THE WAYS OF LIFE
TWO STORIES
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
“_We have wrought no new deliverance in the earth_”
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1897
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A PREFACE: ON THE EBB TIDE 7
MR. SANDFORD 21
THE WONDERFUL HISTORY OF MR. ROBERT DALYELL 149
THE WAYS OF LIFE.
A PREFACE.
ON THE EBB TIDE.
I do not pretend to say that the two stories included in this volume are
conscious or intentional studies of the phase of human experience which
I can describe in no other way than by calling it the ebb, in
contradistinction to that tide in the affairs of men which we all know
is, to those who can identify and seize it, the great turning-point of
life, and leads on to fortune. But they were at least produced under the
influence of the strange discovery which a man makes when he finds
himself carried away by the retiring waters, no longer coming in upon
the top of the wave, but going out. This does not necessarily mean the
decline of life, the approach of age, or any natural crisis, but
something more poignant--the wonderful and overwhelming revelation
which one time or other comes to most people, that their career,
whatever it may have been, has come to a stop: that such successes as
they may have achieved are over, and that henceforward they must
accustom themselves to the thought of going out with the tide. It is a
very startling discovery to one who has perhaps been going with a
tolerably full sail, without any consciousness of weakened energies or
failing power; and it usually is as sudden as it is strange, a thing
unforeseen by the sufferer himself, though probably other people have
already found it out, and traced the steps of its approach. Writers of
fiction, and those whose work it is to realise and exhibit, as far as in
them lies, the vicissitudes and alterations of life, are more usually
employed in illustrating the advance of that tide--in showing how it is
caught or lost, and with what an impetus, and what accompaniments it
flings itself higher and higher up upon the beach, with the sunshine
triumphant in the whirl of the big wave as it turns over and breaks into
foam, and the flood claps its hands with a rejoicing noise. But yet the
ebb has its poetry, too; the colours are more sombre, the sentiment is
different. The flood which in its rise seemed almost individual,
pervaded by something like conscious life of force and pleasure, becomes
like an abstract relentless fate when it pours back into the deep gulf
of a sea of forgetfulness, with a rush of whitened pebbles dragged from
the beach, or a long expanse of uncovered sands left bare, studded with
slippery fragments of rock and the bones of shipwrecked boats. These are
no more than symbols of the rising and falling again of human feeling,
which, in all its phases, is of the highest interest to those who
recognise, even in its imaginary developments, a shadow of their own.
The moment when we first perceive that our individual tide has turned is
one which few persons will find it possible to forget. We look on with a
piteous surprise to see our little triumphs, our not-little hopes, the
future we had still believed in, the past in which we thought our name
and fame would still be to the good, whatever happened, all floating out
to sea to be lost there, out of sight of men. In the morning all might
seem as sure to go on for ever--that is, for our time, which means the
same thing--as the sky over us, or the earth beneath our feet; but
before evening there was a different story, and the tide was in full
retreat, carrying with it both convictions of the past and hope in the
future, not only our little laurels, all tossed and withered, and our
little projects, but also the very heart of exertion, our confidence in
ourselves and providence. The discovery comes in many different ways--in
the unresponsive silence which greets an orator who once was interrupted
by perpetual cheers, in the publishing of a book which drops and is
never heard of more, or, as in the present case, the unsold pictures:
and in the changed accent with which the fickle public pronounces a once
favoured name.
There are some who salute this discovery with outcries of indignation
and refusal to believe. They think, like the French, that they are
betrayed, or, like many of us, that an enemy has done this: a malignant
critic perhaps, an ill-disposed publisher or dealer: and save their own
pride by putting forth explanations, and persuading themselves, if
nobody else, that the thing is temporary and an accident, or else that
it is due to cruel fate, and the machinations of evil-hearted men. But
when, amid the gifts of the artist, be they small or great, he happens
to retain the clearer reason, the common-sense of ordinary intelligence,
it is more difficult to take refuge in such self-deceptions, merciful
expedients of Nature as they may be to blind us to our own misfortunes.
The reasonable man has the worst of it in such cases. It is less
possible for him to believe in a mysterious fate or in malign
influences. He is obliged to allow to himself that the going out of the
tide is as natural as its coming in, and that he is no way exempted from
the operation of those laws which affect human reputation and comfort as
much as the rising and the falling affect the winds and the seas.
These problems of the common life, though they are perhaps less
cheerful, are surely as fit subjects for fiction as are the easier
difficulties of youth. It is common to say that all the stories have
been told and every complication exhausted, so that we can do nothing
but repeat the old themes over again, with such variety of treatment as
our halting genius can suggest. Romance itself, they say, is gone, which
is an assertion strenuously contradicted by the most powerful of our
young writers, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who replies to it in very energetic
tones, that, Here is a steam-engine, which is Romance incarnate, the
great poetry of form and purpose, a creation, as distinct as Hamlet or
Lear, a big, dutiful, but exigent giant which a touch can turn into a
destroyer, but loving guidance into the most useful servant and friend
of man. The tramp of its mighty feet across the wastes of the sea,
bringing the man home to his wife, the son to his mother, is poetry, is
joy to this eager spirit. I am disposed in moderation to accept the
belief of the young author who has a most broad and manful perception of
life as something more than love-making, and to acknowledge the
mysterious monstrous thing which he makes heroic. To show in his
masterful way how every consenting part of the big machine as it clanks
on with large unwieldy steps, so many beats to a minute, sounds a note
in the symphony of life and service, a voice in the great strain of song
which rises from earth to heaven, is more worthy than all the unsavoury
romances of all the decadents. Would not St. Francis, had he lived to
see it, have called to Brother Iron and Brother Steel, strong henchmen
of God, and Sister Steam, with her wreaths of snow, though her voice be
not sweet, to join the song of the Creatures in honour of the Maker, as
he called upon fire and water in his famous hymn? or that older minstrel
in the ancient ages, to whom “snow and vapour, wind and storms
fulfilling His word,” were already members of the great choir? It must
be added, however, when all is said, that it is the grimy engineer
behind watching every valve and guiding every stroke who makes the
romance of the machine, as interesting in his way as Romeo, who, though
he is the perennial hero, and attracts the greatest general interest, is
not so much of a man.
I have often felt while sick or sorry, and craving a little rational
entertainment and distraction--which, in my opinion, it is one of the
highest aims of the novelist to supply--that the everlasting treatment
of the primary problem of youth, as if there was no other in the world,
was at once fatiguing to the reader and injudicious on the part of the
writer. When we want to be taken out of ourselves by the lively
presentment of other people’s difficulties and troubles, it is tiresome
to be always turned back to the disappointments or the successes of
eighteen, or--in deference to the different standard of age held to be
interesting by this generation--let us say five-and-twenty. I do not in
the least deny the great advantages of that episode in life for
treatment in fiction. It is almost the only episode which comes to a
distinct, while it may be, at the same time, a cheerful, end; and its
popularity is obvious: and it is a subject which women, who form the
bulk of readers of fiction, are rarely tired of; all of which points are
important. The elder writers made it the chief thread in the web of
fancy, but surrounded the young people with plenty of fathers and
mothers, neighbours and servants, doctors, clergymen, lawyers, etc., and
all the paraphernalia of common life. But I weary of the two by
themselves, or almost by themselves, as happens so often; and if the
artifices, with which we are so familiar, by which they are brought
together, are fatiguing, how much more so are those uglier artifices by
which, being linked together, they are torn asunder again, and a fierce
duel of what is called passion is set before us against the lurid skies
as the chief object of interest in the world? Novelists make a great
moan when they are hindered in the working out of such subjects, and cry
loudly to heaven and earth against the limited intelligences which
object to them, the British matron, the young person, and so forth. It
seems to me that they would be more reasonable if they complained of the
monotonous demand for a love-story which crushes out of court all the
rest of life--so infinite in variety, so full of complication, so
humorous, so mysterious, so natural and true.
I have wondered often whether Macaulay and Darwin, and such great men,
whom it is the pride of the novel writer to quote as finding their
recreation in novels, were not of my opinion; though it is sadly
disconcerting to find from his own account that all Mr. Darwin wanted
was a story which ended happily--a judgment which is humbling to one’s
pride in a reader of whom one was so much inclined to boast. So do I
like a story which ends happily. And since the public is fond of such
small revelations, I may here confess that I have often begun a story
with the determination to be high-minded--to treat my young lovers
without indulgence, and either kill them or part them in deference to
the rules of Art. But my heart has generally failed me, and I have
rarely found courage to do them any harm. They will have plenty of
trouble in the world, one knows--why should one cross them in the
beginning of their career?
These, however, are questions of a lighter mood than the one with which
I began, and a manifest digression from that theme. The two stories
which follow treat not of the joy and pride of life, but of those so
often unforeseen misfortunes and accidents which shape it towards its
end. Life appears under a very different aspect to the man who has felt
the turn of the tide. Probably the discovery has been quite sudden,
startling, and, so far as he knows, private to himself. His friends all
the time may go on hailing him as poet, creator--all manner of fine
things. If he discloses his discovery to them, he is met by reproaches
for his dejection, his distrust and gloomy views; the compliments which
he knows so well and believes so little are heaped again upon him; he is
out of health, out of spirits, overworked, they say, in want of rest; a
few weeks leisure and repose, and he will be himself again--as if it
were a mood or a freak of temper, and not a fact staring him in the
face. But usually he is too much stunned to speak. He is not dying, or
like to die, though his career has come or is coming to an end. It would
be far more appropriate, far more dramatic if he were; but death is
illogical, and will seldom come at the moment when it is wanted, when it
would most appropriately solve the problem of what is to be done
after?--which becomes the most pressing, the most necessary of
questions. Why did not Napoleon die at Waterloo? He lived to add a
pitiful postscript to his existence, to accumulate all kinds of squalid
miseries about his end, instead of the dramatic and clear-cut conclusion
which he might have attained by a merciful bullet or the thrust of a
bayonet. And how well it would be to end thus when we have discovered
that our day is over! But so far from that, the man has to go on, as if
nothing had happened, “in a cheerful despair,” as I have read in a
note-book--as if to-day were as yesterday, or perhaps more abundant.
“We poets in our youth, begin in gladness,
But after comes in the end despondency and madness,”
says Wordsworth. “We have wrought no deliverance in the earth,” says
with profounder meaning a much older poet. A man in such straits may
sometimes save himself as Hamlet would have done, with a bare bodkin,
had not the thought of that something after death which might be worse
even than present calamity deterred him; but if he is of other mettle
and cannot run away, or leave his post save at the lawful summons, the
question, What he is to do? is overwhelming. No hope of being carried to
any island valley of Avillion by stately queens in that boat which is
going out with the tide. And no rebellion against fate will do him the
slightest service. He has to hold his footing somehow--but how?
I confess that I have not had the courage to follow this question, in
either of the cases treated here, to such depths of human discomfiture
as may have been, or may yet be. A greater artist might have done so,
and led the defeated man through all the depths of humiliation and
dismay; but my hand is not strong or firm enough to trace out to the
bounds of the catastrophe the last possibilities of the broken career.
What in the jargon of the age is called the psychological moment is
that in which the first discovery is made, and the startled victim
suddenly perceives what has happened to him, and feels in every plank of
his boat the downward drag of the ebb tide, and looks about him wildly
to see if there is anything he can lay hold of to arrest it, any
deliverance or any escape. This is the case of Mr. Sandford, the hero of
the first of the following tales: and of many others who are not
favoured by so speedy and so complete an answer to this bewildering
problem of life.
The other story is different; for Robert Dalyell, the subject of that,
has laid his plans arbitrarily to escape out of it, doing what seems to
him the best he can for those who belonged to him. And here again there
is much more to say than has been said; for the condition of the man who
blots himself out of life without dying, and accepts a kind of moral
annihilation while yet all the sources of life are warm within him,
might well afford us one of the most tragic chapters of human history.
But I have shrunk from those darker colours with a compunction for him
whom I have made to suffer, which is quite fantastical and out of
reason, but yet true. To have brought him into the world for the mere
purpose of exhibiting his torments seems bad enough without searching
into the depths of them, and betraying those secrets which he himself
accepts with a robust commonplace of endurance as the natural
consequences of the step he has taken.
I may add here that the circumstances of this latter story, which a just
but severe writer has upbraided me with taking from real life, are
indeed, so far as the central incident goes, facts in a family history,
but facts of which I know neither the date nor the personages involved,
all of whom are purely imaginary, as are most of the consequences that
follow, at least so far as is known to me.
The reader, I hope, will forgive a writer very little given to
explanations, or to any personal appearance, for these prefatory words.
M. O. W. O.
MR. SANDFORD.
CHAPTER I.
He was a man approaching sixty, but in perfect health, and with no
painful physical reminders that he had already accomplished the greater
part of life’s journey. He was a successful man, who had attained at a
comparatively early age the heights of his profession, and gained a name
for himself. No painter in England was better or more favourably known.
He had never been emphatically the fashion, or made one of those great
“hits” which are far from being invariably any test of genius; but his
pictures had always been looked for with pleasure, and attracted a large
and very even share of popular approbation. From year to year, for what
was really a very long time, though in his good health and cheerful
occupation the progress of time had never forced itself upon him unduly,
he had gone on doing very well, getting both praise and pudding--good
prices, constant commissions, and a great deal of agreeable applause. A
course of gentle uninterrupted success of this description has a
curiously tranquillising effect upon the mind. It did not seem to Mr.
Sandford, or his wife, or any of his belongings, that it could ever
fail. His income was more like an official income, coming in at slightly
irregular intervals, and with variations of amount, but wonderfully
equal at the year’s end, than the precarious revenues of an artist. And
this fact lulled him into security in respect to his pecuniary means. He
had a very pleasant, ample, agreeable life--a pretty and comfortable
house, full of desirable things; a pleasant, gay, not very profitable,
but pleasant family; and the agreeable atmosphere of applause and public
interest which gave a touch of perfection to all the other good things.
He had the consciousness of being pointed out in every assembly as
somebody worth looking at: “That’s Sandford, you know, the painter.” He
did not dislike it himself, and Mrs. Sandford liked it very much.
Altogether it would have been difficult to find a more pleasant and
delightful career.
His wife had been the truest companion and helpmeet of all his early
life. She had made their small means do in the beginning when money was
not plentiful. She had managed to do him credit in all the many
appearances in society which a rising painter finds to his advantage,
while still spending very little on herself or her dress. She had kept
all going, and saved him from a thousand anxieties and cares. She had
sat to him when models proved expensive so often that it was a common
joke to say that some reflection of Mrs. Sandford’s face was in all his
pictures, from Joan of Arc to Queen Elizabeth. Now that the children
were grown up, perhaps the parents were a little less together than of
old. She had her daughters to look after, who were asked out a great
deal, and very anxious to be fashionable and to keep up with their fine
friends. The two grown-up girls were both pretty, animated, and pleasant
creatures, full of the chatter of society, yet likewise full of better
things. There were also two grown-up sons: one a young barrister,
briefless, and fond of society too; the other one of those agreeable
do-nothings who are more prevalent nowadays than ever before, a very
clever fellow, who had just not succeeded as he ought at the University
or elsewhere, but had plenty of brains for anything, and only wanted the
opportunity to distinguish himself. They were all full of faculty, both
boys and girls, but all took a good deal out of the family stores
without bringing anything in. Ever since these children grew up the
family life had been on a very easy, ample scale. There was never any
appearance of want of money, nor was the question ever discussed with
the young ones, who had really no way of knowing that there was anything
precarious in that well-established family income which provided them
with everything they could desire. Sometimes, indeed, Mrs. Sandford
would shake her head and declare that she “could not afford” some
particular luxury. “Oh, nonsense, mamma!” the girls would say, while
Harry would add, “That’s mother’s _rôle_, we all know. If she did not
say so she would not be acting up to her part.” They took it in this
way, with the same, or perhaps even a greater composure than if Mr.
Sandford’s revenues had been drawn from the three per cents.
It was only after this position had been attained that any anxieties
arose. At first it had seemed quite certain that Jack would speedily
distinguish himself at the bar, and become Lord Chancellor in course of
time; and that something would turn up for Harry--most likely a
Government appointment, which so well known a man as his father had a
right to expect. And Mrs. Sandford, with a sigh, had looked forward with
certainty to the early marriage of her girls. But some years had now
passed since Ada, who was the youngest, had been introduced, and as yet
nothing of that kind had happened. Harry was pleasantly about the world,
a great help in accompanying his sisters when Mrs. Sandford did not want
to go out, but no appointment had fallen in his way; and the briefs
which Jack had procured were very few and very trifling. Things went on
quite pleasantly all the same. The young people enjoyed themselves very
much--they were asked everywhere. Lizzie, who had a beautiful voice, was
an acquisition wherever she went, and helped her sister and her
brothers, who could all make themselves agreeable. The life of the
household flowed on in the pleasantest way imaginable; everything was
bright, delightful, easy. Mrs. Sandford was so good a manager that all
domestic arrangements went as on velvet. She was never put out if two or
three people appeared unexpectedly to lunch. An impromptu dinner party
even, though it might disturb cook, never disturbed mamma. There was no
extravagance, but everything delightfully liberal and full. The first
vague uneasiness that crept into the atmosphere was about the boys. It
was Mrs. Sandford herself who began this. “Did you speak to Lord Okeham
about Harry?” she said to her husband one day, when she had been
particularly elated by the appearance of that nobleman at her tea-table.
He had come to look at a picture, and he was very willing afterwards, it
appeared, to come into the drawing-room to tea.
“How could I? I scarcely know him. It is difficult enough to ask a
friend--but a man I have only seen twice----”
“Your money or your life,” said Harry, with a laugh. He was himself
quite tranquil about his appointment, never doubting that some day it
would turn up.
“It is easier to ask a stranger than a friend,” said Mrs. Sandford. “It
is like trading on friendship with a man you know; but this man’s
nothing but a patron, or an admirer. I should have asked him like--I
mean at once.”
“Mother was going to say like a shot--she is getting dreadfully slangy,
worse than any of us. Let’s hope old Okeham will come back; there’s not
much time lost,” said the cheerful youth.
“When your father was your age he was making a good deal of money. We
were beginning to see our way,” said Mrs. Sandford, shaking her head.
“What an awfully imprudent pair you must have been to marry so early!”
cried Jack.
