A LIKELY STORY
BY
WILLIAM DE MORGAN
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1911
All rights reserved
DEDICATED TO
THE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRER
CONTENTS
A good deal about a box of matches. Concerning a married couple, whom anyone would have thought quarrelsome, to listen to them. Of the difficulty with which the lady housekept, and how her husband was no help at all. But they went to the Old Water Colour. How Sairah only just wiped gently over a tacky picture, and Mr. Aiken said God and Devil. Of the plural number. Of a very pretty girl, but dressy, and her soldier lover, and how Mrs. Aiken was proper. Of her mystical utterance about the young lady. How Mr. Aiken sought for an explanation from Sairah, and created a situation. How his wife went to her Aunt Priscilla, at Athabasca Villa, and cried herself to sleep
How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently. How he woke up from a dream, which went on. The loquacity of a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality. The Artist's name. There was plenty of time to hear more. The exact date of Antiquity. The Rational way of accounting for it
The Picture's tale. It was so well painted—that was why it could hear four hundred years ago. How its painter hungered and thirsted for its original, and vice versa. How old January hid in a spy-hole, to watch May, and saw it all. Of Pope Innocent's penetration. Of certain bells, unwelcome ones. How two innamorati tried to part without a kiss, and failed. Nevertheless assassins stopped it when it had only just begun. But Giacinto got at January's throat. How the picture was framed, and hung where May could only see it by twisting. Of the dungeon below her, where Giacinto might be. How January dug at May with a walking-staff. How the picture was in abeyance, but loved a firefly; then was interred in furniture, and three centuries slipped by. How it sold for six fifty, and was sent to London to a picture-restorer, which is how it comes into the tale. How Mr. Pelly woke up
A Retrospective Chapter. How Fortune's Toy and the Sport of Circumstances fell in love with one of his Nurses. Prose composition. Lady Upwell's majesty, and the Queen's. No engagement. The African War, and Justifiable Fratricide. Cain. Madeline's big dog Cæsar. Cats. Ormuzd and Ahriman. A handy little Veldt. Madeline's Japanese kimono. A discussion of the nature of Dreams. Never mind Athenæus. Look at the Prophet Daniel. Sir Stopleigh's great-aunt Dorothea's twins. The Circulating Library and the potted shrimps. How Madeline read the manuscript in bed, and took care not to set fire to the curtains
Mr. Aiken's sequel. Pimlico Studios. Mr. Hughes's Idea. Aspects of Nature. Mr. Hughes's foot. What had Mr. Aiken been at. Not Fanny Smith. It was Sairah!! Who misunderstood and turned vermilion? Her malice. The Regent's Canal. Mr. Aiken's advice from his friends. Woman and her sex. How Mr. Hughes visited Mr. Aiken one evening, and the Post came, with something too big for the box, while Mrs. Parples slept. Mr. Aiken's very sincerely Madeline Upwell. Her transparency. How the picture's photo stood on the table. Interesting lucubrations of Mr. Hughes. What was that? But it was nothing—only an effect of something. The Vernacular Mind. Negative Juries. How Mr. Aiken stopped an echo, so it was Mr. Hughes's fancy
Follows Mrs. Euphemia Aiken to Coombe and Maiden. Proper pride. You cannot go back on a railway ticket, however small its price. One's Aunts. How Miss Priscilla Bax was not surprised when she heard it was Reginald. Of the Upas Tree of reputations—the Pure Mind. How Aunt Prissy worked her niece up. Of the late Prince Regent, and Tiberius. Never write a letter, if you want the wind to lull. Ellen Jane Dudbury and her mamma. Of Ju-jutsu as an antidote to tattle. Of the relative advantages of Immorality to the two Sexes. Of good souls and busy bodies, and of the Groobs. How that odious little Dolly was the Modern Zurbaran. But he had never so much as called. Colossians three-eighteen. Miss Jessie Bax and her puppy. Miss Volumnia Bax. The delicacy of the female character. Of the Radio-Activity of Space and how Mr. Adolphus Groob sat next to Mrs. Aiken. The Godfrey Pybuses. But they have nothing to do with the story. How Time slipped by, and how Mr. Aiken employed him till the year drew to an end
The Upwell family in London. How Madeline promised not to get mixed up. A nice suburban boy, with a Two-Power Standard. No Jack now! The silver teapot. Miss Priscilla's extraction. Imperialism. Horace Walpole and John Bunyan. The Tapleys. How an item in the Telegraph upset Madeline. How she failed in her mission, but left a photograph behind her. The late Lady Betty Duster's chin. How Mrs. Aiken stayed downstairs and went to sleep in an arm-chair and of a curious experience she had. How she related the same to her cousin Volumnia. Of Icilia Ciaranfi and Donnina Magliabecchi, and of The Dust. The Psychomorphic Report. How Miss Volumnia did not lose her train
How Mrs. Euphemia Aiken found Madeline at home, who consequently did not go to a Bun-Worry. But she had met Miss Bax. How these ladies each confessed to Bogyism, of a sort, and Madeline said make it up. How Mr. Aiken took Mr. Tick's advice about Diana, but could not find his Transparent Oxide of Chromium. Man at his loneliest. No Tea. And what a Juggins he had been! Of Mrs. Gapp's dipsomania. The Boys. How Mr. Aiken lit the gas, and heard a cab. How he nearly kissed Madeline, who had brought his wife home, but it was only a mistake, glory be! Was there soap in the house?
Madeline's report, next morning. Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris. How well Madeline held her tongue to keep her promise. An anticipation of post-story time. How a Deputation waited on Mrs. Aiken from the Psychomorphic. Mr. MacAnimus and Mr. Vacaw. Gevartius much more correct for Miss Jessie to listen to than the Laughing Cavalier. Of Self-hypnosis and Ghosts, their respective categories. The mad cat's nose outside the blanket. Singular Autophrenetic experience of Mr. Aiken. Stenography. A case in point. Not a Phenomenon at all. How Miss Volumnia's penetration penetrated, and got at something. Suggestion traced home. Enough to explain any Phenomenon
How Mr. Pelly, subject to interruption, read aloud a translation from Italian. Who was the Old Devil? Who was the Duchessa? Of the narrator's incarceration. Of his incredible escape. Whose horse was that in the Avenue? How Mr. Pelly read faster. Was Uguccio killed? Sir Stopleigh scandalised. But then it was the Middle Ages—one of them, anyhow! How only Duchesses know if Dukes are asleep. Of the bone Mr. Pelly picked with Madeline. But what becomes of Unconscious Cerebration? Ambrose Paré. Marta's little knife. Love was not unknown in the Middle Ages. The end of the manuscript. But Sir Stopleigh went out to see a visitor, in the middle. How Madeline turned white, and went suddenly to bed. What was it all about? Seventy-seven could wait
How the picture spoke again. Abstract metaphysical questions, and no answers. How the Picture's memory was sharpened, and how Mr. Pelly woke up. Mr. Stebbings and Mrs. Buckmaster. The actule fax. Jack's resurrection, without an arm. Full particulars. All fair in love. How Mr. Pelly knew the picture could see all, and how Madeline had not gone to bed. Captain Maclagan's family. Fuller particulars. General Fordyce and the Bart. not wanted. What the picture must have seen and may have thought. Good-bye to the story. Mere postscript
CHAPTER I
A good deal about a box of matches. Concerning a married couple, whom anyone would have thought quarrelsome, to listen to them. Of the difficulty with which the lady housekept, and how her husband was no help at all. But they went to the Old Water Colour. How Sairah only just wiped gently over a tacky picture, and Mr. Aiken said God and Devil. Of the plural number. Of a very pretty girl, but dressy, and her soldier lover, and how Mrs. Aiken was proper. Of her mystical utterance about the young lady. How Mr. Aiken sought for an explanation from Sairah, and created a situation. How his wife went to her Aunt Priscilla, at Athabasca Villa, and cried herself to sleep.
"You'll have to light the gas, Sairah!" said an Artist in a fog, one morning in Chelsea. For although summer was on the horizon, it was cold and damp; and, as we all know, till fires come to an end, London is not fogless—if, indeed, it ever is so. This was a very black fog, of the sort that is sure to go off presently, because it is only due to atmospheric conditions. Meanwhile, it was just as well to light the gas, and not go on pretending you could see and putting your eyes out.
This Artist, after putting his eyes out, called out, from a dark corner in his Studio, to something in a dark corner outside. And that something shuffled into the room and scratched something else several times at intervals on something gritty. It was Sairah, evidently, and Sairah appeared impatient.
"They're damp, Sairah," said the Artist feebly. "Why do you get that sort? Why can't you get Bryant and May?"
"These are Bryant and May, Mr. Aching. You can light 'em yourself if it sootes you better. I know my place. Only they're Safety, and fly in your eye. Puttin' of 'em down to dry improves. I'd screw up a spell, only there's no gettin' inside of the stove. Nor yet any fire, in the manner of speaking."
The scratching continued. So did Sairah's impatience. Then the supply of the something stopped, for Sairah said: "There ain't any more. That's the hend of the box. And exceptin' I go all the way to the King's Road there ain't another in the house—not Bryant and May."
"Oh dear, oh dear!" said the Artist, in the lowest spirits. But he brightened up. "Perhaps there's a Vesta," said he.
Sairah threw the thing nearest to her against the thing nearest to it to indicate her readiness to search.
"Look in the pocket of my plaid overcoat, Sairah," he continued. "It was a new box Tuesday."
Sairah shuffled into another room, and was heard to turn over garments. The Artist seemed to know which was which, by the sound. For he called out: "None of those! On the hook." Sairah appeared to turn up the soil in a new claim, and presently announced: "Nothing in neither pocket. Only coppers and a thrip'ny!"
"Oh dear—I'm certain there was! Are you sure you've looked? Just look again, Sairah." He seemed distressed that there should be no Vesta in his overcoat pocket.
"You can see for yourself—by lookin'," says Sairah. "And then there won't be any turnin' round and blamin' me!" Whereupon she appears, bearing a garment. The reason she shuffles is that she has to hold the heels of her shoes down on the floor with her feet.
The owner of the overcoat dived deep into the pockets, but found nothing. He appeared dumbfoundered. "Well, now!" he continued. "Whatever can have become of my Vestas?" And thereon, as one in panic on emergency, he put down the sponge and brush he was using and searched rapidly through all his other pockets. He slapped himself in such places as might still contain forgotten pockets; and then stood in thought, as one to whom a light of memory will come if he thinks hard enough, but with a certain glare and distortion of visage to say, in place of speech, how truly active is his effort of thought. And then of a sudden he is illuminated, and says of course!—he knows! But he doesn't know, for, after leaving the room to seek for his Vestas, and banging some doors, he comes back, saying he thought they were there and they aren't. Wherefore, Sairah must run out and get some more; and look sharp, because they must have the gas! But Sairah, who has not been exerting herself, awakes suddenly from something equivalent to sleep which she can indulge in upright, without support, and says, nodding towards a thing she speaks of, "Ain't that them on the stove?" And the Artist says, "No, it isn't; it's an empty box. Cut along and look sharp!" Sairah made no response; and time was lost in conversation, as follows:
"That ain't an empty box!"
"It is an empty box! Do cut along and look sharp!"
"It ain't my idear of an empty box. But, of course, it ain't for me to say nothin'!"
"I tell you I'm quite sure it's empty. Perfectly certain!"
"Well! It ain't for me to say anything. But if you had a asted me, I should have said there wouldn't any harm have come of looking inside of it, to see. Of course I can go, if you come to that! Only there's tandstickers in the kitchen, and for the matter of that, the fire ain't let out; nor likely when it's not the sweep till Wednesday."
"Get 'em out of the kitchen, then! Get the tandstickers or get anything. Anywhere; only look alive!" He seemed roused to impatience.
"Of course I can get them out of the kitchen. Or there's missus's bedroom candlestick stood on the landin', with one in, and guttered." Sairah enumerated two or three other resources unexhausted, and left the room.
When she had vanished, the Artist went and stood with his back to the stove, for it was too dark to work. Being there, he picked up the empty box and seemed to examine it. Having done so, he left the room, and called over the stair-rail, to a lower region.
"Sair-ah!"
"Did you call, Sir?"
"Yes—you needn't go! There's some here."
"'Arf a minute till I put these back."
And then from underground came the voice of the young woman saying something enigmatical about always wishing to give satisfaction, and there was never any knowing. But she remained below, because her master said: "You needn't come up again now. I'll light it myself." In an instant, however, he called out again that she must bring the matches, after all, because the Vestas were all stuck to, through being on the stove.
When she reappeared, after a good deal of shuffling about below, he asked her why on earth she couldn't come at once. She explained, with some indignation, that she had been doing a little dusting in the parlour; and, of course, the tandstickers, she put 'em back in the kitchen, not bein' wanted, as you might say. But all obstacles to lighting the gas were now removed.
Illumination presented itself first as an incombustible hiss; but shortly became a flame, and was bright enough to work by. The Artist did not seem very contented with it, and said that the pressure was weak, and it was off at the main, and there was water in the pipes, and the gas was bad and very dear. But he worked for half-an-hour or so, and then a young woman came in, of whom he took no notice; so she must have been his wife. Of whom anyone might have thought that she was stopping away from a funeral against her will, and resented the restraint. For she bit her lips and tapped with her feet as she sat in the arm-chair she dropped into when she entered the room. She made no remark, but maintained an aggressive silence. Presently the young man moaned.
"What is the rumpus?" said he plaintively. "What is the everlasting rumpus?"
"It's very easy for you. Men can! But if you were a woman, you would feel it like I do. Thank God, Reginald, you are not a woman!"
"Good job I ain't! We might quarrel, if I was. You've got something to be thankful for, you see, Mrs. Hay." This way of addressing her, as Mrs. Hay, was due to the substitution of the initial for the whole name, which was Aiken.
"Oh, you are unfeeling," said she reproachfully. "You know perfectly well what I meant!"
"Meant that you thanked God I wasn't a woman." But this made the lady evince despair. "Well!—what did you mean, then? Spit it out."
"You are tired of me, Reginald, and I shall go for my walk alone. Of course, what I meant was plain enough, to any but a downright fool. I meant you were to thank God, Reginald—on your knees!—that you were a man and not a woman. The idea of my saying anything so silly! Wait till you are a woman, and then see! But if you're not coming, I shall go. I don't know why you want the gas. It all mounts up in the bills. And then I shall be found fault with, I suppose."
"I want the gas because I can't see without it."
After a phase of despair, followed by resignation, the lady said, speaking in the effect of the latter: "I think, Reginald, if you had any regard for the bills, you would just look out of the window, once in an hour or so, and not consume all those cubic feet of gas at three-and-ninepence. The fog's gone! There's the sun. I knew it would be, and it was perfectly ridiculous to put off going to the Old Water Colour."
