"YES, sir, Mr. Melville is at home in his studio."
Kenelm followed the maid across the hall into a room not built at the
date of Kenelm's former visits to the house: the artist, making
Grasmere his chief residence after Lily's death, had added it at the
back of the neglected place wherein Lily had encaged "the souls of
infants unbaptized."
A lofty room, with a casement partially darkened, to the bleak north;
various sketches on the walls; gaunt specimens of antique furniture,
and of gorgeous Italian silks, scattered about in confused disorder;
one large picture on its easel curtained; another as large, and half
finished, before which stood the painter. He turned quickly, as
Kenelm entered the room unannounced, let fall brush and palette, came
up to him eagerly, grasped his hand, drooped his head on Kenelm's
shoulder, and said, in a voice struggling with evident and strong
emotion,--
"Since we parted, such grief! such a loss!"
"I know it; I have seen her grave. Let us not speak of it. Why so
needlessly revive your sorrow? So--so--your sanguine hopes are
fulfilled: the world at last has done you justice? Emlyn tells me
that you have painted a very famous picture."
Kenelm had seated himself as he thus spoke. The painter still stood
with dejected attitude on the middle of the floor, and brushed his
hand over his moistened eyes once or twice before he answered, "Yes,
wait a moment, don't talk of fame yet. Bear with me. The sudden
sight of you unnerved me."
The artist here seated himself also on an old worm-eaten Gothic chest,
rumpling and chafing the golden or tinselled threads of the
embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn, flung over the Gothic
chest, so rare also, and so worm-eaten.
Kenelm looked through half-closed lids at the artist, and his lips,
before slightly curved with a secret scorn, became gravely compressed.
In Melville's struggle to conceal emotion the strong man recognized a
strong man,--recognized, and yet only wondered; wondered how such a
man, to whom Lily had pledged her hand, could so soon after the loss
of Lily go on painting pictures, and care for any praise bestowed on a
yard of canvas.
In a very few minutes Melville recommenced conversation,--no more
reference to Lily than if she had never existed. "Yes, my last
picture has been indeed a success,--a reward complete, if tardy, for
all the bitterness of former struggles made in vain, for the galling
sense of injustice, the anguish of which only an artist knows, when
unworthy rivals are ranked before him.
"'Foes quick to blame, and friends afraid to praise.'
"True that I have still much to encounter; the cliques still seek to
disparage me, but between me and the cliques there stands at last the
giant form of the public, and at last critics of graver weight than
the cliques have deigned to accord to me a higher rank than even the
public yet acknowledge. Ah, Mr. Chillingly, you do not profess to be
a judge of paintings, but, excuse me, just look at this letter. I
received it only last night from the greatest connoisseur of my art,
certainly in England, perhaps in Europe." Here Melville drew, from
the side-pocket of his picturesque /moyen age/ surtout, a letter
signed by a name authoritative to all who, being painters themselves,
acknowledge authority in one who could no more paint a picture himself
than Addison, the ablest critic of the greatest poem modern Europe has
produced, could have written ten lines of the "Paradise Lost," and
thrust the letter into Kenelm's hand. Kenelm read it listlessly, with
an increased contempt for an artist who could so find in gratified
vanity consolation for the life gone from earth. But, listlessly as
he read the letter, the sincere and fervent enthusiasm of the
laudatory contents impressed him, and the preeminent authority of the
signature could not be denied.
The letter was written on the occasion of Melville's recent election
to the dignity of R. A., successor to a very great artist whose death
had created a vacancy in the Academy. He returned the letter to
Melville, saying, "This is the letter I saw you reading last night as
I looked in at your window. Indeed, for a man who cares for the
opinion of other men, this letter is very flattering; and for the
painter who cares for money, it must be very pleasant to know by how
many guineas every inch of his canvas may be covered." Unable longer
to control his passions of rage, of scorn, of agonizing grief, Kenelm
then burst forth: "Man, man, whom I once accepted as a teacher on
human life,--a teacher to warm, to brighten, to exalt mine own
indifferent, dreamy, slow-pulsed self! has not the one woman whom thou
didst select out of this overcrowded world to be bone of thy bone,
flesh of thy flesh, vanished evermore from the earth,--little more
than a year since her voice was silenced, her heart ceased to beat?
But how slight is such loss to thy life compared to the worth of a
compliment that flatters thy vanity!"
The artist rose to his feet with an indignant impulse. But the angry
flush faded from his cheek as he looked on the countenance of his
rebuker. He walked up to him, and attempted to take his hand, but
Kenelm snatched it scornfully from his grasp.
"Poor friend," said Melville, sadly and soothingly, "I did not think
you loved her thus deeply. Pardon me." He drew a chair close to
Kenelm's, and after a brief pause went on thus, in very earnest tones,
"I am not so heartless, not so forgetful of my loss as you suppose.
But reflect, you have but just learned of her death, you are under the
first shock of grief. More than a year has been given to me for
gradual submission to the decree of Heaven. Now listen to me, and try
to listen calmly. I am many years older than you: I ought to know
better the conditions on which man holds the tenure of life. Life is
composite, many-sided: nature does not permit it to be lastingly
monopolized by a single passion, or while yet in the prime of its
strength to be lastingly blighted by a single sorrow. Survey the
great mass of our common race, engaged in the various callings, some
the humblest, some the loftiest, by which the business of the world is
carried on,--can you justly despise as heartless the poor trader, or
the great statesman, when it may be but a few days after the loss of
some one nearest and dearest to his heart, the trader reopens his
shop, the statesman reappears in his office? But in me, the votary of
art, in me you behold but the weakness of gratified vanity; if I feel
joy in the hope that my art may triumph, and my country may add my
name to the list of those who contribute to her renown, where and when
ever lived an artist not sustained by that hope, in privation, in
sickness, in the sorrows he must share with his kind? Nor is this
hope that of a feminine vanity, a sicklier craving for applause; it
identifies itself with glorious services to our land, to our race, to
the children of all after time. Our art cannot triumph, our name
cannot live, unless we achieve a something that tends to beautify or
ennoble the world in which we accept the common heritage of toil and
of sorrow, in order therefrom to work out for successive multitudes a
recreation and a joy."
While the artist thus spoke Kenelm lifted towards his face eyes
charged with suppressed tears. And the face, kindling as the artist
vindicated himself from the young man's bitter charge, became
touchingly sweet in its grave expression at the close of the not
ignoble defence.
"Enough," said Kenelm, rising. "There is a ring of truth in what you
say. I can conceive the artist's, the poet's escape from this world,
when all therein is death and winter, into the world he creates and
colours at his will with the hues of summer. So, too, I can conceive
how the man whose life is sternly fitted into the grooves of a
trader's calling, or a statesman's duties, is borne on by the force of
custom, afar from such brief halting-spot as a grave. But I am no
poet, no artist, no trader, no statesman; I have no calling, my life
is fixed into no grooves. Adieu."
"Hold a moment. Not now, but somewhat later, ask yourself whether any
life can be permitted to wander in space, a monad detached from the
lives of others. Into some groove or other, sooner or later, it must
settle, and be borne on obedient to the laws of Nature and the
responsibility to God."