THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM
[Illustration]
THE
GOSPEL OF FREEDOM
BY
ROBERT HERRICK
AUTHOR OF “THE MAN WHO WINS,” “LITERARY
LOVE-LETTERS AND OTHER STORIES”
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1898
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
To
The Memory of
P. S. A.
“_Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labour-house vast
Of being, it practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!_”
THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM
PART I
CHAPTER I
Simeon Erard tiptoed deftly across the room, tugging at his thin, sandy
heard. Fumbling among the curtains which draped one corner of the best
light, he pulled the cord, after carefully eyeing his visitors to
see that all were placed properly. The light silk folds fell apart,
revealing a small canvas,--a cool deep slit of grey water let into a
marble floor, which was cut in two by the languorous reach of a woman’s
back done in hard green. The large masses of auburn hair of the bent
head floated on the creamy slab. The artist coughed.
“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Anthon, in a puff of surprise. “A bath-room, I
declare!”
“Is that your exhibition-picture?” inquired her brother-in-law,
Sebastian Anthon, a little dubiously. Erard took no notice of these
wavering remarks. To him they were the necessary comment of the world,
to which he habitually paid as marked disrespect as he dared.
“You see, don’t you, Miss Anthon,” his voice was persuasively
patronizing, “what I have tried to do? You grasp the difficulties,
don’t you? Of course to the crowd it’s nothing but a modern bath, half
full of water, with a young woman in it, whose hair is red. But you
see the vigor of that leg, the coolness of that water shot with light.
You _feel_ it. The artist--and the rare person--will stop before that
picture; _he_ will know what it means. And the artist paints for the
artist; shouldn’t he, Miss Anthon?”
The young woman thus distinguished by the special appeal waived the
responsibility of assent to the last proposition. But she moved
away from the little group of suspicious critics, drawing near to
the picture, as if she were willing to represent the sympathetic
intelligence.
“Yes,” she murmured slyly, “that leg half in the water, half out, is
subtle. The flesh gives itself to the coolness.”
Mrs. Anthon began ostentatiously to use her lorgnette on the room.
Sebastian Anthon turned one or two canvases to the light.
“Ah!” the young artist responded, “my dear Miss Anthon, you are the
right sort; you understand. Don’t you _feel_ that back rippling into
the new medium? To do the little bit where the lights change,” he
indicated hastily a patch of rough brushwork, “that was the keenest
delight of the past year, the best minutes of intense existence, and
for that we artists live, don’t we?”
The girl half smiled as if something vaguely humorous crossed her mind,
yet again her impulse was to take his part against his antipathetic
fellow-countrymen.
“Well, that cornfield didn’t grow in the States, I’d bet!” This
ejaculation came from a young man, who had unearthed a sketch in
bright yellows. He stood with his cane behind his back, his light coat
thrown open, in an attitude of eager expectation, and anxiety to lose
nothing that was going on, while hunting for appropriate expression.
The dull Paris sunlight of a November afternoon sobered the robust hue
of his face and his broad hands. “Eh!” Erard remarked indifferently,
“that’s a sketch I made in Calabria, an effort in yellows.” He turned
the canvas back to the wall, as if he would take from a child a fragile
toy.
“This impressionistic business is beyond me,” the young man remarked
defiantly, addressing Mrs. Anthon for support.
“Adela hasn’t done much in it yet,” Mrs. Anthon answered. “You know,
Mr. Wilbur, she’s at Jerome’s. He’s good for the drawing, they say, and
then he has so many studios, and one is up our way, just behind the
Madeleine. And Jerome has such a good class of young women. I couldn’t
have Adela running about and living as the common art-students do. No
Trilby stuff for me, I said to Sebastian, when he advised me to take
Adela over here and let her have a chance to culture herself. Adela
rather wanted to try it by herself for a year, but her father made
her keep on at Bryn Mawr, that school down near Baltimore, where they
wear caps and gowns. But when her father died,--her elder brother was
married and living out to Denver, and Walter was just finishing school
at Harvard,--I said I couldn’t be left alone. What are children good
for, if they’re going to run away to college and to art-schools? It is
bad enough to have them marry, but a girl, when she isn’t obliged to
work,--and Addie won’t have to teach, I guess--”
Mrs. Anthon was fast unwinding her philosophy of life, in the
sympathetic manner of Western Americans, that takes for granted
a neighbour’s interest in one’s affairs and does not comprehend
reticence. Wilbur was apparently interested. But Miss Anthon, who had
practised the power of watching ever for her mother’s garrulous tongue,
while she attended to other matters, interfered.