"Suppose we go, then? Hay, Mrs. Hay? Get your hat, and we'll go." He turned the gas out.
"Oh no! It's no use going now—it's too late. And it's all so depressing. And you know it is! And I shall have to get rid of this new girl, Sairah."
"I thought she looked honest." This was spoken feebly.
She answered irritably: "You always think they look honest when they're ugly. This one's no better than they all are. It's not the honesty, though. It's she won't do anything."
"Why didn't you have that rather pleasin'-looking gyairl with a bird's wing on her hat?"
"That conscious minx! I really do sometimes quite wonder at you, Reginald! Besides, she wanted a parlourmaid's place, and wouldn't go where there wasn't a manservant kept. You men are such fools! And you don't give any help."
Mr. Aiken, observing a disposition to weep in these last words, seemed embarrassed for a moment; but after reflection became conciliatory. "Sairah does seem lazy. But she says she's not been accustomed."
"And then you give way! You might put that magnifying-glass down just for one moment, and pay attention! Of course, she says she's not been accustomed to anything and everything. They all do! But what can one expect when their master blacks his own boots?"
"What can I do, when she says she hopes she knows her place, and she ain't a general, where a boy comes in to do the rough work?"
"What can you do? Why, of course not carry your dirty boots down into the kitchen and black them yourself, and have her say, when you ask for the blacking, do you know where it's kept? I've no patience! But some men will put up with anything, except their wives; and then one's head's snapped off! 'Do you know where it's kept!' The idea! ... Well, are you coming, or are you not? Because, if you're coming, I must put on my grey tweed. If you're not coming, say so!"
But Mr. Aiken did not say so. So, after a good deal of time needlessly spent in preparation, the two asked each other several times if they were ready, shouting about the house to that effect. And then, when they reappeared in the Studio, having succeeded very indifferently in improving their appearance, the lady asked the gentleman more than once whether she looked right, and he said in a debilitated way, Yes!—he thought so. Whereon she took exception to his want of interest in her appearance, and he said she needn't catch him up so short. However, they did get away in the end, and Sairah came in to do a little tidin' up—not often getting the opportunity in the Studio—in pursuance of a programme arranged between herself and her mistress, in an aside out of hearing of her master, in order that the latter should not interpose, as he always did, and he knew it, to prevent anything the least like cleanness or order. How he could go on so was a wonder to his wife.
As for Sairah, the image of herself which she nourished in her own mind was apparently that of one determined to struggle single-handed to re-establish system in the midst of a world given over to Chaos. Whatever state the place would get into if it wasn't for her, she couldn't tell! The other inhabitants of the planet would never do a hand's turn; anyone could see that! In fact, the greater part of them devoted themselves to leavin' things about for her to clear up. The remainder, to gettin' in the way. When you were that werrited, you might very easy let something drop, and no great wonder! And things didn't show, not when riveted, if only done careful enough. Or a little diamond cement hotted up and the edges brought to. There was a man they knew his address at Pibses Dairy, over a hivory-turner's he lived, done their ornamential pail beautiful, and you never see a crack!
But Sairah's alacrity, when she found herself alone in the Studio, fell short of her implied forecast of it. Instead of taking opportunity by the forelock, and doing the little bit of tidying up that she stood pledged to, she gave herself up to the contemplation of the Fine Arts.
Now, there were two Fine Arts to which this master, Mr. Reginald Aiken, devoted himself. One, the production of original compositions; which did not pay, owing to their date. Some of these days they would be worth a pot of money—you see if they wouldn't! The other Fine Art was that of the picture-restorer, and did pay. At any rate, it paid enough to keep Mr. Aiken and his wife—and at this particular moment Sairah—in provisions cooked and quarrelled over at the street-door by the latter; leaving Mrs. Aiken's hundred a year, which her Aunt Priscilla allowed her, to pay the rent and so on, with a good margin for cabs and such-like. Anyhow, as the lady of the house helped with the house, the Aikens managed, somehow. Or perhaps it should be said that, somehow, the Aikens managed anyhow. Mrs. Verity, their landlady, had her opinions about this.
This, however, is by the way; but, arising as it does from this Artist's twofold mission in life, it connects itself with a regrettable occurrence which came about in consequence of Sairah's not confining herself to tidying up, and getting things a bit straight, but seizing the opportunity to do a little dusting also.
Those on whom the guardianship of a picture recently varnished has fallen know the assiduous devotion with which it must be watched to protect it from insect-life and flue. Even the larger lepidoptera may fail to detach themselves from a fat, slow-drying varnish, without assistance; and who does not know how terribly the delicate organization of beetles' legs may suffer if complicated with treacle or other glutinous material. But beetles' legs may be removed with care from varnish, and leave no trace of their presence, provided the varnish is not too dry. Flue, on the other hand, at any stage of desiccation, spells ruin, and is that nasty and messy there's no doing anything with it; and you may just worrit yourself mad, and sticky yourself all over, and only make matters worse than you began. So you may just as well let be, and not be took off your work no longer; nursing, however, an intention of saying well now!—you declare, who ever could have done that, and not a livin' soul come anigh the place, you having been close to the whole time, and never hardly took your eyes off?
That sketches the line of defence Sairah was constrained to adopt, after what certainly was at least a culpable error of judgment. She should not have wiped over any picture at all, not even with the cleanest of dusters. And though the one she used was the one she kep' for the Studio, nothing warranted its application to the Italian half-length that had been entrusted to Mr. Aiken by Sir Stopleigh Upwell, to clean and varnish carefully, and touch up the frame, without destroying the antique feeling of the latter.
Mr. Aiken was certainly to blame for not locking the door and taking away the key. So he had no excuse for using what is called strong language when he and his wife came back from the Old Water Colour. She had not been in ten minutes—a period she laid great stress on—when she heard him shouting inside the Studio. And then he came out in the passage and shouted down the stairs.
"Good God, Euphemia! where are you? Where the Devil are you? Do come up here! I'm ruined, I tell you! ... that brute of a girl!..." And he went stamping about in his uncontrollable temper.
His wife was alarmed, but not to the extent of forgetting to enter her protest against the strong language. "Reginald!" she said with dignity, "have I not often told you that if you say God and Devil I shall go away and spend the rest of the day with my Aunt Priscilla, at Coombe? Before the girl and all!"
But her husband was seriously upset at something. "Don't go on talking like an idiot," he said irritably. Then his manner softened, as though he was himself a little penitent for the strong language, and he subsided into "Do come up and see what that confounded girl has done." Those conversant with the niceties of strong language will see there was concession in this.
Mrs. Aiken went upstairs, and saw what the confounded girl had done. But she did not seem impressed. "It wants a rub," she said. Then her husband said, "That's just like you, Euphemia. You're a fool." Whereupon the lady said in a dignified manner, "Perhaps if I am a fool, I'd better go." And was, as it were, under compulsion to do so, seeing that no objection was raised.
But she must have gone slowly, inasmuch as she presently called back from the landing, "What's that you said?" not without severity.
"I said 'Call the girl.'"
"You said nothing of the sort. What was it you said before that?"
Now, what her husband had said was, "The idea of a rub! Idiotic barbarian!" He was unable to qualify this speech effectually, and his wife went some more stairs up. Not to disappear finally; a compromise was possible.
"Did you say 'idiotic barbarian,' or 'idiotic barbarians'? Because it makes all the difference."
"Barbarians. Plural. Don't be a fool, and come down."
Thereupon the lady came back as far as the door, but seemed to waver in concession, for she made reservations.
"I am not coming down because of anything," she said, "but only to remind you that that Miss Upwell was to come some time to see the picture, and I think that's her."
"What's her? I don't hear anyone at the door."
"It's no use gaping out of the front-window. You know quite well what I mean. That's her in the carriage, gone to the Macnivensons' by mistake for us, as people always do and always will, Reginald, until Mrs. Verity gets the Borough Council to change the numbers. 'Thirty-seven A' is a mere mockery."
Mr. Aiken came out of the Studio, and went up to the side-window on the landing, commanding a view of the street in which thirty-seven A stood, his own tenancy being in the upper half of a corner house. "That's her," said he. "And a young swell. Sweetheart, p'raps! Smart set, they look. But, I say, Mrs. Hay..."
"Do come away from the window. They'll see you, and it looks so bad. What do you say?"
"What the Devil am I to do? I can't let her see the picture in that state."
"Nonsense! Just wipe the mess off. You are such a fidget, Reginald."
But the Artist could not have his work treated thus lightly. The girl must say he had been called away on important business. It was absolutely impossible to let that picture be seen in its present state. And it would take over an hour to make it fit to be seen.... Well, of course, it was difficult, Mr. Aiken admitted, to think what to say, all in a hurry! He thought very hard, and twice said, "I've an idea. Look here!" And his wife said, "Well?" But nothing came of it. Then he said, "Anyhow, she mustn't come into the Studio. That's flat!..." But when, in answer to inquiry as to how the difficulty of the position should be met, he riposted brusquely, "Who's to see her? Why, you!"—Mrs. Aiken said, in the most uncompromising way, No—that she wouldn't; the idea! If there were to be any fibs told, her husband must tell them himself, and not put them off on her. It was unmanly cowardice. Let him tell his own fibs.
But the colloquy, which threatened to become heated, was interrupted by a knock at the door. Warmth of feeling had to give way before necessity for action. Broadly speaking, this took the form of affectation, on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Aiken, of a remoteness from the Studio not favoured by the resources of their premises, and, on the part of Sairah, of a dramatic effort to which she proved altogether unequal. She was instructed to say that she didn't know if her master was at home, but would see, if the lady and gentleman would walk into the Studio. She was then to convey an impression of passing through perspectives of corridors, and opening doors respectfully, and meeting with many failures, but succeeding in the end in running her quarry down in some boudoir or private chapel. She failed, and was audible to the visitors in the Studio, within a few feet of its door, which didn't 'asp, unless pulled to sharp. She had not pulled it to sharp. And her words were not well chosen:—"I said to 'em to set down till you come, and you wouldn't be a minute." No more they were; but there are more ways than one of not being a minute, and they chose the one most illustrative—to Mrs. Aiken's mind—of the frequency of unexpected visits from the élite. "Don't go rushing in, as if no one ever came!" said she to her husband.
The young lady and gentleman did not sit down, but walked about the room, the former examining its contents. The gentleman, who was palpably an officer in a cavalry regiment, neglected the Fine Arts, in favour of the lady, whom he may be said to have gloated over at a respectful distance. But he expressed himself to the effect that this was an awful lark, straining metaphor severely. The young lady, whose beauty had made Sairah's head reel, said, "Yes—it's fun," more temperately. But both looked blooming and optimistic, and ready to recognise awful larks and fun in almost any combination of circumstances.
The first instinct of visitors to a Studio is to find some way of avoiding looking at the pictures. A good method towards success in this object is to lean back and peep over all the canvases with their faces to the wall, and examine all the sketch-books, in search of what really interests you so much more than finished work; to wit, the first ideas of the Artist, fresh from his brain—incomplete, of course, but full of an indefinable something. They are himself, you see! But they spoil your new gloves, and perhaps you are going on to Hurlingham. These young people were; and that, no doubt, was why the young lady went no further in her researches than to discover the rich grimy quality of the dirt they compelled her to wallow in. It repulsed her, and she had to fall back on the easels and their burdens.
They glanced at "Diana and Actæon," unfinished, the Artist's capo d'opera at this date, and appeared embarrassed for a moment, but conscious that something is still due to High Art.
"Why don't you say the drawing's fine, or the tone, or something? You're not doing your duty, Jack." Thus spoke the young lady, who presently, to the relief of both, found an enthusiasm. "She's perfectly lovely! But is she Mr. Malkin's work? She isn't—she's our picture! She's Early Italian." She clapped her hands and laughed with delight. Oh dear!—how pretty she looked, transfixed, as it were, with her lips apart opposite to the picture Sairah had been attending to!
The young man took his eyes off her to glance at the picture, then put them back again. "I don't dislike 'em Early Italian," he said. But he wasn't paying proper attention; and, besides, Sairah's little essay towards picture-restoration had caught his passing glance. "What's all that woolly mess?" said he.
"Picture-cleaning, of course," said the lady. "Mr. Malthus knows what he's about—at least, I suppose so.... Oh, here he is!" Now, this young lady ought to have made herself mistress of the Artist's real name before visiting his Studio. Not having done so, his sudden appearance—he had taken the bit in his teeth and rushed in as though at most very few people ever came—was a little embarrassing to her, especially as he said correctively, "Aiken." Thereon the young lady said she meant Aiken, which may have been true, or not. However, she got the conversation on a sound footing by a little bit of truthfulness. "I was just saying to Captain Calverley that the 'woolly mess,' as he is pleased to call it, is what you are doing to the picture. Isn't it, now?"
Mr. Aiken satisfied his conscience cleverly. He smiled in a superior way—as a master smiles at one that is not of his school—and said merely, "Something of the kind."
This young lady, Madeline Upwell, had never been in a real picture-restorer's Studio before, and could not presume to be questioning anything, or taking exceptions. So she accepted Sairah's handiwork as technical skill of a high order. And Mr. Aiken, his conscience at ease at having avoided fibs, which so often lead to embarrassments, felt quite in high spirits, and could give himself airs about his knowledge of Early Italian Art.
"A fine picture!" said he. "But not a Bronzino."
Miss Upwell looked dejected, and said, "Oh dear!—isn't it? Ought it to be?" Captain Calverley said, "P'raps it's by somebody else." But he was evidently only making conversation. And Miss Upwell said to him, "Jack, you don't know anything about it. Be quiet!" Whereupon Captain Calverley was quiet. He was very good and docile, and no wonder; for the fact is, his inner soul purred like a cat whenever this young lady addressed him by name.
Mr. Aiken went on to declare his own belief about the authorship in question. His opinion was of less than no value, but he gave it for what it was worth. The picture was palpably the work of Mozzo Vecchio, or his son Cippo—probably the latter, who was really the finer artist of the two, in spite of Jupp. As to the identity of the portrait, he did not agree with any of the theories about it. He then, receiving well-bred encouragement to proceed from his hearers, threw himself into a complete exposition of his views—although he frequently dwelt upon their insignificance and his own—with such enthusiasm that it was with a wrench to his treatment of the subject that he became aware that his wife had come into the room and was expecting to be taken notice of, venomously. At the same time it dawned on him that his visitors had assumed the appearance of awaiting formal introduction. The method of indicating this is not exactly like endeavouring to detect a smell of gas, nor giving up a conundrum and waiting for the answer, nor standing quite still to try on, nor any particular passage in fielding at cricket; but there may be a little of each in it. Only, you mustn't speak on any account—mind that! You may say "er"—if that indicates the smallest speakable section of a syllable—as a friendly lead to the introducer. And it is well to indicate, if you can, how sweet your disposition will be towards the other party when the introducer has taken action, like the Treasury. But the magic words must be spoken.