“I wonder what you would say to us if we suggested anything of the
kind?” said Miss Ada, who had made herself very agreeable to Lord
Okeham.
“A poor painter!” said Lizzie, with a tone in her voice which her mother
understood--for, indeed Mrs. Sandford did not at all encourage the
attentions of poor painters, having still that early certainty of great
matches in her mind.
The young people were quite fond of their parents, very proud of their
father, dutiful as far as was consistent with the traditions of their
generation: but naturally they were of opinion that fathers and mothers
were slightly antiquated, and did not possess the last lights.
“The young ones are too many for you, Mary,” said Mr. Sandford; but he
added, “It’s true what your mother says; you oughtn’t to be about so
much as you are, doing nothing. You ought to grind as long as you’re
young----”
“At what, sir?” said Harry, with mock reverence. Mr. Sandford did not
reply, for indeed he could not. Instead of giving an answer he went back
to the studio, which indeed he had begun to find a pleasant refuge in
the midst of all the flow of youthful talk and laughter, which was not
of the kind he had been used to in his youth. Young artists, those poor
painters whom Mrs. Sandford held at arms’ length, are not perhaps much
more sensible than other young men, but they have at least a subject on
which any amount of talk is possible, and which their elders can
understand. Mr. Sandford was proud of his children, and loved them
dearly. Their education, he believed, was much better than his own, and
they knew a great deal more on general subjects than he did. But their
jargon was not his jargon, and though it seemed very clever and knowing,
and even amusing for a while, it soon palled upon him. He went back to
his studio and to the picture he was painting, for the daylight was
still good. It was the largest of his Academy pictures, and nearly
finished. It occurred to him as he stood looking at it critically from a
distance, with his head on one side and his hand shading now one part
now another, that Lord Okeham, though very complimentary, had not said
anything about a desire to possess in his small collection a specimen of
such a well-known master as ----. He remembered, now, that it was with
this desire that his lordship had been supposed to be coming. Daniells,
the picture dealer, had said as much. “He wants to come and see what
you’ve got on the stocks. Tell you w’at, old man, ’e’s as rich as
Cressus. Lay it on thick, ’e won’t mind--give you two thou’ as easy as
five ’undred.” This was what, with his usual elegant familiarity, Mr.
Daniells had said. It occurred to Mr. Sandford, with a curious little
pang of surprise, that Lord Okeham had not said a word on the subject.
He had admired everything, he had lingered upon some of the smaller
sketches, making little remarks in the way of criticism now and then
which the painter recognised as very judicious, but he had not said a
word about enriching his collection with a specimen, &c. The surprise
with which Mr. Sandford noticed this had a sort of sting in it--a prick
like the barb of a fish-hook, like the thorn upon a rose. He did not at
the moment exactly perceive why he should have felt it so. After a
little while, indeed, he began to smile at the idea that it was from
Okeham that this sting came. What did one man’s favour, even though that
man was a cabinet minister, matter to him? It was not that, it was the
discussion that followed which had left him with a prick of disquiet, a
tingling spot in his mind. He must, he felt, speak to some one about
Harry--not Lord Okeham, whom he did not know, who had evidently changed
his mind about that specimen of so well-known, &c. He would not dream of
saying anything to him, a man not sympathetic, a stranger whom, though
he might offer him a cup of tea, he did not really know; but it was very
clear that Harry ought to have something to do.
So ought Jack. Jack had a profession, but that did not seem to advance
him much. Mr. Sandford had early determined that his sons should not be
artists like himself--that they should have no precarious career,
dependent on the favour of picture dealers and patrons, notwithstanding
that he himself had done very well in that way. He had always resolved
from the beginning to give them every advantage. Mr. Sandford recalled
to mind that a few years ago he had been very strenuous on this point,
talking of the duty of giving his children the very best education,
which was the best thing any father could do for his children. He had
been very confident indeed on that subject; now he paused and rubbed his
chin meditatively with his mahl-stick. Was it possible that he was not
quite so sure now? He shook himself free from this troublesome coil of
thought, and made up his mind that he must make an effort about Harry.
Then he put down his brushes and went out for his afternoon walk.
In earlier days Mrs. Sandford would have come into the studio; she would
have talked Lord Okeham over. She would have said, “Oh, he did not like
that forest bit, didn’t he? Upon my word! I suppose my lord thinks he is
a judge!”
“What he said was reasonable enough. He does know something about it. I
told you myself I was not satisfied with the balance of colour. The
shadow’s too dark. The middle distance----”
“Oh, Edward, don’t talk nonsense: that’s just like you--you’re so
ridiculously modest. If the cook were to come in one morning and tell
you she thought your composition bad, you would say she approached the
picture without any bias, and probably what she said was quite true.
Come out for a walk.”
This, be it clearly understood, was an imaginary conversation. It did
not take place for the excellent reason that Mrs. Sandford was in the
drawing-room, smiling at the witticisms of her young ones, and saying at
intervals, “Come, come, Lizzie!” and “Don’t be so satirical, Jack.” They
were not nearly such good company as her husband, nor did they want her
half so much, but she thought they did, and that it was her duty to be
there. So Mr. Sandford, who did not think of it at all as a grievance,
but only as a natural necessity, had nothing but an imaginary talk which
did not relieve him much, and went out for his walk by himself.
It would be foolish to date absolutely from that day a slight change
that began to work in him--but it did come on about this time: and that
was an anxiety that the boys should get on and begin their life’s work
in earnest which had not affected him before. He had been too busy to
think much except about his work so long as the young ones were well;
and the period at which the young ones become men and women is not
always easy for a father to discern so long as they are all under his
roof as in their childish days. He, too, had let things flow along in
the well-being of the time without pausing to inquire how long it was to
last, or what was to come of it. A man of sixty who is in perfectly good
health does not feel himself to be old, nor think it necessary to
consider the approaching end of his career. Something, however, aroused
him now about these boys. He got a little irritable when he saw Harry
about, playing tennis with the girls, sometimes spending the whole day
in flannels. “Why can’t he do something?” he said to his wife.
“Dear Edward,” said Mrs. Sandford, “what can the poor boy do? He is only
too anxious to do something. He is always talking to me about it. If
only Lord Okeham or some one would get a post for him. Is there no one
you can speak to about poor Harry?”
This was turning the tables upon Harry’s father, who, to tell the truth,
was very slow to ask favours, and did not like it all. He did speak,
however--not to Lord Okeham, but to an inferior potentate, and was told
that all the lists were full, although everybody would be delighted, of
course, to serve him if possible; and nothing came of that. Then there
was Jack. The young man came into dinner one day in the highest spirits.
He had got a brief--a real brief--a curiosity which he regarded with a
jocular admiration. “I shall be a rich man in no time,” he said.
“How much is your fee?” asked one of the girls. “You must take us
somewhere with it Jack.”
“It is two guineas,” Jack said, and then there was a general burst of
laughter--that laughter young and fresh which is sweet to the ears of
fathers and mothers.
“That’s majestic,” Harry said; “lend us something, old fellow, for
luck,” and they all laughed again. They thought it a capital joke that
Jack should earn two guineas in six months. It did not hurt him or any
of them; he had everything he wanted as if he had been earning hundreds.
But Mr. Sandford did not laugh. This time it vexed and disturbed him to
hear all the cheerful banter and talk about Jack’s two guineas.
“It is all very well to laugh,” he said to his wife afterwards, “but how
is he ever to live upon that?”
“Dear Edward, it’s not like you to take their fun in earnest,” said the
mother. “The poor boy has such spirits--and then it’s always a
beginning.”
“I am afraid his spirits are too good. If he would only take life a
little more seriously----”
“Why should he?” said Mrs. Sandford, taking high ground; “it is his
happiest time. If he wanted to marry and set up for himself it might be
different. But they have no cares--as yet. We ought to be thankful they
are all so happy at home. Few young men love their home like our boys.
We ought to be very thankful,” she repeated with a devout look upon her
upturned face. It took the words out of his mouth. He could not say any
more.
But he kept on thinking. The time was passing away with great
rapidity--far more quickly than it had ever done. Sunday trod on the
heels of Sunday, and the months jostled each other as they flew along.
Presently it was Jack’s birthday, and there was a dance and a great deal
of affectionate pleasure; but when Mr. Sandford remembered how old the
boy was, it gave him a shock which none of the others felt. At that age
he himself had been Jack’s father, he had laid the foundation of his
reputation, and was a rising man. If they did not live at home and had
not everything provided for them, what would become of these boys? It
gave him a sort of panic to think of it. In the very midst of the dance,
when he was himself standing in the midst of a little knot of
respectable fathers watching the young ones enjoying themselves, this
thought overtook him and made him shiver.
“Getting on, I hear, very well at the bar,” one of the gentlemen said.
“He is not making very much money as yet,” replied Mr. Sandford.
“Oh, nobody does that--at first, at least; but so long as he has you to
fall back upon,” this good-natured friend said, with a nod of his head.
Mr. Sandford could not make any reply. He kept saying to himself, “Two
guineas--two guineas--he could not live very long on that.” And Harry
had not even two guineas. It fretted him to have this thought come back
at all manner of unlikely times. He did not seem able to shake it off.
And Mrs. Sandford was always on the defensive, seeing it in his eyes,
and making responses to it, speaking at it, always returning to the
subject. She dwelt upon the goodness of the boys, and their love of
their home, and how good it was for the girls to have them, and how
nobody made their mark all at once, “except people that have genius like
you,” she said with that wifely admiration and faith which is so sweet
to a man. What more could he say?
CHAPTER II.
About the same time, or a little later, another shadow rose up upon Mr.
Sandford’s life. It was like the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, like
a mere film upon the blue sky at first. Perhaps the very first
appearance of it--the faintest shadow of a shade upon the blue--arose on
that day when Lord Okeham visited the studio and went away without
giving any commission. Not that great personages had not come before
with the same result; but that this time there had been supposed to be a
distinct purpose in his visit beyond that of taking a cup of tea with
the artist’s wife and daughters--and this purpose had not been carried
out. It was not the cloud, but it was a sort of _avant-coureur_ of the
cloud, like the chill little momentary breath which sometimes heralds a
storm. No storm followed, but the shadow grew. The next thing that made
it really shape itself as a little more than a film was the fact of his
Academy picture, the principal one of the year, coming back--without
any explanation at all; not purchased, nor even with any application
from the print-sellers about an engraving; simply coming back as it had
gone into the exhibition. No doubt in the course of a long career such a
thing as this, too, had happened before. But there was generally
something to account for it, and the picture thus returned seldom dwelt
long in the painter’s hands. This time, however, it subsided quite
quietly into its place, lighting up the studio with a great deal of
colour and interest--“a pleasure to see,” Mrs. Sandford said, who had
often declared that the worst thing of being a painter’s wife was that
she never liked to see the pictures go away. This might be very true,
and it is quite possible that it was a pleasure to behold, standing on
its easel against a wall which generally was enlivened only with the
earliest of sketches, and against which a lay figure grinned and
sprawled.
But the prospect was not quite agreeable to the painter. However
cheerfully he went into his studio in the morning, he always grew grave
when he came in front of that brilliant canvas. It was the “Black Prince
at Limoges,” a picture full of life and action, with all the aid of
mediæval costume and picturesque groups--such a picture as commanded
everybody’s interest in Mr. Sandford’s younger days. He would go and
stand before it for an hour at a time, trying to find some fault in the
composition, or in the flesh tints, or the arrangements of the
draperies. It took away his thoughts from the subject he was then
engaged in working out. Sometimes he would put up his hand to separate
one portion from another, sometimes divide it with a screen of paper,
sometimes even alter an outline with chalk, or mellow a spot of colour
with his brush. There was very little fault to be found with the
picture. It carried out all the rules of composition to which the
painter had been bred. The group of women which formed the central light
was full of beauty; the sick warrior to whom they appealed was a marvel
of strength and ferocity, made all the keener by the pallor of his
illness. There was nothing to be said against the picture; except,
perhaps, that, had not this been Mr. Sandford’s profession, there was no
occasion for its existence at all.
When the mind has once been filled with a new idea it is astounding how
many events occur to heighten it. Other distinguished visitors came to
the studio, like Lord Okeham, and went away again, having left a great
deal of praise and a little criticism, but nothing else, behind them.
These were not, perhaps, of importance enough to have produced much
effect at an ordinary moment, but they added to the general
discouragement. Mr. Sandford smiled within himself at the mistakes the
amateurs made, and the small amount of real knowledge which they showed;
but when they were gone the smile became something like that which is
generally and vulgarly described as being on the wrong side of the
mouth. It was all very well to smile at the amateurs--but it was in the
long run their taste, and not that of the heaven-born artist, which
carried the day; and when a man takes away in his pocket the sum which
ought to supply your balance at your banker’s, the sight of his back as
he goes out at the door is not pleasant. Mr. Sandford had not come to
that pitch yet; but he laughed no longer, and felt a certain ruefulness
in his own look when one after another departed without a word of a
commission. There were other things, too, not really of the slightest
importance, which deepened the impression--the chatter of Jack’s
friends, for instance, some of whom were young journalists, and talked
the familiar jargon of critics. He came into the drawing-room one day
during one of his wife’s teas, and found two or three young men,
sprawling about with legs stretched out over the limited space, who were
pulling to pieces a recent exhibition of the works of a Royal
Academician. “You would think you had got among half a dozen different
sorts of people dressed for private theatricals,” said one of the
youths. “Old models got up as Shakespearian kings, and that sort of
thing. _You_ know, Mrs. Sandford; conventional groups trying to look as
if they were historical.”
“I remember Mr. White’s pictures very well,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I used
to think them beautiful. We all rushed to see what he had in the
exhibition, upon the private view day, when I did not know so much about
it as I do now.”
“Ah, yes; before you knew so much about it,” said the art authority.
“You would think very differently to-day.”
“The whole school is like that,” said another. “Historical painting is
gone out like historical novel-writing. The public is tired of costume.
Life is too short for that sort of thing. We want a far more profound
knowledge of the human figure and beauty in the abstract----”
“Stuff!” said Harry; “the British public doesn’t want your nudities,
whatever you may think.”
“The British public likes babies, and sick girls getting well, and
beautiful young gentlemen saying eternal adieux to lovely young ladies,”
said one of the girls.
“To be sure, that sort of thing always goes on; but everybody must feel
that in cultured circles there is a far greater sense of the beauty of
colour for itself and art for art than in those ridiculous old days when
the subject was everything----”
“You confuse me with your new lights,” said Mrs. Sandford. “I always did
think there was a great deal in a good subject.”
“My dear Mrs. Sandford!” cried one of the young men, laughing; while
another added, with the solemnity of his kind--
“People really did think so at one time. It was a genuine belief so long
as it lasted. I am not one of those who laugh at faith so _naïf_.
Whatever is true even for a time has a right to be respected,” said
this profound young man.
Mr. Sandford came in at this point, having paused a little to enjoy the
fun, as he said to himself. It was wonderful to hear how they
chattered--these babes. “I am glad to hear that you are all so tolerant
of the old fogeys,” he said, with a laugh as he showed himself. And one
at least of the young men had the good taste to jump up as if he were
ashamed of himself, and to take his legs out of the way.
“I suppose that’s the new creed that those fellows were giving forth,”
he said to Jack, when the other young men were gone.
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said Jack, with an embarrassed laugh. “We all
of us say our say.”
“But that is the say of most of you, I suppose,” said his father.
“Well, sir, I suppose every generation has its own standard. ‘The old
order changeth,’ don’t you know--in art as well as in other things.”
“I see; and you think we know precious little about it,” said Mr.
Sandford, with a joyless smile which curled his lip without obeying any
mirthful impulse. He felt angry and unreasonably annoyed at the silly
boys who knew so little. “But they know how to put that rubbish into
words, and they get it published, and it affects the general opinion,”
he said to himself, with perhaps a feeling, not unnatural in the
circumstances, that he would like to drown those kittens with their
miauling about things they knew nothing about. Angry moods, however, did
not last long in Mr. Sandford’s mind. He went back to his studio and
looked at the “Black Prince” in the light of these criticisms. And he
found that some of the old courtiers in attendance on the sick warrior
did look unfeignedly like old models, which indeed they were, and that
there was more composition than life in the attitudes of the women. “I
always thought that arm should come like this,” he said to himself,
taking up his chalk.
One day about this time he had a visit from Daniells, the picture
dealer, leading a millionaire--a newly-fledged one--who was making a
gallery and buying right and left. Daniells, though he was very dubious
about his h’s, was a good fellow, and always ready to stand by a friend.
He was taking his millionaire a round of the studios, and especially to
those in which there was something which had not “come off,” according
to his phraseology. The millionaire was exceptionally ignorant and
outspoken, expressing his own opinion freely. “What sort of a thing have
we got here?” he said, walking up to the “Black Prince;” “uncommon nice
lot of girls, certainly; but what are they all doing round the fellow
out of the hospital? I say, is it something catching?” he cried, giving
Mr. Sandford a dig with his elbow. Daniells laughed at this long and
loudly, but it was the utmost the painter could do to conjure up a
simple smile. He explained as well as he could that they were begging
for life, and that the town was being sacked, a terrible event of which
his visitor might have heard.
“Sacked,” said the millionaire; “you mean that they’re factory hands and
have got the sack, or that they have been just told they’ve got to work
short time. I understand that; and it shows how human nature’s just the
same in all ages. But I can tell you that in Lancashire it’s a nice
rowing he’d have got instead of all these sweet looks. They would not
have let him off like that, don’t you think it. Wherever you get your
women from, ours ain’t of that kind.”
Sandford tried to explain what kind of a sack it was, but he did not
succeed, for the rich man was much pleased with his own view.
“It’s a fine picture,” said Daniells; “Mr. Sandford, he’s one of the
very best of our modern masters, sir. He has got a great name, and
beautiful his pictures look in a gallery with the others to set ’em off.
Hung on the line in the Academy, and collected crowds. I shouldn’t ’a
been surprised if they’d ’ad to put a rail round it like they did to Mr.
Frith’s.”
He gave a wink at Mr. Sandford as he spoke, which made our poor painter
sick.
“I’ve got one of Frith’s,” said the millionaire.
“You’ll ’ave got one of every modern artist worth counting when you’ve
got Mr. Sandford’s,” said Daniells, with a pat upon the shoulder to his
wealthy client. That gentleman turned round, putting his hands into his
pockets.
