While the public were busy discussing the merits and demerits of the star which had shone forth so suddenly upon the theatrical horizon, the lady herself was sitting in her dressing-room, apparently indifferent to all that passed or was likely to come. Her theatrical splendour had been cast off, and, enveloped now in a plain dark dress, she sat with dishevelled hair and pale cheeks, gazing dreamily at her own reflection in a mirror. Her maid, who was busily engaged in folding a delicate robe, was suddenly interrupted in her work by a knock at the door.
She opened it and admitted White. He walked over to the dreamy girl, put his arm round her shoulders, and kissed her fondly.
‘Well, here I am,’ he said quickly, with a glance at the busy, listening maid. ‘Are you almost ready to come home?’
‘I am quite ready,’ returned Madeline, awakening from her dream.
She rose at once, coiled up her hair, put on her hat and cloak, and, after giving a few directions to her maid, took White’s arm and left the room.
The house had been emptied and darkened, and the curtain raised, but confusion still prevailed upon the stage. Carpenters, scene-shifters, property men, actors and actresses, bereft of their splendour, all gathered according to their different grades around Abrahams, Hart, and the acting manager, who were holding forth like the outer world upon the merits of the heroine of the night.
Madeline, plainly dressed, thickly veiled, and clinging closely to White’s arm, hoped to pass unseen through the crowd; but no sooner had she reached the centre of the stage than the keen eye of the manager fell upon her, and he advanced with outstretched hands.
‘My dear Miss Vere,’ he said, ‘allow me to congratulate you on a big success. You’ve hit ’em right between the eyes, my dear. You have, by Jove!
I always said you would. Didn’t I always say you would?’ And turning to White, he added—
‘White, old man, dine with me to-morrow at five sharp. I’ve a lot to talk over.’
Madeline received the homage quietly enough, and by a slight pressure of her hand upon the arm of her delighted guardian hurried him along out through the stage door.
It was a calm still night, the sky was studded with stars; not a breath of air was stirring, but the noise in the streets was deafening, the confusion bewildering. A crowd was gathered round the theatre door, cabs rattled up and down, streams of people moved hither and thither, as if in a feverish dream. Once in the open air, White paused to hail a cab, but Madeline stopped him.
‘Let us walk,’ she said quickly. ‘I am so excited, and a breath of this cool air will do me good.’
‘As you please, my dear,’ returned White, and, clasping her hand more firmly upon his arm, he led her through the ever-moving crowd. What a crowd it was! Men and women, old and young, rich and poor, mingling together in one perpetual eddy; shivering, starving, half-clad children; brazen street-walkers disporting in finery even more tawdry than that which the actress had cast aside, and pale-faced outcasts glaring ghastly beneath the gaslight, clutching at their rags, and forcing their parched heated lips to offer up a curse to Him who had made them what they were.
Still veiled, still clinging closely to White’s arms, Madeline passed slowly on, watching the crowd surging up and down beside her, seeing the faces pale, haggard, gaunt, and famine-stricken, flashing like phantoms. Now and then, as some weary woman passed beneath the glare of the gaslight, Madeline would pause and instinctively stretch forth her hand, as if to offer succour; but White, tightening his hold upon her, soothed the strange agitation which he knew to be rising, and firmly urged her on. Thus they left the trouble and the turmoil behind them, and passing into a sequestered square, with green trees around them, and the starlit heaven above, paused for a moment.
Madeline raised her veil, and looked upward.
‘To think,’ she said, ‘that such a bright sky should shine upon so much wickedness and sorrow! I wonder if any people are ever happy until they die?’
‘Happy! Of course they are. But come, we are lingering too long. I mean to drink a bottle of champagne to-night to celebrate your success, my dear.’
Madeline said no more, but quietly suffered him to lead her home.
It was certainly not such a home as one would picture as the abode of the queen of the night; for White, whose circumstances had never been affluent, had been brought lower than ever of late through the demands made upon him by Madeline, whom it had been necessary to fit out superbly before she could be presented to the gaze of the world. Still, poor as they were, the rooms were dear to Madeline, and as she entered them she felt stealing over her a sense of security and peace which she had not experienced all that evening before.
The good news had sped quickly, and the welcome given to the young actress was in keeping with all the rest. The table was spread for supper, the solitary bottle of champagne stood at the head, and poor Madame de Berny, now very worn and much aged, stood upon the narrow, dimly lighted stairs, with outstretched hands and quivering voice.
‘Ah, my dear,’ she said, as she drew Madeline into the bedroom, and assisted her to remove her hat and cloak, ‘to think that only a few years ago you stood at my poor dear Marie’s knee, and listened, with open eyes and mouth, to the stories she used to tell about the theatre. Now, you are a leading lady, and she—oh! my poor girl!’
‘Don’t cry, Madame,’ said Madeline gently. ‘I think Marie is happy.’
‘Ah, Miss Madeline, how can I help grieving when I think of all my child has lost? To think that when she was rising so rapidly she could throw herself away upon a man who only betrayed her; that she should cause her father to die of a broken heart, and bring me to this!’ As Madeline listened she sank into a chair, and let her weary head rest upon her hands. Her face was paler than it had been before, and Madame de Berny looking at her saw that a look of terrible sadness, which she had often noticed before, was creeping again into her eyes.
‘Madeline, my dear,’ she said, ‘you at least ought to be happy.’
The girl raised her head and smiled, and the smile was even more pitiful to behold than the look of sadness had been.
