THE RECORD OF AN IMPOTENT GENIUS
And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill
to the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or
merely walk round your house, none but yourself shall you meet
on the highway of fate.--MAETERLINCK.
The door of the studio was slightly ajar, and the sound of a singularly
sweet voice crooning out a lullaby was plainly audible. Malcolm, who
was about to knock, changed his mind and peeped in through the
aperture; then he beckoned to Anna to do likewise.
It was certainly a pretty picture before them. Verity was sitting in
her low nursery chair, in the shadow of the heavy, ruby-coloured
curtains, hushing her child to sleep, while her husband, at a little
distance, stood before his easel; but she was so utterly transformed
that Anna would not have known her.
She wore the dress of a Roman peasant; heavy gilt beads were clasped
round her throat and fell over her white pleated chemisette, a
gay-coloured scarf was arranged picturesquely on her head and gave
warmth and colour to the small brown face. On her lap lay Babs,
open-eyed and rebellious, kicking up her bare little feet and humming
baby fashion in pleased accompaniment.
"Oh, Amias," exclaimed Verity at last in a laughing voice, "what am I
to do with this naughty girlie, who refuses to go to sleep and only
laughs in her mother's face? Oh, you darling, you darling!" and here
Verity smothered the little one with kisses.
"Behold the stern parent!" observed Malcolm mockingly at this point.
"Verity, that rogue of a Babs is a match for you already. Why don't you
put her in her cot and order her to go to sleep, instead of crooning
absurd ditties over her? Oh, I thought so," severely, as Babs grasped
her toes with her dimpled hands in the practised style of an acrobat,
and gurgled defiantly in his face; "she is just exulting over her own
victory as an emancipated daughter."
"Babs takes after her great-grandmother," observed Amias cheerfully
from the background; "it is the law of heredity, you see. Her name was
also Barbara--Barbara Allen, and she was remarkable for her brown skin,
her gipsy beauty, and her incorrigible self-will. She had lovers by the
score, and flouted them all except my great-grandfather, whom I have
reason to believe wished himself dead before he had been married a
week. She was the mother of fifteen, and lived to a good old age, and
was a pride and terror to the neighbourhood, and the mantle of her
self-will has fallen upon Barbara Maud Keston. Yea-Verily, my child,
the oracle has spoken," and Amias went on with his work, while Babs
gurgled at him in delighted appreciation of these paternal sentiments.
"Would Miss Sheldon care to see my picture, Malcolm?" he asked the next
minute in his usual voice; "it is nearly finished, and I shall be glad
of an opinion;" and then he drew back from the canvas, and Malcolm and
Anna took his place.
It was one of those little studies from life that appeal so strongly to
the popular taste, and in spite of its simplicity and absence of
breadth, it was exquisitely painted. It was only a couple of
organ-grinders resting during the noontide heat. The man was sitting on
the curb with a short pipe in his mouth--a handsome rascal of a fellow,
evidently an Italian, with gold rings in his ears. The woman, in
peasant costume, looked heated and weary, and had a baby in her arms.
Both mother and child were painted from life.
"How beautiful!" whispered Anna, looking reverently at the giant beside
her.
"It is one of your best pictures, Goliath," observed Malcolm, "but I
suppose you do not intend to exhibit it next year?"
"Oh no," he returned, "it is already bespoken by a rich Australian.
Rainsford brought him here to see if he would give me an order, and he
fell in love with my organ-grinders at once. I had a sort of idea that
I would keep it myself, for the sake of Verity and the kid; but with a
family"--here Amias smoothed his yellow moustache proudly--"one is
bound to keep the pot boiling."
