fountains,” she replied evasively.
“And horrid looking pagan things they are, too,” said the elder woman,
turning from them disgustedly, without vouchsafing a second glance.
“Come. If we expect to do the abbey, we must hurry up, or we won't catch
the train. Your uncle is waiting for us at the top of the garden.”
And, to Potter's intense relief, she grasped the young girl's arm and
hurried her away, their figures the next moment vanishing in the tangled
shrubbery.
Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped limbs into the water
and regaining the other side. Here he quickly half dried himself with
some sun-warmed leaves and baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and
hastened off in the opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet
with such circuitous skill and speed that he reached the great gateway
without encountering anybody. A brisk walk brought him to the station
in time to catch a stopping train, and in half an hour he was speeding
miles away from Domesday Park and his half-forgotten episode.
*****
Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the abbey. “I don't
see why I mayn't sketch things I see about me,” said the young lady
impatiently. “Of course, I understand that I must go through the
rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn
perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the difference between
working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a
STUDY, and sketching a full or half length in the open air with the
wonderful illusion of light and shade and distance--and grouping and
combining them all--that one knows and feels makes a picture. The real
picture one makes is already in one's self.”
“For goodness' sake, Lottie, don't go on again with your usual
absurdities. Since you are bent on being an artist, and your Popper
has consented and put you under the most expensive master in Paris, the
least you can do is to follow the rules. And I dare say he only wanted
you to 'sink the shop' in company. It's such horrid bad form for you
artistic people to be always dragging out your sketch-books. What would
you say if your Popper came over here, and began to examine every lady's
dress in society to see what material it was, just because he was a big
dry-goods dealer in America?”
The young girl, accustomed to her aunt's extravagances, made no reply.
But that night she consulted her sketch, and was so far convinced of her
own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon
her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from
memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere
caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and
accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this
first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a
pencil sketch, and wanted the vivification of color.
When she returned to Paris she began--still secretly--a larger study in
oils. She worked upon it in her own room every moment she could spare
from her studio practice, unknown to her professor. It absorbed her
existence; she grew thin and pale. When it was finished, and only then,
she showed it tremblingly to her master. He stood silent, in profound
astonishment. The easel before him showed a foreground of tangled
luxuriance, from which stretched a sheet of water like a darkened
mirror, while through parted reeds on its glossy surface arose the
half-submerged figure of a river god, exquisite in contour, yet whose
delicate outlines were almost a vision by the crowning illusion of
light, shadow, and atmosphere.
“It is a beautiful copy, mademoiselle, and I forgive you breaking my
rules,” he said, drawing a long breath. “But I cannot now recall the
original picture.”
“It's no copy of a picture, professor,” said the young girl timidly, and
she disclosed her secret. “It was the only perfect statue there,” she
added diffidently; “but I think it wanted--something.”
“True,” said the professor abstractedly. “Where the elbow rests there
should be a half-inverted urn flowing with water; but the drawing of
that shoulder is so perfect--as is YOUR study of it--that one guesses
the missing forearm one cannot see, which clasped it. Beautiful!
beautiful!”
Suddenly he stopped, and turned his eyes almost searchingly on hers.
“You say you have never drawn from the human model, mademoiselle?”
“Never,” said the young girl innocently.
“True,” murmured the professor again. “These are the classic ideal
measurements. There are no limbs like those now. Yet it is wonderful!
And this gem, you say, is in England?”
“Yes.”
“Good! I am going there in a few days. I shall make a pilgrimage to see
it. Until then, mademoiselle, I beg you to break as many of my rules as
you like.”
Three weeks later she found the professor one morning standing before
her picture in her private studio. “You have returned from England,” she
said joyfully.
“I have,” said the professor gravely.
“You have seen the original subject?” she said timidly.
“I have NOT. I have not seen it, mademoiselle,” he said, gazing at
her mildly through his glasses, “because it does not exist, and never
existed.”
The young girl turned pale.
“Listen. I have go to England. I arrive at the Park of Domesday. I
penetrate the beautiful, wild garden. I approach the fountain. I see
the wonderful water, the exquisite light and shade, the lilies, the
mysterious reeds--beautiful, yet not as beautiful as you have made it,
mademoiselle, but no statue--no river god! I demand it of the concierge.
He knows of it absolutely nothing. I transport myself to the noble
proprietor, Monsieur le Duc, at a distant chateau where he has collected
the ruined marbles. It is not there.”
“Yet I saw it,” said the young girl earnestly, yet with a troubled face.
“O professor,” she burst out appealingly, “what do you think it was?”
“I think, mademoiselle,” said the professor gravely, “that you created
it. Believe me, it is a function of genius! More, it is a proof, a
necessity! You saw the beautiful lake, the ruined fountain, the soft
shadows, the empty plinth, curtained by reeds. You yourself say you feel
there was 'something wanting.' Unconsciously you yourself supplied it.