“Mr. Erard will show us his den, mamma. Isn’t the apartment delightful
and interesting? It’s an old swell’s house. _Louis seize_ complete,
just as it was, without any change. Mr. Erard found it quite by
accident, he says, one day when he was wandering about in this quarter
among the convents. He came down a side lane that runs into the rue
Vaugirard. Just as he was leaving it, his eye happened to fall upon
that old cypress in the court. He prowled about and found this nest.”
Animation returned once more to the party. Erard led them from the
studio--a fine old room, with open-timbered ceiling, left almost
ostentatiously bare--into the adjoining salon. In the sombre studio
there had been only the warm woodwork; here were many living
qualities,--the lofty windows hung with dark stuffs, the fireplace
adorned by a delicate relief of nymphs. In one corner was a spinet,
and along the sides of the room couches, with a few low tables and
aristocratic chairs. Some little bronzes, one or two pastels, and a
cast of a group by a young American sculptor, completed the obvious
contents.
The ladies exclaimed. Wilbur observed thoughtfully, “I should think you
would rattle around a little.”
“Ah! I don’t live here,” Erard answered airily, pushing open the large
folding doors beside the fireplace. “_This_ is my den, and beyond are
the bedrooms.”
The inner room was of the same dignified height as the rest of the
apartment. A bit of tapestry on one side, and shelves for books and
photographs on another, hid the walls. In one corner was a simple
ormolu table, where notes lay half opened, and beside it a lounge. A
few high-backed chairs, each one a precious find, were ranged like
solemn lackeys along the walls. A second piece of tapestry cut off a
dimly lighted alcove, where a bed of state could be seen,--“also of
the period,” as Erard remarked complacently. The visitors were still
admiring when the servant opened the door into the dining salon.
“We will have some punch,” Erard sighed, throwing himself into the
deep chair at the head of the table, in which his small figure seemed
engulfed. While Pierre, like an attentive mouse, passed the punch and
cakes, the Americans let their eyes roam over the room. It was sombre
with heavy furniture, but scrupulously confined to “the period,” from
the few plates that looked down from the lofty sideboard, to the
andirons on the hearth.
“An ideal nest,” Miss Anthon murmured.
“Your man makes such good punch,” Mrs. Anthon added.
“You must have put a mine into this,” Wilbur commented, as he sipped
his punch. “Fixed it up for a permanent residence?”
“Ah! I can’t say,” the artist replied negligently. “Paris bores me a
good deal. I do my best work at Giverney or San Geminiano. This is a
kind of office.”
“Not much like the old garret where genius was once supposed to
blossom,” Sebastian Anthon reflected in his weary voice, as if making
propositions for himself.
Erard moved uneasily. The gentle old man’s remark contained a special
sting.
“That doesn’t go nowadays. To do his best work, the workman must have
his proper atmosphere. It was all well enough in the Renaissance for
those old fellows to bang about; there was so much going on that was
inspiring; so much beauty in the world! But to-day he must cover
himself up from the horrid impressions of reality. If he fought with
cold and hunger and bad wall-paper, and all that, he would never be
fit for his fine work. Either the harsh actualities would blunt his
sensitiveness, or he would show that he hadn’t any, that he wasn’t of
the temperament.”