“I’ve seen some pictures as I liked better,” he said.
“Yes, I know. You’ve seen that one o’ Millais’, a regular stunner; but,
God bless you, that’s but one figger, and twice the money. Look at the
work in that,” cried the dealer, turning his man round again, who gave
the picture another condescending inspection from one corner to the
other.
“I don’t deny there’s a deal of work in it,” he said, “if it’s painted
fair with everything from the life; and I don’t mind taking it to
complete my collection; but I’ll expect to have that considered in the
price,” he added, turning once more on the painter. “You see, Mr. ----
(What’s the gentleman’s name, Daniells?) I am not death on the picture
for itself. It’s a fine showy picture, and I don’t doubt ’t’ll look well
when it’s hung; but big things like that, as don’t tell their story
plain, they’re not exactly my taste. However, it’s all right since
Daniells says so. The only man I know that goes in for that sort of
thing thinks all the world of Daniells. ‘Go to Daniells,’ he says, ‘and
you’ll be all right.’ So I’ll take the picture, but I’ll expect a
hundred or two off for ready money. I suppose there’s discount in all
trades.”
“Say fifty off, and you’ll do very well, and get a fine thing cheap,”
said Daniells.
Mr. Sandford’s countenance had darkened. He was very amiable, very
courteous, much indisposed to bargaining, but he felt as if his customer
had jumped upon him, and it was all he could do to contain himself. “I
never make----” he began, with a little haughtiness most unusual to him;
but before he had said the final words he caught Daniells’ eye, who was
making anxious signs to him. The picture dealer twisted his face into a
great many contortions. He raised his eyebrows, he moved his lips, he
made all kinds of gestures; at last, under a pretence of looking at a
sketch, he darted between Mr. Sandford and the other, and in a hoarse
whisper said “Take it,” imperatively, in the painter’s ear.
Mr. Sandford came to an astonished pause. He looked at the uncouth
patron of art, and at the dealer, and at the picture, in turn. It was on
his lips to say that nothing would induce him to let the “Black Prince”
go; but something stopped and chilled him--something, he could not tell
what. He paused a moment, then retired suddenly to the back of the
studio. “I’m not good at making bargains--I will leave myself,” he said,
“in Mr. Daniells’ hands.”
“Ah, a bad system--a bad system. Every man ought to make his own
bargains,” said the rich man.
Mr. Sandford did not listen. He began to turn over a portfolio of old
sketches as if that were the most important thing in the world. He
heard the voices murmur on, sometimes louder, sometimes lower, broken by
more than one sharp exclamation, but restrained himself and did not
interfere. Many thoughts went through his mind while he stooped over the
big portfolio, and turned over, without seeing them, sketch after
sketch. Why should he be bidden to “take it” in that imperative way?
What did Daniells know which made him interfere with such a high hand?
He was tempted again and again to turn round, to put a stop to the
negotiation, to say, as he had the best right, “I’ll have none of this;”
but he did not do it, though he could not even to himself explain why.
He found eventually that Daniells had sold the picture for him at a
reduction of fifty guineas from the original price, which was a thing of
no importance. He hated the bargain, but the little sacrifice of the
money moved him not at all. He recovered his temper or his composure
when the arrangement was completed, and smiled with a reserved
acceptance of the millionaire’s invitation to “come to my place and see
it hung,” as he showed the pair away. They were a well-matched pair, and
Daniells was no doubt far better adapted to deal with each a man than a
sensitive, proud artist, who did not like to have his toes trodden upon.
After a while, indeed, Mr. Sandford felt himself quite able to smile at
the incident, and shook off all his annoyance. He went in to luncheon
with the cheque in his hand.
“I have sold the ‘Black Prince,’” he said, with a certain pleasure, even
triumph, in his voice, remembering how Jack’s friends had scoffed, if
not at the picture, at least at the school to which it belonged.
“Ah!” cried Mrs. Sandford, half pleased, half regretful. “I knew we
should not have to give it house-room long.” She gave a glance round her
as if she had heard something derogatory to the picture too.
“Who have you taken in and done for this time, father?” said Harry, who
was given to banter.
“Was it that horrid man who came with Mr. Daniells?” cried Lizzie. “Oh,
papa, I should not have thought you would have sold a nice picture to
such a man.”
“Art-patrons are like gift-horses; we must not look them in the mouth,”
said the painter. “There are quantities of h’s, no doubt, to be found
about the studio; but if we stood upon that----”
“So long as he doesn’t leave out anything, either h’s or 0’s, in his
cheque.”
Mr. Sandford felt slightly, unreasonably offended by any reference to
the cheque. He gave it to his wife to send to the bank, with an annoyed
apprehension that she would make some remark upon the fifty guineas
which were left out. But Mrs. Sandford had not been his wife for thirty
years without being able to read the annoyance in his face. And though
she did not know what was its cause she respected it, and said not a
word about the difference which her quick eye saw at once. Could it be
that which had vexed Edward? she asked herself--he was not usually a man
who counted his pounds in that way.
The sending off of the “Black Prince,” its packing and directing, and
all the details of its departure, occupied him for some time. It was
August, the beginning of holiday time, when, though never without a
protest at the loss of the light days, even a painter idles a little.
And the youngest boy had come from school, and they were all going to
the seaside. Mr. Sandford did not like the bustle of the moment. He
proposed to stay in town for a few days after the family, and join them
when they had settled down in their new quarters. Before they went,
however, he had an interview with one of those friends of Jack’s who
were always about the house, and whose opinions on art were so different
from Mr. Sandford’s, which gave another touch of excitement to the
household. The young fellow wanted to marry Lizzie, as had been a long
time apparent to everybody but her father. There was nothing to be said
against him except that he had not much money; but Mr. Sandford thought
that young Moulton looked startled when he had to inform him that Lizzie
would have no fortune. “Of course that was not of the least
consequence,” he said, but he gave his future father-in-law a curious
and startled look.
“I think he was disappointed that there was no money,” the painter said
afterwards to his wife.
“Oh, Edward! there is nothing mercenary about him!” said Mrs. Sandford;
but she sighed and added, “If there only had been a little for her--just
enough for her clothes. It makes such a difference to a young married
woman. It is hard to have to ask your husband for everything.”
“Did you think so, Mary?” he asked, with a smile but a sense of pain.
“I--but we were not like ordinary people, we were just two fools
together,” said the wife, with a smile which brightened all her face;
“but,” she added, shaking her head, “we don’t marry our daughters like
that.”
“If she is half as good to him as you have been to me----”
“Oh, don’t speak,” she said, putting up her hand to stop his mouth.
“Lance Moulton can never be the hundredth part so good as _my_ husband.”
But she stopped after this little outburst, and laughed, and again
shaking her head, repeated, “But we don’t marry our daughters like
that.”
He felt inclined to ask, but did not, why?
When they all went away Mr. Sandford felt a little lonely, left by
himself in the house, and perhaps it was that as much as anything else
that set him thinking again. His wife had pressed the question of what
Lizzie would want if she married young Moulton, who was only a
journalist, on several occasions, until at last they had both decided
that a small allowance might be made to her in place of a fortune.
“Fifty pounds is the interest of a thousand, and that is what she will
have when we die,” Mrs. Sandford said, who was not learned in per cents.
“I think we might give her fifty pounds a year, Edward.”
“Fifty pounds will not do much good,” he said.
“Not in their housekeeping, perhaps; but to have even fifty pounds will
be a great thing for _her_. It will make her so much more comfortable.”
Thus they concluded the matter between them, though not without a
certain hesitation on Mr. Sandford’s part. It was strange that he should
hesitate. He had always been so liberal, ready to give. There was no
reason why he should take fright now. There was the millionaire’s cheque
for the “Black Prince,” which had just been paid into the bank, leaving
a comfortable balance to their credit. There was no pressure of any kind
for the moment. To those who had known what it was to await their next
payment very anxiously in order to pay very pressing debts, and had seen
the little stream of money flowing, flowing away, till it almost seemed
to be on the point of disappearing altogether, the ease of having a
considerable sum to their credit was indescribable; but Mrs. Sandford
was more and more wrapped up in the children, and though never
indifferent, yet a little detached in every-day thought and action from
her husband. She did not ask him as usual about his commissions and his
future work. She seemed altogether at ease in her mind about everything
that was not the boys and the girls.
CHAPTER III.
The house was very quiet when they were all away. Merely to look into
the drawing-room was enough to give any one a chill. The sense of
emptiness where generally every corner was full, and silence where there
were always so many voices, was very depressing. Mr. Sandford consoled
himself by a very hard day’s work the first day of the absence of his
family, getting on very well indeed, and making a great advance in the
picture he was painting--a small picture intended for one of his oldest
friends. In the evening, as he had nothing else to occupy him, he moved
about the studio, not going into the other parts of the house at all,
and amused himself by making a little study of the moonlight as it came
in upon the plants in the conservatory. His house was in a quarter not
fashionable, somewhere between St. John’s Wood and Regent’s Park, and
consequently there was more room than is usual in London, a pretty
garden and plenty of air. The effect of the moonlight and the black
exaggerated shadows amused him. The thought passed through his mind that
if perhaps he were one of the newfangled school which Jack’s friends
believed in, he might turn that unreal scene which was so indubitable a
fact into a picture and probably make a great success as an
impressionist--an idea at which he smiled with a milder but not less
genuine contempt than the young impressionist might have felt for Mr.
Sandford’s school. He had half a mind to do it--to conceal his name and
send it to one of the lesser exhibitions, so as afterwards to have a
laugh at the young men, and prove to them how easy the trick was, and
that any old fogey who took the trouble could beat them in their own
way. Next morning, however, he threw the sketch into a portfolio, with a
horror of the black and white extravagance which in the daylight
offended his artist-eye, and which he had a suspicion was not so good
after all, or so easy a proof of the facility of doing that sort of
thing as he had supposed. And that day his work did not advance so
quickly or so satisfactorily. He listened for the swing of the door at
the other end of the passage which connected the studio with the house,
though he knew well enough there was no one who could come to disturb
him. There are days when it is so agreeable to be disturbed! And it was
when he was painting in this languid way, and, as was natural, not at
all pleasing himself with his work, that there suddenly and most
distinctly came before him, as if some one had come in and said it, a
thing--a fact--which strangely enough he had not even thought of before.
When it first occurred to him his hand suddenly stopped work with an
action of its own before the mind had time to influence it, and there
was a sudden rush of heat to his head. He felt drops of moisture come
out on his forehead; his heart for a second paused too. His whole being
received a shock--a start. For the first moment he could scarcely make
out what this extraordinary sudden commotion, for which his mind seemed
only partially responsible, could be.
This was what had in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, occurred to
the painter. He had, of course, been aware of it before without giving
any particular importance to the fact. The fact, indeed, in a
precarious, uncertain profession like his, in which a piece of good
fortune might occur at any moment, was really not of the first
importance; but it flashed upon him now in a significance and with a
force which no such thing had ever held before. It was this--that when
he had completed the little picture upon which he was working he had no
other commission of any kind on hand. It sounds very prosaic to be a
thing capable of giving such a tragic shot--but it was not prosaic. One
can even conceive circumstances in which despair and death might be in
such words; and to no one in Mr. Sandford’s position could they be
pleasant. Even if the fact represented no material loss, it would
represent loss--which at his age could never be made up--loss of
acceptance, loss of position, that kind of failure which is popularly
represented as being “shelved,” put aside as a thing that is done with;
always a keen and grievous pang. But to our painter the words meant more
than that. They meant a cutting off of the ground from under his feet, a
sudden arrest of everything, a full stop, which in his fully flowing
liberal life was a tragic horror and impossibility, a something far more
terrible than death. It had upon him something of the character of a
paralytic stroke. His hand, as we have said, stopped work sharply,
suddenly; it trembled, and the brush with which he was painting fell
from it; his limbs tottered under him, his under lip dropped, his heart
gave a leap and then a dead pause. He stumbled backwards for a few steps
and sank into a chair.
Well! it was only for a few moments that he remained under the influence
of this shock. He picked himself up again, and then picked up his brush
and dried the perspiration from his forehead, and his heart with a
louder beat went on again as if also crying out “Well!” When he had
recovered the power of thought--which was not for a moment or two--he
smiled to himself and said, “What then?” Such a thing had happened
before. In an artist’s life there are often hair-breadth ’scapes, and
now and then the most prosperous comes, as it were, to a dead
wall--which is always battered through by a little perseverance or else
opens by itself, melting asunder at the touch of some heaven-sent patron
or happy accident, and so all goes on more prosperously than before. Mr.
Sandford had passed through many such crises at the beginning of his
career, and even when fully established had never been entirely certain
from whence his next year’s income was to come. But it had always come;
there had never been any real break in it--no failure of the continuity.
He had seemed to himself to be as thoroughly justified in reckoning upon
this continuity as any man in an office with so much a year. It might be
a little more or a little less, and there was always that not unpleasant
character of vagueness about it. It might even by a lucky chance for one
fortunate year be almost doubled, and this had happened on rare
occasions; but very seldom had there been any marked diminution in the
yearly incomings. He said, “Pooh, pooh,” to himself as he went up to his
picture again smiling, with his brush in his hand; not for such a matter
as that was he going to be discouraged. It was a thing that had happened
before, and would no doubt happen again. He began to work at his
picture, and went on with great spirit for perhaps a quarter of an hour,
painting in (for he had no model that morning) a piece of drapery from a
lay figure, and catching just the tone he wanted on the beautiful bit of
brocade which figured in the picture as part of a Venetian lady’s
majestic dress. He was unusually successful in his work, and also
succeeded for ten perhaps of these fifteen minutes in amusing himself
and distracting his thoughts from that discovery. A bit of success is
very exhilarating; it made him more confident than anything else could
have done. But when he had got his effect his smile began to fade away,
and his face grew grave again, and his hand trembled once more. After a
while he was obliged to give up and take a rest, putting down his
palette and brush with a sort of impatience and relief in getting rid of
them. Could he have gone straight to his wife and made her take a turn
with him in the garden, or even talked it over with her in the studio,
no doubt the impression would have died off; but she was absent, and he
could not do that; most likely, indeed, if she had been at home she
would have been absorbed in some calculation about Lizzie’s wedding, and
would not have noticed his preoccupation at all.
He sat down again in that chair, and said once more to himself, “What
then?” and thought over the times in which this accident had happened
before. But there now suddenly occurred to him another thought which was
like the chill of an icy hand touching his heart. The same thing had
happened before--but he had never been sixty before. He felt himself
struck by this as if some one had given him a blow. It was quite true;
he had called himself laughingly an old fogey, and when he and his old
friends were together they talked a great deal about their age and about
the young fellows pushing them from their seats. How much the old
fellows mean when they say this, heaven knows. So long as they are
strong and well they mean very little. It is an amusing kind of adoption
of the folly of the young which seems to show what folly it is--a sort
of brag in its way of their own superiority to all such decrepitudes,
and easy power of laughing at what does not really touch them. But alone
in their own private retirements, when a thought like this suddenly
comes, a sharp and sudden realisation of age and what it means, no doubt
the effect is different. For the moment Mr. Sandford was appalled by the
discovery he had made, which had never entered his mind before. Ah! a
pause in one’s means of making one’s living, a sudden stop in the wheels
of one’s life, is a little alarming, a little exciting, perhaps a
discouragement, perhaps a sharp and keen stimulant at other times: at
forty, even at fifty, it may be the latter; but at sixty!--this gives
at once a new character to the experience--a character never apprehended
before. His heart, which had begun to spring up with an elasticity
natural to him, stopped again--nay, did not stop, but fell into a sudden
dulness of beating, a subdued silence as if ice-bound. Sensation was too
much for thought; his mind could not go into it; he only felt it, with a
dumb pang which was deeper than either words or thought.
He could not do any more work that day. He tried again two or three
times, but ended by putting down his palette with a sense of incapacity
such as he thought he had never felt before. As a matter of fact, he
might have felt it a hundred times and attached no importance to it; he
would have gone into the house, leaving his studio, and talked or read,
or gone out for a walk, or to his club, or to see a friend, saying he
did not feel up to work to-day, and there would have been an end of it.
But he was alone, and none of these distractions were possible to him.
Luncheon came, however, which he could not eat, but sat over drearily,
not able to get away from the impression of that thought. Afterwards it
occurred to him that he would go and see Daniells and ask him--he was
not quite clear what. He could not go to one of his friends and ask, “Am
I falling off--do you see it? Has my hand lost its cunning--am I getting
old and is my mind going?” He could not ask any one such questions as
these. He smiled at it dolefully, feeling all the ridicule of the
suggestion. He knew his mind was not going--but---- At last he made up
his mind what he would do. It was a long walk to Bond Street, but it was
now afternoon and getting cooler, and the walk did him good. He reached
Daniells’ just before the picture dealer left off business for the day.
He was showing some one out very obsequiously through the outer room all
hung with pictures when he saw Sandford coming in. The stranger looked
much interested and pleased when he heard Sandford’s name.
“Introduce me, please,” he said, “if this is the great Mr. Sandford,
Daniells.”
“It is, Sir William,” said Daniells; and Sir William offered his hand
with the greatest effusion. “This is a pleasure that I have long
desired,” he said.
Mr. Sandford was surprised--he was taken unawares, and the greeting
touched his heart. “After all, perhaps it isn’t _that_,” he said to
himself.
“What a piece of luck that you should have come in just then! Why,
that’s Sir William Bloomfield--just the very man for you to know.”
“Why for me more than another? I know his name, of course,” said Mr.
Sandford, “and he seems pleasant; but I’m too old for new friends.”
“Too old; stuff and nonsense! You’re always a-harping on that string.
He’s just the man for you, just the man,” said Daniells, rubbing his
hands.
Mr. Sandford was amused--perhaps a little pleased by this encounter; and
the pressure of his heavy thoughts was stilled. He began to look at the
new pictures which had come into the gallery, to admire some and
criticise others. Daniells had the good sense always to listen to Mr.
Sandford’s criticisms with attention. They had furnished him with a
great many telling phrases, and given to his own rough and practical
knowledge of art a little occasional polish which surprised and overawed
many of his customers. He listened admiringly now as usual.