All that you had ever dreamt of mythology, all that you had ever seen
of statuary, thronged upon you at that supreme moment, and, evolved from
your own fancy, the river god was born. It is your own, chere enfant, as
much the offspring of your genius as the exquisite atmosphere you have
caught, the charm of light and shadow that you have brought away. Accept
my felicitations. You have little more to learn of me.”
As he bowed himself out and descended the stairs he shrugged his
shoulders slightly. “She is an adorable genius,” he murmured. “Yet she
is also a woman. Being a woman, naturally she has a lover--this river
god! Why not?”
The extraordinary success of Miss Forrest's picture and the
instantaneous recognition of her merit as an artist, apart from her
novel subject, perhaps went further to remove her uneasiness than any
serious conviction of the professor's theory. Nevertheless, it appealed
to her poetic and mystic imagination, and although other subjects from
her brush met with equally phenomenal success, and she was able in a
year to return to America with a reputation assured beyond criticism,
she never entirely forgot the strange incident connected with her
initial effort.
And by degrees a singular change came over her. Rich, famous, and
attractive, she began to experience a sentimental and romantic
interest in that episode. Once, when reproached by her friends for her
indifference to her admirers, she had half laughingly replied that she
had once found her “ideal,” but never would again. Yet the jest had
scarcely passed her lips before she became pale and silent. With this
change came also a desire to re-purchase the picture, which she had
sold in her early success to a speculative American picture-dealer. On
inquiry she found, alas! that it had been sold only a day or two before
to a Chicago gentleman, of the name of Potter, who had taken a fancy to
it.
Miss Forrest curled her pretty lip, but, nothing daunted, resolved
to effect her purpose, and sought the purchaser at his hotel. She was
ushered into a private drawing-room, where, on a handsome easel, stood
the newly acquired purchase. Mr. Potter was out, “but would return in a
moment.”
Miss Forrest was relieved, for, alone and undisturbed, she could now let
her full soul go out to her romantic creation. As she stood there, she
felt the glamour of the old English garden come back to her, the play of
light and shadow, the silent pool, the godlike face and bust, with its
cast-down, meditative eyes, seen through the parted reeds. She clasped
her hands silently before her. Should she never see it again as then?
“Pray don't let me disturb you; but won't you take a seat?”
Miss Forrest turned sharply round. Then she started, uttered a
frightened little cry, and fainted away.
Mr. Potter was touched, but a master of himself. As she came to, he
said quietly: “I came upon you suddenly--as you stood entranced by this
picture--just as I did when I first saw it. That's why I bought it.
Are you any relative of the Miss Forrest who painted it?” he continued,
quietly looking at her card, which he held in his hand.
Miss Forrest recovered herself sufficiently to reply, and stated her
business with some dignity.
“Ah,” said Mr. Potter, “THAT is another question. You see, the picture
has a special value to me, as I once saw an old-fashioned garden like
that in England. But that chap there,--I beg your pardon, I mean that
figure,--I fancy, is your own creation, entirely. However, I'll think
over your proposition, and if you will allow me I'll call and see you
about it.”
Mr. Potter did call--not once, but many times--and showed quite a
remarkable interest in Miss Forrest's art. The question of the sale of
the picture, however, remained in abeyance. A few weeks later, after a
longer call than usual, Mr. Potter said:--
“Don't you think the best thing we can do is to make a kind of
compromise, and let us own the picture together?”
And they did.
A ROMANCE OF THE LINE
As the train moved slowly out of the station, the Writer of Stories
looked up wearily from the illustrated pages of the magazines and
weeklies on his lap to the illustrated advertisements on the walls of
the station sliding past his carriage windows. It was getting to be
monotonous. For a while he had been hopefully interested in the bustle
of the departing trains, and looked up from his comfortable and early
invested position to the later comers with that sense of superiority
common to travelers; had watched the conventional leave-takings--always
feebly prolonged to the uneasiness of both parties--and contrasted it
with the impassive business promptitude of the railway officials; but
it was the old experience repeated. Falling back on the illustrated
advertisements again, he wondered if their perpetual recurrence at every
station would not at last bring to the tired traveler the loathing of
satiety; whether the passenger in railway carriages, continually offered
Somebody's oats, inks, washing blue, candles, and soap, apparently as
a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there and
thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or recoil from that
particular quality. Or, as an unbiased observer, he wondered if, on
the other hand, impressible passengers, after passing three or four
stations, had ever leaped from the train and refused to proceed further
until they were supplied with one or more of those articles. Had he ever
known any one who confided to him in a moment of expansiveness that he
had dated his use of Somebody's soap to an advertisement persistently
borne upon him through the medium of a railway carriage window?