Miss Upwell was beginning to feel a spirit of Chauvinism rising in her heart, that might in time have become "Is this Mrs. Aiken?" with a certain gush of provisional joy, when the gentleman perceived his neglect, and said, "Ah—oh!—my wife, of course! Beg pardon!" On which Mrs. Aiken said, "You must forgive my husband," with an air of spacious condescension, and the incident ended curiously by a kind of alliance between the two ladies against the social blunders of male mankind.
But the Artist's wife declined to fall in with current opinion about the picture. "I suppose it's very beautiful, and all that," said she. "Only don't ask me to admire it! I never have liked that sort of thing, and I never shall like it." She went on to say the same thing more frequently than public interest in her decisions appeared to warrant.
The young lady said, in a rather plaintive, disappointed tone, "But is it that sort of thing?" She had evidently fallen in love with the picture, and while not prepared to deny that sorts of things existed which half-length portraits oughtn't to be, was very reluctant to have a new-found idol pitchforked into their category.
The Artist said, "What the dooce you mean, Euphemia, I'm blest if I know!" He looked like an Artist who wished his wife hadn't come into his room when visitors were there.
The Captain said, "What sort of thing? I don't see that she's any sort at all. Thundering pretty sort, anyhow!"
Thereupon the Artist's wife said, "I suppose I'm not to speak," and showed symptoms of a dangerous and threatening self-subordination. The lady visitor, perceiving danger ahead, with great tact exclaimed: "Oh, but I do know so exactly what Mrs. Aiken means." She didn't know, the least in the world. But what did that matter? She went on to dwell on the beauty of the portrait, saying that she should persuade Pupsey to have it over the library chimneypiece and take away that dreary old Kneller woman. It was the best light in the whole place.
But her sweetly meant effort to soothe away the paroxysm of propriety which seemed to have seized upon the lady of the house was destined to fail, for the husband of the latter must needs put his word in, saying, "I don't see any ground for it. Never shall." This occasioned an intensification of his wife's attitude, shown by a particular form of silence, and an underspeech to Miss Upwell, as to one who would understand, "No ground?—with those arms and shoulders! And look at her open throat—oh, the whole thing!" which elicited a sympathetic sound, meant to mean anything. But the young lady was only being civil. Because she had really no sympathy whatever with this Mrs. What's-her-name, and spoke with severity of her afterwards, under that designation. At the moment, however, she made no protest beyond an expression of rapturous admiration for the portrait, saying it was the most fascinating head she had ever seen in a picture. And as for the arms and open throat, they were simply ducky. The Artist's wife could find nothing to contradict flatly in this, and had to content herself with, "Oh yes, the beauty's undeniable. But that was how they did it."
The young officer appeared to want to say something, but to be diffident. A nod of encouragement from Miss Upwell produced, "Why, I was going to say—wasn't it awfully jolly of 'em to do it that way?" The speaker coloured slightly, but when the young lady said, "Bravo, Jack! I'm on your side," he looked happy and reinstated.
But when could the picture be finished and be sent to Surley Stakes? The young lady would never be happy till it was safe there, now she had seen it. Would Mr. Aiken get it done in a week? ... No?—then in a fortnight? The Artist smiled in a superior way, from within the panoply of his mystery, and intimated that at least a month would be required; and, indeed, to do justice to so important a job, he would much rather have said six weeks. He hoped, however, that Miss Upwell would be content with his assurance that he would do his best.
Miss Upwell would not be at all content. Still, she would accept the inevitable. How could she do otherwise, with Captain Calverley's sisters waiting for them at Hurlingham?
"Quite up to date!" was the verdict of the Artist's wife, as soon as her guest was out of hearing.
"Who?" said the Artist. Then, as one who steps down from conversation to communication, he added in business tones: "I say, Euphemia, I shall have to run this all down with turps before the copal hardens, and I really must give my mind to it. You had better hook it."
"I'm going directly. But it's easy to say 'who?'"
"Oh, I say, do hook it! I can't attend to you and this at the same time."
"I'm going. But it is easy to say 'who?' And you know it's easy."
The Artist, who was coquetting with one of those nice little corkscrews that bloom on Artists' bottles, became impatient. "Wha-a-awt is it you're going on about?" he exclaimed, exasperated. "Can't you leave the girl alone, and hook it?"
"I can leave the room," said his wife temperately, "and am doing so. But you see you knew perfectly well who, all along!" Even so the Japanese wrestler, who has got a certainty, is temperance itself towards his victim, who writhes in vain.
Why on earth could not the gentleman leave the lady to go her own way, and attend to his work? He couldn't; and must needs fan the fires of an incipient wrangle that would have burned down, left to itself. "Don't be a fool, Euphemia," said he. "Can't you answer my question? What do you mean by 'quite up to date'?"
Now, Mrs. Aiken had a much better memory than her husband. "Because," she replied, dexterously seizing on his weak point, "you never asked any such question, Reginald. If you had asked me to tell you what I meant by 'quite up to date,' I should have told you what I meant by 'quite up to date.' But I shall not tell you now, Reginald, because it is worse than ridiculous for you to pretend you do not know the meaning of 'quite up to date,' when it is not only transparently on the surface, but obvious. Ask anyone. Ask my Aunt Priscilla. Ask Mrs. Verity." The lady had much better have stopped here. But she wished to class her landlady amongst the lower intelligences, so she must needs add, somewhat in the rear of her enumeration, in a quick sotto voce, "Ask the girl Sairah, for that matter!"
"What's that?" said her husband curtly.
"You heard what I said."
"Oh yes, I heard what you said. Well—suppose I ask the girl Sairah!"
"Reginald! If you are determined to make yourself and your wife ridiculous, I shall go. I do think that, even if you have no common sense, you might have a little good-feeling. The girl Sairah! The idea!" She collected herself a little more—some wandering scraps were out of bounds—and went almost away, just listening back on the staircase landing.
Now, although an impish intention may have flickered in the mind of Mr. Reginald Aiken, he certainty had no definite idea of catechising the girl Sairah about the phrase under discussion when he rang the bell for her and summoned her to the Studio. But his wife having taken him au serieux instead of laughing at his absurdity, the impish intention flared up, and had not time to die down before Sairah answered the bell. Would it have done so if he had not been conscious that his wife was still standing at pause on the staircase to keep an eye on the outcome?
So, when Sairah lurched into his sanctum, asking whether he rang—not without suggestion that offence would be given by an affirmative answer—his real intention in summoning the damsel wavered at the instigation of the spirit of mischief that had momentary possession of him; and instead of blowing her up roundly for damaging his picture, he actually must needs ask her the very question his wife had said "The idea!" about. He spoke loud, that his speech should reach that lady's listening ears.
"Yes Sairah: I rang for you. What is the meaning of...?" He paused a moment, to overhear, if possible, some result of his words in the passage.
"It's nothin' along o' me. I ain't done nothin'." A brief sketch of a blameless life, implied in these words, seemed to Sairah the safest policy. She thought she was going to be indicted for the ruin of the picture.
"Shut up, Sairah!" said the Artist, and listened. Of course, he was doing this, you see, to plague his wife. But he heard nothing, being nevertheless mysteriously aware that Mrs. Aiken was still on the landing above, taking mental notes of what she overheard. So he pursued his inquiry, regarding Sairah as a mere lay-figure of use in practical joking. "I expect you know the meaning of 'up to date,' Sairah," said he, and listened. But no sign came from without. If the ears this pleasantry was intended to reach were still there, their owner was storing up retribution for its author in silence.
It was but natural that this young woman Sairah, having no information on any topic whatever—for this condition soon asserts itself in young women of her class after their Board-School erudition has had time to die a natural death—should be apt to ascribe sinister meanings to things she did not understand. And in this case none the less for the air and aspect of the speaker, which, while it really was open to the misinterpretation that it was intended to convey insinuating waggery to the person addressed, had only reference to the enjoyment Mr. Aiken had, or was proposing to himself, from a mild joke perpetrated at his wife's expense. However, the young woman was not going to fly out—an action akin to the showing of a proper spirit—without an absolute certainty of the point to be flown out about. Therefore Sairah said briefly, "Ask your parding!" Briefly, but with a slight asperity.
The Artist, though he was in some doubt whether his jest was worth proceeding with, was too far committed to retreat. With his wife listening on the stairs, was he not bound to pursue his inquiry? Obviously he must do so, or run the risk of being twitted with his indecision by that lady later on. So he said, with effrontery, "Your mistress says you can tell me the meaning of the expression 'up to date,' Sairah."
Sairah turned purple. "Well, I never!" said she. "Mrs. Aching to say that of a respectable girl!"
Mr. Aiken became uncomfortable, as Sairah turned purple. He began to perceive that his jest was a very stupid one. As Sairah turned purpler, he became more uncomfortable still. A panic-stricken review of possible ways out of the difficulty started in his mind, but soon stopped for want of materials. Explanation—cajolery—severe transition to another topic—he thought of all three. The first was simply impossible to reasoning faculties like Sairah's. The second was out of Mr. Aiken's line. If the girl had been a model now! ... And who can say that then it might not have been ticklish work—yes!—even with the strong personal vanity of that inscrutable class to appeal to? There was nothing for it but the third, and Mr. Aiken's confidence in it was very weak. Something had to be done, though, with Sairah's colour crescendo, and probably Mrs. Hay outside the door; that was the image his mind supplied. He felt like an ill-furnished storming-party, a forlorn hope in want of a ladder, as he said, "There—never mind that now! You've been meddling with this picture. You know you have. Look here!" Had he been a good tactician, he would have affected sudden detection of the injury to the picture. But he lost the opportunity.
Sairah held the strong position of an Injured Woman. If she was to have the sack, she much preferred to have it "on her own"—to wrest it, as it were, from a grasp unwilling to surrender it—rather than to have it forced upon her unwilling acceptance, with a month's notice and a character for Vandalism. So she repeated, as one still rigid with amazement, "Mrs. Aching to say that of a respectable girl!" and remained paralysed, in dumb show.
Mr. Aiken perceived with chagrin that he might have saved the situation by, "What's this horrible mess on the picture? You've been touching this!" and a drowning storm of indignation to follow. It was too late now. He had to accept his task as Destiny set it, and he cut a very poor figure over it—was quite outclassed by Sairah. He could actually manage nothing better than, "Do let that alone, girl! I tell you it was foolery.... I tell you it was a joke. Look here at this picture—the mischief you've done it. You know you did it!"
To which Sairah thus:—"Ho, it's easy gettin' out of it that way, Mr. Aching. Not but what I have always known you for the gentleman—I will say that. But such a thing to say! If I'd a been Missis, I should have shrank!"
The Artist felt that there was nothing for it but to grapple with the situation. He shouted at the indignant young woman, "Don't be such a confounded idiot, girl! I mean, don't be such an insufferable goose. I tell you, you're under a complete misconception. Nobody's ever said anything against you. Nobody's said a word against your confounded character, and be hanged to it! Do have a little common sense! A young woman of your age ought to be ashamed to be such a fool."
But Sairah's entrenchments were strengthened, if anything. "It's easy calling fool," said she. "And as for saying against, who's using expressions, and passing off remarks now?" Controversial opponents incapable of understanding anything whatever are harder to refute than the shrewdest intellects. Mr. Aiken felt that Sairah was oak and triple brass against logical conviction. Explanation only made matters worse.
A vague desperate idea of summoning his wife and accusing Sairah of intoxication, as a sort of universal solvent, crossed his mind; and he actually went so far as to look out into the passage for her, but only to find that she had vanished for the moment. Coning back, he assumed a sudden decisive tone, saying, "There—that'll do, Sairah! Now go." But Sairah wasn't going to give in, evidently, and he added, "I mean, that's enough!"
Whether it was or wasn't, Sairah showed no signs of concession. She was going, no fear! She was going—ho yes!—she was going. She said she was going so often that Mr. Aiken said at last, "Well, go!" But when the young woman began to go—vengefully, as it were, even as a quadruped suddenly stung by an ill-deserved whip—he inconsequently exclaimed, "Stop!" For a fell purpose had been visible in her manner. What, he asked, was she going to do?
What was she going to do? Oh yes!—it was easy asking questions. But the answer would reach Mr. Aiken in due course. Nevertheless, if he wanted to know, she would be generous, and tell him. She wasn't an underhand girl, like the majority of her sex at her age. Mean concealments were foreign to her nature. She was going straight to Mrs. Aching to give a month's warning, and you might summing in the police to search her box. All should be aboveboard, as had been the case in her family for generations past, and she never had experienced such treatment all the places she'd been in, nor yet expected to it.
It was then that this Artist made a serious error of judgment. He would have done much more wisely to allow this stupid maid-of-all-work to go away and attend to some of it in the kitchen, while he looked after his own. Instead of doing so, he, being seriously alarmed at the possible domestic consequences of his very imperfectly thought out joke—for he knew his wife accounted the finding of a new handmaid life's greatest calamity—must needs make an ill-advised attempt to calm the troubled waters on the same line that he would have adopted, at any rate in his Bohemian days, with Miss de Lancey or Miss Montmorency—these names are chosen at random—whose professional beauty as models did not prevent their suffering, now and again, from tantrums. And cajolery, of the class otherwise known as blarney, might have smoothed over the incident, and the whole thing have been forgotten, if bad luck had not, just at this moment, brought back to the Studio the mistress of the house, who had only been attracted by a noise in the street to look out at a front-window. She, coming unheard within hearing, not only was aware of interchanges of unusual amiability between Reginald and that horrible girl Sairah, but was just in time to hear the latter say, "You keep your 'ands off of me now, Mr. Aching!" without any apparent intention of being taken at her word. And, further, that the odious minx brazened it out, leaving the room as if nothing had happened, before the gentleman's offended wife could find words to express her indignation. At least, so this lady told her Aunt Priscilla that evening, in an interview from which we have just borrowed some telling phrases.
As for her profligate husband, it came out in the same interview that he looked "sheepish to a degree, and well he might." He had tried to cook up a sort of explanation—"oh yes! a sort,"—which was no doubt an attempt on the misguided man's part to tell the truth. But we have seen that he was the last person to succeed in such an enterprise; and, indeed, self-exculpation is tough work, even for the guiltless. Fancy the fingers of reproachful virtue directed at you from all points of the compass. And suppose, to make matters worse, you had committed something—not a crime, you would never do that; but something or other of a committable nature—what on earth could you do but look sheepish to some degree or other? Unless, indeed, you were a minx, and could brazen it out, like that gurl.