‘Yes, you are right, Madame de Berny,’ she said, ‘I ought to be happy, so I will try to be from this night forth;’ and as if to avoid further conversation she passed out into the sitting-room, where she found White awaiting her with a look of contented happiness in his face.
Puzzled and thoughtful, the old lady saw her go. What was the matter with the girl? She could not tell. Some few months before that day, when, in answer to an appeal from her, White had offered her a home, with himself and ward, she had come full of her own troubles, expecting to find a bright-eyed vivacious beautiful girl to soothe and cheer her. But instead of being the comforted she became the comforter. The first sight of the girl rent her heartstrings. Could this be Madeline Hazelmere? Could this be the lissome blue-eyed child, who had been the very impersonation of happy impulse and joy? This woman with the pale cheeks and strange, sad eyes? Madame de Berny paused before her shattered vision, gave one prolonged look, and burst into tears.
‘Do not cry, dear Madame,’ Madeline had said, kindly taking her old friend affectionately in her arms; ‘the poor chevalier has gone from a world in which it is more terrible to live than to leave. I hope he has no memory of it—that at least he is at peace.’
Strange words, to come from a girl scarcely twenty years of age. They affected the Frenchwoman curiously at the time, and set her pondering afterwards.
The longer she remained with White the more she became impressed with the painful change that had taken place in Madeline. It was not that the child had become a woman, and had learnt to subdue her spirits to a sadder, more womanly tone; her soul was haunted by a memory which poisoned every pleasure which was lifted to her lips, and converted the world into a tomb. What the memory was, Madame could not understand, but she knew, whenever the girl’s prospects seemed brightest, it haunted her the most, and that on that night when she had shone forth upon the world, and made hundreds envy her, it seemed to loom before her eyes more terribly than ever.
For several days after that night when she had achieved her great theatrical triumph, Madeline was too much occupied with business to give much thought to herself. She seemed to be lifted on a whirlwind, and carried along in tumult—forgetting the past, thinking nothing of the future, and scarcely conscious even of the bewildering present.
On the third morning, however, a note arrived which dispelled the dream that enveloped her, and brought her to herself again. The note had been placed among many others upon the breakfast table. She looked twice or thrice at the handwriting, then opened the envelope, and read as follows—
My dear Ophelia,—For the last few days I have been looking every hour, nay, every minute, for a visit from you. Am I to be again honoured by a visit from you in my studio, or may I take the liberty of waiting upon you? I have been putting one or two finishing touches to my work, but without the presence of the original I cannot bring it to completion.
Accept my friendly homage, which must be to you like a drop of water to the ocean.
Blanco Serena.
Having perused the note, Madeline laid it down again upon the table and looked round the room. How poverty-stricken it looked; how opposed to everything in the house of the successful painter who wrote that letter! She turned to White, who sat near her with his head buried in the folds of the ‘Times.’
‘Mr. Serena thinks that success has turned my head,’ she said quietly. ‘I must undeceive him by giving him my last sitting for “Ophelia” to-day.’
Accordingly, as soon as the breakfast was over, White retired to his studio, and Madeline went on her way.
On arriving at the house of Mr. Blanco Serena, she was made to feel her new greatness more than ever she had done before. The servant in livery looked at her with unusual respect, as he led her solemnly through long corridors to the studio, and ushered her into the presence of the great man himself.
Mr. Blanco Serena sat among his pictures. He wore an Eastern dressing-gown, and smoked a fantastically twisted meerschaum pipe. His eyes were fixed with rapt attention on the walls where his own handiwork was displayed; but when Madeline came in, he withdrew his gaze, collected his thoughts, and gave her a kindly welcome. To all his congratulations Madeline listened quietly, then she took her place before the painter, and, as he painted, her thoughts wandered to the past.
‘Ah, those eyes, those eyes,’ thought Serena to himself as he painted rapidly. ‘I cannot put them on canvas. The critics will rave about my “Ophelia,” but their praise will never satisfy me. If I could only paint the expression of that face I should think myself the genius they call me, not the poor impostor I know myself to be.’
Nevertheless, he tried and tried again, while Madeline sat patiently. Presently the studio door was opened, and with much ceremony, but no announcement, a stranger was shown in.
The new-comer was a tall, robust-looking man in the prime of life, who was dressed with the utmost neatness and exactness, in the plain frock coat and grey-coloured trousers so much in favour among so-called business men Despite the ceremony with which he was introduced, and which showed that he was an individual of no small importance, his manner was modest and retiring in the extreme, and he looked around him on the splendid temple of modern painting, and at its famous owner, with smiling and good-humoured homage.
Serena put down his brush at once, and warmly shook hands. Then, seeing Madeline, the new-comer made a movement as if to retire.
‘I am afraid I interrupt you,’ he exclaimed.
But before he could say more, Madeline came forward gently, and offered her hand.
‘Miss Hazelmere!’ he exclaimed, recognising her; ‘or shall I rather call you by the name you’ve already made so famous?’
‘You know each other?’ interrupted Serena, with some surprise.
‘Oh yes,’ cried Madeline, smiling. ‘Mr. Forster and I are old, old friends.’
At this statement even the new-comer himself evinced some surprise; but Madeline continued—
‘When I was only a very little girl, Mr. Forster, I remember how you came to see my guardian one day when he was sick, and how, when you went away, he cried and told me how good you were. You came often after that, and we used to talk of you together. And the other night at the theatre, when I saw your face in the box, I felt so glad, and I said to myself, “I won’t be afraid now, for there are at least two kind faces in front—one my dear guardian’s, the other the face of the best friend he ever had in the world.”’
