"Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it like?"
Mastering some hesitation, he answered, "Miss Oliver, I presume."
"Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I don"t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless."
He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. "It is like!" he murmured; "the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect. It smiles!"
"Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting? Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?"
He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute, disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.
"That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious or wise is another question."
Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I--less exalted in my views than St. John--had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr.
Oliver"s large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered--
"As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once."
By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable--to hear it thus freely handled--was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure--an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to "burst" with boldness and good-will into "the silent sea" of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.
"She likes you, I am sure," said I, as I stood behind his chair, "and her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl--rather thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her. You ought to marry her."
"_Does_ she like me?" he asked.
"Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so often."
"It is very pleasant to hear this," he said--"very: go on for another quarter of an hour." And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon the table to measure the time.
"But where is the use of going on," I asked, "when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart?"
"Don"t imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared--so a.s.siduously sown with the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood--the young germs swamped--delicious poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver"s feet: she is talking to me with her sweet voice--gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well--smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine--I am hers--this present life and pa.s.sing world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing--my heart is full of delight--my senses are entranced--let the time I marked pa.s.s in peace."
I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.
"Now," said he, "that little s.p.a.ce was given to delirium and delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers. I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow--her offers false: I see and know all this."
I gazed at him in wonder.
"It is strange," pursued he, "that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly--with all the intensity, indeed, of a first pa.s.sion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating--I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months"
rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know."
"Strange indeed!" I could not help ejaculating.
"While something in me," he went on, "is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to--co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary"s wife? No!"
"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme."
"Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race--of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance--of subst.i.tuting peace for war--freedom for bondage--religion for superst.i.tion--the hope of heaven for the fear of h.e.l.l? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for."
After a considerable pause, I said--"And Miss Oliver? Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?"
"Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do."
"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away."
"No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled--my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six."
"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom."
Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had pa.s.sed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart"s very hearthstone.
"You are original," said he, "and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to a.s.sure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ign.o.ble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am--a cold hard man."
I smiled incredulously.
"You have taken my confidence by storm," he continued, "and now it is much at your service. I am simply, in my original state--stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity--a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not because I deeply compa.s.sionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer."
"You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher," I said.
"No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher--a follower of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus:--From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master"s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated "till this mortal shall put on immortality.""
Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my palette. Once more he looked at the portrait.
"She _is_ lovely," he murmured. "She is well named the Rose of the World, indeed!"
"And may I not paint one like it for you?"
"_Cui bono_? No."
He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took it up with a s.n.a.t.c.h; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.
"What is the matter?" I asked.
"Nothing in the world," was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and "good-afternoon," he vanished.
"Well!" I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, "that caps the globe, however!"
I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon forgot it.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII
When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impa.s.sable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the m.u.f.fled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down "Marmion," and beginning--
"Day set on Norham"s castled steep, And Tweed"s fair river broad and deep, And Cheviot"s mountains lone; The ma.s.sive towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round them sweep, In yellow l.u.s.tre shone"--