“What a deal you do know, to be sure!” he said after a while. “I don’t
know one of them that can make a thing clear like you, old man. It’s a
shame----” and here he coughed and broke off, as if endeavouring to
swallow his last words.
“What is a shame?” The broken sentence changed Mr. Sandford’s mood
again--the momentary cheer died away. “Daniells,” he said, “I want you
to tell me what you meant the other day by forcing me to accept that
man’s offer. Yes, you did. I should not have let him have the picture
but for you.”
“Forcing him! Oh, that’s a nice thing to say--the most obstinate fellow
in all London!”
“Never mind that; I can see you are fencing. Come, why did you do it?”
Daniells paused for some time. He said a great many things to stave off
his confusion, many half-things which involved others, and made his
answer perhaps more clear than if he had put it directly into words.
“I see,” Mr. Sandford said at last, “you thought it very unlikely that I
should sell it at all to any one who knew better.”
“It ain’t that. They don’t know half enough, hang ’em! or they wouldn’t
run after a booby like Blank and neglect you.”
Mr. Sandford smiled what he felt to be a very sickly smile. “We must let
Blank have his day,” he said, “I don’t grudge it him; but I’d like to
know why my chances are so bad. I have always sold my pictures.”
Daniells gave him a sudden look, as if he would have spoken; then
thought better of it, and said nothing.
“I have had no reason to complain,” Mr. Sandford continued; “I have done
very well on the whole. I have never had extravagant prices like Em or
En.”
“No,” said Daniells; “you see, you’ve never made an ’it. You’ve gone on
doing good work, and you’ve always done good work. I’d say that if I
were to die for it; but you’ve never made an ’it.”
“I suppose that’s true; but you need not put it so very frankly,” said
the painter, with a laugh.
“Frankly! I’ve got occasion to put it frankly; and I say it’s a d----d
shame--that’s what it is,” cried Daniells, raising his voice.
“You’ve had occasion? Now that we’re on this subject, I should like to
get to the bottom of it. You’ve had occasion?”
“Well, of course,” said the picture dealer, “if you drive me into a
corner. I’m in the middle of everything, and I hear what people say----”
“What do they say? That I’ve lost my sense of colour like old Millrain,
or fallen into my dotage like----”
“Nonsense, Sandford! You know it’s nothing of the kind. Don’t talk such
confounded nonsense. You are painting quite as well as ever, you know
you are. They--people don’t care for that sort of thing. It’s too good
for them, or you’re too good for them, or I don’t know what.”
Mr. Sandford kept smiling--not for pleasure; he was conscious of that
sort of fixed smile that might be thought a sneer, at those people for
whom he was too good. “And you’ve had occasion,” he said, “to prove
this?”
“Don’t smile at me like that--don’t look like that. If you knew how I’ve
argued and put it all before ’em---- I’ve said a hundred times if I’ve
said once, ‘Sandford! why, Sandford’s one of the best. There isn’t a
better educated painter not in England. You can’t pick a hole in his
pictures, try as you like.’”
“Am I indeed so much discussed?” said the victim. “I did not know I was
of such importance. And on what ground have you held this discussion,
Daniells? There must have been some occasion for it. I don’t see
anything here of mine.”
“Look here,” cried the picture dealer, roused, “if you won’t believe
me.” He opened the door of an inner room, into which Mr. Sandford
followed him. And there, with their faces turned to the wall, were three
pictures in a row. The shape of them gave him a faint, uneasy feeling.
By this time Daniells had been wound up to self-defence, and thought of
the painter’s feelings no more.
“Look ’ere,” he said, “I shouldn’t have said a word if you had let well
alone--but look ’ere.” Before one of the pictures was visible Mr.
Sandford knew what he was going to see. Three pictures of his own, of a
kind for which he had been famous--cabinet pictures, for which there had
always been the readiest market. He recognised them all with a faintness
that made his brain swim and the light go from his eyes. They seemed so
familiar, like children. At the first glance, without looking at them,
he knew what they were and all about them, and had a sick longing that
the earth would open and swallow them, and hide his shame, for so it
seemed.
“If that don’t show how I’ve trusted you, nothing can,” said the dealer.
“I thought they were as safe as the bank. I bought them all on spec,
thinking I’d get a customer as soon as they were in the shop--and, if
you’ll believe me, nobody’ll have them. I can’t tell what people are
thinking of, but that’s the truth.”
Mr. Sandford stood with the light going out of his eyes, gazing straight
before him. “In that case--in that case,” he began, “you should--I
must----”
“I say, don’t take it like that, old man. It’s the fortune of war. One
up and another down. It can’t be helped, don’t you know. Sandford, I
say, why, it’ll come all right again in half-a-dozen years or so. It’ll
come all right after a time.”
“What did you say?” said Mr. Sandford, dazed. Then he answered vaguely,
“Oh yes; all right--all right.”
“What’s the matter? I’ve been a wretched fool. Sandford, here, I say,
have a glass of wine.”
“There’s nothing the matter. It seems to me a little--cold. I know--I
know it’s not a cold day; but there’s a chill wind about,
penetrating--thanks, Daniells, you’ve cleared up my problem very well.
Now, I think--I think I understand.”
“Don’t go now, Sandford; don’t go like this.”
“I want,” he said, smiling again, “to think it over. Much obliged to
you, Daniells, for helping me to understand.”
“Sandford, don’t go like this. You make me awfully anxious--I’m sure
you’re ill. I can’t let you go out of my place, looking so dreadfully
ill, without some one with you.”
“Some one with me! I hope you don’t mean to insult me, Daniells. I am
perfectly well--a little startled, but that’s all. I shall go and take a
walk, and blow away the cobwebs, and--think it over. That’s the best
thing. I’m much obliged to you, Daniells. Good-bye.”
“Have a hansom, at least,” Daniells said.
“No hansom,” Mr. Sandford answered, turning upon the dealer with a
curious smile. He even laughed a little--low, but quite distinct. “No,
I’ll have no hansom. Good-bye, Daniells, good-bye.”
And in a minute he was gone. The picture dealer went out to the door
after him, and followed him with his eyes until his figure was lost in
the crowd. Daniells was alarmed. He blamed himself for his frankness. “I
never thought he’d have taken it to heart like that,” he said to
himself. “Yes, I did; or I might have done--he’s awful proud. But I’m
’asty. I can’t help it; I’m always doing things I’m sorry for. Anyhow,
he must have found it out some time, sooner or later,” the dealer said
to himself; and this philosophy silenced his fears.
CHAPTER IV.
Mr. Sandford knew nothing till he found himself in the Regent’s Park,
not far from his house. He had passed through the crowds in the street
with his life and thoughts suspended, feeling that to think was
impossible, seeing only before him the line of the three pictures
standing against the wall. They seemed to accompany him on his way,
showing against the front of the houses wherever he turned his eyes.
Three pictures, painted cheerfully, without a premonition, or any sense
of failure, or a moment’s fear that they would ever stand with their
faces against a dealer’s wall. One of them had been a great favourite
with his wife. The youngest girl--little Mary--had sat for one of the
figures, and Mrs. Sandford had not wished to let it go. “I wish we could
afford to keep this,” she said; “it is like selling our own flesh and
blood.” But most painters have to accustom themselves to that small
trouble, and even she had laughed at herself. And now to think that it
had never been sold at all--that it was unsaleable, oh, heaven! The
sense of a dreadful humiliation, far more than was reasonable, filled
the painter’s mind. The man whom he had always liked, but partly
despised--Daniells, who was as ignorant as a pig, who knew a picture
indeed when he saw it, but had not a notion why he liked it, nor could
render a reason or tell how he knew one to be bad or another good--that
he should be losing by his kindness, should be out of pocket, burdened
by three “Sandfords” with their faces against the wall! Mr. Sandford’s
gentle contempt came back upon him with a shock of humiliation and
shame. To sneer at a man who had suffered by him, who had given money
for his unsaleable work--a man who had thus shown himself a better man
than he: for Daniells had never said a word, probably never would have
said a word, listened to the painter’s calm assumptions and taken no
notice, having it in his power all the time to shame him! Nay, he had
done even more than this--he had brought his own customer out of his
way, in pity and friendship, to buy that “Black Prince,” no doubt
equally unsaleable, though--heaven help the poor painter!--he had not
found it out. The pang of this humiliation, mingled with tingling shame
and a painful gratitude and admiration, quivered through and through
him, penetrating the dark dismay and pain of his suspended thoughts.
He began to notice everything more clearly when he got into the park.
The August afternoon was softening every moment into the deeper
sweetness of the evening. He avoided instinctively the frequented parts,
where the children were playing and people walking about, and made a
long circuit round the outskirts of the park, where only a rare
passenger was to be met with now and then. The air was sweet, though it
was the air of town. The leaves were fluttering in a light breeze, the
birds singing their evening songs, thrushes repeating a hundred
questions, blackbirds unconditional, piping loud and clear, almost as
good as nightingales. He was a man who was not hard to please, and even
Regent’s Park delighted him on a summer evening. He felt it even now,
notwithstanding the shadow that was over him. Never, up to this time,
had care hung so heavy on Mr. Sandford but what he could escape from it
by help of the artist-eye, ever ready to seize a passing effect, or by
the gentle heart which was full of sympathy with every human emotion or
even whim of passing fancy. His heart was unaccustomed to anything
tragical. It tried even now to beguile him and escape; to withdraw his
attention to the long, streaming, level rays of the sinking sun; to get
him out of himself to the aid of the child who had broken its toy and
was crying with such passion--far more than a man can show for losses
the most terrible--by the side of the road. And these expedients
answered for the moment. But what had befallen him now was not to be
eluded as other troubles had been. He could not escape from it. The most
ingenious imagination could not lessen it by turning it over and over.
Behind the sunset rays a strange vision of the unsold pictures came out
into the very sky. They shaped themselves behind the child, whom it was
so easy to pacify with a shilling, against the park palings.
Three--which was one of the complete numbers, as if to prove the fulness
of the disaster--three pictures unsold in Daniells’ inner room, and not
a commission in hand, nothing wanted from him, no one to buy. After thus
trying every device to escape, his heart grew low and faint within him,
giving up the conflict; he felt a dull buzzing in his ears, and a dull
throbbing in his breast.
But thinking was not so easy a matter as it seemed. Think it over? How
was he to think it over? If it were possible to imagine the case of a
man who, walking serenely over a wide and peaceful country, should
suddenly, with the softest, scarcely audible, roll of the pebbles under
his feet, see the earth yawn before him and find himself on the brink of
a fearful precipice, that would have been like his case: but not so bad
as his case, for the man would have it in his power to draw back, to
retire to the peaceful fields behind: whereas, to Mr. Sandford, there
were no peaceful fields, but a gulf all round that one spot of
undermined earth on which he stood. Presently he found himself at his
own door, very tired and a little dazed in mind, thinking of that
precipice, of nothing more distinct. The house stood very solid, very
tranquil, its red roof all illumined with the last level line of the
sun, the garden stretching into shady corners under the trees, the
flower-beds blazing in lavish colours, the little lawn all burnt bare by
the ardent sun and worn with the feet of the tennis players: all so
peaceful, certain, secure--an old-established home with deep
foundations, and the assured, immovable look of household tranquillity
and peace. If the walls had been tottering, the garden relapsing into
weeds and wildness, he would not have been surprised--that would have
been suitable to his circumstances. The thing unsuitable was to come
back to that trim order and well-being, to that modest wealth and
comfort and beauty, and to know that all this too, like himself, was on
the edge of the precipice. Tired as he was, he went round the garden
before he went in, and gazed wistfully at the pleasant dwelling with its
open windows, wondering, when the next shock of the earthquake came,
whether it would all fall to pieces like a house of cards, and everybody
become aware that the earth was rent and a great chasm yawning before
the peaceful door.
He never seemed to have realised, before now, how full of modest luxury
and exquisite comfort that house was. It was not yet covered up and
dismantled, though the fingers of the maid-servants had been itching to
get at that delightful task since ever “the family” left. All was empty
and still, but all in good order; no false pretension or show,
everything temperate and well chosen; rich, soft carpets in which the
foot sank, curtains hanging in graceful folds, the cosiest chairs,
Italian cabinets, Venice glass, pictures, not only of his own but of
many contemporary artists--a delightful interior, without a bare corner
or vacant spot anywhere. He went over it with a sort of despairing
pleasure and admiration, his head aching and giddy, with a sense that at
any moment the next shock might come, and everything collapse like the
shadows of a dream. Presently he was served with his dinner, which he
could not eat, in the cool dining-room, with a large window opening to
the garden and the sweet air breathing about him as he sat down at the
vacant table. What a mockery of all certitude and safety it was!--for
nothing could seem more firmly established, more solid and secure. If he
had been a prince of the blood he might have had a more splendid
dwelling, but not more comfort, more pleasantness. All that a sober mind
could desire was there--the utmost refinement of comfort, beautiful
things all around, every colour subdued into perfection, no noise or
anything to break the spell. He was glad that the others were
absent--it was the only alleviation to the dismay within him. There
would have been questions as to what was the matter--“Are you ill,
Edward?” “What is wrong with papa?” and other such questions, which he
could not have borne.
Afterwards he went into the studio. The first thing that caught his eye
was the glow of that piece of drapery which he had painted under the
keen stimulant of the first warning. It had been a stimulant then, and
he was startled by the splendour of the colour he had put into that
piece of stuff--the roundness of it, the clear transparence of the
shadows. It stood out upon the picture like something by another hand,
painted in another age. Had he done that only a few hours ago--he with
the same brushes which had produced the rest of the picture which looked
so pale and insignificant beside it? How had he done it? it made all the
rest of the picture fade. He recognised in a moment the jogtrot, the
ordinary course of life, and against it the flush of the sudden
inspiration, the stronger handling, the glory and glow of the colour. He
had never done anything better in his life; he whose pictures were drugs
in the market, who had not a commission to look forward to. He stood
and looked at it for a long time, growing sadder and sadder. He was not
a man who had failed, and who could rail against the world; he was a man
who had succeeded; not a painter in England but would laugh out if any
one said that Sandford had been a failure. Why, who had been successful
if he had not? they would have said. He had not a word to say against
fate. Nobody was to blame, not even himself, seeing that now, in the
midst of all, he could still paint like that. He knew the value of that
as well as any man could know it. He could not shut his eyes to it
because he himself had done it. If he saw such a bit of painting in a
young fellow’s picture he would say, “Well done;” he would say, “Paint
like that, and you have your fortune in your own hand.” Ah, but he was
himself no longer a young fellow. Success was not before him; he had
grasped her, held her, and now it seemed his day was past.
It is never cheerful to have to allow that your day is past. But there
are circumstances which make it less difficult. Sometimes a man accepts
gracefully enough that message of dismissal. Then he will retire with a
certain dignity, enjoying the ease which he has purchased with his hard
work, and looking on henceforward at the struggle of the others, not
sorry, perhaps, or at least saying to the world that he is not sorry, to
be out of that conflict. Mr. Sandford said to himself that in other
circumstances he might have been capable of this; might have laid aside
his pencil, occupied himself with guiding the younger, helping the less
strong, standing umpire, perhaps, in the strife, giving place to those
who represented the future, and whose day was but beginning. Such a
retirement must always seem a fit and seemly thing: but not now; not in
what he felt was but the fulness of his career; not, above all--and this
gave the sting to all--not while he was still depending upon his
profession for his daily bread. His daily bread, and what was worse than
that, the daily bread of those he loved. How many things that simple
phrase involved! Oh for the simplicity of those days when it meant but
what it said! He asked himself with a curious, fantastic, half-amused,
half-despairing curiosity whether it had ever meant mere bread? Bread
and a little fruit, perhaps; a cake, and a draught from a spring in the
primitive Eastern days when the phrase was invented. “Day by day our
daily bread:” a loaf like that of Elijah which the angel brought him:
the cakes of manna in the wilderness of which only enough was gathered
to suffice for one day: and the tent at night to retire to, or a cave,
perhaps--a shelter which cost nothing. How different now was daily
bread; so many things involved in it, that careful product of many men’s
work, the house which was his home: and all the costly nameless
necessities, so much more than food and clothing; the dainty and
pleasant things, the flowers and gardens, the amusements, the trifles
that make life delightful and sweet. Give us our daily bread: had it
ever been supposed to mean all that? All these many years these
necessities had been supplied, and all had gone on as if it were part of
the constitution of the world. But now the time had come when the
machinery was stopped, when everything was brought to a conclusion. Mr.
Sandford turned his eye from that bit of painting which stood out upon
his picture as if the sun had touched it, to the sheaves of old studies
and sketches in the portfolios, the half-finished bits about the walls,
all those scraps and fragments, full of suggestion, full of beautiful
thoughts, which make the studio of a great painter rich. He had thought
a few days ago that all this meant wealth. Now his eyes were opened, and
he saw that it meant nothing, that all about him was rubbish not worth
the collection, and himself, who could work no longer, who was no more
good for anything, only one piece of lumber the more, the most valueless
of all.
He paused, and tried to say to himself that this was morbid. But it was
not morbid, it was true. With that curious hurrying of the thoughts
which a great calamity brings about, he had already glimpsed everything,
seeing the whole situation and all that was involved. There was a
certain sum of money in the bank, no more anywhere, except after his own
death. There were his insurances, a little for every one, enough, he had
hoped, though in a much changed and subdued manner, to support his wife
and the girls, enough for that daily bread of which he had been
thinking; but it could not be had till he died; and that was all. There
was nothing, nothing more; nothing to live upon, nothing to turn to. If
you have losses, if your income is reduced, you can retrench and
diminish your expenses. But when everything is cut off in a moment, when
you have no income at all? such utter loss paralyses the unfortunate.
He stood in his studio with a sort of vague smile upon his face, and
something of the imbecility of utter helplessness taking possession of
him. Everything cut off. Nothing to turn to. Vague visions passed
through his mind of the expenses of that seaside house, for instance,
which could not be got rid of now; of Lizzie’s fifty pounds a year which
he had promised not without forebodings; of Jack’s fee of two guineas
which the children had all made so merry about; of the easy course of
their existence, their life, which was so blameless, so innocent, so
kind: they were all ready to give, ready to be hospitable; none of the
family could see another in want and not eagerly offer what they had.