Under this simple praise Forster looked a little uncomfortable.
‘How is White?’ he inquired nervously, as if for want of something better to say.
Madeline did not immediately reply, so Serena answered for her.
‘At the present moment, my dear Forster, our friend White is the happiest fellow in all the world, or shall I rather say, in all Bohemia. A hundred successful original plays, a thousand successful adaptations, could not have given him half the pleasure that he feels at the triumph of his charming ward. And well may he be proud. He has hatched at his lonely hearth a phoenix, who rises out of the ashes of our drama, to glorify the stage.’
‘Ah, but you spoil me,’ said Madeline, well pleased, nevertheless. ‘It is so easy to act; and, besides, who but my dear guardian has taught me the little I know?’
‘For you it is easy,’ returned Serena, gallantly; ‘ah yes—and it is easy for a flower to look beautiful or for a lark to sing a splendid song. That is all the difference between genius and talent. All you have to do is to be natural, to be your charming self, and the art comes of itself, like the perfume from a rose.’
Madeline looked at Forster and laughed.
‘Mr. Serena would not say that,’ she said, ‘if he knew what a goose I was when I first began. It was in that little theatre at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, and when I went on the people could not hear a word, and I did not know what to do with my hands and feet. The manager said I was the greatest idiot who ever stept upon his stage, and he was right.’
Serena was not to be dismayed.
‘Another proof of genius,’ he cried. ‘Mere talent would have caught all the tricks of the stage, and by means of its affectations and insincerities gained cheap applause at the outset. I have often heard my friend Eugene Aram say that when he began he was so great a stick that no manager would keep him in his theatre. The people laughed at his legs, mimicked his voice. Critics compared him to the Knight of the Rueful Visage. He was invertebrate, inchoate, inarticulate. Look at him now. The people adore his legs and consider his voice music itself. That’s genius, my dear, depend upon it.’
‘One touch of genius makes amends for much,’ observed Forster quietly. ‘I don’t think Aram is a good actor even now, but he is interesting and intelligent, and his eccentricities have a fascination.’ He added, turning to the picture in the easel, ‘May I ask, is that picture a commission?’
Serena shook his head.
‘If I could afford it,’ he answered, ‘I should say “Yes,” and make a present of it—to the original. But it’s not worthy of her; upon my word it’s not worthy. I’m ashamed of my art when I compare my miserable attempt to the reality.’
‘It is very like,’ said Forster thoughtfully, studying before the canvas; ‘but too sorrowful; too sorrowful! I should not like to see Miss Hazelmere look like that.’
‘You see, it’s an “Ophelia,”’ observed Serena apologetically.
‘I would rather you had painted her as smiling and happy. So young a face should not reveal such depths of suffering. There is no hope here, and in Miss Hazelmere’s face all should be hope and happiness.’
Turning to glance at Madeline, he was startled and surprised. She was gazing now at the picture with the very expression depicted in it; all life, all pleasure seemed to have faded out of her face, leaving nothing but blankness there, and the shadow of a painful dream. Her thoughts seemed to have wandered far away, and have left her unconscious of the presence in which she stood.
But while he gazed the look faded, and the light came back to her eyes. Meeting his gaze she smiled, and held out her hand.
‘I must go now,’ she said; ‘my sitting is over, and I am already past my time.’
‘Do you ride or walk?’ asked Forster.
‘I am going to walk across the park, and then, at the Marble Arch, I shall take a cab.’
‘May I offer myself as an escort?’ he said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I am going that way, and—and———’
He paused, smiling benignly and blushing boyishly, but Madeline at once put her hand upon his arm and accepted his escort with a happy smile. Serena saw them to the door, and watched them as they walked chatting up the street.
‘I think I know the signs,’ muttered the painter to himself, ‘and if Forster is not fascinated, Eros Athanatos is no true god. Well, so be it. It will be none the worse for my pictures, and a splendid thing for the girl.’
Left alone with Madeline, Forster felt constrained and a little uneasy, but her perfect simplicity and frankness soon put him entirely at his ease. She was indeed happy beyond measure in his accidental companionship. Since her early childhood his name had been familiar to her as that of one whom White emphatically pronounced to be ‘the best man he had ever known or hoped to know,’ and his perfect gentleness and kindliness, which impressed even the most casual observer of his countenance, won the open-hearted girl at once. Leaning lightly on his arm, she chatted away frankly and fearlessly, as she might have done to White himself. Frank without boldness, fearless without forwardness, in every word and gesture free and spirituelle without affectation, she fairly won her way to his heart of hearts. Talking with her was like talking with a child; she was so unconscious of herself, so un reserved; and this, seeing her wonderful physical beauty, constituted at once her peril and her charm.
Passing in at Albert Gate, they crossed Rotten Row, and strolled quietly across the park. It was a bright golden day, and Madeline, always the creature of physical and external impressions, seemed to kindle into new gladness. She looked at the fair horsewomen, of whom there was a fair sprinkling already, though it was early in the afternoon, and laughed for pleasure.
‘Do you like riding?’ she asked. ‘I have never ridden; but I think if I were on a horse’s back, I could ride—and ride—and ride—and never stop.’
‘You would find it duller than you think,’ said Forster. ‘I ride here often, and do not think it very amusing.’