"I did not want it to go," sighed Verity, who had just then sidled up
to her husband--she looked a mere child beside him--"it is such a
perfect likeness of Babs." And then she withdrew with the rebel, while
the others made a turn round the studio; and Amias showed them
sketches, and also a more important picture that was to be exhibited at
the Royal Academy the following year. Verity was the model again--this
time as a sick gipsy girl lying on a heap of straw in a barn, while the
caravan and encampment were painted most realistically, even to the old
horse and shaggy donkey hobbled to the trunk of a tree, with a thin
yellow cur near them. When completed it would be a striking picture:
the smoky sunset tints of a November afternoon were faithfully
depicted; and a woodman's hut, just falling into decay, with golden
lichen on the rotting roof, was marvellously painted. Malcolm stood
before it in a rapt mood of ecstasy, then he struck himself
dramatically on the breast.
"Goliath," he said sorrowfully, "I am the most miserable of men, a
'mute inglorious Milton' is nothing to me. Nature has created me a
lover of the picturesque. In heart and soul I am an artist, I dabble in
colours, I dream of lights and shades and glorious effects; but the
power of working out my ideas is denied me. If I try to paint a tree my
friends gibe at me. I am a poor literary hack; but I give you my word,
my dear old Philistine, that I would willingly change places with you."
Anna smiled, she was accustomed to this sort of talk; but to her
surprise Verity, who had just rejoined them, looked grave.
"I am always so sorry for Mr. Herrick when he says this sort of thing,"
she observed in a low voice aside to Anna. "He means us to laugh, but
he is quite serious. Amias and I just know how he feels. It must be so
sad to love the beautiful with all one's heart and not have the power
to create--to be just a thought and word painter and nothing else."
"Perhaps if Malcolm took lessons he might be able to paint in time,"
suggested Anna. She felt rather culpable, as though all these years she
had not sympathised enough with him; but then it was so difficult for
any one to know when he was serious.
It was evident that Verity understood him.
"Oh no, it is too late now," she remarked; "besides, the gift has been
denied him. But he helps Amias so much by his clever suggestions. He
would not tell you, of course, but this caravan scene is all his idea.
He came upon a gipsy encampment in a Kentish lane one afternoon, and he
made Amias go down the next day and see it. There was the woodman's
hut, and the barn, and the hobbled horse and donkey. Amias was down
there at the inn three days, making sketches for the picture, and
getting some of the gipsies to sit to him. There was one woman ill in
the tent, but Amias declared she looked more like a sick ape, she was
so ugly--so I had to be the model."
"Isn't it rather tiring work, Mrs. Keston?"
"Oh dear, no," returned Verity smiling; "it never tires me to do things
for Amias; and then he lets me talk to him all the time. I like to feel
I am useful to him, and can help him a little with his work."
"Oh yes, I can understand that," returned Anna softly. She thought
Verity looked quite beautiful as she spoke; perhaps the costume of a
Roman peasant suited her, but Anna, who was standing quite close to
her, noticed the wonderful softness of the brown eyes and the length of
the curling lashes. Babs had grown drowsy at last, and Verity had
placed her in the cot. Then they all sat down for a brief chat before
it was time for Malcolm to take Anna home.
They had been talking about Amias Keston's unfinished picture, and, as
usual, Malcolm had been holding forth in his role of art critic, when
one of those sudden pauses which seem to drop softly between intimate
friends followed his concluding speech. Verity held up her finger with
the hackneyed allusion to a passing angel, at which Malcolm laughed
scornfully.
"You are too poetical, my dear Verity," he observed; "it was no
white-robed celestial vision brushing past us in the twilight and
fanning us with plumed and balmy wings; the gliding shadow that moved
between us was merely the guardian genius who presides over my destiny.
But as he passed I touched his mantle"--and here Malcolm regarded his
audience with infinite meaning.
No one hazarded an observation. Amias, who had been filling his pipe
with tobacco, looked at it longingly and returned it to his pocket.
This process he repeated at intervals from sheer force of habit. With
his pipe alight he was an ideal listener; without it his attention
wandered and grew drowsy. But Malcolm, wrapt up in his own visionary
conceits, did not see the pathos of the action.
He was on his favourite hobby-horse--life, and its limitations, its
enforced denials and futile sacrifices, was opening before his eyes.