Such a ridiculous and vulgar incident would not be worth so much description, but that, like other things of the same sort, it led to serious consequences. A storm occurred in what had hitherto been a haven of domestic peace, and the Artist's wife carried out her threat, this time, of a visit to her Aunt Priscilla. That good lady, being a spinster of very limited experience, but anxious to make it seem a wide one, dwelt upon her knowledge of mankind and its evil ways, and the hopelessness of undivided possession thereof by womankind. She had told her niece "what it was going to be," when she first learned that Mr. Aiken was an Artist. She repeated what she had said before, that Artists' wives had no idea what was going on under their eyes. If they had, Artists would very soon be unprovided with the raw material of proper infidelity. They would have no wives, and would go on like in Paris. This tale is absolutely irresponsible for Miss Priscilla's informants; it only reports her words.
Now, Mrs. Euphemia Aiken, in spite of a severe ruction with her husband, had really not consciously imputed to him any transgression of a serious nature when—as that gentleman worded it—she "flounced away" to her Aunt Priscilla with an angry report of how Reginald had insulted her. She had much too high an opinion of him to form, on her own account, a mental version of his conduct, such as the one her excellent Aunt jumped at, in pursuance of the establishment of a vile moral character for Artists and nephews-in-law generally, with a concrete foundation in the case of an Artist-nephew—a Centaur-like combination with a doubt which half was which. But nothing is easier than to convince any human creature that any other is twice, thrice, four times as human as itself, in respect of what is graceless or disgraceful—spot-stroke barred, of course; meaning felony. So that after a long interview with Aunt Priscilla, this foolish woman cried herself to sleep, having accepted the good lady's offered hospitality, and was next morning so vigorously urged to do scriptural things in the way of forgiveness and submission to her husband—so Miltonic, in fact, did the prevailing atmosphere become—that she naturally sat down and wrote a healthily furious letter to him. The tale may surmise that she offered him Sairah as a consolation for what it knows she proposed—her own withdrawal to a voluntary grass-widowhood. For she flatly refused to return to her deserted hearth. And, indeed, the poor lady may have felt that her home had been soiled and desecrated. But it was not only her Aunt's impudent claim to superior knowledge—she was still Miss Priscilla Bax, and of irreproachable character—that had influenced her, but the recollection of Sairah. It would not have been half as bad if it had been a distinguished young lady with a swoop, like in a shiny journal she subscribed for quarterly. But Sairah! That gurl! Visions of Sairah's coiffure; of the way Sairah appeared to be coming through, locally, owing to previousness on the part of hooks which would not wait for their own affinities, but annexed the very first eye that appealed to them; of intolerable stockings she overlooked large holes in, however careful she see to 'em when they come from the Wash; of her chronic pocket-handkerchief—all these kept floating before her eyes and exasperating her sense of insult and degradation past endurance. Perhaps the worst and most irritating thought was the extent to which she had stooped to supplement this maid's all-work by efforts of her own, without which their small household could scarcely have lived within its limited means. No!—let Reginald grill his own chops now, or find another Sairah!
It was illustrative of the unreality of this ruction that the lady took it as a matter of course that Sairah would accept the sack in the spirit in which it was given; for official banishment of the culprit was her last act on leaving the house. No idea entered her head that her husband had the slightest personal wish to retain Sairah.
As for him, he judged it best to pay the girl her month's wages and send her packing. He removed her deposit of flue from the picture-varnish, and in due time completed the job and sent it off to its destination. He fell back provisionally on his old bachelor ways, making his own bed and slipping slowly down into Chaos at home, but getting well fed either by his friends or at an Italian restaurant near by—others being beyond his means or fraught with garbage—and writing frequent appeals to his wife not to be an Ass, but to come back and be jolly. She opened his letters and read them, and more than once all but started to return to him—would have done so, in fact, if her excellent Aunt had not pointed out, each time, that it was the Woman's duty to forgive. Which she might have gone the length of accepting, but for its exasperating sequel, "and submit herself to her husband."
But neither he nor either of the other actors in this drama had the slightest idea that it had been witnessed by any eyes but their own.
CHAPTER II
How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently. How he woke up from a dream, which went on. The loquacity of a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality. The Artist's name. There was plenty of time to hear more. The exact date of Antiquity. The Rational way of accounting for it.
Old Mr. Pelly is the little grey-headed wrinkled man with gold spectacles whom you have seen in London bookshops and curio-stores in late August and early September, when all the world has been away; the little old man who has seemed to you to have walked out of the last century but one. You may not have observed him closely enough at the moment to have a clear recollection of details, but you will have retained an image of knee-breeches and silk stockings; of something peculiar in the way of a low-crowned hat; of a watch and real seals; of a gold snuff-box you would have liked to sell for your own benefit; and of an ebony walking-stick with a silver head and a little silk tassel. On thinking this old gentleman over you will probably feel sorry you did not ask him a question about Mazarine Bibles or Aldus Manutius, so certain were you he would not have been rude.
But you did not do so, and very likely he went back to Grewceham, in Worcestershire, where he lives by himself, and you lost your opportunity that time. However that may be, it is old Mr. Pelly our story has to do with now, and he is sitting before a wood-fire out of all proportion to the little dry old thing it was lighted to warm, and listening to the roaring of the wind in the big chimney of the library he sits in.
But it is not his own library. That is at Grewceham, two miles off. This library is the fine old library at Surley Stakes, the country-seat of Sir Stopleigh Upwell, M.P., whose father was at school with Mr. Pelly, over sixty years ago.
Mr. Pelly is stopping at "The Stakes," as it is called, to avoid the noise and fuss of the little market-town during an election. And for that same reason has not accompanied Sir Stopleigh and his wife and daughter to a festivity consequent on the return of that very old Bart, for the County. They will be late back; so Mr. Pelly can do no better than sit in the firelight, rejecting lamps and candles, and thinking over the translation of an Italian manuscript, in fragments, that his friend Professor Schrudengesser has sent him from Florence. It has been supposed to have some connection with the cinque-cento portrait by an unknown Italian artist that hangs above the fire-blaze. And this portrait is the one the story saw, a little over six months since, in the atelier of that picture-cleaner, Mr. Reginald Aiken, who managed to brew a quarrel with his wife by his own silliness and bad taste.
It is only dimly visible in the half-light, but Mr. Pelly knows it is there; knows, too, that its eyes can see him, if a picture's eyes can see, and that its laugh is there on the parted lips, and that its jewelled hand is wound into the great tress of gold that falls on its bosom. For it is a portrait of a young and beautiful woman, such as Galuppi Baldassare wrote music about—you know, of course! And Mr. Pelly, as he thinks what it will look like when Stebbings, the butler, or his myrmidons, bring in lights, feels chilly and grown old.
But Stebbings' instructions were distinctly not to bring in lights till Mr. Pelly rang, and Mr. Pelly didn't ring. He drank the cup of coffee Stebbings had provided, without putting any cognac in it, and then fell into a doze. When he awoke, with a start and a sudden conviction that he indignantly fought against that he had been asleep, it was to find that the log-flare had worn itself out, and the log it fed on was in its decrepitude. Just a wavering irresolute flame on its saw-cut end, and a red glow, and that was all it had left behind.
"Who spoke?" It was Mr. Pelly who asked the question. But no one had spoken, apparently. Yet he would have sworn that he heard a woman's voice speaking in Italian. How funny that the associations of an Italian manuscript should creep into his dream!—that was all Mr. Pelly thought about it. For the manuscript was almost entirely English rendering, and no one in it, so far as he could recollect, had said as this voice did, "Good-evening, Signore!" It was a dream! He polished his spectacles and watched the glowing log that bridged an incandescent valley, and wondered what the sudden births of little intense white light could be that came and lived on nothing and vanished, unaccounted for. He knew Science knew, and would ask her, next time they met. But, for now, he would be content to sit still, and keep watch on that log. It must break across the middle soon, and collapse into the valley in a blaze of sparks.
Watching a fire, without other light in the room, is fraught with sleep to one who has lately dined, even if he has a pipe or cigar in his mouth to burn him awake when he drops it. Much more so to a secure non-smoker, like Mr. Pelly. Probably he did go to sleep again—but who can say? He really believed himself wide-awake, though, when the same voice came again; not loud, to be sure, but unmistakable. And the way it startled him helped to convince him he was awake. Because one is never surprised at anything in a dream. When one finds oneself at Church in a stocking, and nothing more, one is vexed and embarrassed, certainly, but not surprised. It dawns on one gradually. If this was a dream, it was a very solid one, to survive Mr. Pelly's start of amazement. It brought him out of his chair, and set him looking about in the half-lighted room for a speaker, somewhere.
"Who are you, and where are you?" said he. For there was no one to be seen. The firelight flickered on the portraits of Sir Stephen Upwell, the Cavalier, who was killed at Naseby, and Marjory, his wife, who was a Parliamentarian fanatic; and a phenomenal trout in a glass case, with a picture behind it showing the late Baronet in the distance striving to catch it; but the door was shut, and Mr. Pelly was alone in the library. He was rather frightened at his own voice in the stillness; it sounded like delirium. So it made him happier that an answer should come, and justify it.
"I am here, before you. Look at me! I am La Risvegliata—that is what you call me, at least." This was spoken in Italian, but it must be translated in the story. Very likely you understand Italian, but remember how many English do not. Mr. Pelly spoke Italian fluently—he spoke many languages—but he must be turned into English, too, for the same reason.
"But you are a picture," said he. "You cannot speak." For he understood then that his hallucination—as he thought it, believing himself awake—was that the picture-woman over the mantelpiece had spoken to him. He felt indignant with himself for so easily falling a victim to a delusion; and transferred his indignation, naturally, to the blameless phantom of his own creation. Of course, he had imagined that the picture had spoken to him. For "La Risvegliata"—the awakened one—was the name that had been written on the frame at the wish of the Baronet's daughter, when a few months back he brought this picture, by an unknown Artist, from Italy.
"I can speak"—so it replied to Mr. Pelly—"and you can hear me, as I have heard you all speaking about me, ever since I came to this strange land. Any picture can hear that is well enough painted."
"Why have you never spoken before?" Mr. Pelly was dumbfounded at the unreasonableness of the position. A speaking picture was bad enough; but, at least, it might be rational. He fell in his own good opinion, at this inconsistency of his distempered fancy.
"Why have you never listened? I have spoken many a time. How do I know why you have not heard?" Mr. Pelly could not answer, and the voice continued, "Oh, how I have longed and waited for one of you to catch my voice! How I have cried out to the wooden Marchese whose Marchesa will not allow him to speak, and to that beautiful Signora herself, and to that sweet daughter most of all. Oh, why—why—have they not heard me?" But still Mr. Pelly was slow to answer. He found something to say, though, in the end.
"I can entertain no reasonable doubt that your voice is a fiction of my imagination. But you will confer a substantial favour on me if you will take advantage of it, while my hallucination lasts, to tell me the name of your author—of the artist who painted you."
"Lo Spazzolone painted me."
"Lo ... who?"
"Lo Spazzolone. Surely, all men have heard of him. But it is his nickname—the big brush—from his great bush of black hair. Ah me!—how beautiful it was!"
"Could you give me his real name, and tell me something about him?" Mr. Pelly took from his pocket a notebook and pencil.
"Giacinto Boldrini, of course!"
"Ought I to know him? I have never heard his name."
"How strange! And it is but the other day that he was murdered—oh, so foully murdered! But no!—I am wrong, and I forget. It is near four hundred years ago."
Mr. Pelly was deeply interested. The question of whether this was a dream, a hallucination, or a vision, or the result of exceeding by two ounces his usual allowance of glasses of Madeira, he could not answer offhand. Besides, there would be plenty of time for that after. His present object should be to let nothing slip, however much he felt convinced of its illusory character. It could be sifted later. He would be passive, and not allow an ill-timed incredulity to mar a good delusion in the middle. He switched off scepticism for the time being, and spoke sympathetically.
"Is it possible? Did you know him? But of course you must have known him, or he could scarcely have painted you. Dear me!" Mr. Pelly checked a disposition to gasp; that would never do—he might wake himself up, and spoil all. The sweet voice of the picture—it was like a voice, mind you, not like a gramophone—was prompt with its reply:
"I knew him well. But, oh, so long ago! One gets to doubt everything—all that was most real once, that made the very core of our lives. Sometimes I think it was a dream—a sweet dream with terror at the end—a nectar-cup a basilisk was watching, all the while. Four hundred years! Can I be sure it was true? Yet I remember it all—could tell it now and miss nothing."
Mr. Pelly was silent a moment before answering. He reflected that if his reply led to a circumstantial narrative of events four hundred years old, it would be a bitter disappointment to be waked by the return of the family, and to have it all spoiled. However, it was only ten o'clock, and they might be three hours yet. Besides, it was well known that dreams have no real duration—are in fact compressed into a second or so of waking. He would risk it.
"I have a keen interest, Signora," said he, "in the forgotten traditions of antiquity. It would indeed be a source of satisfaction to me if you would consider me worthy of your confidence, and entrust to me some portion at least of your family history, and that of your painter. I can assure you that no portion of what you tell me shall be published without your express permission. No one can detest more keenly than myself the modern American practice of intrusion into private life...." He stopped. Surely that sound was a sigh, if not a sob. In a moment the voice of the picture came again, but with even more of sadness in it than before:
"Was it Antiquity, then, in those days? We did not know it then. We woke to the day that was to come—that had not been, before—even as you do now; and the voices of yesterday were not forgotten in our ears. We flung aside the thing of the hour; as you do now, with little thought of what we lost, and lived alone for hope, and the things that were to be. I cannot tell you how young we were then. And remember! I am twenty now; as I was then, and have been, ever since.
"I see," said Mr. Pelly. "Your original was twenty when you were painted. And you naturally remained twenty." He felt rather prosaic and dry, and to soften matters added, "Tell me of your first painting, and what is earliest in your recollection."
"Then you will not interrupt me?" Mr. Pelly gave a promise the voice seemed to wait for, and then it continued, and, as it seemed to the listener, told the tale that follows, which is printed as continuous. The only omissions are a few interruptions of Mr. Pelly's, which, so far as they were inquiries or points he had not understood, are made up for by very slight variations in the text, which he himself has sanctioned, as useful and explanatory.
Whether he was awake or dreaming, he never rightly knew. But his extraordinary memory—he is quite a celebrity on this score—enabled him to write the whole down in the course of the next day or two, noting his own interruptions, now omitted.
The most rational way of accounting for the occurrence undoubtedly is that the old gentleman had a very vivid dream, suggested by his having read several pages—this he admits—of the manuscript translation, in which a too ready credulity has detected a sequel to the story itself. None knows better than the student of alleged supernatural phenomena how frequent is this confusion of cause and effect.