To his astonishment Madeline asked, quietly—
‘Does Mrs. Forster ride?’
‘Mrs. Forster?’ he repeated.
‘I mean your wife.’
‘My wife,’ he echoed, in still greater astonishment. ‘I am not married!’
‘How strange!’ exclaimed Madeline, with raised eyebrows. ‘Not married?’
‘Why is it so strange?’ asked Forster, with a laugh.
‘You do not look like an old bachelor—no, I don’t mean that; but there is something in your manner which makes one think of a kind wife, and little children, and home. You are not old, and yet I feel as if I could speak to you so freely, and could tell you anything, as I do my dear guardian. Do you understand?’
‘I think I do—partly,’ answered Forster, not without a certain uneasiness.
‘And that lady whom I saw you with at the theatre on the first night of “Cymbeline”—I thought she was Mrs. Forster.’
‘That was my sister.’
They walked on for a little in silence. Forster was the first to speak.
‘It is curious, after all, that you should class me among the married people, for the fact is, I am a widower. My poor wife died many years ago, and left me one child, a boy. My sister keeps my house; but when you talk of home, and home ties, I cannot help telling you that I am a very lonely man—quite an old bachelor, indeed, in my way. When, after a long day in the City, I return to my house, and get among my books and pictures, I am still lonely, but sometimes very happy after all.’
A girl less naïve and unsuspicious than Madeline might have been astonished at this fragment of autobiography, coming from such a man, and might have questioned her own fascinations as to the origin of such candour. But Madeline thought it quite natural, as between friend and friend.
‘But let us speak of other things,* continued Forster, after a pause, ‘of yourself. I sometimes think, if you will forgive me for saying so, that you must be rather lonely too.’
‘No,’ she replied readily; adding with her brightest smile, ‘not while I have Mr. White.’
‘Ah, he is a good fellow—but you have neither father nor mother.’
Madeline shook her head.
‘They died long ago. I do not remember them.’
‘Your other relations?’
‘I have none.’
‘None?’
‘When my father died I was left with poor people, who brought me up. Then trouble came, and Uncle Mark died, and I was brought to Mr. White. Uncle Luke brought me. After he went away he used to write me, but at last all letters ceased. Mr. White made inquiries, but he had disappeared, and no one knew where he had gone. Dear Uncle Luke!’
Her voice was broken, and her eyes were full of tears.
‘What made you think of going upon the stage?’
‘I used to go to the theatre with Mademoiselle de Berny, and she used to make me hear her go through her parts. I always loved acting, Mr. Forster, and at Mr. White’s there were so many professional people. Afterwards, when I was older, I tried to think how I could repay my dear guardian for all his kindness, and then I thought if I could act—only a little—it would be some help. When he first heard me recite he was pleased, and I told him I would like to become an actress and act in his plays. So he sent me down into the country to try. That was how it began.’
‘And you like acting?’
‘Better than anything in the world; best of all, Mr. Forster, because it makes my dear guardian happy.’
‘You will make a great name/
‘I don’t care for that—yes, I do care; for a great name would mean a great deal of money, and I want that?
‘Indeed! Why?’
‘Because Mr. White is poor, and I want to make him rich—as rich as he deserves to be, for all his goodness to me. I love him so much. I should like to put him in a palace and surround him with splendour, like a king in a fairy tale.’
Forster laughed merrily.
‘I don’t think White would care for a palace, and he’s too Bohemian for a king.’
‘What do you mean by Bohemian?’ asked Madeline, with her characteristic frankness. ‘I often hear the word, and I don’t understand it.’
‘I’m not sure that I do either,’ he answered at once, ‘unless it means unconventionality, carelessness of appearances, contempt for Mrs. Grundy. In White’s case, though, it means far more—honesty, lightness of heart, patience under disappointment, all combined in one of the best fellows in the world.’
‘If you knew all about him, Mr. Forster, you would say even more than that. If you knew—if you knew—but no one will ever know but God! Oh, I should die if he even thought me ungrateful—he is so good. I have no other friend in all the world!’
‘Do not cry; you have one other.’
‘No.’
‘While I live, I hope you will not doubt it.’
She paused, and, looking at him through her tears, held out both her hands.
‘It is so kind of you to say so,’ she cried. ‘Yes, you are good also; but no one in the world can be to me what Mr. White has been.’
‘It is right that you should be grateful,’ said Forster, gently, ‘and I think more highly of you for that holy feeling. But here we are at the Marble Arch. Must I call a cab?’
‘If you please, unless you will drive home with me, and see Mr. White. I know he is at home, for he is very busy on his new play.’
The offer was accepted as frankly as it was made, and Forster’s face shone with pleasure.
‘Shall it be a hansom or a four-wheeler?’ he said, smiling.
‘A hansom, please; I cannot bear these slow old things, and I love hansoms. I used to think when I was a little girl that I would like to have one all to myself, and drive about in it for ever.’
A hansom was called, and the pair entered it; they drove swiftly away to St. John’s Wood. Very little more was said on either side, but Forster felt very happy.
They turned into the old familiar street, and reined up before the old familiar ‘studio,’ which Madeline knew and loved so well. They found the dramatist en déshabille and very busy, not on the new play, as Madeline had stated, but on a picture—which, on their entry, he hastily covered up.
‘My dear Forster,’ he exclaimed, with real delight. ‘How glad I am! But, upon my life, you puzzle me. How does it happen that——’
He paused and looked questioningly at Madeline, who laughed and explained.