Good God! and to think they had nothing, nothing! It was not a question
of enough, it was that there was nothing; that all the streams were
closed, and all the doors shut, and the successful man, with his large
income, had suddenly become like a navvy out of work, like a dock
labourer, or whatever was most pitifully unprovided for in the world.
It made Mr. Sandford’s brain whirl. So much in the bank, and after that
nothing; and all the liberal life going on; the servants, who could not
be sent off at a moment’s notice; the house, which could not be
abandoned; the family, all so cheerful in their false security, who had
no presentiment of evil. He asked himself what people did who were
ruined? He had no great acquaintance with such things. What did they do?
He was very helpless. He could not realise the possibility of breaking
up the house, having no home; of dispersing all the pleasant things
which had been part of his being so long; of stopping short---- He could
not understand how such things were done. And those people who were
ruined generally had something upon which they could fall back. A
merchant could begin again. He might have friends who would help him to
a new start, and there was always hope that he might do as well at last
as at first. But an artist (at sixty) could have no new start. The
public would have none of him. He had done his best; he could not begin
anew. His career when once closed was over, and nothing more could be
made of it. He remembered with a forlorn self-reproach of having himself
said that So-and-so should retire; that it would be more dignified to
give up work before work gave him up. Ah! so easy a thing to say, so
cruel a thing to say; but he had not realised that it was cruel, or that
such an end was cruel. He had never supposed it possible that such a
thing could happen to himself.
The insurances: yes, there were always the insurances: a thousand pounds
for each child, that was the calculation they had made. They had said to
each other in the old times, Mary and he, that they never could save
money enough to make any appreciable provision for so many children, but
that if they could but secure for each a thousand pounds, that would
always be something. It would help to give the boys a start; it would be
something for the girls. That the boys should all have professions in
which they would be doing well, and the girls husbands to provide for
them, had seemed too commonplace a certainty even to be dwelt upon: and
a thousand pounds is never to be despised; it would help the young ones
over any early struggle, it would make all the difference. “So long as
we live,” Mrs. Sandford had said, “they will always have us to fall back
upon: and afterwards--what a thing it would have been for us, Edward, to
have a thousand pounds to the good to begin upon!” They had thought
they made everything safe so, for the young ones. Mr. Sandford, indeed,
still felt a faint lightening of his heart as he thought of the
insurances. It had always done him good to think of them; that would be
something at least to leave behind. But then it was necessary first that
he should die.
He had never thought urgently of that necessity. So long as there is
nothing pressing about it, no appearance of its approach, it is easy
enough to speak of that conclusion. Sometimes there is even a pensive
pleasure in it. “When I am out of the way,” “When our day is over,” are
things quite simple to say. For of course that must come one time or
another, as everybody knows. It is more serious, but still not anything
very bad, to speak now and then of what is to be done “if anything
happens.” These things make but little impression upon the mind, even
when old age is on its way. And Mr. Sandford at sixty had as yet felt
very few premonitions of old age. He had called himself an old man with
a laugh, for his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated; and it
was still pleasantly absurd to think that he could be supposed an old
man. But now all this took a different aspect. He felt no older, indeed,
but his position was altogether changed. In the shock of his new
circumstances he stood helpless, not knowing how to meet this unfeared,
unthought-of contingency. But his mind went off with a spring to further
eventualities. The only comfort was this, they had a thousand pounds
apiece laid up for them. But it would be necessary first that he should
die.
Thinking it all over, he thought, on the whole, that this was the best
thing that could happen. The changes which he surveyed with such a sense
of impossibility, not knowing how they could be brought about, would
become quite natural if he died. There was always a change on the death
of the father. It was the natural time for remodelling life, for
altering everything. The family would not be able, of course, to remain
in this house, to keep up their present superstructure of existence: but
then in the change of circumstances that would seem quite natural and
they would not feel it. They could put everything, then, upon a simpler
footing. And they would have an income, not much of an income, perhaps,
but yet something that would come in punctually to the day, and which
would be independent of anything they did, which would have nothing to
do with picture dealers or patrons of art, or the changes of taste that
affected them. What a thing that was, when one came to think of it, to
have an income--something which came in all the same whether you worked
or not, whether you were ill or well, whether you were in a good vein
and could get on with your picture, or whether it dragged and did not
satisfy you! It gave him a sensation of pleasure to think of it: but
then he reflected on the one preliminary which was not so easy to bring
about, which no planning of his could accomplish just when it was
wanted, just when it would be of most use.
For before this state of things could ensue, it would be necessary that
Mr. Sandford should be dead; and so far as he was aware there was no
immediate prospect of anything of the kind. People do not die when it is
most necessary, when it would be most expedient. It is a thing
independent of your own will, horribly uncertain, happening just when it
is not wanted. This difficulty, when he had begun to take a little
comfort in the possible arrangement of everything, sent the painter back
into all the confusion of miserable thoughts. Was it possible that he
was in circumstances which made it impossible for him to do anything,
even to die?
CHAPTER V.
Mr. Sandford went down next day to the seaside to join his family. They
had got a very pleasant house, in full sight of the sea. “What was the
use of going to the sea at all,” Mrs. Sandford said, “unless you got the
full good of it? All the sunsets and effects, and its aspect at every
hour of the day, which was so very different from having merely glimpses
of it--that is what my husband likes,” she said. And of course this
meant the most expensive place. He was met at the station by his wife
and little Mary, the youngest, who was always considered papa’s
favourite. The others had all gone along the coast with a large pic-nic
party, some of them in a boat, some riding--for there were fine
sands--and a delightful gallop along that crisp firm road, almost within
the flash of the waves, was most invigorating. “They all look ever so
much the better for it already,” said the fond mother.
“There was not much the matter with them before that I could see.”
“Oh, nothing the matter! But they do so enjoy the sea. And I find there
are a great many people here whom we know--more than usual; and a great
deal going on.”
“There is generally a good deal going on.”
“My dear Edward, staying behind has not been good for you; you are
looking pale; and I never heard you grudge the children their little
pleasures before.”
“_I_ stayed at home, papa,” said little Mary, not willing to be
unappreciated, “to be the first to see you.”
“You are always a good little girl,” said the father gratefully.
“I assure you they were all anxious to stay: but I did not think you
would like them to give up a pleasure,” said Mrs. Sandford, never
willing to have any of her children subjected to an unfavourable
comparison.
“No; oh no,” he said, with a sigh. It was almost impossible not to feel
a grudge at the thought of that careless enjoyment, no one taking any
thought; but he could not burst out with any disclosures of his trouble
before little Mary, looking up wistfully in his face with a child’s
sensitiveness to the perception of something wrong. Mary was more ready
to perceive this than Mrs. Sandford, who only thought that her husband
was perhaps a little out of temper, or annoyed by some trifling matter,
or merely affected by the natural misanthropy of three days’ solitude.
She clasped his arm caressingly with her hand as she led him along.
“You have got some cobwebs into your mind,” she said, “but the sea
breezes will soon blow them away.”
The sea breezes were very fresh; the sea itself spread out under the
sunshine a dazzling stretch of blue; the wide vault of heaven all belted
with lines of summer cloud, “which landward stretched along the deep”
like celestial countries far away. The air was filled with the soft
plash of the water, the softened sound of voices. The whole population
seemed out of doors, and all in full enjoyment of the heavenly afternoon
and the sights and sounds of the sea. Walking along through these
holiday groups, with his wife by his side and his little girl holding
his hand, Mr. Sandford felt an unreasonable calm--a sense of soothing
quiet--come over him. He could not dismiss the phantom which
overshadowed him, but he felt for the moment that he could ignore it. It
was necessary that he should ignore it. He could not communicate to his
wife so tragical a discovery there and then, in her ease and cheerful
holiday mood. He must prepare her for it. Not all in a moment could that
revelation burst upon her. Poor Mary! so happy in her children, so full
of their plans and pleasures, so secure in the certainty of prosperous
life: even the child, strange to think it, understood him better, being
nearer, he supposed, to those springs of life where there are no shades
of intervening feeling, but all is either happiness or despair. A
profound sorrow for these innocent creatures came into his mind; he
could not overcloud them, either the mother or the child. They were so
glad to have him again; so proud to walk on either side of him, pointing
out everything: and all was so happy, were it not for one thing; nothing
to trouble them, all well, all full of pleasure, confidence, health,
lightheartedness; not a cloud--except that one.
“You have been tiring yourself--doing too much while you have been
alone; the servants have made you uncomfortable; they have been pulling
everything, to pieces, though I left the most stringent orders----”
“No, the servants were very good; they disturbed nothing, though they
were longing to get at it.”
“They always are; they take a positive pleasure in making the house look
as desolate as possible--as if nobody was ever going to live in it any
more.”
“Nobody going to live in it more!” he repeated the words with a faint
smile. “No--on the contrary, it looked the most liveable place I ever
saw. I never felt its home-look so much.”
“It is a nice little place,” she said, with a little pressure of his
arm. “Whatever may happen to the children in after life, we can always
feel that they have had a happy youth and a bright home.”
“What should happen to them?” he said, alarmed with a sudden fear that
she must know.
“Oh, nothing, I hope, but what is good; but the first change in the
family always makes one think. I hope you won’t mind, Edward: Lance
Moulton is here.”
“Oh, he is here!”
“If it is really to be so, Edward, don’t you think it is better they
should see as much of each other as possible?” his wife said, with
another tender pressure of his arm. “And somehow, when there is a thing
of that kind in the air, everything seems quickened; I am sure I can’t
tell how it is. It gives a ‘go’ to all they are doing. There are no end
of plans and schemes among them. Of course, Lance has a friend or two
about, and the Dropmores are here, who are such friends of our girls.”
“And all is fun and nonsense, I suppose?”
“Well, if you call it so--all pleasure, and kindness, and real
delightful holiday. Oh, Edward,” said Mrs. Sandford, with the ghost of a
tear in her eye, “don’t let us check it! It is the brightest time of
their lives.”
The sunset was blazing in glory upon the sea, the belts of cloud all
reddening and glowing, soft puffs of vapour like roses floating across
the blue of the sky. And the air full of young voices softened and
musical, children playing, lovers wandering about, happy mothers
watching the sport, all tender gaiety, and security, and peace.
Everything joyful--save one thing. “No; God forbid that I should check
it,” he said hastily, with a sigh that might have been a groan.
They all came back not long after, full of high spirits and endless
talk; they were all glad to see their father, who had never been any
restraint upon their pleasure, whose grave, gentle presence had never
checked or stilled them. They were sure of his sympathy more or less. If
he did not share their fun, he had at least never discouraged it. And
soon in the plenitude of their own affairs they forgot him, as was so
natural, and filled the room with laughing consultations over
to-morrow’s pleasure, and plans for it. “What are we going to do?” they
all cried, one after another, even Lizzie and Lance, coming in a little
dazzled from the balcony, where they had been enjoying the last fading
lights of the ending day, while the others had clamoured for lamps and
candles inside; “What are we going to do?” Mrs. Sandford sat beaming
upon them, hearing all the suggestions, offering a new idea now and
then. “I must know to-night, that the hampers may be got ready,” she
said; and then there was an echoing laugh all round. “Mother’s always so
practical.” Mr. Sandford sat a little outside of that lively circle with
a book in his hand. But he was not reading; he was watching them with a
strange fascination; not willing to check them; oh no! feeling a
helpless sort of wonder that they should play such pranks on the edge of
the precipice, and that none of them should divine--that even his wife
should not divine! The animated group, full in the light of the
lamps--girls and young men in the frank familiarity of the family
interrupting each other, contradicting each other, discussing and
arguing--was as charming a study as a painter could have desired; the
mother in the midst with her pencil in her hand and a sheet of white
paper on the table before her, which threw back the light; and behind,
the lovers stealing in out of the soft twilight shadows, the faint
glimmer of distant sea and sky. He watched it with a strange dull ache
under the pleasure of the father and the painter: the light touching
those graceful outlines, shining in those young eyes, the glimmer of
shining hair, the play of animated features, the soft, dreamlike,
suggestive shadows of the two behind. And yet the precipice yawning,
gaping at their feet, though nobody knew.
“Papa,” said suddenly a small voice in his ear, “I am not going
to-morrow. I want to stay with you.”
“My little Mary! But I am a dull old fellow, not worth staying with.”
“You are sorry about something, papa!”
“Sorry? There are a great many things in the world to be sorry about,”
he said, stroking her brown head. The child had clasped her hands about
his arm, and was nestling close up to him whispering. They were
altogether outside of the lively group at the table. This little
consoler comforted Mr. Sandford more than words could say.
It was thus that the holiday life went on. The young people were always
consulting what to do, making up endless excursions and expeditions,
Mrs. Sandford always explaining for them. What was the use of being at
the seaside if they did not take full advantage of it? What was the use
of coming to a new part of the country if they did not see everything?
Sometimes she went with them, compelled by the addition of various
strangers with whom the girls could not go without a chaperon; sometimes
stayed at home with her husband, calculating where they would be by this
time; whether they had found a pleasant spot for their luncheon; when
they might be expected back. Meanwhile, Mr. Sandford took long solitary
walks--very long, very solitary--along the endless line of the sands,
within sight and sound of the sea. Little Mary and her next brother, the
schoolboy, always started with him; but the fascination of the rocks and
pools was too much for these little people, and the father, not
ill-pleased, went on with a promise of picking them up again on his way
back. He would walk on and on for the whole of the fresh shining
morning, with the sea on one side and the green country on the other,
and all the wonderful magical lights of the sky and water shining as if
for him alone. They beguiled him out of himself with their miraculous
play and shimmer and wealth of heavenly reflection; and sometimes he
seemed to feel a higher sensation still--the feeling as of a silent
great Companion who filled the heavenly space, yet moved with him, an
all-embracing, all-responsive sympathy, till he thought of God coming
down to the cool of the garden and walking with His creatures, and all
his trouble seemed to breathe away in a heavenly hush, which every
little wave repeated, softly lapping at his feet.
But when he came back into the midst of his cheerful family other
subjects got the upper hand. There was not the least harm in the gaiety
that was about him--not the least harm; it was mere exuberance of
youthful life and pleasure. If things had been running their usual
course, and his usual year’s work had been in front of him, Mr. Sandford
said to himself that he too would have come out to the door to see the
children start on their expeditions, as his wife did, with pleasure in
their good looks, and in the family union and happiness. He might have
grumbled a little over Harry’s idleness, or even shaken his head over
the expense; but he too would have liked it--he would have admired his
young ones, and taken pleasure in seeing them happy. But to stand by and
watch all that, and know that presently the revenue which kept it all up
would stop, and the ground be cut from under their feet, sheer down,
like a precipice! Already he had begun to familiarise himself with this
idea. It had a sort of paralysing effect, as well as one of panic and
horror. It is not a thing that happens often. People grow poorer, or
even they get ruined at a blow, but there is generally something
remaining upon which economy will tell; he went over these differences
in his lonely hours, imagining a hundred cases. A merchant, for
instance, who ruins himself by speculation, if he is an honourable man,
has means at his disposal of trying again, or at least can get a
situation in an office (at the worst), where he will still have an
income--a steady income, though it may be small; his friends, and the
people who had business relations with him, would be sure to exert
themselves to secure him that; or if his losses were but partial, of
course nothing could be easier than to retrench and live at a lower
rate. So Mr. Sandford said to himself. But what can a few economies do
when at a critical moment, at a period close at hand, all incoming must
cease, and nothing remain? It did not now give him the violent shock of
sensation which he had felt at first when this fact came uppermost. He
had become accustomed to it. It was not _après moi_, but in three months
or so, the deluge: an end to everything, no half measures, no
retrenchment, but the end. He began to wonder when that time came what
would be done. The house could be sold, and all that was in it, but
where then would they go for shelter? They would have to pay for the
poorest lodgings, and at least there was nothing to pay for the house.
Mr. Sandford was not a man of business, he was a man of few resources;
he did not know what to do, or where to turn when his natural occupation
failed him.
These thoughts went through his mind in a painful round. Three months or
so, and then an end of everything. Three months, and then the precipice
so near that the next step must be over it. Perhaps in other
circumstances, or if he had not been known to be so near the head of his
profession, he might have thought of artists’ work of some other kind
which he could do. He might have tried to illustrate books, to take up
one of the art manufactures; might have become a designer, a decorator,
something that would bring in money. But in this respect he was so
helpless, he knew no more what to do than the most ignorant; his heart
failed him when he tried to penetrate into the darkness of that future.
The only thing that came uppermost was the thought of the insurances,
and of the thousand pounds for each which the children would have. It
was not very much, but still it was something, a something real and
tangible, not like a workman’s wages for work, which may fail in a
moment as soon as he fails to please his employer, or loses his skill,
or grows too old for it. It had never occurred to Mr. Sandford before
how precarious these wages are, how little to be relied on. To think of
a number of people depending for their whole living upon the skill of
one man’s hand, upon the clearness of his sight, the truth of his
instincts, even the fashion of the moment! It seems, when you look at it
in the light of a discovery such as that which he had made, so mad, so
fatal! A thing that may cease in a moment as if it had never been, yet
with all the complicated machinery of life built upon it, based on the
strange theory that it would go on for ever! On the other hand a
thousand pounds is a solid thing; it would be a certainty for each of
them. Harry might go to one of the colonies and get an excellent start
with a thousand pounds in his pocket. Jack would no doubt be startled
into energy by the sense of having something which it would be fatal to
lose, yet which could not be lived upon. A thousand pounds would make
all the difference to Lizzie on her marriage. When he thought of his
wife a quiver of pain went over him, and yet he tried to calculate all
the chances there would be for her. All friends would be stirred in
sympathy for her; they would get her a pension, they would gather round
her: it would be made easy for her to break up this expensive way of
living, and begin on a smaller footing. There would be the house, which
would bring her in a little secure income if it was let. Whatever she
had would be secure--it would be based on something solid, certain--not
on a man’s work, which might lose its excellence or go out of fashion.
He felt himself smile with a kind of pleasure at the contemplation of
this steady certainty--which he never had possessed, which he never
could possess, but which poor Mary, with a pension and the rent of the
house, would at last obtain. Poor Mary! his lip quivered when he thought
of her. He wondered if the children would absorb her interest as much
when he was no longer in the background, whether she would be able to
find in them all that she wanted, and consolation for his absence. It
was not with any sense of blame that this thought went through his mind.