Erard turned from the attentive old man to the young woman, whose
fortune of contemporaneous birth might render her intelligent to the
force of his remarks. Moreover, she was a woman, and Simeon Erard’s
strong point was his management of women. He got at them on impersonal,
sexless grounds. His rambling physique and flattened face were almost
repulsive, and he had never quite lost the traces of the dull back
alley in Jersey City, whence he had emerged upon the circle of patrons
and patronesses who were to attend him on towards fame. With a subtle
insight into his own resources, he knew that women would always be
useful to him; that they were most excellent working-partners of
fame. To have a chorus of women at your command was like subsidizing
the press: it was a dangerous weapon to use, but its range was
incalculable. And in manipulating women he was skilful enough to
exclude the sexual basis. He never appeared to them in the light of a
possible husband or lover. Further, he never included a stupid woman in
his chorus merely because she made court to him.
Just now it seemed to him better worth while securing a new ally than
opening the dangerous question started by the old man. So he led the
party back to the salon and begged Miss Anthon to try the spinet. While
he explained the working of the instrument, he threw out casually some
remarks about music. The young woman struck a few thin chords, that
rustled like yellowed parchment in the lofty room; her glance followed
the artist as he looked after his guests.
Now he was talking to Wilbur, who was eagerly loquacious. She could
catch phrases: “... run over for a few months ... business dull ... had
a chance to be fixed up in a little job ... pretty good place ... am a
University of Michigan man.” Erard’s little eyes were coolly judging
the expansive young man, assigning him to his species, and calculating
the exact amount of significance he might contain.
Who was this Erard? She had heard her mother refer often enough to
Sebastian Anthon’s “folly” over that “painter-fellow” he had picked up
in New York as a tutor for his daughter. She remembered many little
details of his career: how her uncle had found him in a print-shop
behind the counter, and had encouraged him in his efforts to worm
his way through the art-school. Later he had come to Sebastian
Anthon’s summer home, on the half-intimate footing of a tutor, and
she remembered to have seen him there,--a sullen, ugly lad, with
his material and stupid charge. Then Erard had gone abroad, first
with Uncle Sebastian, then again for a long period by himself. And
her mother accused him of “getting Sebastian to waste good money on
pictures and such stuff.”
She was not aware that Erard had done much to justify all the Anthon
money that had gone into his career. At least if you counted by
tangible evidences! She did not know that one of the first precepts
which the protégé had inculcated had been that you should _not_ count
by vulgar or tangible proofs, such as books published, pictures painted
and sold, articles appearing in magazines, with accompanying checks and
drafts.
For Erard’s initial ambition--to paint--had expanded in the atmosphere
of Paris, until now it would be hard to say just where he proposed to
apply his force.
A professorship in aesthetics, the editorship of a magazine devoted
to the arts, the curatorship of a museum,--one or all, might have
satisfied his present ambition. Yet he had never quite abandoned
actual creative work. Now and then, whenever Sebastian Anthon was
becoming unusually restless, some one “evidence” appeared to justify
the interest that old Anthon was taking in him. Some clever article on
the Salons for an American journal, a little essay on an early Italian
master in an English magazine, a portrait of Mrs. George Payne,--the
editor’s young wife,--which set the American colony in Paris agog with
talk; at the worst, some bit of encouraging gossip from “a man who
knew.” Perhaps Erard had been right in not forcing himself; Sebastian
Anthon shivered at the thought of how he himself had been forced.
It had been superb in its way, Erard’s campaign thus far, or
preparation for campaign. Once in Paris, the very pavement seemed
familiar to him, the air in the streets to be intimate. “You are one
of us,” it whispered. He prepared leisurely to realize far-reaching
projects. He was never idle, and he was rarely dissipated. Quite early,
it is probable, he suspected that his organism was not the artist’s;
his blood was too thin. But his power was to comprehend, to enjoy and
relate. Or, to use the phrase that he found for his patron, “to know
the background.” So he had had the audacity to proceed from capital to
capital, establishing large siege-lines,--the audacity, when to-morrow
might find him at the pawn-shop with nothing to pawn. Perhaps he knew
his world better than most; had he had more scrupulous doubts, he would
have failed at the outset.