‘I met Mr. Forster when I was sitting for my portrait, and he brought me home.’
‘Very good of him.’
‘Was it not? But what are you doing? Painting something! You told me the other day that you did not intend to paint any more.’
‘It’s nothing,’ returned the dramatist, ‘nothing at all. Only a kind of sketch—a little thing of memory. No, no,’ he added, as Madeline approached the canvas, ‘you mustn’t look at it. It’s a secret. It’s—it’s a—portrait—of—a—young—lady—I—admire.’
Quietly laughing, he endeavoured to prevent Madeline from inspecting the picture, but she was too quick for him, and had already uncovered the easel.
‘Why, it’s me!’ she cried, and continued merrily, with a theatrical gesture, ‘I mean “it is I”!—which is the same thing, and more grammatical.’
‘Grammar was never your strong point, my dear,’ observed White, gently. ‘Well, what do you think of it?’
It was Madeline indeed, but Madeline the child, as she first appeared, with wild, wistful eyes, in that lonely studio. The colours were crude, the drawing incorrect, but for all that the expression was there, and the whole thing was instinct with life.
With smiling face and clasped hands, Madeline stood gazing at the likeness; then, as if moved by a sudden impulse, she threw her arms round White’s neck and kissed him, first on one cheek then on the other, while Forster looked on in amused sympathy.
‘You like it, my dear? It was—ahem!—a sort of a kind of an inspiration. It came upon me when I was looking at the play, and, by Jove, I had to do it.’
‘It is really capital,’ said Forster. ‘I should have recognised the likeness anywhere.’
‘Of course, it’s only a daub,’ returned White, humbly. ‘I might have painted decently if I had stuck to it, instead of dangling after Jew managers and doing potboilers for Eugene Aram. But you’re fresh from seeing Serena’s picture, and that gives my thing no chance.’
‘I don’t care for Mr. Serena’s picture,’ cried Madeline. ‘I do not like to tell him so, but I am sure I am not so lovely as he makes me, and I know my eyes are not green. I like your picture ever so much the best—and, oh! it was so kind of you to do it, Mr. White. It is just like me as I was—a nasty, little, pale thing, with shock hair!’
And she stood contemplating the likeness in an ecstasy of honest reminiscence.
‘My dear, you were never nasty,’ said White, good humouredly. ‘Shock haired, if you like, but charming as you are now.’
‘Always charming, I’m sure,’ suggested Forster, mildly ‘Do you know, I should like to buy this picture?’
White opened his eyes.
‘Take it, my dear fellow, it’s of no pecuniary value. Stop, though! I can make a composition of it by putting in some flowers and a bit of background, and calling it “Primroses—a Study,” or something of that sort.’
‘You’ll allow me to fix the price?’ said Forster.
But there Madeline interfered.
‘No, Mr. White, you must not sell it; that is, you will sell it to no one but the original. How much must I give you for it? A thousand guineas? Two thousand? Tell me, and I’ll begin to save at once.’
She paused with sparkling eyes, looking into her guardian’s face.
‘Miss Hazelmere is right,’ said Forster; ‘she must keep the sketch as a souvenir of her childhood. No other person in the world has a right to possess it.’
No more was said on the subject, and White soon led the way into the adjoining house, there to dispense the hospitalities to his friend, who, however, soon took his leave, and departed by omnibus towards his home in South Kensington.
The night afterwards, however, Madeline saw his hearty face looking from a box in the theatre, and between the acts he came round to speak to her. He said little, but what he did say set her wits working, and the next morning she told White, as they sat at breakfast, that Mr. Forster had witnessed the performance on the previous evening.
‘Oh, indeed,’ said the dramatist with a pleased smile. ‘Did he come round?’
‘Yes, for a few minutes.’
‘It’s rather odd, and I think you may take it as a compliment. Forster doesn’t care for the drama as a rule.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Fact, my dear. Why, though we’re such capital friends, he has seldom come even to see my plays.’
‘Do you know his sister?’
‘Who told you he had a sister?’ asked White, slyly.
‘He did.’
‘Indeed. Well, the fact is, I don’t know her. She’s a sort of amiable Ogre; pious, you know, and all that sort of thing. Whenever I have dined at the house, she has been invisible; but we’ve generally met at his club.’
‘And his little boy?’
‘Eh? Who told you he had a little boy? The same informant. Why, he’s been giving you his autobiography!’
‘He only told me he was a widower.’
‘And that’s more than he ever told to me, though of course I was aware of it. You see, our friendship has been a sort of club friendship, and, besides, all the favour has been on his side. A rich man like Forster and a poor devil like myself can’t meet on equal terms.’
‘He is rich, then?’
‘Very. One of the oldest firms in the city. His house in Cromwell Road is like a palace, and the pictures in it alone would realise a fortune.’
Madeline looked thoughtful, then she said—‘I’m sorry he’s so rich.’
‘God bless me! why?’
‘I don’t like rich people, and—and he’s so nice!’ ‘If you were a poor poet, or a struggling painter, or a musician with a craze, you wouldn’t blame the dear fellow for his good fortune. He’s so generous, so good-hearted—not only to me, but to every fellow-creature who needs his help. Then look how modest and unaffected he is. His own flunkeys are lords to him, and when he asks for a cup in his own house he’s like a humble City clerk asking deferentially for refreshment in a large hotel.’