No! Would he not have connected that man with that other certifying
individual who always appends a name and address singularly obscure and
unconvincing, yet who, at some supreme moment, recommends Somebody's
pills to a dying friend,--afflicted with a similar address,--which
restore him to life and undying obscurity. Yet these pictorial and
literary appeals must have a potency independent of the wares they
advertise, or they wouldn't be there.
Perhaps he was the more sensitive to this monotony as he was just then
seeking change and novelty in order to write a new story. He was not
looking for material,--his subjects were usually the same,--he was
merely hoping for that relaxation and diversion which should freshen and
fit him for later concentration. Still, he had often heard of the odd
circumstances to which his craft were sometimes indebted for suggestion.
The invasion of an eccentric-looking individual--probably an innocent
tradesman into a railway carriage had given the hint for “A Night with
a Lunatic;” a nervously excited and belated passenger had once
unconsciously sat for an escaped forger; the picking up of a forgotten
novel in the rack, with passages marked in pencil, had afforded the plot
of a love story; or the germ of a romance had been found in an obscure
news paragraph which, under less listless moments, would have
passed unread. On the other hand, he recalled these inconvenient and
inconsistent moments from which the so-called “inspiration” sprang, the
utter incongruity of time and place in some brilliant conception, and
wondered if sheer vacuity of mind were really so favorable.
Going back to his magazine again, he began to get mildly interested in
a story. Turning the page, however, he was confronted by a pictorial
advertising leaflet inserted between the pages, yet so artistic in
character that it might have been easily mistaken for an illustration of
the story he was reading, and perhaps was not more remote or obscure in
reference than many he had known. But the next moment he recognized
with despair that it was only a smaller copy of one he had seen on the
hoarding at the last station. He threw the leaflet aside, but the flavor
of the story was gone. The peerless detergent of the advertisement had
erased it from the tablets of his memory. He leaned back in his seat
again, and lazily watched the flying suburbs. Here were the usual
promising open spaces and patches of green, quickly succeeded again by
solid blocks of houses whose rear windows gave directly upon the line,
yet seldom showed an inquisitive face--even of a wondering child. It was
a strange revelation of the depressing effects of familiarity. Expresses
might thunder by, goods trains drag their slow length along, shunting
trains pipe all day beneath their windows, but the tenants heeded them
not. Here, too, was the junction, with its labyrinthine interlacing of
tracks that dazed the tired brain; the overburdened telegraph posts,
that looked as if they really could not stand another wire; the long
lines of empty, homeless, and deserted trains in sidings that had seen
better days; the idle trains, with staring vacant windows, which were
eventually seized by a pert engine hissing, “Come along, will you?”
and departed with a discontented grunt from every individual carriage
coupling; the racing trains, that suddenly appeared parallel with one's
carriage windows, begot false hopes of a challenge of speed, and then,
without warning, drew contemptuously and, superciliously away; the swift
eclipse of everything in a tunneled bridge; the long, slithering passage
of an “up” express, and then the flash of a station, incoherent and
unintelligible with pictorial advertisements again.
He closed his eyes to concentrate his thought, and by degrees a pleasant
languor stole over him. The train had by this time attained that rate of
speed which gave it a slight swing and roll on curves and switches
not unlike the rocking of a cradle. Once or twice he opened his eyes
sleepily upon the waltzing trees in the double planes of distance, and
again closed them. Then, in one of these slight oscillations, he
felt himself ridiculously slipping into slumber, and awoke with some
indignation. Another station was passed, in which process the pictorial
advertisements on the hoardings and the pictures in his lap seemed to
have become jumbled up, confused, and to dance before him, and then
suddenly and strangely, without warning, the train stopped short--at
ANOTHER station. And then he arose, and--what five minutes before he
never conceived of doing--gathered his papers and slipped from the
carriage to the platform. When I say “he” I mean, of course, the
Writer of Stories; yet the man who slipped out was half his age and a
different-looking person.
*****
The change from the motion of the train--for it seemed that he had been
traveling several hours--to the firmer platform for a moment bewildered
him. The station looked strange, and he fancied it lacked a certain kind
of distinctness. But that quality was also noticeable in the porters and
loungers on the platform. He thought it singular, until it seemed to him
that they were not characteristic, nor in any way important or necessary
to the business he had in hand. Then, with an effort, he tried to
remember himself and his purpose, and made his way through the station
to the open road beyond. A van, bearing the inscription, “Removals to
Town and Country,” stood before him and blocked his way, but a dogcart
was in waiting, and a grizzled groom, who held the reins, touched his
hat respectfully. Although still dazed by his journey and uncertain of
himself, he seemed to recognize in the man that distinctive character
which was wanting in the others. The correctness of his surmise was
revealed a few moments later, when, after he had taken his seat beside
him, and they were rattling out of the village street, the man turned
towards him and said:--
“Tha'll know Sir Jarge?”