Blame her! oh no. To think of her children was surely a mother’s first
duty. She was not aware that her husband wanted consolation and help
more than they did. How could she know when he did not tell her? And he
felt incapable of telling her. He had meant to do it. When he came he
had intended as soon as possible to prepare her for it, to lead by
degrees to that revelation which could not but be given. But to break in
upon all their innocent gaieties, to stop her as she stood kissing her
hand to the merry cavalcade as they set out, her eyes shining with a
mother’s delight and pride; to call her away from among her pretty
daughters (she, her husband thought the fairest of them all), and their
pleasant babble about pleasures past and to come, and pour black despair
into the cheerful heart, how could he do it, how could any one do it?
Such happiness was sacred. He could not interrupt it, he could not
destroy it; it was pathetic, tragic, beyond words: on the edge of the
precipice! Oh no, no! not now, he could not tell her. Let the holidays
be over, let common life resume again, and then--unless by the grace of
God something else might happen before.
They all noticed, however, that papa was dull--which was the way in
which it struck the young people--that he had no sympathy with their
gaiety, that he was “grumpy,” which was what it came to. Lizzie thought
that this probably arose from dissatisfaction with her marriage, and
was indignant. “If he doesn’t think Lance good enough, I wonder what
would please him. Did he expect one of the princes to propose to me?”
she cried.
“Oh, Lizzie, my love, don’t speak so of your father!”
“Well, mamma, he should not look at us so,” cried the girl.
Mrs. Sandford herself was a little indignant too. Her sympathies were
all with the children. She saw disapproval in his subdued looks, and was
ready at any moment to spring to arms in defence of her children. And
indeed sometimes, in his great trouble, which no one divined, Mr.
Sandford would sometimes become impatient.
“I wish,” he would say, “that Jack would do something--does he never do
anything at all? It frets me to see a young man so idle.”
“My dear Edward!” cried his wife, “it is the Long Vacation. What should
he have to do?”
“And Harry?” Mr. Sandford said.
“Poor boy! You know he would give his little finger to have anything to
do. He has nothing to do. How can he help that? When we go back to town
you must really put your shoulder to the wheel. Among all your friends
surely, surely, something could be got for Harry,” said his mother, thus
turning the tables. “And in the meantime,” she added, “to get all the
health he can, and the full good of the sea, is certainly the best thing
the poor fellow could do.”
What answer could be made to this? Mr. Sandford went out for his
walk--that long silent walk, in which the great Consoler came down from
amid all the silvery lights and shining skies, and walked with him in
the freshness of the morning, all silent in tenderness and great
solemnity and awe.
CHAPTER VI.
“Unless, by the grace of God, something should happen”--that was what he
kept saying to himself when he reflected on the disclosure which must be
made when the seaside season was over. The great events of life rarely
happen according to our will. A man cannot die when he wishes it, though
there should be every argument in favour of such an event, and its
advantages most palpable. The moment passes in which that conclusion
would have all the force and satisfactory character of a great tragedy,
and a dreary postscript of existence drivels on, destructive of all
dignity and appropriateness. We live when we should do much better to
die, and we die sometimes when every circumstance calls upon us to live.
Most people will think that it was a very dreary hope that moved Mr.
Sandford’s mind--perhaps even that it was not the expedient of a brave
man to desire to leave his wife and children to endure the change and
the struggle from which he shrank in his own person. But this was not
how it appeared to him. He thought, and with some reason, that the
change which becomes inevitable on the death of the head of a house is
without humiliation, without the pang of downfall which would be
involved in an entire reversal of life which had not that excuse; he
thought that everybody who knew him would regret the change, and that
every effort would be made to help those who were left behind. It would
be no shame to them to accept that help; it would seem to them a tribute
to his position rather than pity for them. His wife would believe that
her husband, a great painter, one of the first of the day, had fully
earned that recognition, and would be proud of the pension or the money
raised for her as of a monument in his honour. And then the insurances.
There could be no doubt, he said to himself, with a rueful smile, that
so much substantial money would be much better to have than a man who
could earn nothing, who had become incapable, whose work nobody wanted.
He had no doubt whatever that it would be by far the best solution. It
would rouse the boys by a sharp and unmistakable necessity; it might, he
thought, be the making of the boys, who had no fault in particular
except the disposition to take things easily, which was the weakness of
this generation. And as for the others, they would be taken care of--no
doubt they would be taken care of. Their condition would appeal to the
kindness of every friend who had ever bought a “Sandford” or thought it
an honour to know the painter. He would even himself be restored to
honour and estimation by the act of dying, which often is a very
ingratiating thing, and makes the public change its opinion. All these
arguments were so strongly in favour of it that to think there was no
means of securing it depressed Mr. Sandford’s mind more than all. By the
grace of God. But it is certain that the Disposer of events does not
always see matters as His creatures see them. No one can make sure,
however warmly such a decree might be wished for, or even prayed for,
that it will be given. If only that would happen! But it was still more
impossible to secure its happening than to open a new market for the
pictures, or cause commissions to pour in again.
It may be asked whether Mr. Sandford’s conviction, which was so strong
on this subject, ever moved him to do anything to bring about his
desire. It was impossible, perhaps, that the idea should not have
crossed his mind--
“When we ourselves can our demission make
With a bare bodkin.”
And we can scarcely say that it was, like Hamlet, the fear of something
after death that restrained him. It was a stronger sentiment still. It
was the feeling that to give one’s self one’s dismissal is quite a
different thing. It is a flight--it is a running away; all the arguments
against the selfishness of desiring to leave his wife and children to a
struggle from which he had escaped came into action against that. What
would be well if accomplished by the grace of God would be miserable if
done by the will of the man who might be mistaken in his estimate of the
good it would do. And then another practical thought, more tragical than
any in its extreme materialism and matter-of-fact character, it would
vitiate the insurances! If the children were to gain nothing by his
death, then it would certainly be better for them that he should live.
On that score there could be no doubt. This made suicide as completely
out of the question from a physical point of view as it was already
from a spiritual. He could not discharge himself from God’s service on
earth, though he should be very thankful if God would discharge him; and
he could not do anything to endanger the precious provision he had made
for his family. It can scarcely be said that Mr. Sandford considered
this case at leisure or with comparison of the arguments for and
against, for his decision was instinctive and immediate; nevertheless
the idea floated uppermost sometimes in the surging and whirl up and
down of many thoughts, but always to be dismissed in the same way.
Two or three weeks had passed in this way when one evening Mr. Sandford
received a letter from Daniells, the dealer, inviting him to join a
party on the Yorkshire moors. Daniells was well enough off to be able to
deny himself nothing. He was not a gentleman, yet the sports that
gentlemen love were within reach of his wealth, and gentlemen not so
well off as he showed much willingness to share in his good things. Some
fine people whose names it was a pleasure to read were on his list, and
some painters who were celebrated enough to eclipse the fine people.
That all these should be gathered together by a man who was as ignorant
as a pig, and not much better bred, was wonderful; but so it was.
Perhaps the fact that Daniells was really at heart a good fellow had
something to do with it: but even had this not been the case, it is
probable that he could still have found guests to shoot on his moor, and
eat the birds they had shot. Mr. Sandford was no sportsman, and at first
he had little inclination to accept. It was his wife who urged him to do
so.
“You are not enjoying Broadbeach as you usually do,” she said; “you are
bored by it. Oh, don’t tell me, Edward, I can see it in your eyes.”
“If you think so, my dear, no denial of mine----”
“No,” she said, shaking her head; “nothing you say will change my
opinion. I am dreadfully sorry, for I am fond of the place; but I have
made up my mind already never to come here again: for you are bored--it
is as plain as possible: you want a change: you must go.”
“It is not much of a change to visit Daniells,” said Mr. Sandford.
“Oh, it isn’t Daniells; it’s the company, and the distance, and all you
will find there. I have no objection to Mr. Daniells, Edward.”
“Nor I; he is a good fellow in spite of his ’h’s.’”
“I don’t care about his ’h’s.’ He’s very hospitable and very friendly,
and all the nice people go to him. I saw in the papers that Lord Okeham
was there. You might be able to speak a word for Harry.”
Mr. Sandford smiled. “I am to go, then, as a business speculation,” he
said; but his smile faded away very soon, for he reflected that Lord
Okeham was the first to give him that sensation of being wanted no
longer, of having nobody to employ him, which had risen to such a tragic
height since then.
“Don’t laugh,” said his wife. “I do think indeed it is your
duty--anything that may help on the children; and you do like Mr.
Daniells, Edward.”
“Yes, I do like Daniells; he is a very good fellow.”
“And the change will do you good. You must go.”
It was arranged so almost without any voluntary action on his part. His
wife’s anxiety that he should “speak a word for Harry” seemed to him
half-pathetic, half-ridiculous in what he knew to be the position of
affairs; but then she did not know. It can scarcely be said that it was
other than a relief to him to leave his family to their own
light-hearted devices, or that the young ones were not at least
half-pleased when he went away. “Papa was not a bit like himself,” they
said; probably it was because the heat was too much for him (he
preferred cold weather), and the freshness of the moors would put him
all right. Mrs. Sandford was by no means willing to confess to herself
that she, too, was relieved by her husband’s departure. It was the first
time she had ever been conscious of that feeling in thirty years of
married life; but she, too, said that he would be the better of the
freshness of the moors, and they all gave themselves up to “fun” with a
new rush of pleasure when his grave countenance was away.
“I am sure he did not mean it,” said Lizzie, “but I could not help
feeling that it was poor Lance that was the cause.”
“Nothing of the sort, my dear,” said Mrs. Sandford. “Your father would
have told you if he had any objections. No; I know what it is; he is
very anxious about the boys--and so am I.”
No one, however, who had seen her among them could have believed that
Mrs. Sandford was very anxious. She was so glad that they should enjoy
themselves. Afterwards, when the holidays were over, when they were all
back in town again, then something, no doubt, must be done about Harry.
He was very thoughtless, to be sure; he took no trouble about what was
going to happen to him. Mrs. Sandford threw off any shade of distress,
however, by saying to herself that now his father was fully roused to
the necessity of doing something, now that he was about to meet Lord
Okeham and other influential people, something _must_ be found for
Harry, and then all would go well. But the look in her husband’s eyes
haunted her, nevertheless, for the rest of the day. She had gone to the
railway with him to see him off, as she always did, and when the train
was just moving, he looked at her, waving his hand to her. The look in
his eyes was so strange and so sad, that Mrs. Sandford felt disposed to
rush after her husband by the next train. Failing that, she drew her
veil over her face as she turned away and shed tears, she could not tell
why, as if he had been going away never to return. How ridiculous! how
absurd! when he was only a little out of sorts and sure to be set right
by the freshness of the moors. The impression very soon wore out, and
the young people had already organised a little impromptu dance for the
evening, which gave Mrs. Sandford plenty to do.
“It looks a little like taking advantage of your father’s absence--as if
you were glad he was gone.”
“Not at all,” they all cried. “What a dreadful idea! The only thing is
that it would have bored him horribly; otherwise,” added Harry, “we are
always glad of my father’s company,” with an air of protection and
patronage which made the others laugh. And Mrs. Sandford keenly enjoyed
the dance, and felt it better that her husband’s face, never so grave
before, should not be there to over-shadow the evening’s entertainment.
He would be so much more in his element discussing light and shade with
the other R.A.s, or talking a little moderate politics with Lord Okeham,
or breathing in the freshness of the moors.
And he did like the freshness of the moors, and the talk of his brother
artists, and the discussions among the men. It was entirely a man’s
party, and perhaps a very domestic man like Mr. Sandford, a little
neglected amid the exuberances of a young family, his very wife drawn
away from him by the exigencies of their amusements, is specially open
to the occasional refreshment of a party of his fellows, when congenial
pursuits and matured views, and something of a like experience--at all
events something which is a real experience of life--draw individuals
together. The “sport” of the painters was apt to be interrupted by
realisations of the “effects” about them, and by discussions on various
artistic-scientific points which only masters in the art could settle;
and that semi-professional flavour of the party was extremely
interesting to the other men, the public personages and society
magnates, who found it very piquant to be thrown amid the painters, and
who were inspired thereby to talk their best, and tell their most
entertaining stories. No atmosphere of failure accompanied Mr. Sandford
into this circle, which was kept hilarious by the host’s jovialities and
social mistakes. If anybody knew that Daniells kept in his inner room
three “Sandfords” which he could not sell, there was no hint of that
knowledge in anything that was said, or in the manner of the other
painters towards their fellow, to whom all appealed as to as great an
authority as could be found on all questions of art. He was restored,
thus, to the position which, indeed, nobody could take from him, though
he should never sell a picture again. It soothed him to feel and see
that, to all his brethren, he was as much as ever one of the first
painters of his time, and to give his opinion and sustain it with the
experience of his long professional life, and much experiment in art. A
forlorn hope had been in his mind that Daniells might have some good
news for him; that he might say some day, “That was all a false alarm,
old man--I’ve sold the pictures;” but this unfortunately did not come to
pass. Daniells never said it was a false alarm; he even said some things
in his rough but not unkindly way which to Mr. Sandford’s ear, quickened
by trouble, confirmed the disaster; but perhaps Daniells, who had no
particular delicacy of perception, did not intend this.
The change, however, did Mr. Sandford a great deal of good: though
sometimes, when he found himself alone, the settled shadow of calamity
which had closed upon his life, and which must soon be known to all,
came over him with almost greater force than at first. It was but seldom
that he was alone, when he was indoors: yet now and then he would find
himself on the moors in the sun-setting, when the western sky was still
one blaze of yellow or orange light, varied by bands of cloudy red, with
the low hills and sweeps of moor standing black against that waning
brightness which, magnificent as it was, sent out little light. Mr.
Sandford did not compare his own going out of practical life and
possibility, yet preservation of a glow of fame which neither warmed nor
enlightened, with that show in the west. People seldom see allegories of
their own disaster. But as he strayed along with the sense of dreariness
in his heart which the dead and spectral aspect of hill and tree was so
well calculated to give, his own circumstances came back to him in
tragic glimpses. He thought of the gay group he had left behind, the
heedless young creatures singing and dancing on the edge of the
precipice, and of the peaceful home lying silent awaiting them, to which
they had no doubt of returning, with all its security of comfort and
peace, but on the edge of the precipice too. And he thought of Jack’s
fee, his two guineas, which they had all taken as the best joke in the
world, and of Lizzie, who was to have fifty pounds a year from her
father, and of Harry, quite happy and content on his schoolboy
allowance; and all this going on as if it were the course of nature,
unchangeable as the stars or the pillars of the earth. These things
glided before him as he looked over all the inequalities of the moor
standing black against the western sky. They were the true facts about
him, notwithstanding that in the shelter of this momentary pause he only
felt them as at a distance, and less strongly than before realised the
ease it would bring if by the grace of God something happened--before----
It was the time of the year when there are various race meetings in the
north, and Mr. Daniells had planned to carry his party to the most
famous of them. He had his landau and a brake, royally charged with
provisions, and filled with his guests. Mr. Sandford had done his best
to get off this unnecessary festivity, for which he had little taste.
But all his friends, who by this time had begun to perceive that his
spirits were not in their usual equable state, resisted and protested.
He must come, they said: to leave one behind would spoil the party; he
was not to be left alone with all the moorland effects to steal a march
upon the other painters. And he had not sufficient energy to stand
against their remonstrances. It was easier to yield, and he yielded. The
race was not unamusing. Even with all his preoccupation, he took a
little pleasure in it, more or less, as most Englishmen do: though it
glanced across his mind that somebody might say afterwards, “Sandford
was there, amusing himself on the edge of the precipice.” These vague
voices and glimpses of things were not enough to stand against the
remonstrances and banter of his friends: and after all, what did it
matter? The plunge over the precipice is not less terrible because you
may have performed a dance of despair on the edge. It was about sunset
on a lovely September evening when the party set out on their return
home. They were merry; not that there had been any excess or indulgence
unbecoming of English gentlemen. Daniells, it is true, who was not a
gentleman, had, perhaps, a little more champagne under his belt than was
good for him. But his guests were only merry, talking a little more
loudly than usual about the events of the day and the exploits of the
favourite, and settling some moderate bets which neither harmed nor
elated any one. Mr. Sandford, who had not betted, was the most silent
of party; the lively talk of the others left him free to retire to his
own thoughts. He had got rather into a tangle of dim calculations about
his insurances, and how the money would be divided, when somebody
suddenly called out “Hallo! we’ve got off the road!”
For some time Mr. Sandford was the only one who paid any attention to
this statement. Looking out with a little start, he saw the same scene
against which his musings had taken form on previous nights. A sky
glowing with a stormy splendour, deep burning orange on the horizon
rising through zones of yellow to the daffodil sky above, every object
standing out black in the absence of light; not the hedgerows and white
line of the road alone, but the blunt inequalities of the moor, here a
lump of gorse or gnarled hawthorn bush, there a treacherous hollow with
a gleam of water gathered as in a cup. The coachman and grooms had not
been so prudent as their masters; their potations had been heavier than
champagne. How they had left the road and got upon the moor could never
be discovered. It was partly the perplexing glow above and blackness
below, partly the fumes of a long day’s successive drinkings in their
brains; partly, perhaps, as one of the passengers thought, something
else. The horses had taken the unusual obstacles on their path with
wonderful steadiness at first, but by the time the attention of the
gentlemen was fully attracted to what was happening, the coachman had
altogether lost control of the kicking and plunging animals. The man was
not too far gone to have driven home by the road, but his brain was
incapable of any effort to meet such an emergency. He began to flog the
horses wildly, to swear at them, to pull savagely at the reins. The
groom jumped down to rush to their heads, and in doing so, as they made
a plunge at the moment, fell on the roadside, and in a moment more was
left behind as the terrified horses dashed on. By this time everybody
was roused, and the danger was evident. Mr. Sandford sat quite still; he
was not learned about horses, while many of his companions were. One of
them got on to the box beside the terrified coachman to try what could
be done, the others gave startled and sometimes contradictory
suggestions and directions. He was quite calm in the tumult of alarm and
eager preparation for any event. He was sensible, profoundly sensible,
of the wonderful effect of the scene: the orange glow which no pigments
in the world could reproduce, the blackness of the indistinguishable
objects which stood up against it like low dark billows of a motionless
sea. The shocks of the jolting carriage affected him little, any more
than the shouts of the alarmed and excited men. He did not even remark,
then, that some sprang off and that others held themselves ready to
follow. His sensations were those of perfect calm. He thought of the
precipice no more, nor even of the insurances. Some one shook him by the
shoulder, but it did not disturb him. The effect was wonderful; the
orange growing intense, darker, the yellow light pervading the
illuminated sky. And then a sudden wild whirl, a shock of sudden
sensation, and he saw or felt no more.