Having thus begun, White did not pause till he had sounded the praises of his patron over and over again; told of his goodness and generosity to himself personally; of his countless good deeds to others, who would otherwise have sunk long ago in the dark waters of Bohemia. The theme brought honest tears, as White concluded that ‘if ever there was an angel in a frock-coat and grey trousers, it was James Forster.’
Unsuspicious as Madeline herself, White at first saw nothing remarkable in the close interest with which Forster followed the fortunes of his ward. Nor, when some days afterwards the merchant again put in an appearance, bringing with him a bouquet of choice flowers, did the simple soul awake to much suspicion of the truth.
One afternoon, however, as White sat at work on the scenario of a new play, which he was about to submit to the distinguished Mr. Aram, Madeline entered in great agitation.
‘Are you busy? May I speak to you?’ she exclaimed.
‘Certainly, my dear; my time is yours. But what’s the matter?’
‘Something terrible has happened.’
‘Indeed!’
The dramatist pushed his papers aside, and arose trembling to his feet.
‘Mr. Forster——’
There she paused.
‘Not ill, I hope?’
‘Oh, no, no. But I have just left him. He was at Mr. Serena’s, and he came part of the way home.’
‘Yes. Pray go on.’
‘Oh, I was afraid of it!’ cried Madeline, with a sob. ‘I should have avoided him!—and yet, at first, I could not believe it possible.’
‘Do explain!’ cried White, in hopeless perplexity.
Madeline sank into a chair, crying, and hid her face in her hands.
‘He has asked me to become his wife.’
Mr. Blanco Serena, the prophet of a new school of painting, the object of which was more closely to reconcile and blend the kindred arts of painting, poetry, and music, occupied a large detached house in South Kensington, whither his worshippers flocked every Sunday, as to the shrine of some patron saint. The walls were embellished with designs from his own pencil, or those of his own friends; the furniture was his own invention, in form as well as colour; the ceilings were cerulean, like the heavens, and like the heavens were studded with golden stars; so that when the rapt creature looked up in contemplation or in inspiration, his vision was rewarded by celestial glimpses. There were no carpets on the floors, but here and there costly rugs were strewn. The house formed a quadrangle, in the centre of which was an open court with a playing fountain, and by the fountain, in fine weather, the prophet and the faithful would lie upon tiger and lion skins, smoking pipes and calumets of strange device.
Serena himself was a middle-aged man, with a high, bald forehead, long apostolic beard, and large brown dreamy eyes. He was a good soul, with the kindest disposition, and the affectations of his profession did not extend to his personal character. The fault lay more in his stars than himself that he had become an eccentric painter. He began merrily, in Bohemian fashion, with a clay pipe in his mouth, painting real landscapes from nature and human beings from the life, and producing compositions noteworthy for fine colour and honest effect. But he discovered early, as many another prophet has discovered, that it did not pay. In an angry moment, one day, disgusted with a picture which he had just completed, he took up his brush and deliberately reversed all the colours of his composition. Where water was blue, he made it vermilion; where boughs were green and golden, he made them purple and cerulean; a white human figure standing by water became an Ethiop, through excess of shadow; and finally, out of sheer devilry, he covered the daffodil sky with layers of pea-green cloud. He had just completed his work, and was scowling at it grimly, when there entered Ponto, the new art critic from Camford. No sooner did Ponto see the mutilated picture than he clasped his hands and raised his eyes rapturously to heaven. ‘At last!’ he cried, and wrung Serena by the hand. ‘Only paint like this, and your fame is sure.’ The ‘Megatherium’ of the following Saturday contained an article by Ponto, entitled, ‘Mr. Blanco Serena’s new painting—a Reverie in Vermilion and Pea-green,’ in which article it was clearly demonstrated, not merely that the painting was one of the masterpieces of the world, but that the painter was the first ‘modern man’ who had dared ‘to give prominence on canvas to evanescent cosmic moods.’ From that day forth the epithets cosmic, august, titanic, supersensuous, sublime, and other adjectives of equal meaning were the especial property of Serena and his imitators; for that imitators came soon goes perhaps without saying, seeing that imitation is so easy. ‘Reveries’ on canvas became the rage; to be non-natural was the fashion. Artists who had once in their innocence strained every nerve to study great models and to copy nature, now tortured ingenuity to represent ‘evanescent cosmic moods’—out of colour, out of drawing, and out of all harmony with anything but the diseased invention of bad painters and the bad critics who urged them on.
Serena, as we have said, was a good fellow, and took his success sensibly. Only to one man in the world did he secretly confess the facts of the case. ‘I know I am a humbug,’ he said to Forster, ‘and that those who praise me are humbugs. I know that I paint worse than I did at twenty, and that, when I die, and my school dies with me, posterity will find me out. This is why, now and then, I follow the true lights of my soul, and paint a true picture; just to keep my work from utterly perishing in Limbo, just to enable some poor soul in the far future to say, “After all, Blanco Serena might, had he chosen, have escaped from being the æsthetic Prig of his period.” But what I am the scribblers and the public have made me. If another man painted a bony woman in yellow gauze, with red hair and pale green eyes, and impossible arms and legs, he would be found out directly: but only let me paint such a figure, and call it “Persephone musing by the waters of Lethe,” or “Memory kneeling by the grave of Hope,” or “Fading away: a Sonata in Sunset tints,” and I am sure at least of Ponto’s praise and the public approval. Well, of all humbugs Art humbug is the worst, though, after all, worse saints have been canonised than Blanco Serena.’