"I am going to write a book," he announced abruptly. "I mean to take
the world by storm--to say my say--for once. It will not be a novel.
The public is inundated by the flood of fiction that threatens to
engulf it. We have biographies by the ton, in two, three, or four
volumes; in every public place in England we set up our golden image,
and we bid men, women, and children fall down and do it homage.
Hero-worship is our favourite cult; woe to that man who refuses to burn
incense before it!"
"I suppose you intend to bring out a volume of essays?" queried Amias
lazily.
"No, my dear fellow," returned Malcolm rather mendaciously, for he was
planning a series of essays at that very time. "No trifles and
syllabubs for me--froth above and sweetness and jam beneath. Every one
writes essays nowadays, and tries to stir with his little Gulliver pen
the yeasty foam raised by a Carlyle or an Emerson. One might as well
watch the effort of a small hairy caterpillar to follow in the wake of
a sea-serpent. Oh ye gods and little fishes, could anything be more
grotesque!"
"But the book?" growled Amias, with a surreptitious glance at his pipe.
"Oh, the book," returned Malcolm loftily, "it is a sudden inspiration,
but I feel the grip of my Frankenstein already; I have not yet let go
the mantle of my guardian genius. It will be autobiographical,
expansive, and deep as human nature itself, and I shall call it 'The
Record of an Impotent Genius.'"
"Good lack!" observed Amias in a disgusted tone, "what a drivelling
title! Why impotent, in the name of all that is rational?"
"My dear old Philistine," returned his friend in a measured voice, "I
use the word impotent in the meaning attached to it in Holy Writ, and
as my beloved and well-thumbed Thesaurus uses it: impotent, powerless,
unarmed, weaponless, paralytic, crippled, inoperative, ineffectual,
inadequate. Think of the strong man bound for a lifetime, Goliath--of a
dumb and palsied genius gazing out of a prison-house. Could even a
blinded Samson equal the pathos of such a picture?"
Amias shook his head mutely, and felt a third time for his pipe, and
plugged the tobacco tenderly with his finger. In some moods he never
argued with Malcolm.
"I shall write the autobiography of this poor tormented soul," went on
Malcolm--"this dumb poet, this crippled artist, to whom the birthright
of failure has descended, who has to look on for a lifetime at other
men's labours, and to whom the power of expression and creation is
denied, who has been gifted with the seeing eye in vain."
"Oh that seeing eye!" groaned Amias, who had heard this observation at
least a hundred times. Then Verity began to laugh, and, to Anna's
surprise, Malcolm followed suit. Then he clapped Amias heavily on the
shoulder.
"Where's your pipe, Goliath? Poor old Philistine, he is a gone coon
without his baccy. Fetch him a match somebody." And as Amias feebly
protested against this, he went on--"Anna is quite a Bohemian, and
rather likes the smell of tobacco. I will have a cigarette to keep you
company," and in another minute Amias's broad countenance wore its
usual expression of placid enjoyment.
The conversation turned on Cedric Templeton, and Malcolm asked Verity
if she could transform the lumber-room into a bedroom for two or three
nights for the use of his friend. This she at once cheerfully undertook
to do, and promised to have it ready by the following evening, and then
he informed them of his intended visit to Staplegrove.
Verity's eyes at once challenged her husband. "Staplegrove," she said
in a surprised voice, "do you mean Staplegrove in Surrey? Why, that is
the very place where the Logans live."
"Are you speaking of Matt Logan?" asked Malcolm.
"Of course he lives down there; but I heard the other day that he had
come in for some money, and had gone abroad for his wife's health."
"Oh, that's right enough," returned Amias. "Verity and I saw them off
two days ago. They have gone to the Black Forest. I meant to have told
you before, but something put it out of my head--that he has lent us
his cottage."
"What a piece of good luck! Upon my word, I am inclined to envy you,
Goliath."