CHAPTER VII.
Presently the light came back to Mr. Sandford’s eyes. He was lying upon
the dry heather on the side of the moor, the brown seed-pods nestling
against his cheek, the yellow glow in the west, to which his eyes
instinctively turned, having scarcely faded at all since he had looked
at it from the carriage. A confused sound of noises, loud speaking, and
moans of pain reached him where he lay, but scarcely moved him to
curiosity. His first sensation was one of curious ease and security. He
did not attempt to budge, but lay quite peacefully smiling at the
sunset, like a child. His head was confused, but there was in it a vague
sense of danger escaped, and of some kind of puzzled deliverance from he
knew not what, which gave the strangest feeling of soothing and rest. He
felt no temptation to jump up hastily, to go to the help of the people
who were moaning, or to inquire into the accident, as in another case he
would have done. He lay still, quite at his ease, hearing these voices
as if he heard them not, and smiling with a confused pleasure at the
glow of orange light in the sky.
He did not know how long it was till some one knelt down and spoke to
him anxiously. “Sandford, are you badly hurt? Sandford, my dear fellow,
do you know me? Can you speak to me?”
He burst into a laugh at this address.
“Speak to you? Know you? What nonsense! I am not hurt at all. I am quite
comfortable.”
“Thank God!” said the other. “Duncan, I fear, has a broken leg, and the
coachman is---- It was his fault, the unfortunate wretch. Give me your
hand, and I’ll help you to get up.”
To get up? That was quite a different matter. He did not feel the least
desire to try. He felt, before trying and without any sense of alarm,
that he could not get up; then said to himself that this was nonsense
too, and that to lie there, however comfortably, when he might be
helping the others, was not to be thought of. He gave his hand
accordingly to his friend, and made an effort to rise. But it would have
been as easy (he said to himself) for a log of wood to attempt to rise.
He felt rather like that, as if his legs had turned to wood--not stone,
for that would have been cold and uncomfortable. “I don’t know how it
is,” he said, still smiling, “but I can’t budge. There’s nothing the
matter with me, I’m quite easy and comfortable, but I can’t move a limb.
I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Look after the others. Never mind
me.” He thought the face of the man who was bending over him looked
strangely scared, but nothing more was said. A rug was put over him and
one of the cushions of the carriage under his head, and there he lay,
vaguely hearing the groans of the man whose leg was broken as
(apparently) they moved him, and all the exclamations and questions and
directions given by one and another. What was more wonderful was the
dying out of that wild orange light in the sky. It paled gradually, as
if it had been glowing metal, and the cold night air breathing on it had
paled and dwindled that ineffectual fire. A hundred lessening tints and
tones of colour--yellows and faint greens, with shades of purple and
creamy whiteness breaking the edges--melted and shimmered in the
distance. It was like an exhibition got up for him alone, relieved by
that black underground, now traversed by gigantic ebony figures of a
horse and man, moving irregularly across the moor. A star came out with
a keen blue sparkle, like some power of heaven triumphant over that
illumination of earth. What a spectacle it was! And all for him alone!
The next thing he was conscious of was two or three figures about
him--one the doctor, whose professional touch he soon discovered on his
pulse and his limbs. “We are going to lift you. Don’t take any trouble;
it will give you no pain,” some one said. And before he could protest,
which he was about to do good-humouredly, that there was no occasion, he
found himself softly raised upon some flat and even surface, more
comfortable, after all, than the lumps of the heather. Then there was a
curious interval of motion along the road, no doubt, though all he saw
was the sky with the stars coming gradually out; neither the road nor
his bearers, except now and then a dark outline coming within the line
of his vision; but always the deep blue of the mid sky shining above.
The world seemed to have concentrated in that, and it was not this
world, but another world.
He remembered little more, except by snatches; an unknown
face--probably the doctor’s--looking exceedingly grave, bending over
him; then Daniells’ usually jovial countenance with all the lines
drooping and the colour blanched out of it, and a sound of low voices
talking something over, of which he could only make out the words
“Telegraph at once;” then, “Too late! It must not be too late. She must
come at once.” He wondered vaguely who this was, and why there should be
such a hurry. And then, all at once, it seemed to him that it was
daylight and his wife was standing by his bedside. He had just woke up
from what seemed a very long, confused, and feverish night--how long he
never knew. But when he woke everything was clear to him. Unless, by the
grace of God, something were to happen---- Something was about to
happen, by the grace of God.
“Mary!” he cried, with a flush of joy. “You here!”
“Of course, my dearest,” she said, with a cheerful look, “as soon as I
heard there had been an accident.”
He took her hand between his and drew her to him. “This was all I
wanted,” he said. “God is very good; He gives me everything.”
“Oh, Edward!” This pitiful protest, remonstrance, appeal to heaven and
earth--for all these were in her cry--came from her unawares.
“Yes,” he said, “my dear, everything has happened as I desired. I
understand it all now. I thought I was not hurt; now I see. I am not
hurt, I am killed, like the boy--don’t you remember?--in Browning’s
ballad. Don’t be shocked, dear. Why shouldn’t I be cheerful? I am
not--sorry.”
“Oh, Edward!” she cried again, the passion of her trouble exasperated by
his composure; “not to leave--us all?”
He held her hand between his, smiling at her. “It was what I wanted,” he
said--“not to leave you; but don’t you believe, my darling, there must
be something about that leaving which is not so dreadful, which is made
easy to the man who goes away? Certainly, I don’t want to leave you; but
it’s so much for your good--for the children’s good----”
“Oh, never, Edward, never!”
“Yes; it’s new to you, but I’ve been thinking about it a long time--so
much that I once thought it would almost have been worth the while, but
for the insurances, to have----”
“Edward!” She looked at him with an agonised cry.
“No, dear--nothing of the kind. I never would, I never could have done
it. It would have been contrary to nature. The accident--was without any
will or action of mine. By the grace of God----”
“Edward, Edward! Oh, don’t say that; by His hand, heavy, heavy upon us!”
“It is you that should not say that, Mary. If you only knew, my dear. I
want you to understand so long as I am here to tell you----”
“He must not talk so much,” said the voice of the doctor behind; “his
strength must be husbanded. Mrs. Sandford, you must not allow him to
exhaust himself.”
“Doctor,” said Mr. Sandford, “I take it for granted you’re a man of
sense. What can you do for me? Spin out my life by a few more feeble
hours. Which would you rather have yourself? That, or the power of
saying everything to the person you love best in the world?”
“Let him talk,” said the doctor, turning away; “I have no answer to
make. Give him a little of this if he turns faint. And send for me if
you want me, Mrs. Sandford.”
“Thanks, doctor. That is a man of sense, Mary. I feel quite well, quite
able to tell you everything.”
“Oh, Edward, when that is the case, things cannot be so bad! If you will
only take care, only try to save your strength, to keep up. Oh, my dear!
The will to get well does so much! Try! try! Edward, for the love of
God.”
“My own Mary: always believing that everything’s to be done by an
effort, as all women do. I am glad it is out of my power. If I were in
any pain there might be some hope for you, but I’m in no pain. There’s
nothing the matter with me but dying. And I have long felt that was the
only way.”
“Dying?--not when you were with us at the sea?”
“Most of all then,” he said, with a smile.
“Oh, Edward, Edward! and I full of amusements, of pleasure, leaving you
alone.”
“It was better so. I am glad of every hour’s respite you have had. And
now you’ll be able easily to break up the house, which would have been a
hard thing and a bitter downfall in my lifetime. It will be quite
natural now. They will give you a pension, and there will be the
insurance money.”
“I cannot bear it,” she cried wildly. “I cannot have you speak like
this.”
“Not when it is the utmost ease to my mind--the utmost comfort----”
She clasped her hands firmly together. “Say anything you wish, Edward.”
“Yes, my poor dear.” He was very, very sorry for his wife. It burst upon
her without preparation, without a word of warning. Oh, he was sorry for
her! But for himself it was a supreme consolation to pour it all forth,
to tell her everything. “If I were going to be left behind,” he said,
soothingly, “my heart would be broken: but it is softened somehow to
those that are going away. I can’t tell you how. It is, though; it is
all so vague and soft. I know I’ll lose you, Mary, as you will lose me,
but I don’t feel it. My dearest, I had not a commission, not one. And
there are three pictures of mine unsold in Daniells’ inner shop. He’ll
tell you if you ask him. The three last. That one of the little Queen
and her little Maries, that our little Mary sat for, that you liked so
much, you remember? It’s standing in Daniells’ room; three of them. I
think I see them against the wall.”
“Edward!”
“Oh no, my head is not going. I only _think_ I see them. And it was the
merest chance that the ‘Black Prince’ sold; and not a commission, not a
commission. Think of that, Mary. It is true such a thing has happened
before, but I never was sixty before. Do you forget I am an old man, and
my day is over?”
“No, no, no,” she cried with passion; “it is not so.”
“Oh yes; facts are stubborn things--it is so. And what should we have
done if our income had stopped in a moment, as it would have done? A
precipice before our feet, and nothing, nothing beyond. Now for you, my
darling, it will be far easier. You can sell the house and all that is
in it. And they will give you a pension, and the children will have
something to begin upon.”
“Oh, the children!” she cried, taking his hand into hers, bowing down
her face upon it. “Oh, Edward, what are the children between you and
me?” She cast them away in that supreme moment; the young creatures all
so well, so gay, so hopeful. In her despair and passion she flung their
crowding images from her--those images which had forced her husband from
her heart.
He laughed a low, quiet laugh. “God bless them,” he said; “but I like to
have you all to myself, you and me only, for the last moment, Mary. You
have been always the best wife that ever was--nay, I won’t say have
been--you are my dear, my wife. We don’t understand anything about
widows, you and I. Death’s nothing, I think. It looks dreadful when
you’re not going. But God manages all that so well. It is as if it were
nothing to me. Mary, where are you?”
“Here, Edward, holding your hand. Oh, my dear, don’t you see me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, with a faint laugh, as if ashamed at some mistake
he had made, and put his other hand over hers with a slight groping
movement. “It’s getting late,” he said; “it’s getting rather dark. What
time is it? Seven o’clock? You’ll not go down to dinner, Mary? Stay with
me. They can bring you something upstairs.”
“Go down? Oh, no, no. Do you think I would leave you, Edward?” She had
made a little pause of terror before she spoke, for, indeed, it was
broad day, the full afternoon sunshine still bright outside, and nothing
to suggest the twilight. He sighed again--a soft, pleasurable sigh.
“If you don’t mind just sitting by me a little. I see your dear face in
glimpses, sometimes as if you had wings and were hovering over me. My
head’s swimming a little. Don’t light the candles. I like the
half-light; you know I always did. So long as I can see you by it, Mary.
Is that a comfortable chair? Then sit down, my love, and let me keep
your hand, and I think I’ll get a little sleep.”
“It will do you good,” said the poor wife.
“Who knows?” he said, with another smile. “But don’t let them light the
candles.”
Light the candles! She could see, where she sat there, the red sunshine
falling in a blaze upon a ruddy heathery hill, and beating upon the dark
firs which stood out like ink against that background. There is perhaps
nothing that so wrings the heart of the watcher as this pathetic mistake
of day for night which betrays the eyes from which all light is
failing. He lay within the shadow of the curtain, always holding her
hand fast, and fell asleep--a sleep which, for a time, was soft and
quiet enough, but afterwards got a little disturbed. She sat quite
still, not moving, scarcely breathing, that she might not disturb him;
not a tear in her eye, her whole being wound up into an external calm
which was so strangely unlike the tumult within. And she had forsaken
him--left him to meet calamity without her support, without sympathy or
aid! She had been immersed in the pleasures of the children, their
expeditions, their amusements. She remembered, with a shudder, that it
had been a little relief to get him away, to have their dance
undisturbed. Their dance! Her heart swelled as if it would burst. She
had been his faithful wife since she was little more than a child. All
her life was his--she had no thought, no wish, apart from him. And yet
she had left him to bear this worst of evils alone!
Mrs. Sandford dared not break the sacred calm by a sob or a sigh. She
dared not even let the tears come to her eyes, lest he should wake and
be troubled by the sight of them. What thoughts went through her mind as
she sat there, not moving! Her past life all over, which, until that
telegram came, had seemed the easy tenor of every day; and the future,
so dark, so awful, so unknown--a world which she did not understand
without him.
After an interval he began to speak again, but so that she saw he was
either asleep still or wandering in those vague regions between
consciousness and nothingness. “All against the wall--with the faces
turned,” he said. “Three--all the last ones: the one my wife liked so.
In the inner room: Daniells is a good fellow. He spared me the sight of
them outside. Three--that’s one of the perfect numbers--that’s--I could
always see them: on the road and on the moor, and at the races: then--I
wonder--all the way up--on the road to heaven? no, no. One of the
angels--would come and turn them round--turn them round. Nothing like
that in the presence of God. It would be disrespectful--disrespectful.
Turn them round--with their faces----” He paused; his eyes were closed,
an ineffable smile came over his mouth. “He--will see what’s best in
them,” he said.
After this for a time silence reigned, broken only now and then by a
word sometimes unintelligible. Once his wife thought she caught
something about the “four square walls in the new Jerusalem,” sometimes
tender words about herself, but nothing clear. It was not till night
that he woke, surprising them with an outcry as to the light, as he had
previously spoken about the darkness.
“You need not,” he said, “light such an illumination for me--_al giorno_
as the Italians say; but I like it--I like it. Daniells--has the soul of
a prince.” Then he put out his hands feebly, calling “Mary! Mary!” and
drew her closer to him, and whispered a long, earnest communication; but
what it was the poor lady never knew. She listened intently, but she
could not make out a word. What was it? What was it? Whatever it was, to
have said it was an infinite satisfaction to him. He dropped back upon
his pillows with an air of content indescribable, and silent pleasure.
He had done everything, he had said everything. And in this mood slept
again, and woke no more.
* * * * *
Mr. Sandford’s previsions were all justified. The house was sold to
advantage, at what the agent called a fancy price, because it had been
his house--with its best furniture undisturbed. Everything was
miserable enough indeed, but there was no humiliation in the breaking up
of the establishment, which was evidently too costly for the widow. She
got her pension at once, and a satisfactory one, and retired with her
younger children to a small house, which was more suited to her
circumstances. And Lord Okeham, touched by the fact that Sandford’s
death had taken place under the same roof, in a room next to his own
(though that, to be sure, in an age of competition and personal merit
was nothing), found somehow, as a Cabinet Minister no doubt can if he
will, a post for Harry, in which he got on just as well as other young
men, and settled down into a very good servant of the State. And Jack,
being thus suddenly sobered and called back to himself, and eager to get
rid of the intolerable thought that he, too, had weighed upon his
father’s mind, and made his latter days more sad, took to his profession
with zeal, and got on, as no doubt any determined man does when he
adopts one line and holds by it. The others settled down with their
mother in a humbler way of living, yet did not lose their friends, as it
is common to say people do. Perhaps they were not asked any longer to
the occasional “smart” parties to which the pretty daughters and
well-bred sons of Sandford the famous painter, who could dispense
tickets for Academy soirées and private views, were invited, more or
less on sufferance. These failed them, their names falling out of the
invitation books; but what did that matter, seeing they had never been
but outsiders, flattered by the cards of a countess, but never really
penetrating beyond the threshold?
Mrs. Sandford believed that she could not live when her husband was thus
taken from her. The remembrance of that brief but dreadful time when she
had abandoned him, when the children and their amusements had stolen her
heart away, was heavy upon her, and though she steeled herself to carry
out all his wishes, and to arrange everything as he would have had it
done, yet she did all with a sense that the time was short, and that
when her duty was thus accomplished she would follow him. This softened
everything to her in the most wonderful way. She felt herself to be
acting as his deputy through all these changes, glad that he should be
saved the trouble, and that humiliation and confession of downfall which
was not now involved in any alteration of life she could make, and
fully confident that when all was completed she would receive her
dismissal and join him where he was. But she was a very natural woman,
with all the springs of life in her unimpaired. And by-and-by, with much
surprise, with a pang of disappointment, and yet a rising of her heart
to the new inevitable solitary life which was so different, which was
not solitary at all, but full of the stir and hum of living, yet all
silent in the most intimate and closest circle, Mrs. Sandford recognised
that she was not to die. It was a strange thing, yet one which happens
often: for we neither live nor die according to our own will and
previsions--save sometimes in such a case as that of our painter, to
whom, as to his beloved, God accorded sleep.
And more--the coming true of everything that he had believed. After
doing his best for his own, and for all who depended upon him in his
life, he did better still, as he had foreseen, by dying. Daniells sold
the three pictures at prices higher than he had dreamed of, for a
Sandford was now a thing with a settled value, it being sure that no new
flood of them would ever come into the market. And all went well.
Perhaps with some of us, too, that dying which it is a terror to look
forward to, seeing that it means the destruction of a home, may prove,
like the painter’s, a better thing than living even for those who love
us best. But it is not to every one that it is given to die at the right
moment, as Mr. Sandford had the happiness to do.
THE WONDERFUL HISTORY
OF
MR. ROBERT DALYELL.
CHAPTER I.
It was a September night, rather chilly and dreary, as the evening often
becomes at that season, even when the day has been beautiful. There was
a little cold wailing wind about, like the ghost of an autumn breeze,
which came in puffs of air, only strong enough to dislodge a fluttering
yellow leaf or two, and sometimes with a few drops of rain upon it,
which it dashed in your face with an elfish moan--not a night to walk in
the garden for pleasure. It was, however, a custom with Mr. Dalyell to
smoke his cigar out-of-doors after dinner in all weathers, and Fred, who
was his eldest son, was proud to be his father’s companion and share
this indulgence--too proud to make any opposition to the chill of the
night or the occasional dash of rain. All that was visible from the
windows of the Yalton drawing-room, across which now and then a white
figure would flutter, with a glance out were the red fire-tips of the
two cigars, moving now quickly, now slowly, stopping altogether for a
moment, going on with renewed rapidity--which was papa’s way.