To the studio of Serena, a few days after Madeline’s visit, came Ponto, the art critic, bringing with him a thin, middle-aged. Frenchman, with a coarse mouth and a sinister expression of countenance. The painter, with deft and careless hand, was adding a few touches to the picture of Ophelia.
‘Serena,’ cried Ponto, ‘let me introduce you to M. Auguste de Gavrolles, from Paris—the friend and pupil of the supreme and impeccable Gautier. He is a poet, an ardent worshipper of your genius, and in all matters of art completely sane a cosmic.’
Serena smiled and held out his hand, which the Frenchman took rapturously, and raised it to his lips.
‘Ah, Monsieur,’ he exclaimed, ‘this is the proudest moment of my life!’
Ponto threw himself into a chair, and looked around him with a smile of feline insipidity.
‘What’s that you have there, my dear Serena?’ he asked, blinking at the picture. ‘Ah, I see, another superbly musical meditation in the minor key of flake white!’
‘It is a portrait,’ said Serena, quietly.
‘An ideal portrait—quite so. How wonderfully in that floating drapery you have conveyed the serene insouciance of trances of languor crescending into aberration of supersensual dream!’
‘It is neither more nor less than a careful likeness of the original,’ returned Serena, modestly. ‘In the arrangement of the colours I wish to convey——’
‘The spirituality of a superb and life-consuming dream, fired with the arid flame of incipient passion—ethereal, almost epicene—conscious of throbbing vistas of asexual retrospection and chromatic wastes of fruitless future fantasy, interspersed with forlorn gulfs of irremediable darkness and despair. Added to this, and seen in the pose of the limp hand and the melancholy texture of the flesh tints, is the Lethean consciousness of a drowned and devastated ideal, unlightened by one star of promise and irredeemed by one flower of celestial ruth. Am I right? Do I take your meaning?’
‘Just so,’ said Serena, dryly, and turned to look at the Frenchman.
The latter, with shoulders elevated, and pince-nez in position, was gazing eagerly at the portrait. He now turned with a bow to Serena.
‘A portrait, did you say, Monsieur?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask of whom?’
‘Of the new actress, Miss Diana Vere.’
‘It is curious,’ said Gavrolles; ‘but pardon, the face seems familiar to me. I have seen it somewhere before.’
‘Indeed! Well, such a face, once seen, is not likely to be forgotten.’
‘Is it not beautiful!’ cried the Frenchman, with elevated shoulders and extended hands; ‘and seen upon your canvas, how sublime! How shall I express to you—to you, great artist, great genius, what at this moment I feel? But tell me, Monsieur, this—is she a friend of yours? No? Yes?’
41 know her slightly, that is all.’
‘What would I not give to see her, to have the honour of her acquaintance!’
‘If you wish to see her,’ said Serena, ‘you have only to go to the Parthenon Theatre, where she appears nightly.’
‘I will go; but stay, I return this night to Paris—but I shall return, and then, perhaps, you will introduce me?’ Serena shook his head.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he answered. ‘The lady sees no one, and is quite a recluse. What is still more peculiar is the fact that she has a particular aversion to gentlemen of your nation—to France and to Frenchmen without exception.’
‘You amaze me, Monsieur! Ah, this insular prejudice, how bête! But perhaps she has reason—perhaps she has lived in my country.’
‘Can’t say,’ returned Serena, as if tired of the subject; and he commenced again to work at the picture.
Ponto looked over his shoulder as he worked with admiring eyes.
‘You must know Gavrolles better,’ he observed; ‘I like him; we all like him. He is a man of ideas.’
Gavrolles placed his hand upon his heart and bowed.
‘I have learned of my master, the immortal Théophile, to worship what is beautiful, to adore what is superb.’
‘In France, at the present moment,’ continued Ponto, patronisingly, ‘Gavrolles represents the school of supersensuous personal yearning. In his last book of poems, “Parfums de la Chair,” and particularly in that superb fragment, “Cameo Satanique,” he has supplied the connecting link between the celestial appetite of Gautier and the divine nausea of Baudelaire. Till Gavrolles came, the calendar of imperial passion was incomplete. What Smith, Jones, and Keats are to our august poetry, that is he to the poetry of modern France.’
‘Ah, Monsieur, forbear!’ cried the Frenchman. ‘You overwhelm me with shame. Such praise—before the master!’
‘I will go further,’ cried Ponto, recklessly, ‘and I will fearlessly assert, that in the golden roll of the fearless and fecund Parisian Parnassus, there is no more affluent name than that of my friend Gavrolles. His “Chant Aromatique” to the Venus of Dahomey would alone entitle him to a place in that Pantheon where the names of Victor Hugo and Achille de Ganville shine effulgent, while his masterly management of the Sestina, in his great address to myself, is only to be compared with the Titanic sculpture cf Michael Angelo, or the colossal imagery of Potts.’
Serena smiled gloomily. He was familiar with that sort of praise, as addressed to himself, but, with all his cynicism, he scarcely approved of its lavish application to an obscure Frenchman. The fact was, that the whole speech formed part and parcel of an eulogistic article, in Ponto’s best manner, then in type for the ‘Megatherium,’ a widely circulated literary journal in which nepotism and malignity formed equal parts.
‘By the way,’ observed Serena, still quietly at work, ‘I see that MacAlpine has been falling foul of our friend Potts in the “North British.”’