CHAPTER III
The Picture's tale. It was so well painted—that was why it could hear four hundred years ago. How its painter hungered and thirsted for its original, and vice versa. How old January hid in a spy-hole, to watch May, and saw it all. Of Pope Innocent's penetration. Of certain bells, unwelcome ones. How two innamorati tried to part without a kiss, and failed. Nevertheless assassins stopped it when it had only just begun. But Giacinto got at January's throat. How the picture was framed, and hung where May could only see it by twisting. Of the dungeon below her, where Giacinto might be. How January dug at May with a walking-staff. How the picture was in abeyance, but loved a firefly; then was interred in furniture, and three centuries slipped by. How it sold for six fifty, and was sent to London, to a picture-restorer, which is how it comes into the tale. How Mr. Pelly woke up.
You ask me to tell you what is earliest in my recollection. I will do so, and will also endeavour to narrate as much as I can remember of the life of the lady I was painted from; whose memory, were she now living, would be identical with my own.
The very first image I can recall is that of my artist, at work. He is the first human being I ever saw, as well as the first visible object I can call to mind. He is at work—as I am guided to understand by what I have learned since—upon my right eye. It is a very dim image indeed at the outset, but as he works it becomes clearer, and at last I see him quite plainly.
He is a dark young man, with hair of one thickness all over, like a black door-mat, and a beautiful olive skin. As he turns round I think to myself how beautiful his neck is at the back under the hair, and that I should like to kiss it. But that is impossible. I can recall my pleasure at his fixed gaze, and constant resolute endeavour. Naturally I want him to paint my other eye. Then I shall see him still better.
I am not surprised at his saying nothing—for remember!—I did not know what speech was then. He had painted my mouth, only, of course, I did not know what to do with it. Needless also to say that I had not heard a word, for I had no ear at all. I have only one now, but it has heard all that has been spoken near it for four hundred years. I heard nothing then—nothing at all! I only gazed fixedly at the fascinating creature before me who was trying his best to make me beautiful too—to make me as beautiful as something that I could not see—something his eyes turned round to at intervals, something to my right and his left. What I recall most vividly now is my curiosity to know what this thing or person was that took his eyes off me at odd moments; to which he made, now and again, slight deprecatory signs and corrective movements with his left hand; from which he received some response I could not guess at, which he acknowledged by a full-spread smile of grateful recognition. But always in perfect silence, though I saw, when his brush was not in front of my incomplete eye, that his lips moved, showing his beautiful white teeth; and that he paused and listened—a thing I have learned about since—with a certain air of deference, as towards a social superior. Oh, how I longed to see this unseen being, or thing! But I was not to do so, yet awhile.
My recollection goes no farther than the fact of this young artist, working on in a strange, systematic way, quite unlike what I have since understood to be the correct method for persons of genius, until at the end of some period I cannot measure, he paints my other eye, and I rejoice in a clearer image of himself; of the huge bare room he works in; of the small window, high up, with its cage of grating against the sky; of the recess below it, in which, at the top of two steps, an old woman sits plaiting straws, and beside her a black dog, close shaved, except his head, all over. But I get no light upon the strange attraction that takes my creator's attention off me, until after a second experience, as strange as my first new-found phenomenon of sight—to wit, my hearing of sound. As he painted my ear, it came.
At first, a musical, broken murmur—then another, that mixes with it. As one rises, the other falls; then both together, or as the threads of a cascade cross and intersect in mid-air. Then a third sound, a sound with a musical ring that makes my heart leap with joy—a sound that comes back to me now, when in the early mornings of summer, I hear, through the window of this room opened outwards to let in the morning air, the voice of the little brown bird that springs high into the blue heaven, and unpacks its tiny heart in a flood of song. And then I think to myself that that is the language in which I too should have laughed, had laughter been possible to me.
For what I heard then from behind the easel I stood on as the young artist painted me was the laughter of Maddalena Raimondi, from whom he was working; whom I may describe myself as being. For ought not the name written on the frame below me to be hers also, with the date of her birth and death? Are not my eyes that I see with now hers? Is not the nostril with the lambent curve—that is what a celebrated Art-Critic has called it—hers, and the little sea-shell ear hers that heard you say, but now, that my original cannot have been more than twenty?...
More than twenty! No, indeed!—for in those days a girl of twenty was a woman. And the girl that one day a little later came round at a signal from behind the panel, to see the portrait that I now knew had received its last touch from its maker, was one who at eighteen had been threatened, driven, goaded into harness with an old Devil of high rank, to whom she had been affianced in her babyhood; and who is now, we may hope, in his proper Hell, as God has appointed. Yet it may well be he is among the Saints; for his wealth was great, and he gave freely to Holy Church. But to Maddalena, that was myself—for was I not she?—he was a Devil incarnate.
For mark you this: that all she had known I too knew, in my degree, so soon as ever I was completed. Else had I been a bad portrait. It all came to my memory at once. I remembered my happy girlhood, the strange indifference of my utter innocence when I was first told I was destined to marry the great Duke, whose vassal my father was, and how my marriage would somehow—I am, maybe, less clear about details than my original would have been—release my father from some debt or obligation to the Raimondi which otherwise would have involved the forfeiture of our old home. So ignorant was I that I rejoiced to think that I should be the means of preserving for my family the long stretches of vine-clad hills and the old Castello in the Apennines that had borne our name since the first stone was laid, centuries ago. So ignorant, innocent, indifferent—call it what you will!—that the moment I was told my destiny I went straight to Giacinto, the page, with whom I had grown from infancy, to tell him the good news, that he might rejoice too. But he would not rejoice at my bidding, and he was moody and reserved, and I wondered. I was but twelve and he thirteen. Although a girl may be older than a boy, even at those years, her eyes are not so wide open to see some things, and it may be he saw plainer than I. I know not.
This, then, was what had happened to the beautiful creature that came round into my sight on that day when I first saw and heard and knew her for myself, and hoped I was well done, and very like. And thus, also, it all came back to me, so soon as I was finished and was really Maddalena Raimondi, how the great Venetian artist, Angelo Allori, whom they called Il Bronzino, came to the Castello to paint my mother, and how he took a fancy to Giacinto, and would have him away to his studio, and taught him how to use brushes and colours, and how to grind and prepare these last, and to make canvas ready for the painter. And it ended by his taking him as an apprentice, at his own wish and Giacinto's. And they went away together to Venice, and I could recall now that Maddalena had not seen Giacinto after that for six years.
That is to say: she had not seen him till he came to the Villa Raimondi in the first year of her unhappy marriage, an unhappy bride with all the deadly revelation of the realities of life that an accursed wedlock must needs bring. The girl was no longer a girl; she knew what she had lost. And I knew it too, and all that she had known up to the moment of that last brush-touch, when Giacinto said, "Now, carissima Signora, you may come round and see!"
And the ringing laugh came round, and she came round, that had been me. Then I too saw what I had been—what I was still. And after that, I will tell you what I saw and heard—but presently!
For I want you first to know what Maddalena was when her old owner told her that he had commanded a young Venetian artist, of rising fame, to come at once, under penalty of his displeasure, to paint her portrait in a dress of yellow satin brocade well broidered in gold thread, and a gorgiera of fine linen turned back over it, that had belonged to his first wife, Vittoria Fanfani, who was much of the size and shape of la Maddalena, as who could tell better than he? And for this portrait she was to sit or stand, as the painter should arrange, in front of the tapestry showing Solomon's Judgment in the Stanza delle Quattro Corone; which is, as you would say, The Room of the Four Crowns, so called because it was said four Kings had met there in old days, three of whom had slain the fourth, which was accounted of great fame to the Castello Raimondi. And the time for this painting was to be each day after the sun had passed the meridian; for the room looked south-east, and one must study the sun. And Marta Zan would always be in attendance, as a serious person who would keep a check on any pranks such young people might choose to play. For as I too now knew and could well remember, it was a wicked touch of this old birbante's character that he was never tired of a wearisome pretence that this young Maddalena, whose heart was truly broken if ever girl's heart was, was still full of joyousness and youth and kittenish tricks. And he would rally her waggishly before his retinue for pranks she had never played, and pretended youthful escapades she could have had no heart for. For in truth she was filled up with sorrow, and shame of herself and her kind, and intense loathing of the old man her master; but she was forced to reply to his unwelcome badinage by such pretence as might be of gaiety in return. And this, although she knew well all the while that there was not a scullion among them all but could say how little she loved this eighty-year-old lord of hers; though none could guess, not even the women, what good cause she had to hate him.
But the sly old fox knew well enough; and when he made his edict that Marta Zan—an old crone, who had been, some said, his mistress in his youth—should keep watch and ward over his young wife's demeanour with this new painting fellow, he knew too that in the thick wall of the Stanza delle Quattro Corone was a little, narrow entry, where one might lie hid at any time, approaching from without, and see all that passed in the chamber below. And so he would see and know for himself; for he knew Marta Zan too well to place much faith in her.
You may guess, then, that Maddalena, when il Duca first informed her of his gracious pleasure about the portrait, was little inclined to take an interest in that, or any other scheme of his Highness; but to avoid incurring his resentment, she was bound to affect an interest she did not feel, and in this she succeeded, so far as was necessary. But my lord Duke was growing suspicious of her; only he was far too wily an old fox to show his mistrust openly. Be sure that when, after Maddalena's first sitting with my young artist, he noticed that the roses had returned to her cheeks, and that her step was light again upon the ground, he said never a word to show his thought, and only resolved in his wicked old heart to spy upon the two young people from his eyrie in the wall.
It was little to be wondered at that Maddalena should show pleasure when she saw who after all was the young Venetian painter; who, still almost a boy, had climbed so high in fame that it was already held an honour to be painted by him. For he was her old friend Giacinto, and she in her languid lack of interest in all about her, had never asked what was the actual name of lo Spazzolone. For by this nickname only had he been spoken of in her presence, and it may easily be he was known by no other to the old Duca himself, so universal is the practice of nicknaming among the artists of Italy. But he was Giacinto himself, sure enough!—only grown so tall and handsome. And you may fancy how gladly the poor Maddalena would have flung her arms round the boy she had known from her cradle, and kissed her welcome into his soul—only there! was she not a wife, and the wife too of the thing men called the Duke? What manner of thing was he, that God should have made him, there in the light of day?
But if it was difficult for Maddalena to keep her embrace of welcome in check, you may fancy how strong a constraint my young painter had to put on himself when he saw who the great lady was whom he was come to paint. For none had told him, and till she came suddenly upon him in all the beauty of her full and perfect womanhood, he had no idea that she would be la Maddalena—la sua sorellaccia (that is, his ugly sister), as he would call her in jest in those early days—because there was no doubt of her beauty, and the joke was a safe one. Only mind you!—this would be when they were alone, as might be, in the court of the old Castello, looking down into the deep well and dropping stones to hear them splash long after, or gathering the green figs in the poderi when the great heat was gone from August, and they could ramble out in the early mornings. When her sisters or brothers were there, she was la Signorina Maddalena. I can remember it all now! One does not lightly forget these hours—the hours before the ugly dawn of the real World. Nor the little joys one takes as a right, without a rapture or a thought of gratitude; nor the little pangs one thinks so hard to bear, and so soon forgets.
If you should ask me how it came about that the two of them should have so completely parted during all those six years, that La Maddalena should not even have known the nickname of the young painter, nor his fame, I must beg that you will remember that these were not the days of daily posts, of telegraphs, and railways; nor of any of the strange new things I hear of now, and find so hard to understand. Moreover, my own opinion is that the parents of Maddalena judged shrewdly that this young stripling was no friend to be encouraged for a little daughter that was to be the salvation of their property. The less risk, the less danger! The fewer boys about, the fewer fancies of a chit. They managed it all, be sure of that! It was for the girl's own best interest.
But—dear me![#]—if you know anything of life in youth, and of the golden thread of Love that is shot though it in the weft, and starts out somewhere always, here or there, whatever light you hold it in—if you know this, there is no more to be said of why, when they met again, in the Stanza delle Quattro Corone, each heart should leap out to meet the other, and then shrink back chilled, at the thought of what they were now that they were not once, and of what perforce they had to be hereafter. But the moment was their own, and none pauses in the middle of a draught of nectar because, forsooth, the cup will soon be empty. La Maddalena became, in one magic instant, a Maddalena whose laugh rang out like the song of the little brown bird I told you of but now, and filled the wicked old room with its music. And as for our poor Giacinto—well!—are you a man, and were you ever young? He could promise the withered old Duca that he would make a merry picture of la Duchessa; none of your sinister death's-head portraits, but with the smile of sua Altezza. For all Maddalena's heart was in her face, and that face wore again the smile of the old, old days, the days long before her bridal. And you see that face before you now.
[#] Probably the words Mr. Pelly heard were "Dio mio!" which some consider the original of the English "Dear me!" Many of the expressions are evidently literal translations.—EDITOR.
Now, if only this old shrunken mummy will begone! If he will only go away to count over his gold, to rack his tenantry for more than his share of the oil-crop, to get absolution for his sins, or, better still, to go to expiate them in the proper place! If he will only take his venerable presence and his cold firm eye away—if it be but for an hour!...
He went—sooner than we had hoped. And then when he was quite, quite gone, and the coast was clear, then the laughter broke out. And Marta Zan wondered was this really the new Duchessa?—she who had brought from her bridal no smile but a sad one, no glance unhaunted by the memory or the forecast of a tear, no word of speech but had its own resonance of a broken heart. The beldam chuckled to herself, and saw money to come of it, if she winked skilfully enough, and at the right time. But in this she was wrong, for she judged these young people by her bad old self; and indeed they thought no harm, of her sort. Neither could she see their souls, nor they hers. But the laughter and the voices filled the place, and each felt a child again, and back in the old Castello in the hills.
"And was it really you, Giacinto? You, your very self—the little Giacintino grown so great a man! Dio mio, how great a man you have grown!"
"And was the Duchessa then la nostra Maddalena, grown to be a great Signora! Was it all true?"
And then old Marta scowled from the steps below the window, for was not this saucy young painter bold enough to kiss the little hand her mistress let him hold so long; and most likely she was ready enough to guess that the poor boy had much ado to be off kissing the lips that smiled on him as well. But then, when the Maddalena saw through his heart, and saw all this as plain as I tell it you now, she flinched off with a little sigh, and a chill came. For now, she said, they were grown-up people, responsible and serious, and must behave! And Marta Zan would not be cross; for look you, Marta cara, was not this Giacinto, her foster-brother, and had they not been rocked to sleep in the same cradle? And had they not eaten the grapes of a dozen vintages at her father's little castle in the hills, and heard the dogs bark all across the plain below in the summer nights?