You could not see a prettier old house than Yalton in all the eastern
shires. It had the mixture of French with native Scotch architecture
which distinguishes a period in history. There were turrets, which the
profane called pepper-boxes, at the corners, and lines of many windows
in the commodious, comfortable _corps de logis_, now shining through the
night with cheerful lights. Two terraces stood between the altitude of
the house and the walk in which the father and son were, with lines of
stone balustrades all overgrown by creeping plants and adorned with
great vases in which the garish flowers of autumn were still fully
blooming, though they were unseen in the darkness. On the lower level
was the little temple of a fountain, which was reduced to a small and
broken jet by age and negligence. The scent of the mignonette in the
borders, the faint dripping of the water in the fountain, communicated
to the atmosphere a little half-artificial speciality of character, like
the terraces and great vases, not altogether natural to the locality,
yet not uncongenial in its quaint double nationality. The two dark
figures walking up and down, made visible by those red points, were yet
undistinguishable, save by the fact that one was slim and slight, a
boyish figure, and the other round and solid in the complete development
of the man. The lad had been unfolding to his father the many novelties
and wonders of his first year at the University, with that delightful
force of conviction that such pleasant and wonderful experiences had
never happened to anybody before which is the perennial belief of the
young: while the father listened with that half-amused, half-pensive
sympathy, made up of recollections fond and familiar, and the
half-provoked, half-pleased sensation of amazement at finding those
experiences re-embodied in the person of his son, which is habitual to
the old. But, indeed, to say old is merely to express a comparative
quality, for Mr. Dalyell of Yalton was a man under fifty, in the full
force and vigour of life.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “Fred, it’s fine times for you now, my boy. But you
must remember that life is not made up of bumps and bump-suppers, and
that there are worse things than a proctor waiting for you, perhaps,
round the next corner. I don’t want you not to play--but you must learn
to work a little, too.”
“All right, father,” said Fred; “I’ll pull through. I sha’n’t disgrace
the old house.”
“No,” said Mr. Dalyell. “I don’t suppose you will: but you might perhaps
go a little farther than that.”
“I didn’t think,” said Fred, surprised, “that you intended me to do more
than a good pass. I never supposed there was--any need for hard work.”
“Need? I never said there was need: but it does a young fellow good to
be thought to work: even if it does no more it does that. It’s well for
you to be thought to work, Fred.”
“If that’s all,” said the young man, “I don’t fancy I want to get a
reputation in that way.”
“Then you’re a silly boy,” said his father. “It’s a capital thing to
have a good reputation. You don’t know what it might do for you.”
“Well,” said the lad, with a laugh, “I don’t fancy that matters so much,
so long as you do everything for me, father.”
“That’s just the point, Fred. That’s what I wanted to show you. I
sha’n’t always be here to do everything for you.”
“Why,” said Fred, “you’re almost as young as I am!”
“I’m not particularly old: but no man’s life is secure, however young he
may be; it’s not to be lippened to, as old Janet says. You ought to
contemplate what your position would be if I were taken away. Think what
happens to many a young fellow, Fred, whose father dies--perhaps just
when he is where you are: and he has to stop all his pleasant ways and
turn to, perhaps to work for his mother and the rest, perhaps only to
look after them and take care of them--but at all events to be the head
of the family instead of a careless boy.” Mr. Dalyell had stopped in his
walk to enforce what he said, which was a way he had. “I’ve known a boy
of your age,” he said, “that had to give up everything, and go into an
office, and work like a slave: instead of your bump-suppers, Fred.”
“I’ve heard of such a thing myself,” said Fred; “though you don’t think
much of my experience, father. It happened to Surtees of New, a fellow a
little senior to me. It was awfully hard upon him. He would have been in
the ‘eight’ if he had stayed another year. What he felt most was leaving
the ‘Varsity without getting his blue. But,” added the lad, “if it
matters about what people think, as you were saying, he was thought no
end of for it. He went abroad, I think, to look after some business
there.”
“And dropped, I suppose, never to be heard of more--among his old chums
at least?”
“It was awfully hard upon him,” said Fred, regretfully.
“Well,” said Mr. Dalyell, “that’s what may happen to any one of you
whose fathers are in business. You ought to remember that such a
contingency is always on the cards.”
“Why, father----!” cried Fred. The boy was unwilling to make any
application, to seem to think that there could be anything in their own
circumstances to suggest this conversation: but he threw an involuntary
glance at the house behind him with all its cheerful lights, and at the
dark clouds of trees all round in the distance, which marked the great
extent of the park and woods of Yalton. He did not add a word, and
indeed the whole movement was involuntary--a sort of appeal from the
lugubrious remarks on one side to all these unending signs of wealth on
the other.
“You mean to say there’s Yalton; and though I’m in business, I’m not all
in business,” said Mr. Dalyell with a laugh. “I was not speaking of
ourselves, my boy; but of the vicissitudes of life. I hope there will be
Dalyells of Yalton as long as Edinburgh Castle stands upon a rock; and
one can’t say more than that. Still, there are wonderful changes in
life, and I’d like to think--if you force me to an application--that you
were up to anything that might happen. You’d have to take the command,
you know, Fred,” he added after a moment, knocking the ash off his cigar
against the balustrade of the terrace, with another curious laugh. “Your
dear mother has never been used to anything but to be taken care of. You
had better not bother her by asking advice from her if you should ever
be in that position.”
“I wish you would not say such dreadful things,” said Fred petulantly.
“Why should we talk of what I hope to heaven will never happen?--you
make me quite uncomfortable, papa.”
“Well, my dear boy,” said Mr. Dalyell, “that’s the penalty, don’t you
know, of being grown up--like shaving, and other disadvantages. You
rather like the shaving--which implies an imaginary beard: but you don’t
like to hear of the much more important responsibilities.”
“Shaving’s inevitable,” said Fred, giving a little furtive twirl to an
almost imaginary moustache.
“Oh, is it?” said his father, with a more cheerful laugh. “Not for years
yet; don’t flatter yourself. When do you start for your ball to-morrow?
It’s fine to be an eligible young man, and sought after for all the
dances. That’s a pleasant consequence of being a ‘Varsity man, and heir
of Yalton, eh?”
“Well, father,” said Fred, “seeing I’ve known the Scrymgeours all my
life, we needn’t put it on that ground. Whatever I was--if I was heir to
nothing--it would be the same to them.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Mr. Dalyell, and he breathed a sigh, which somehow
got mingled with the little wail of the wind, and echoed into Fred’s
heart with a poignant suggestion. There was no reason to fear anything,
and he was angry with himself. It was childish and superstitious to
shiver as he did, as if the cold had caught him. There was no occasion
in the world for anything of the sort. He was not a fellow to catch
cold, he said to himself indignantly, nor to have presentiments, both of
which things were equally absurd. There was nothing but prosperity and
peace known in Yalton, and his father had the constitution of an
elephant. But the night was eerie, the horizon had a sort of weird
clearness upon it in the far distance, like a light showing through the
openings of the clouds. The trees stood up black in billows of
half-distinguishable shade, and the hills beyond them marked out their
outlines wistfully against the clearness in the west. It was cold, and
the air breathed of coming winter. A leaf drifting on the wind caught
him on the cheek like a soft blow. Altogether the night was eerie, wild,
full of possibilities. There was no ghost at Yalton; but sometimes old
Janet said there was a sound in the avenue that meant trouble, like a
horseman riding up to the house who never arrived. Fred involuntarily
listened, as if he might have heard that horseman, which was as good as
inviting trouble, but he did not think of that. However, there was no
sound, nor ghost of a sound, except what was purely natural--the wild
bitter wind wailing, driving a few leaves about, and bending, with a
soft swish of the dark unseen foliage, the light branches of the trees.
“Come, let’s go in, Fred; I’ve finished my cigar,” said Mr. Dalyell; and
then, as though a brain wave, as scientific people say, had passed from
one to another--Fred’s unspoken thought of old Janet suggested her to
his father’s mind. They were going up one of the sets of stone steps
which led from one terrace to the other, when Mr. Dalyell suddenly put
his hand on his son’s arm:
“You’ll laugh,” he said, but not himself in a laughing tone, “at what
I’m going to say. But if you should be in any difficulty what to do in
case of my absence, or--or anything of that sort--do you know, Fred,
whom I’d advise you to consult? The last person you would think of,
probably, by yourself--old Janet! You know she’s been about Yalton all
her life. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for any of us--and she’s an
extraordinarily sensible old woman, full of resource, and with a head on
her shoulders----”
“I’m not fond of old Janet,” said Fred sturdily.
“No, none of you are. Your mother never could be got to like her. It’s a
prejudice. She’s been invaluable to me.”
“If it’s all the same to you, father,” said Fred stiffly, “I’d rather
not turn to an old wife for advice, an old nurse. What can she know? Of
course your good opinion goes a very long way----”
“For or against? I’m afraid, so far as your mother is concerned, it is
rather against. However, we need say no more about it. But, remember! as
King Charles said.”
They had paused on the landing between two flights of stairs. A great
trail of yellow nasturtium, dropping from the vase at the corner, showed
even in the dark a ghost of colour, and thrust its pungent odour into
Fred’s nostril. The faint billows of the trees stretched out dark and
darker over the landscape below, and the cold clear light in the sky
seemed to look on like a spectator who knows far more than the actors
what is and is going to be. Fred once more gave a little shiver, and
elevated his shoulders to his ears.
“You’d better go and take some camphor, boy. You’ve caught cold,” his
father said.
The drawing-room of Yalton was on the first floor, unlike the generality
of country houses, which gave it a great advantage in respect to the
landscape. On the ground floor a great deal of space was taken up with
the hall, which opened into a large portico, and was scarcely light
enough to be made much use of, in a climate where there is seldom too
much sun. It happened, fortunately, that Mrs. Dalyell, who was a nervous
and somewhat fantastic woman, was fond of a great deal of light, so that
the large windows, which made the turreted Scotch house like a wing of
the Louvre, were not displeasing to her. The curtains were but partially
drawn over the central windows even now, so that it was possible to turn
at any moment from the light and warmth of the interior to the wide
landscape out-of-doors, with its wild breadth of sky and wailing winds.
But within it was exceedingly bright with a number of lamps and candles
and that pleasant blaze of a fire which it is an agreeable tradition in
Scotch country houses to keep up in the evening, whether it is wanted or
not. In September it is generally wanted; but it cannot be said there
was any necessity for it on this particular night. The company in the
drawing-room consisted of Mrs. Dalyell, her two daughters, and a
gentleman of middle age and manners very ingratiating and friendly, if a
little formal--Mr. Patrick Wedderburn, than whom no man was more
respected in Edinburgh, a W.S. of the first eminence, learned in the
law, and a favourite everywhere. He belonged, it need scarcely be said,
to a good Scotch family, and was any man’s equal in Scotland, though he
acted as a “man of business” to many of his friends. He was one of the
dearest friends of Robert Dalyell of Yalton, and was a more constant
visitor than any other of the many familiar associates who called the
laird of Yalton “Bob,” and knew him and his affairs to the
finger-points. Pat Wedderburn, as the visitor was commonly called, was
an old bachelor, and therefore had no family to call him to a fireside
centre of his own. He was as much in Yalton as he was in his own
handsome but dull house in Ainslie Place, where, except when he had a
dinner-party, the rooms were so silent, the solitude so serious. Neither
the girls nor their mother made “company” of Mr. Wedderburn. He was
seated in a deep chair, reading the papers while they talked, as if he
were an uncle at the least, and he did not hesitate to interrupt their
conversation now and then by reading out a bit of news or making a
remark. He did not hesitate to correct Susie, who sometimes ventured
upon a big word with which she was not familiar, and used it wrongly, or
to tell Alice that she was a fidget, and could not keep still for five
minutes; and as this was done from behind the newspaper, in the most
accidental manner, it deepened still more the impression that nowhere
could Mr. Wedderburn have been more perfectly at home. The papers, it
may be added--that is to say, the London papers--arrived in Edinburgh in
the evening. The conversation which was going on when Mr. Dalyell came
into the drawing-room was, however, confined to the young people, and
was chiefly on the subject of the Scrymgeour ball, to which Fred was
going next day.
“I think they might have asked me,” said Susie in an aggrieved tone. “I
am just the same age as Lucy Scrymgeour. It isn’t my fault mother, that
you’ve never taken me out yet. I am seventeen and _past_, as everybody
knows.”
“No, it’s not your fault. I am sure you have badgered me enough about
it,” said Mrs. Dalyell; “but though you think you can do anything you
like with me, I have my opinions about some things. And one of them is
that a girl should not go out too soon. People are quite capable of
saying, ten or twenty years hence, ‘Oh, Susie Dalyell, I can tell you
her age to a day! She came out in such a year, and she must have been
nineteen at the least.’ That is exactly how people talk.”
“And if they did,” cries Susie, “what would it matter? Farmer thinks I
look quite eighteen when I have my hair nicely dressed.”
“That is all very well now, my dear; but wait till you are thirty or
thirty-five. You would like to put on a year or two now, but you will
like to take them off at the other end.”
“Let’s hope,” said Mr. Wedderburn from behind his paper, “that she’ll
not be Susie Dalyell then.”
“What difference will that make?” said Susie scornfully. “If I were
forty I should never make a mystery about it. What is the use of trying
to hide it, if you do have one foot in the grave?”
“Mother’s forty--or more,” said Alice, “and nobody would say she had one
foot in the grave.”
“Oh, what does it matter,” cried Susie again, “at that time of life,
when you are medeval and antediluvious? It is now that one minds.”
“Susie, don’t call mamma such dreadful names.”
“Mediæval and antediluvian, Susie”--from behind the paper, in an
undertone.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Dalyell tartly, “that Mr. Wedderburn thinks that
quite appropriate. Gentlemen always think a girl’s impertinence is
amusing when it’s directed against her mother; but you ought to know
better, Susie, than to hold me up to ridicule. I am sure, whatever else
I may be, I have been a careful mother to you.”
“Oh, mamma! As if I meant anything like that,” cried Susie petulantly,
flinging herself upon her mother. “I only mean you don’t care now. It’s
nothing to you to think of Lucy dancing all night in billows of tulle,
like the girls in the novels, and me going to bed at ten o’clock. They
will only just have begun then. And to think they should have asked
Fred! and me Lucy’s greatest friend and contemporaneous, and friends
with Davie all my life--and that they never thought of asking me--never
even tried! Perhaps if they had asked me--and it’s such an opportunity
and such old friends--you would have let me go.”
“I’ll tell you what, Susie,” said Fred, who had just come in; “I’ll ride
over to-morrow morning first thing and ask them to ask you. I dare say
they will for my sake.”
Susie looked at him for a moment with a flush of hope, and then her face
clouded. “For your sake!” she said, with a sister’s frank contempt. “If
it’s only for your sake, I’ll stay at home. I am not a nobody like that.
I’m Lucy Scrymgeour’s oldest friend. If she doesn’t of her own
account--and Davie too,” cried the girl with an access of
indignation--“it’s more than any one can bear!”
“I would never speak to one of them again,” said Alice, “if it was me.”
“And what good would that do?” cried Susie, with the tear still in her
eye, turning upon her sister. “Lose the ball and a friend too! I suppose
they had some reason. Perhaps there were too many girls already--else
why should they ask Fred? Or, perhaps---- Yes, I’ll speak to Lucy again,
the first time I see her; but I shall be very dignified, and pretend
that I didn’t care a bit.”
“But you couldn’t if you tried; dignified, my dear--that would be rather
difficult.”
“Is there anything in the paper, Pat?” said Mr. Dalyell.
“Not much. But it’s ill talking between a full man and a fasting. I’ve
seen what there is, and you’ve not. Here’s the _Times_. Munro’s in for
that place in the North.”
“Bless my soul! and you call that nothing? Another firebrand, and as
good as two lost in our majority. That’s bad, Pat; that’s bad.”
“I never think anything of a bye-election. They’re all in the nature of
accidents. There’s a good speech of Gladstone’s at one of the Lancaster
towns, and John Bright flaming on the side of peace like a house on
fire.”
“And he says there’s nothing in the paper!” said Mr. Dalyell, as he
dropped into an easy-chair in his turn with the great broad-sheet of the
_Times_ in his hand.
“When gentlemen begin talking politics,” said Mrs. Dalyell, “I always
think it is time for the ladies to retire. But you have begun early
to-night. Are you going into town at your usual hour to-morrow, Robert?
I hope you’ll be home early, for, with Fred away, there will be no man
but only the servants in the house.”
“And what the worse will you be for that, Amelia? There are plenty to
protect you, I hope, if I were never to be seen again.”
“Robert! that’s not a thing to joke about. I never feel safe, you know,
in this big, rambling old house when you’re not here--if it was only the
rats----”
“What could the rats do to you, mother?”
“Hold your peace, Fred!” said Mrs. Dalyell. “I sometimes think of Bishop
Hatto in that poem you used all to be so fond of--and those in the Pied
Piper. If you just heard some of old Janet Macalister’s stories, they
would make your hair stand on end.”
“You’ll be back in time, Bob, not to keep her uneasy,” said Mr.
Wedderburn behind the _Standard_, which he had just taken up, to his
friend behind the _Times_.
Dalyell answered carelessly, “Yes, yes. Why shouldn’t I be back in
time?” Then, with a laugh, to his wife, “You should never mind old
Janet. I dare say you were interfering with some hiding-holes of hers
that she did not want disturbed. She’s a kind of familiar spirit of the
house, that old woman. She knows it better than any of us; and there’s
all sorts of uncanny corners about this house. It would be to keep you
out of the secret chamber that she told you daft stories about the
rats.”
“I don’t believe in any nonsense about secret chambers,” said Mrs.
Dalyell. “That’s all very well in Glamis, and such places: but Yalton’s
not good enough for that.”
“Yalton’s good enough for anything, mamma,” cried Susie, indignant. “I
heard the horseman in the avenue a week ago, as clear as----”
“What’s that you’re saying, Susie?” said Mr. Dalyell sharply.
“Oh!” said the girl tremulously, “I mean the rain pattering in that
place, you know.”
“Susie is always hearing some nonsense,” said her mother. “Gather up
your work and things, children, for it is time you were going to your
beds.”