To-day he had asked the Anthons to see his apartment and his new
picture; for he still painted, cleverly aware that the world, after
all, pays a certain homage to the mystery of creation that it denies
to mere knowledge. His guests, however, seemed to be impressed more
with the apartment in which he had enveloped himself, by the very
vulgar facts of physical appointments, than by his excellent picture.
The afternoon had engendered a moral opposition which he must overcome
in some way. Sebastian Anthon was especially necessary to him just now;
he must spend this winter in Spain. And he would like to have this nice
old man fall in with the plan, even if it necessitated including his
niece, and, at the worst, the voluble lady her mother.
That person could be heard, above the notes of the spinet, in her
monologue to the patient Wilbur. “I shall take Adela to Aix-les-Bains
as soon as the season opens. I tell her that what she wants is to know
people, to meet pleasant friends, not to spend her year over here
fooling about in a studio. I guess she hasn’t any great talent. Walter
has set his heart on making a writer of himself, and I guess one genius
in the family is enough.” The purple bows on Mrs. Anthon’s new Parisian
hat tossed in time with the vehement workings of her short, thick body.
She had settled into an aggressive pace.
Erard paused for a moment by her side, and then, as the music faded
out, stepped back to Miss Anthon. Her face, which was turned towards
the light, wore a look of tolerance, and the restless tapping of one
foot upon the marquetry betrayed a stifled criticism of her mother’s
chatter.
The young artist noted that the moulding of the face had been begun
freely and graciously. Nothing was final. It might be interesting to
know where the next few years would place the emphasis. Meantime the
impulse of life was throbbing in that face actively, generously. To
feel, to understand, and--what is more--to act swiftly,--a promise of
such powers it held forth.
“You are working here?” Erard observed. Miss Anthon turned to him with
relief.
“Oh! fooling, as the rest do. It seems so utterly silly, but it is
better than shopping perpetually, or running about to see things you
don’t understand.”
“Did you do much--earlier?” Erard assumed easily the catechist’s place.
“Never--much--of anything,” she confessed slowly. “But I liked it
awfully, only papa wanted me to have a sound education first.”
“Quite wise--that papa.”
“Why?”
“Because the chances are that you may know something some day, but
there isn’t much chance of your ever doing anything.”
Miss Anthon flushed at this cool estimation of her range by her uncle’s
protégé. Yet her good sense and her curiosity kept her from betraying
any foolish annoyance, and the two were soon far on in an intimate
conversation. Erard’s finality in judgments, and his conjuror’s trick
of knowing all about herself without detailed confession, impressed
Miss Anthon.
At last the visitors gathered themselves up, and Mrs. Anthon said a
distant good-by to their host. Miss Anthon added to her mother’s
conventionally expressed hope that they might see Erard again, a
pointed invitation. “Come and show me what I ought to know.”
“Would you care to see Degas’s new picture?”
The girl answered with a look, with a flutter of astonishment. Who was
this young man who could take her to Degas’s studio? As they moved
into the hall, Erard found an opportunity to hand her the last _Revue
Internationale_. “Perhaps you will care to look this over; it’s an
article on Degas I wrote last spring.”
Then Pierre, the solemn man-servant, appeared with an old horn lantern,
pulled back the long iron bolt, and prepared to escort the guests to
the courtyard. In the hall a slender crane, supporting a flickering
candle, reached out above the stairs. Erard stood under its shrine-like
glimmer, wafting courtly cordialities to the descending guests. As Miss
Anthon passed the bend in the stairs Pierre’s lantern threw a dash
of light upon her dark strong form, while the plumes in her hat made
magnificent shadows upon the stone walls. She swung her loose cape
about her, as a young officer years before might have wrapped himself
in his military cloak before venturing into the night-blast below. She
looked up at him and smiled with the frank recognition one gives to a
possible master. The last sound Erard heard, as the great doors creaked
open below, was Mrs. Anthon’s shrill babble about dinner.