So Marta, though she looked mighty glum over it, kept her thoughts for her own use, with due consideration how she might get most profit from what she foresaw, and yet keep her footing firm with her great Duke. She was a cunning old black spot, was Marta, and quick to scheme her own advantage, for all she was near seventy. But she saw no reason for meddling to check her young Duchessa's free flow of spirits, and she invented a good apology for letting her alone. She was not going to mar the portrait by making the sitter cry and look sulky: red eyes and swelled cheeks were no man's joy. So she told her employer. And she thought to herself, see how content the old man is, and how clever am I to hoodwink him so!
Be sure, though, that she did not know how he was passing his time, more and more, in that little chapel of knavery in the wall, but a few yards from the two happy young folk, as they laughed and talked over their old days. Only, in this you may believe me, that never a word passed between them—for all that so many came to the lips of both and were disallowed—that might not have been spoken, almost, in the presence of the gracious Duke himself—nay, quite!—if he had not been so corrupt and tainted an old curmudgeon that he would have found a scutch on the leaf of a lily new-blown, and read dishonour into innocence itself. So there he sits in his evil eyrie, day by day, hatching false interpretation of every word and movement, but all silence and caution, for come what may he will not spoil the portrait. It will be time enough when it is quite done. Time enough for what? We shall see. Meanwhile, as well to keep his eye on them! Small trust to be placed in Marta Zan!
So, all this while, I grew and grew. And the laugh that you see on my lips is Maddalena's as she sat looking down on her young painter, and the joy and content of my eyes are her joy and content; and the loose lock of hair that ripples, a stream of golden red, over the red-gold of the brocaded gilliflower on the bosom of my bodice, is the lock of hair Maddalena had almost told Giacinto he might cut away and take, to keep for her sake. But she dared not, because of that dried old fig, old Marta, and the grim eye of her owner. Yet she might never see Giacinto again! She suspected, in her heart, that he would be schemed away from her once more, as before.
But I grew and grew. And now the hour is near when no pretence can prolong the sittings that have been the happiness—the more than happiness—of six whole Autumn weeks. How quick they had run away! Could it be six weeks? Yes, it was. And there was an ugly, threatening look in the Duke's old eye; but he said little enough. No doubt Messer il Pittore knew best how long was needed to paint a portrait; but he had said three weeks, at the outset. So it must needs be. And this, to-day, was the last sitting; and the picture—that was I—would be complete, and have a frame, and hang on the wall in the great room of state, where already were hanging the two portraits of the former wives of his Excellency; whereof the last one died three years before, and left the old miscreant free to affiance himself to the little Maddalena, who was then too young to marry, being but fourteen years old. So at least said her mother, and his Excellency was gracious enough to defer his nuptials, in spite of his years. And our most Holy Father Pope Alexander was truly convinced by this that the charge of the Duke's enemies made against him of having poisoned his second wife was groundless. For with so young a bride in view, would not any man have deferred poisoning a lady who was still young and comely, at least until the object of his new passion was old enough to take her place? So said his Holiness, and for my part I think he showed in this his penetration and his wide insight and understanding of his fellow-men. For Man is, as saith Scripture, created in the Image of God, and it is but seemly and reasonable that His Vicar on Earth should know the inner secrets of the human heart; albeit he may have small experience himself of Love, as is the manner of Ecclesiastics.
I will now tell you all I saw on that day of the last sitting, being now as it were full-grown and able to see and note all; besides being, as I have tried to show, able to feel all the lady Maddalena had felt and to follow her inmost thought.
When they were come to the end of the work I could see that both were heavy at heart for the parting that was to come; and I knew of myself that Maddalena had slept little, and I knew, too, that this was not because sua Eccellenza the Duke snored heavily all night, for had that been so, poor Maddalena would have been ill off for sleep at the best of times. No!—she had lain awake thinking of Giacinto; and he of her, it may be. But what do I know? I could see he was not happy: could you expect it? And his hand shook, and he did no good to me. And he would not touch my face and hands with the colour, and I well knew why.
Therefore, when he had tried for a little and could not work to any purpose, my lady la Duchessa says, as one who takes courage—for neither had yet spoken of how they must part—"Come, my Giacinto, let us be of better cheer, and not be so downcast. For who knows but the good God may let us meet again one happy day when His will is? Let us be grateful for the little hour of our felicity, and make no complaint now that it was not longer. But you cannot work, my Giacinto, and are doing no good to the beautiful picture. Leave it and come and sit here by me, and we will talk of the old days, the dear old time. And as for the old Marta, she is sound asleep and snoring; only not so loud as my old pig of a husband all last night!" Indeed, it was true of old Marta, but for my own part I think she was only pretending to be asleep, for my Maddalena had talked to her of how this would be the last time, and softened her, and given her ten Venetian ducats and a cap of lace. But, for the snoring of the old Duke, it had done some service; for the little joke about it had made Maddalena speak more cheerfully, and Giacinto could find a laugh for it, though he had little heart to laugh out roundly at anything. La Maddalena went near to make him, though! For she talked of how thirteen little puppies all came at once of three mothers, and she christened them all after the Blessed Apostles and Judas Iscariot, and every one was drowned or given away except Judas Iscariot; and how she would hold up Judas for Giacinto to kiss, saying he was a safe Judas this time, as how could he be else with that little fat stomach, and not a month old.
So I was finished, and Giacinto would have put his signature in one corner had he not thought it best to wait until sua Eccellenza the Duke had seen it, for who could say he would not have it altered? Messer Angelo Allori had finished a portrait of la Principessa Gonzaga, and just as he was thinking to sign it, what does her ladyship do but say she would rather have been painted in her camorra di seta verde; and thereat he had to paint out the old dress and paint in the new, for none might say nay to la Principessa. So that is how it comes that this picture—that I am—is unsigned; and that the Art Critics, for once, are not unanimous about who was the author.
But I know who that author was, and I can see him still as he sits at the feet of his lady, la Duchessa Maddalena, and his thick, black hair that had got him the nickname of Spazzolone; which is, or would be as speech goes now, the scrubbing-brush. And I can see his beautiful olive-tinted throat, more fair than tawny, like ivory, and his great black eyes, like an antelope's. I can see her, la Maddalena, seated above him—for he is on the ground—her two white hands encircling her knees, with many rings on them, one a great opal, the one you see on my finger now; and her face, with the red-gold hair, you see on my head, but somewhat fallen about it, for it had shaken down; and the face it hedged in was white—so white! It was not as you see me now; rather, indeed, the face of the sad Maddalena before ever she saw lo Spazzolone, than mine as I have it before you. Look awhile upon my face, and then figure it to yourself as it would be if the lips wanted to tremble, and the eyes to weep, but neither would do so, from sheer courage and strength of heart against an evil cloud. Then you will see la Maddalena as she sat there with eyes fixed on Giacinto, knowing each minute nearer the end; but all the more taking each minute at the most, as one condemned to die delays over his last meal on earth. The gaoler will come, and the prison-guard, and he knows it.
How long, do you ask me, did the pair sit thus, the eyes of each devouring the face of the other; the lips of each replying to the other in a murmured undertone I could not have heard from where I stood on my easel, had it not been that I too, myself, was la Maddalena, and spoke her words and heard his voice? I can only tell you the time seemed too short—though it was none so short a time, neither! But I do not know. I do know this, though—and I wish you too to know it, that you may think no thought of blame of my Maddalena—that never a word passed her lips that any young wife might not fairly and honestly speak to her husband's friend. And scarce a word of his in return that might not have been fairly and honestly spoken back; and for such a slight forgetfulness, as it seemed to me, of what was safe for both—will you not forgive the poor boy? Remember, he was but a boy at best, for all his marvellous skill. And was not his skill marvellous? For look at my lips, and see how they are drawn! Look at my eyes and say, have they moved or not—or will they not move, in an instant? Look at the little bright threads of gold in my cloud of hair! And then say, was he not a wondrous boy?
But a boy for all that! And to my thinking it was because he was a boy, or was only just a man having his manhood forced painfully upon him by sorrow, that he gave the rein for one moment to his tongue. And it was such a little moment, after all! Listen, and I will tell you, if you will not blame him. Promise me!
They had talked, the two of them—or of us, as you choose to have it—over and over of the old days at the Castello, of the old Cappellano who winked at all their misdeeds, and stood between them and the anger of her parents, many a time. How they had frightened him half to death by making believe they had the Venetian plague upon them, by dropping melted wax on their skins with little strawberries in the middle. And how Giacinto undeceived him by eating the strawberries. And what nasty little monkeys they were in those days, to be sure! That made them laugh, and they were quite merry for a while. But then they got sad again when la Maddalena told how Fra Poco—that was what they called il padre Buti the Cappellano, for he was a little man—was the only one of them all that had had a word to say against her marriage, and how he had denounced her father one day as for a crime, and invoked the vengeance of God upon the old Duke's head for using his power to defraud a young virgin of her life, and saying let him have the lands and enjoy them as he would, and rather go out and beg on the highways for alms than sacrifice his own flesh and blood. And how she had overheard all this speech of Fra Poco, and had said to herself that, come what might, she would save the old domain for her father and her brother. And how that very day her brother, who was but young, had beaten her with her own fan, and then run away with it; and little he knew what she was to suffer for him! But in truth she knew little enough herself, for what does a girl-chit know!
And it may have been her fault, too, or mine, for talking thus of her marriage, and none of the boy's own, that my Giacinto should have, as I say, half forgotten himself. For it was but just after she had spoken thus, and they had sat sad and silent for a space, that the big bells of San Felice hard by must needs clang out suddenly in the evening air, and then they knew their parting had come, too soon, and that then they might never meet again. And on that my Giacinto cried out as one whose heaviness of heart is too sore to be borne, "O sorellaccia mia! Mia carina—mio tesoro! Oh if it might but be all a dream, and we might wake and find it so, at the old Castello in the hills, and hear the croaking of the frogs and the singing of the nightingales when the sun had gone to bed, and be punished for staying out too late to listen to them! Oh, Maddalena mia!—the happy days when there were no old Dukes!..." But la Maddalena stopped him in his speech, saying, but as one says words that choke in his throat, "Enough—enough, Signore Giacinto! Remember what we are now—remember what I am!—what you are!" For this, said she, was not how sua Eccellenza the Duke should be spoken of in his own house. And then the great bells, that were so near they went nigh to deafen you, stopped jangling; but the biggest had something to say still, a loud word at a time, and far apart. And what he said was, that now the hour had come, and they should meet no more. And then he paused, and they thought he was silent. But he came back suddenly once again, to cry out "Never!" and was still.
Then comes the old Marta from her corner, rubbing her eyes, for she had been very sound asleep. And her mistress, as one who will not be contradicted, points her on in front, and she passes out, and her black dog. Then says my Maddalena to the painter, "And now, farewell, my friend," and holds out her hand for him to kiss, for is she not the Duchess? And he kisses it without speech, but with a sort of sob, and she gathers up her train, and turns to go. But as she reaches the door, she hears behind her the voice that tries to speak, but cannot.
Then she turns, and her despair is white in her face. And Giacinto's eyes are in his hands—he dares not look up. But she goes back and he hears her, and his name as she speaks it. And then he looks up, and see!—they are locked in each other's arms, as though never to part. And then Maddalena knows, and I know with her, what Love is, and what Life might have been. To think now, at such a moment, of the abhorred caresses that must be endured, later! no, my Maddalena, nothing to be thought of now, nothing said, nothing seen nor heard, just for those few moments that will never come again!
That was so, and therefore neither of these imprudent young people heard the gasp or snarl of anger that came through the little slot in the wall above. Down comes my Lord, unheard; reaches the room, unheard. But not alone! For there are behind him two of his retinue, rough troopers, buff-jerkined and morion-capped with steel, ready for any crime at their master's noble bidding. So silently have they come that the first sound that rouses the young artist and his sorellaccia from their little moment of rapture—for which I for one see little reason to blame them—and brings them back to conscious life and the knowledge of their lot, is the slight ring of the short sword-dagger one of them draws from the scabbard. Their eyes are opened now, and lo Spazzolone sees his executioners; while Maddalena and I see a cold, hard old face to which all pleading for mercy—if there had been a crime—would have been vain; and which would make a crime, inexorably, of what was none, from inborn cruelty and jealous rage. It is all over!
All over! Yes, for any chance of life for Giacinto, for any chance of happiness for la Maddalena for the rest of her term of life. But it may give pleasure to you to know—as it gives me pleasure—however little!—that our young painter, who was strong and active as a wild cat, got at the old man's wicked throat and wellnigh choked him before his assassins could cover the three or four steps between them; and before the one whom Maddalena did not stop—for she flung herself bodily on the man with the sword—could strike with a mace he had. And the blow fell on the olive-tinted neck I had loved so well, and the poor Giacinto fell with a thud and lay, killed or senseless. But the old Devil had felt his grip with a vengeance, and the two men-at-arms looked pleased, and lifted up and bore away the seeming dead Giacinto with admiration. The old man choked awhile, and la Maddalena remained marble-white as a new cut block at Massa Carrara, and as motionless, until her old owner had drunk some wine and done his choking; and then he pinched her tender white wrist savagely—I could show you where he made his mark, but I cannot move—and drew her away, saying, "You come with me, young mistress!" But first he goes and stands opposite the picture, still gripping her wrist. Then says he, "Non c'e male"—not bad—and leads her away, dumb. And they leave me alone in the Stanza delle Quattro Corone, and I hear the door locked from the outside. And the night comes, and I hear the voices of the frogs in the flat land, and think of the boy and girl that heard them together in that other old Castello I remember so well, but have never seen. And the sun comes again and shines upon some blood upon the floor. It is not Giacinto's—it is Maddalena's, where she cut herself on the man with the sword.
After that I remember no more till two men came to measure for the frame I now have on. They came next day, accompanied by the old Marta, who unlocked the door. But her little dog came with them, too, and no sooner had he run once all round the room, to see for cats or what might be else, than he goes straightway to the blood-mark on the floor. And so shrewd is he to guess what it is—remember, he had gone away with Marta when all the riot came about—that he looks round from one to the other for explanation, and tries hard to speak, as a dog does. Whereat each of the three also looks to the other two, and makes believe the dog is gone mad, to be making little compassionate whines and cries, and then, going to each one in turn to tell of it, touching them with his fore-paws, and then back again to the blood. But none would give him a good word, and as for la Marta, she must needs slap him, to the best of her withered power, on his clean-shaved body; which very like hurt but little, but the poor dog cried out upon the injustice! For he knew well this that he smelt was blood. As I believe, so did the three of them; however, in that household each knew that blood, anywhere, was best not seen by whoever wished to keep his own in his veins. So they took the measure for my frame, and went their way. And presently, when they have gone back, comes the old woman, but no dog, and brings with her burnt wood-ash, such as the fire leaves in the open grate, quite white and dry. And she makes a heap on the blood-stain with it, and water added, and goes away again and locks the door without, as before. After which the sun goes many times across the brick floor, stopping always to look well upon the blood-spot; and the night comes back, and I see a little sharp edge of silver in the sky, beyond the window-grating, and I remember that it was the new moon, in the days of the old Castello; and I say to myself, now I shall see it grow again, as it grew in those old days when Giacinto watched it with me. And it grows to be a half-moon before la Marta comes again and gathers up the ashes, and leaves the floor clean. But then I know they will soon come with the frame. So it happens; and then I am in my frame and am carried away to the great old Castle in the Apennines, and hanged upon the wall in the State banqueting-room; and after a while, I know not how long, the old Duke comes to see, and is pleased to approve. And my Maddalena comes, or rather he leads her, stark dumb, and white as the ashes that dried up the drops of her blood upon the floor.