MacAlpine was a cantankerous critic, hailing from beyond the Border, and with a Highland disregard of consequences in the expression of his literary opinions. Ponto turned livid.
‘MacAlpine,’ he exclaims, ‘bears to the immortal Potts the relation that a leper does to Paian Apollo. It is well known that MacAlpine has been guilty of murder, bigamy, rapine, incest, and larceny, but all these are nothing compared to his fiendish and futile statement that Potts is not the most stupendous, wonderful, awe-inspiring, celestial, and cosmic creature existing on this planet. Mac Alpine, it is notorious, left his grandmother to starve in the workhouse, and kicked his little brother to death, but these crimes are venial by the side of his hateful and hellish assertion that your divine and spirit-compelling picture of “Psyche watching the Sleep of Eros” is out of proportion.’
Serena sighed, then smiled.
‘Do you know, my dear Ponto, I sometimes think that a little hostile criticism is refreshing. I really find it so, when it comes in my way.’
Ponto shuddered.
‘The only true attitude of criticism is that of worship,’ he exclaimed. ‘The man who, in contemplating your consummate masterpiece, could be conscious of any feeling save of the surging forces of cosmic yearning, flowering into the form of perfect idealisation, and shining with the reflected light of coruscating eternities of sterile pain—such a man, I say, is capable of any social crime, and incapable of any aesthetic perception.’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Serena. ‘What you say is doubtless very flattering, but if criticism is pure worship, how do you account for your own attacks on the literary productions of the enemies of the aesthetic school?’
‘All modern schools but one are execrable,’ returned Ponto, with a grinding of the teeth and a waving of the hand. ‘It is enough for us to pronounce that they are not—Art! In approaching them we do not criticise—we simply obliterate; we crush, as we crush a reptile or an unclean thing. The man who denies absolute perfection to Potts, or universal mastery to Blanco Serena, at once proclaims, not merely his incompetence to speak on any artistic subject whatever, but by inference his moral degradation as a human being. We wave him from our vision—we wipe him out. He is a loathsome Philistine, an outcast, physically and intellectually abominable. Such a man once said, in my hearing, that “Mademoiselle de Maupin” was not the purest, wholesomest, most supremely sane and salutary book produced since the Divine Comedy, and that, on the whole, he preferred Wordsworth to Gautier as a moral teacher. My whole soul revolted. I shrank from that man with a shudder, and I am convinced that the wretch is ethically lost and intellectually paralytic.’
The Frenchman shook his head dolefully, as over some sad chronicle of human wickedness or sorrow. Serena laughed and turned with twinkling eyes to the excited critic.
‘Confess between ourselves that “Mademoiselle de Maupin” is not virile. For my own part, I never read it without feeling as if I had been slobbered over by a dirty baby.’
‘For God’s sake, Serena,’ cried Ponto, ‘don’t talk like that. I know you don’t mean it, but the very expression is worthy that infernal scoundrel MacAlpine. Not virile? Certainly not, and Heaven forbid! Virility, dear master, is coarseness, ugliness, rudeness, and hideousness. Is a rose-leaf virile? Are sweet shawms, exquisite scents, forlorn pulsations, and cadences of sexless and impotent desire, are these virile? The book of which we speak has been exquisitely called by a contemporary the Golden Book of spirit and sense; nay more, “The Holy Writ of Beauty!” In every page of it we feel the swooning consciousness, the stinging and slaying scourge, of fruitless and rootless passion, and the divine dew of incommunicable and luminous lust watering the spent fibres of a parched and palpitating aesthetic dream. We feel more! We feel that in realising this swoon of sensuous yet despairing pain, sharp as tears, bitter as brine, and sinuous as the serpent, and in falling back like a fountain to the ground from the heaven of eternally unsatisfied longing and delight, we penetrate to the central mystery of life, and see the white heart of the great rose of being pulsating with one melodious throb of self-satiating and non-virile bliss!’
Serena yawned, for he had heard all this before, and he was not particularly interested. As for the Frenchman, he listened and applauded, with many shrugs and smiles, but there was a lurking expression in his cat-like eye which showed that he was not altogether blind to the absurdity of the fatuous Ponto.
It is not our intention further to place on record the lucubrations of this typical critic of the period. The reader is doubtless familiar with the kind of criticism of which he and such as he are the mouthpieces. It has, perhaps, one redeeming merit—that of earnestness and thoroughness—and even its characteristic nepotism should not blind us to the fact that it reveals the existence of a real aspiration.
Arm-in-arm, Ponto and Gavrolles presently sallied forth, leaving Serena to enjoy his quiet meerschaum alone. As they went, the Frenchman was loud in praise of the painter, of his mighty genius and unassuming ways.
‘But this “Ophelia” whom he has painted,’ he cried presently, ‘is she so fair as that?’
Ponto confessed that he seldom went to the theatre, and he had not seen the original.
‘Ah, I am interested much,’ cried the other. ‘I must see her, I must know her, when I return to London.’
They hailed a hansom and got into it together. As they drove along the crowded streets in eager conversation, a young man, passing along on foot, glanced at their faces, started, and gazed eagerly at Gavrolles. The gaze only occupied a moment, then the vehicle was gone.
The young man was Edgar Sutherland, strolling along to his club.
‘That face!’ he muttered to himself, standing and looking after the hansom. ‘Where have I seen it before? Is it possible? Good heavens, now I remember! Can it be indeed the same?’
Lost in thought, with set lips and knitted brow, he walked on to his destination.