“I do not,” said the young man.
“Ay! but theer's many as cooms here as doan't, for all they cooms.
Tha'll say it ill becooms mea as war man and boy in Sir Jarge's sarvice
for fifty year, to say owt agen him, but I'm here to do it, or they
couldn't foolfil their business. Tha wast to ax me questions about Sir
Jarge and the Grange, and I wor to answer soa as to make tha think
thar was suthing wrong wi' un. Howbut I may save tha time and tell thea
downroight that Sir Jarge forged his uncle's will, and so gotten the
Grange. That 'ee keeps his niece in mortal fear o' he. That tha'll be
put in haunted chamber wi' a boggle.”
“I think,” said the young man hesitatingly, “that there must be some
mistake. I do not know any Sir George, and I am NOT going to the
Grange.”
“Eay! Then thee aren't the 'ero sent down from London by the story
writer?”
“Not by THAT one,” said the young man diffidently.
The old man's face changed. It was no mere figure of speech: it actually
was ANOTHER face that looked down upon the traveler.
“Then mayhap your honor will be bespoken at the Angel's Inn,” he said,
with an entirely distinct and older dialect, “and a finer hostel for a
young gentleman of your condition ye'll not find on this side of Oxford.
A fair chamber, looking to the sun; sheets smelling of lavender from
Dame Margery's own store, and, for the matter of that, spread by the
fair hands of Maudlin, her daughter--the best favored lass that ever
danced under a Maypole. Ha! have at ye there, young sir! Not to speak of
the October ale of old Gregory, her father--ay, nor the rare Hollands,
that never paid excise duties to the king.”
“I'm afraid,” said the young traveler timidly, “there's over a century
between us. There's really some mistake.”
“What?” said the groom, “ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry
Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a
duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free
discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler
whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? Ye are not he that was bespoken
by the story writer in London?”
“I don't think I am,” said the young man apologetically. “Indeed, as I
am feeling far from well, I think I'll get out and walk.”
He got down--the vehicle and driver vanished in the distance. It did not
surprise him. “I must collect my thoughts,” he said. He did so. Possibly
the collection was not large, for presently he said, with a sigh of
relief:--
“I see it all now! My name is Paul Bunker. I am of the young branch of
an old Quaker family, rich and respected in the country, and I am on a
visit to my ancestral home. But I have lived since a child in America,
and am alien to the traditions and customs of the old country, and even
of the seat to which my fathers belong. I have brought with me from the
far West many peculiarities of speech and thought that may startle my
kinsfolk. But I certainly shall not address my uncle as 'Hoss!' nor
shall I say 'guess' oftener than is necessary.”
Much brightened and refreshed by his settled identity, he had time,
as he walked briskly along, to notice the scenery, which was certainly
varied and conflicting in character, and quite inconsistent with his
preconceived notions of an English landscape. On his right, a lake of
the brightest cobalt blue stretched before a many-towered and terraced
town, which was relieved by a background of luxuriant foliage and
emerald-green mountains; on his left arose a rugged mountain, which he
was surprised to see was snow-capped, albeit a tunnel was observable
midway of its height, and a train just issuing from it. Almost
regretting that he had not continued on his journey, as he was fully
sensible that it was in some way connected with the railway he had
quitted, presently his attention was directed to the gateway of a
handsome park, whose mansion was faintly seen in the distance. Hurrying
towards him, down the avenue of limes, was a strange figure. It was that
of a man of middle age; clad in Quaker garb, yet with an extravagance
of cut and detail which seemed antiquated even for England. He had
evidently seen the young man approaching, and his face was beaming with
welcome. If Paul had doubted that it was his uncle, the first words he
spoke would have reassured him.
“Welcome to Hawthorn Hall,” said the figure, grasping his hand heartily,
“but thee will excuse me if I do not tarry with thee long at present,
for I am hastening, even now, with some nourishing and sustaining food
for Giles Hayward, a farm laborer.” He pointed to a package he was
carrying. “But thee will find thy cousins Jane and Dorcas Bunker taking
tea in the summer-house. Go to them! Nay--positively--I may not linger,
but will return to thee quickly.” And, to Paul's astonishment, he
trotted away on his sturdy, respectable legs, still beaming and carrying
his package in his hand.
“Well, I'll be dog-goned! but the old man ain't going to be left, you
bet!” he ejaculated, suddenly remembering his dialect. “He'll get there,
whether school keeps or not!” Then, reflecting that no one heard him, he
added simply, “He certainly was not over civil towards the nephew he
has never seen before. And those girls--whom I don't know! How very
awkward!”