And then day follows day, and each day my lord leads a thinner and a whiter Maddalena to the head of his board, and each day she answers him less when he speaks to her, which he does with an evil discourtesy when none other is there to check it; and a courtesy, even worse to bear, when they are in the presence of the household, or of noble guests on a visit. He sees, as I see, that her eyes are always fixed on me, as I hang behind his chair, for well he knows she would not be giving him her eyes—not she! So he tells the primo maggiordomo, who is subservient, but dropsical, and goes on a stick, to see that I am moved to a place in a bay to the left of his mistress; the old Devil having indeed chosen this place cleverly so that la Maddalena might not easily see me by turning her eyes only; but when she gives a little side turn to her head as well, then she may see me plainly. And, of course, it fell out as the cunning fox had foreseen, and the poor Maddalena's eyes wandered more and more to her picture, and then, as they came back, they would be caught in the cold gaze that came at her from the other table-end, and would fall down to look on the food she was fain to send away untasted. This goes on awhile, and then my Duke speaks out when they are alone. He knows, he says, what all these sly glances mean—all this furtive peeping round the corner—we are hankering after that old lover of ours, are we not? And there are things it is not easy to forget—ho, ho! And he laughs out at the poor girl and her sorrow. But she is outspoken, as one in despair may well be, and says to her old tormentor that if he means by the word "lover" that she has in any way whatever made light of her wifely duty to his lordship, it is false, and he knows it; for the boy was no more to her than any foster-brother might have been, brought up with her from the cradle. Only, let him not suppose, for all that, that she held him, husband as he was, and all his lands and hoarded wealth, and titles from his Holiness the Pope, one tithe as dear as the shoelace or the button on the coat of the boy he had murdered. On that his Eccellenza sniggered and was amused. "I should have thought so much," says he, "from the good round buss you gave him at parting. But who has told you your so precious treasure is dead? None has said so to me, so far. When last I heard of him, he was down below, beneath your feet, 'con rispetto parlando,'" which is a phrase folk use in Tuscany, not to be too plain-spoken for delicacy about feet and the like.
But now I must tell you something the old miscreant meant when he said this, and pointed down below the great table, which else might be hard to understand. For this great table stood over a trap or well-hole in the floor, and this well-hole went straight down to the dungeons under the Castle, where, if all tales told were true, there was still living a very old man who was first incarcerated forty years since, and had lived on, God knows how! And others as well, though little was known of them by those above in the daylight. But this old man had made some talk, seeing that he was first confined there in the days of the old Duke, our Duke's father, a just man and well-beloved, for a crime committed near by, on the evidence of his wife and his brother. Of whom, having lived some while par amours, the brother having died by poison, and the woman having died in sanctity as Mother Superior of the nuns of Monte Druscolo in Umbria, it was known that the latter made confession on her death-bed that her paramour was truly, but unknown to her, the author of the crime for which his brother was condemned. Now, this came to her knowledge by a chance, later. On which she, learning with resentment the concealment of this from herself; and seeing that the victim of this crime had been a young girl under her care and charge, had compassed the death of the real culprit for justice' sake, but had not thought it well to proclaim the truth about her husband's innocence, for she might have found it hard to look him in the face. So he was left where he was, the more that it was thought he might die if brought out into the sun; and, indeed, he was very old, and the Holy Abbess in extreme old age when she made her confession. But he is not in my tale, nor she, and I speak of him only because of the chance by which he made known to me the existence of this same well-hole beneath my lord's dining-table. For it was the telling of this story at the banquet that caused it to be spoken of, and also how in old days its use was to be opened after the meal, that the guests might of their gentilezza throw what they had not cared to eat themselves to the prisoners below. And the Prince Cosmo dei Medici, who was graciously present, was pleased to say it would have been a pretty tale for Boccaccio—or perhaps even the great Lodovico Ariosto might not scorn to try his hand upon it?
But now you may see, plain enough, what the wicked old man meant when he pointed down in that way. He thought to make his young wife believe that her lover—as he would call him; though he knew the word, as he used it, was a lie—was still living, and that, too, underground, where a ray of light might hardly penetrate, at high-noon; and almost surely, too, the victim of starvation and tortures she shuddered to think of; even for witches or Jews—aye, even for heretics! She could see the whole tale in the cruelty of her princely husband's eyes; except, indeed, his victim was really dead, slain by the cruel blow she herself had seen; and seeing it, what wonder was it that she longed only to know that he was dead; for then she could die too? But to slip away and leave Giacinto still alive!—in a damp vault with the old bones of those who had died and been buried there, so that none should know of them; and neither day nor the coming of night, but only one long darkness, and not one word from her, and ignorance of whether she herself still lived or died. Surely, if she were to die and leave him thus in ignorance, her ghost would rise from the grave to be beside him in the darkness of his dungeon; and then how her heart would break to speak with him, and be—as might chance—half-heard, and serve only to add a new terror to his loneliness.
Such things I could guess she felt in her heart. I could not feel them now myself, not being la Maddalena as she was at this moment. I am still, as I was then, the Maddalena as she laughed back, from the daïs she sat on, her delight in response to the pleasure in her young painter's eye; and all she became after is—to me—like a tale she might have heard, or some sad pretty ballad one gives a tear to and forgets. But I can fancy, and maybe you can too, how her whole young soul was wrenched as she flung herself at her old tormentor's feet, and besought him in words that I would myself have wept for gladly—had God not made me as I am—to tell her truly, only to tell her, was he living or dead? She would ask no more than just that much of his clemency. What wrong had she done him?—what had Giacinto?—that he should make her think the sun itself a nightmare; for it would shine on her, but never reach the black pit below them, where, for all she knew, Giacinto might be now, at this very moment? Oh, would he not tell her? It was so little to ask!
But the old miscreant had not paid her yet for that kiss, and he would have his account discharged in full. So he takes her face in his two old hands, and pats her on the cheek, and tells her, smiling, to be of good cheer, for she will never know any more of the young maestro, nor whether he be alive or dead. But if she wishes to throw down some dainty titbits from the dinner-leavings, on the chance they shall reach the lips she kissed, why it is but telling Raouf and Stefano to lift the trap. It may be a bit rusty, but if it were oiled on the hinges this time, the less trouble the next! At this la Duchessa gave a long shriek, holding her head tight on, on either side, and then fell backward on the floor, and lay so, stark motionless. And then my great Duke seats himself on the nearest chair; and he has in his hand his crutched stick, to lean on against the gout in his foot. He takes it in his left hand, and just digs with it at the girl's body on the ground, either to rouse her or see if she be dead. But she does not move, and he has her carried away to bed; and his face is contented, as is that of a man who has worked well and deserved his fee.
I wish I could remember more of this old tale of four hundred years ago, but I had no chance to do so; for, after the scene I have just described, the noble Duke, hobbling a short space about the hall, brings up short just facing the bay where I have been hanged by his orders to spite la Maddalena; and then, after choking a little—as indeed he often did since that fierce grip of my young maestro, lo Spazzolone—he calls out to his fat maggiordomo, and bids him to see that I am removed to his own private room and hanged under the picture of Ganymede. But now he must only take it down and remove it to the old stone chamber, where the figs are put to dry on trays; and so leave it, to be hanged in his room when he is away at Rome, as will be shortly. So he hobbles away and I hear him getting slowly up the little stair that goes to his private room, and his attendants following him. The dropsical maggiordomo stays to see that another man should come, with a ladder and a boy, to help, and they get me down from my hooks, and carry me off; and I can smell the dried figs, and the stoia that is rolled up in a stack, and the empty wine-flasks. But I can see nothing, for they place me with my face against the wall, and cover me over with a sacking; and I can hear little more; and then the great door clangs to and is locked, and I am alone in the dark, without feeling or measurement of time, and only catching faint sounds from far-off.
I could guess, rather than hear, the sound of a footstep when one came, rarely enough, in the long corridor without. I could feel its rhythm in the shaken floor, but I could be scarcely said to hear it. I was aware of a kind of scratching close to me, that may have been some kind of beetle or scorpion, but of course it was quite invisible. There was one sort of scaraflaggio that would come, even between me and the wall one time, and make a noise like a thousand whirlwinds, and beat against me with his wings, and I should have liked to be able to ask him to come often. But he seemed not to care about me; and I could just hear him boom away in the darkness, joyous at heart and happy in his freedom. Oh, if he could have known how different was my lot! I thought of how he would float out into the sunlight, whirring all the while like the wheels of the great orologio at the old Castello when Fra Poco let it run down at noon so that he might reset it fair from the sundial on the wall in the Cortile where the well was—our well!
It may have been days, or it may have been weeks or months, before a change came, and I again heard human voices. But it would not be longer than two or three months at most; seeing that it was immediately, as far as I could judge, on the top of a little chance that is dear to my memory now, after—so I gather—some four hundred years. For a sweet firefly came, by the blessing of God, between me and the dry wall, and paused and hung a moment in the air that I might get a sight of his beauty. You have seen them in the corn, how they stop to think, and then shoot on ahead, each to seek his love, or hers: so it is taught by those who say they know, and may be truly. This one also must needs go on, though I would have prayed him to stay, that I might be his love. Yet this could not be, for neither did I know his tongue, nor was aught else fitting. So he went away and left me sad-hearted. He was a spot of light between a gloom behind and a gloom before, even as the Star of Bethlehem.
But about this that I was telling of. I had a sense of half-heard turmoil without. Then the lock in the door, and the imprecations of a man that could not turn the key. He swore roundly at him who made it, and at all locksmiths soever, as persons who from malevolence scheme to exclude all folk from everywhere; and I wished to rebuke him for his injustice, for how can a locksmith do less than make a key? And it was for him to choose the right key, not to keep on twisting at the wrong one, and swearing, which is what he was doing. But he was a noisy, blustering person, for when he did get in, being helped to the right key by a clever young boy who saw his error, he was much enraged with that boy for telling him; and he was ill-satisfied with such a place as this to stow away the furniture, but he supposed they must make it do.
Then came much moving in of goods. And I could gather this, but no more, from the conversation of those who brought it in—that it was the furniture of someone who was little loved, and only spoken of as "he" or "il Vecchiostro"—that he was gone on a journey, and much they cared how soon he arrived at the end of it. The boy, who was young and inquisitive, then asking whither this was that he had gone, they told him with a laugh that it was to his oldest friend, another like himself; to whom he had given his whole soul, and who would not care to part with him in a hurry. They hoped he would have a cool bed to sleep in. And when the boy hoped this too, they were very merry. But they worked hard, and brought in a great mass of furniture, which they stacked against the wall where I was, so that I was quite hidden away. There would be new fittings all through the castle now, they said. But one said no—no! it would only be in the Vecchiostro's own private rooms. "'Tis done that he should be soonest forgotten," said one of them. But it was only just when they had brought in the last of it that this same one said that if ever he—this Vecchiostro—came back from Hell there would be all his gear ready for him. And then I saw this was some dead man's property that his successor would have put out of his sight.
Then says my young boy to his father, who was the man who had sworn at the key, why did they not take the Signora's portrait down instead of leaving it there, because everyone loved her; and for his part, she kissed him once, and said he was carino. Then says his father, what portrait? And he answers, "In there—behind." For he had peeped in round my frame thinking he knew me again; being in fact the same that had helped to get me down in the banqueting-hall, how long since I could not say. But his father calls him a young fool not to say so before it was too late; and as for him, it was time for his supper and bed, and whoever else liked the job might move all the chairs and tables again to fish her ladyship out. And as all were of one mind they laughed over this and went noisily away. And the door was locked and I heard no more. And the darkness was darker still and the silence deeper. And I longed for the scaraffaggio to come and whirr once more, and for the sweet light of the lucciola. But there was none such for me. And my Maddalena must be surely dead, I thought, else that young boy would tell her I was here, and she would come to find the picture Giacinto painted of her in that merry time. But I waited for her voice in vain, and had nothing for myself but the darkness and the silence.
Just as the diver holds his breath and longs for the sudden air that he must surely meet—in a moment—in another moment!—so I held as it were the breath of expectation, and believed in the coming of those who could not but seek me; for at first I felt certain they would come. They would never leave me here, to decay! But there came no voice, no glimmer of light, and I fell into a stupor in which all memory grew dim, even that of my Maddalena.
What I suffered through that long period of silence and darkness I cannot tell, nor could you understand. The prisoner in his solitude is grateful for each thing that enables him to note the flight of time; and the fewer such things are the drearier is the sameness of his lot. Can you imagine it if they were all removed—a condition of simple existence in black space, with no means of marking time at all? Would you become, on that account, unconscious altogether of weariness from the long unalleviated hours? No, indeed! Take my word for it. Rather, you would find it, as I found it, a state of bondage such as one would long and pray might be the lot of such as had been, in this life, devils against the harmless; but going on through all eternity, no nearer the end now than when it started countless ages ago, an absolute monotone of dulled sense without insensibility—even pain itself almost an alleviation.
That is what my life, if you can call it life, was to me through all that term; but, as thought is dumb, though I know the time goes on, how long it goes on I know not. When I next hear human speech, the voices are new and the words strange and barbarous. Also, when I am taken from the wall and turned round to the light, I can see nothing, and I know not why. Perhaps it is all dark here at all times, and they have brought no light. I shall see, though, well enough when I am hanged up under Ganymede, and see my bad old Duke again, and even my other self, my Maddalena. I have a longing on me to see her once more, and to see her more like me, if it may be. It seems so long! So much longer than the time when I was left alone in the Stanza delle Quattro Corone. But what you may find hard to understand is this, that though I could not know how long this dreadful waking sleep had been, neither could I be sure it had not been a few hours only. I now know, for I have learned since, that it was over three hundred years. Yet when the end came it found me not without a hope of Maddalena; or if not Maddalena, at least the Duke.
But I do not see them, either of them. Nor old Marta Zan and her little dog. Nor the dropsical old maggiordomo. That there is no Giacinto is little wonder to me. For I believe him dead, killed by that fell blow on the olive neck I loved so well, just behind the ear. I wonder, though, that I see none of the others. But indeed I have much ado to see anything. All is in a mist of darkness.