"There is no need for you to do that," returned Amias cordially. "There
will be a 'prophet's chamber' ready for you when you feel inclined to
run down. It is a nice little place enough. 'The Crow's Nest' they call
it, though I am not sure there are any crows about. Verity and I ran
down to have a look at it. The house is a mere cottage, only just room
to swing two cats and a kitten--not a corner for any impotent genius to
woo the drowsy god in," and here Amias gave a great laugh; "but there
is a queer sort of garden room Logan has built which he calls his
workshop, and part of it is partitioned off as a bedroom. It is a bit
airy in the winter, he says, but simply perfect in the summer. You can
sleep with your window wide open, and great tea-roses nodding in at
you, and now and then a night-jar or a black-winged bat flitting
between you and the moon."
"It is a little bare certainly," observed Verity, "but so pleasant, and
I think I could make it comfortable for you, Mr. Herrick. The side
window looks out on a flower-border. There are great yellow clumps of
evening primroses and milky white nicotiana, and the roses are simply
everywhere."
"How long shall you stay?" asked Malcolm in an interested voice.
"Well, the Logans have offered it to us until the end of October,"
returned Verity; "and as it is so hot in town, Amias proposed this
morning that we should try and get off in another ten days. I think we
shall stay there until the end of summer."
"And what am I to do without you both--a lonely bachelor?" exclaimed
Malcolm. "For selfishness and want of feeling commend me to married
people. With regard to their less fortunate fellows they have simply no
conscience."
"My dear fellow, you will be as right as a trivet," returned Amias.
"You will have the Snark to attend to your comforts, and the maternal
Snark--a sad-faced but most respectable woman--to attend to her
daughter's. We have the Logan's servant, and a slip of a girl besides,
a sort of Marchioness, who answers to the name of Miranda. Verity will
find her a comfort with Babs."
"And I am to run down to the Crow's Nest when I like?" Then Amias
nodded a cheerful assent.
"We shall expect you from Saturday till Monday, and as many more days
as you like to give us. You are part of the household, my dear fellow.
I wish we could offer a room to Miss Sheldon; but we shall have to turn
the spare room into a nursery. By the bye, Malcolm, I strolled down the
road with Logan and passed the Wood House. It looks a charming place,
and it is only a stone's throw from the Crow's Nest."
Malcolm felt vaguely interested. What a small world it was after all!
He was going to make acquaintance with Cedric's people in this remote
corner of Surrey, and lo and behold, Goliath and his belongings were
following him.
Well, he was sick of the heat and turmoil of town, and it would not be
a bad plan to take possession of the garden room, and make Verity find
a quiet nook where he could write undisturbed. He really had a
brilliant scheme in his head--some essays which should interlace and
overlap each other like a linked chain of curious workmanship. He had
already accumulated his material, and he only wanted leisure to write.
He knew his trade well, and his strong, vigorous style, his admirable
choice of words, his pure English, and above all, his complete
knowledge of his subject, were already bringing him into notice with
the critics.
Yes, his summer holiday should be spent at the Crow's Nest, and he
would work and play at his own sweet will. It was a pity Anna could not
join them for a week or two. She and Verity would have become such
friends; and then he remembered his mother's prejudices. Besides, she
was thinking of going to Whitby, and if so she would expect Anna to
accompany her.
It was time for them to go now; but, as they drove home in a hansom,
Malcolm suddenly laid his hand on Anna's. "You are very quiet, dear,"
he said gently. "Have I tired you, or has your day disappointed you?"
But he was amazed when the girl turned her face to him, for he saw her
eyes were full of unshed tears.
"Oh no, it has been perfect--you and your friends have been so good to
me, Malcolm. It will be like a beautiful picture--the river and the
studio and the sunset. But why must pleasant things come to an end?"
And then she sighed, and said half to herself, "There will be no Wood
House or Crow's Nest for me;" and Anna's voice was so sad as she said
this that Malcolm felt quite a pang of pity cross him. Why was Anna's
life so dull, and his so full of interest?