Also, I am presently stunned by the clash of many voices. I can catch from the words of those who speak Maddalena's language, the tongue that I can follow, that there is a great wranglement over me and my sale price. For I am to be sold, and the foreigners who wish to buy me are loud in their dispraise of me; so much so that I do not understand why they should wish to possess me at all. In fact, they do actually go away after much heated discussion, speaking most scornfully of pictures as things no man in his senses would ever buy, and of pictures with frames like mine as the most valueless examples. I gather all this from repetitions made by others, in Maddalena's tongue, nearly but not exactly.
Presently back comes one of them to say he will go to six hundred pounds, but not a penny more. Then says a woman's voice, "Ah, Signore! Six hundred and fifty!" Then he, six hundred and twenty-five. And then some price between the two. And so we are agreed at last. And I am to be put in a box and sent to a place whose name I have never heard, that sounds like L'Ombra, a name that frightens me, for it sounds like the Inferno of the great poet, Dante.
But I should tell you that, before this riot, and noise, and disputation over me and my price, I had heard the unpacking and removal of the great stack of furniture that hid me. Only, as the persons who removed it have no interest for us, and did not seem from their conversation to be especially cultivated or intelligent, but rather the reverse, I have not said anything of them, nor of their valuations in lire of each article as it was brought to light. Their voices were the very first that I heard; but though their words sounded strange to me, they only made me think that maybe they were from Milan or Genoa or some other place in Italy. I should not have guessed them Tuscans; that is all. Indeed, I hardly distinguished much of what they said until they had removed the last of the furniture and I was turned round to the light. Then I saw things in a cloud, and heard indistinctly. I made out, however, that I was thick with dust, and must be brought out and cleaned before anyone could see what I was like. Then I was carried away down some stairs, and in the end I was aware, but dimly, as in a dream, that I was again in the great chamber where I last saw la Maddalena lying on the ground insensible, while the old Duke prodded at her with a stick. I could see there were many people in the room, talking volubly. But I could not catch their words well until a Signora, who seemed to take the lead, wiped my face over with a wet sponge; and then I heard more. Her voice was clearest, and what she said was "Ecco, Signori! Now you can see the ear quite plain. Ma com'e bella! Bella bella!"—And then it was I came to hear all the clamour of voices of a sudden.
Then follows all the bargaining I told you of. The Signora's husband would not sell an old picture—not he!—for a thousand pounds in gold; not till all the dirt was off and he could see it fairly. All applauded this, and said in chorus neither would they! Who could tell what might not be, under the dirt? However, they knew so little about it that they would not mind buying this one, on the chance. But for a decently reasonable price—say five thousand Italian lire. On which the owner said, "Come mai! E pochissimo!" Then the Signori Inglesi took another tone, and would have none of the picture, nor any picture, at any price! They would not know where to hang it. They did not like pictures on their walls. All the walls were covered with pictures already, all favourites, that must not be moved. But why need I tell you all this? You have heard folk make bargains, and the lies they tell.
The English Signori departed, having bought me for near six hundred and fifty English pounds. And then my lady and gentleman are mightily delighted, and dance about the room with joy. Now they will go to Monte Carlo and win back all they lost last year. Then I hear them talking in an undertone, thus:—
(He) "I hope they never suspected it was none of ours——"
(She) "Ah, Dio mio! And I had told them we were only inquilini"—that is, tenants.
(He) "Non ti confondi? Don't fret about that. They don't know what inquilini means. They can only say 'mangia bene, quanto costa!'"
(She) "Speriamo! But what a fine lot of old furniture! Couldn't we sell some of it, too?" And this young Signora, who was very pretty and impudent, and what I have since heard called svelte, danced about the room in high glee. But the good gentleman stopped her.
(He) "Troppo pericolo! The fat old Marchesa would find out. No, no! The picture is quite another thing——"
(She) "Perche?"
(He) "Can't you see, thickhead? If the old strega"—the old witch, that is—"had known the picture was there, do you suppose she wouldn't have had it out, long ago? And that other picture in front of it, with the eagle.... Don't dance, but listen!"
(She) "... Picture in front of it, with the eagle ... yes, go on!" But she won't quite stop dancing, and makes little quick tiptoe movements, not to seem over-subservient and docile.
(He) "I would have sold that, too, only it's too big for safety. This one will go in a small case. The famiglia will have to be well paid. What was it la Filomena told you first of all about the room and the furniture? Do stop that dancing!"
(She) "There, see now, I've stopped! But you have been told, once!"
(He) "Then tell again!"
(She) "It wasn't la Filomena. It was that old, old Prisca who knows all about the Castello—more than the Marchesa herself. She told me there was an old room in the great tower that had not been open for hundreds of years, as no one dared to go near it for fear of the wicked old Duke's ghost. I told her we were liberi pensatori"—that is to say, free-thinkers—"and he would not hurt us, and where was the key? We would not touch anything—only look in!"
(He) "Won't she tell about it all?"
(She) "Not till we go! Besides, she doesn't know. La Filomena won't tell her; she knows I know all about her and Ugo Pistrucci. And she's the only person that goes near the old Prisca, who hasn't been off her bed for months. Oh no! She's all right. As for the man, I told them la Prisca said the mobiglia was to be taken out and dusted and placed in the passage. Stia tranquillo, mio caro!"
(He) "What a happy chance these pig-headed rich milords happened to come in just as we got it. They might have gone before we found it! Only to think of it! Seicento e cinquante lire...!"
And so they went on rejoicing, and thinking of new schemes, and how they would get me packed off the very next day, and not a soul in the Castle would ever know I had ever been there. They were certainly very bad, unprincipled adventurers. You should have heard them talk of what fun they would have telling the old Marchesa about the great discovery of treasures they had made, and the care they had taken nothing should be lost. And then who knows but she might trust them to get a sale for all her old rubbish in England, and what a lot of money they might make, with a little discretion. If I had remained there I should have been longing always for a chance of telling the old strega, as they called her, what a nice couple she had let her Castle to for the summer months. For I am convinced, not only that they were thieves, but that they were not even lawfully married. However it may have been, I saw no more of them. For next day the same man that had done the removal of the furniture came with a box, and I was carefully packed, and saw nothing more, and distinguished little sound, for weeks it may have been, even months. As the solidity of the box absorbed all sight and hearing, and I knew nothing till I found myself on an easel in a sort of Studio in a town that I at once perceived to be L'Ombra. For what else could it have been?
At this point Mr. Pelly, who had been listening intently, interrupted the speaker. "I think you have got the name of the place wrong," he said. "I imagine it must have been London—Londra—the English Metropolis—not L'Ombra. The sounds are very similar, and easy to mistake."
"Possibly I was misled by the darkness. It made the name seem so appropriate. But it was not exactly night. There was a window near me, and I could see there was a kind of yellow smoke over everything. But there was music in the street, and children appeared to be running and shouting. Other things gave me the impression the time had been intended for morning, but that something had come in the way. It was a terrible place, much like to that dark third circle in Hell, where Dante and Virgilio saw the uncouth monster Cerberus.
"But let us forget it! Why should such a place be remembered or spoken of? I was there for no great length of time: long enough only for the picture-cleaner, in whose workshop I was, to remove the obscurations of four hundred years, and safeguard me with a glass from new deposits. For I understood him to say that I should be just as bad as ever in a very short space of time, in this beastly sooty hole, but for such protection.
"And yet this place was not entirely bad, nor in darkness at all times, for at intervals a phenomenon would occur which I supposed to be a peculiarity of the climate, causing the lady of the house to say, 'There—the sun's coming out. I shall get my Things on. Are you going to stay for ever in the house, and get fustier and fustier, or are you going to have a turn on the Embankment? You might answer me, instead of smoking, Reginald!' But I noticed that this phenomenon, whatever its cause, never seemed to attain fruition, the lady always saying she knew how it would be—they had lost all the daylight. I only repeat her words. I observed another thing worthy of remark, that it very seldom held up. I am again repeating a phrase that was to me only a sound. I have no idea what 'it' was, nor what it held up, nor why. I am only certain that the performance was a rare one, however frequently it was promised. But the gentleman who restored me seemed to have confidence in its occurrence, conditionally on his taking his umbrella. Otherwise, he said, it was cocksure to come down cats and dogs, and they would be in for a cab, and he only had half a crown.
"These persons were of no interest in themselves, and I should never remember or think of them at all but for having been the unwilling witness of a conjugal misunderstanding, which may quite possibly have led to a permanent breach between them. It is painful to think that the whole difference might have been made in the lady's jealous misinterpretation of her husband's behaviour towards a maiden named La Sera—who, as I understood, came in by the week at nine shillings, and always had her Sunday afternoons, whatever those phrases mean; no doubt you will know—if I had been able to add my testimony to her husband's disclaimer of amorous intent. For it was most clear that the whole thing was but an innocent joke throughout, however ill-judged and stupid. I saw the whole from my place on the easel, and heard all that passed. I cannot tell you how I longed to say a word on his behalf, when, some days later, two friends paid him a visit, who had evidently been taken into his confidence, but who seemed to think that he had withheld something from them, not treating them so frankly as old friends deserved. Whereupon he warmly protested that his wife had no solid ground of complaint against him, having gone off, unreasonably, in what he called "a huff"; but that he had just paid La Sera her wages and sent her packing, so that now he had to make his own bed and black his own shoes.
"I am sorry to say that these two friends showed only an equivocal sympathy, winking at each other, and each digging the other in the ribs with strange humorous sounds, as of a sort of fowl. Also, they shook their heads at their friend, though not, as I think, reproaching him seriously, yet implying thus, as by other things said, that he was of a gay and sportive disposition that might easily be misled by the fascinations of beauty, which they were pleased to ascribe to La Sera. This was, however, scarcely spoken with an earnest intent, since this maiden, despite the beauty of her name—for one might conceive it to ascribe to her the tender radiance and sad loveliness of the sunset—was wanting in charm of form and colour, and had not successfully cultivated such other fascinations as sometimes make good their deficiency; as sweetness and fluency of speech, or a quick wit, or even the artificial seductions of well-ordered dress. I derived, too, a most unfavourable impression from a comment of her employer—to the effect that if, when she cleaned herself of a Sunday morning, she couldn't do it without making the whole place smell of yellow soap, she might as well chuck it and stop dirty.
"But I should grieve to think that this Signore's wife should have left him permanently for so foolish a quarrel. For, though their lives seemed filled with a silly sort of bickering, I believed from what I saw that there was really no lack of love between them, and I cannot conceive that they will be any happier apart. Indeed, had she been indifferent to her husband, could she have felt a trivial inconstancy, implying no grievous wrong, of such importance? But, indeed, it is absurd to use the word inconstancy at all in such a case, though we may condemn the ill-taste of all vulgar trifling with the solemn obligations of conjugal duty. I wish I might have spoken, to laugh in their faces and make a jest of the whole affair. But silence was my lot.
"I have hung here, as I suppose, for six months past, and have often striven to speak, but none has heard me till now. Think, dear Signore, how I have suffered! Think how I have longed to speak and be heard, when my Madeline, my darling—who loves me, and says she loves me—has talked to her great dog of her lover that was killed in the war...."
Mr. Pelly interrupted. "Are you referring to young Captain Calverley?" he said. "Because, if so, it is not certain that he is dead. Besides, I suppose you know that Miss Upwell and the Captain were not engaged?" And then the old gentleman fancied he heard a musical laugh come from the picture.
"How funny and cold you English are!" said the voice. "Was I engaged to my darling, my love, that only time he pressed me to his bosom; that only time I felt his lips on mine? Was I not the bond-slave for life to the evil heart and evil will of that old monument of Sin, soaked deep in every stain of Hell? Was I not called his wife? Yet my heart and my soul went out to my love in that kiss, and laughed in their freedom in mockery of the laws that could put the casket that held them in bond, and yet must perforce leave them free. And when that young soldier tore himself away from my Madeline—I saw them here myself; there by the shiny fish, in the glass case—was their parting kiss less real than ours was, that hour when I saw him last, my own love of those years gone by?"
"A—it isn't a subject I profess to understand much about," said Mr. Pelly. He blew his nose and wiped his spectacles, and was silent a moment. Then he said, "But whatever the sentiment of the young lady herself may be, there can be no doubt about her mother's. In fact, she has herself told me that she is most anxious that it should not be supposed that there was any engagement. So I trust—if you ever do have the opportunity of speaking to anyone on the subject—that you will be careful not to give the impression that such was the case. I do not, perhaps, fully realise the motives that influence Lady Upwell—a—and Sir Stopleigh,—of course it's the same thing...."
Mr. Pelly stopped with a jerk. He found himself talking uncomfortably and inexplicably to space, beside the embers of a dying fire, and in the distance he could hear the carriage bringing the absentees back through the wintry night, and the ringing tread of the horses on the hard ground.
"Poor Uncle Christopher all by himself, and the fire out!" said the first comer into the Library. It was the young lady who came to see the Italian picture at the restorer's Studio in Chelsea, a little over six months past. She had changed for the older since then, out of measure with the lapse of time. But her face was beautiful—none the less that it was sad and pale—in the glow as she brought the embers together to make life worth living to one or two more faggots, just for a little blaze before we went to bed.
"I was asleep and dreaming," said the old gentleman. "Such a queer dream!"
"You must tell it us to-morrow, Uncle Christopher. I like queer dreams." This young lady, Madeline Upwell, always made use of this mode of address, although the old gentleman was no uncle of hers, but only a very old friend of the family who knew her father before she was born, and called him George, which was his Christian Christian-name, so to speak, "Stopleigh" being outside family recognitions—a mere Bartitude!
But the picture, which might reasonably have protested against Mr. Pelly's statement, remained silent. So, when his waking judgment set the whole down as a dream, it was probably right.
CHAPTER IV
A Retrospective Chapter. How Fortune's Toy and the Sport of Circumstances fell in love with one of his Nurses. Prose composition. Lady Upwell's majesty, and the Queen's. No engagement. The African War, and Justifiable Fratricide. Cain. Madeline's big dog Cæsar. Cats. Ormuzd and Ahriman. A handy little Veldt. Madeline's Japanese kimono. A discussion of the nature of Dreams. Never mind Athenæus. Look at the Prophet Daniel. Sir Stopleigh's great-aunt Dorothea's twins. The Circulating Library and the potted shrimps. How Madeline read the manuscript in bed, and took care not to set fire to the curtains.
The story of Madeline, the young lady who is going one day to inherit the picture Mr. Pelly thought he was talking to last night, along with the Surley Stakes property—for there is no male heir—is an easy story to tell, and soon told. There were a many stories of the sort, just as the clock of last century struck its hundred.