"Very foolishly proud, the lot of you," said Mr. Gregory. "You knew very well how much I owed to your father"s help and advice when I was a young man. You know that Lizzie would have given you a home, and have thought herself more than paid by your society and friendship." (Lizzie was the late Mrs. Gregory.) "Forgive me," he said a minute later. "Had I been in your place, I should probably have done as you have done. But now to business. Fifteen thousand pounds remain in my hands. Of this sum only ten thousand honestly belongs to you two."
"How is this?" asked Miss Grammont.
"Mr. Calvotti told me just now that my father had left but ten thousand pounds in all."
"For investment, madam--for investment. I am a business man and I have invested it and doubled it. That graceless brother of yours who has gone away with his five thousand now will be back in a year"s time to borrow.
He will still have five thousand to draw upon, but I hold his discharge in full, and I shall cheat him for his own good and b.u.t.ton him down tightly to a weekly allowance. Money is cheap just now, Miss Grammont--dirt cheap--and you can"t do better than leave this in my hands at five per cent, interest. That"s five hundred a year. But all that we"ll talk about, in future. Meantime, that"s the first half-year"s allowance"--laying a cheque upon the table--"and the first thing to be done is to leave this place and come straightway to my house until you can look about you and settle where to live."
"You are just as generous and just as imperious as you always were,"
said Miss Grammont. "We will come this day week."
"Come now," said Mr. Gregory. "My sister will make you comfortable. Poor Jane"s an old maid still, and lives with me."
"Not now," she said. "There are many things to be seen to before we can leave here."
I saw her glance at her own shabby dress, and he saw that also.
"When you like," he said cheerfully. "But this day week is a bargain.
At what time? Say two o"clock. I"ll be there to meet you. Good-day, Calvotti; good-day, Miriam." Then he turned and kissed Cecilia.
"Good-day, Baby. G.o.d bless my soul! it seems only the other day since you _were_ a baby. And now I suppose you"ll be getting married in a week or two."
Cecilia blushed and laughed, and Mr. Gregory turned round with a droll look to me, and then took his hat and went in his own solid and determined way out of the room. Even in his walk the determination of his character declared itself. He was strong and square and firm, but within very gentle. Oh, you English! you English! you are a great people! Great in your stolidity and solidity, before which I, who know what lives beneath them, can only bow in a fluttering, b.u.t.terfly respect! Great in your pa.s.sions, which you repress so splendidly that to the superficial eye they look only like affections! Solid, stolid, much-enduring people, with corners all over you, accept my profoundest veneration!
Now it befalls me that I am impelled to tell why, with a reputation already considerable and fast increasing, and with a balance at the banker"s in the same beautiful conditions, I yet remained in that poor studio of mine, and in those unfashionable apartments. It was not that I am penurious, although I have changed my old harum-scarum habits with regard to money.
It was not--but why should I go on saying what it was not to pave the way to saying what it was? It was, then, that in that house had lived that little English angel who is a woman, and Cecilia. I will set it down in one line. She is all the joy I have and all the sorrow. And now I will set down one thing more that I may see it in plain black and white, and study it there until I drive its meaning into my thick head and my sore heart, and can at last smoke calm pipes over it, and be once more contented. There is no hope for me--there is no hope for me: none in the world. For my little Cecilia is in love already, and I would not for twenty thousand times my own sake have her in one thought untrue.
I was walking upstairs one night a month before the events I have just related, when I met a man coming down in the dark. I did not at all know who he was, but I knew that he had been to Miss Grammont"s rooms, because I was already near my own door, and n.o.body but Miss Grammont lived above me. The stranger said Good-night as he pa.s.sed me, and I returned his salutation. He stopped short.
"Have I the honour to address Mr. Calvotti?" he asked.
"That is my name," I answered, in some astonishment.
"Ah, then," he said, turning back again, "if you can spare me just a minute, I will deliver a letter I have for you."
We went upstairs together, and into my studio. I lighted the gas and took the letter. It came from Miss Grammont, and introduced Mr. Arthur Clyde, an old friend who had found them out by accident, and who had an especial desire to know me.
"This is not a good time at night to make a call," he said, with a frank and winning smile; "but I"m an artist myself. I"ve seen your work, and I"ve heard so much about you, that when I found that Miss Grammont knew you I couldn"t deny myself the pleasure of making your acquaintance."
He was very frank and pleasant in his manner, very fresh and English in his look, very handsome and self-possessed. Not self-possessed in the sense that he had a.s.surance, but in the sense that he did not seem to think about himself at all, which is the most agreeable kind of self-possession, both for those who have it and for those who meet them.
We talked about indifferent things for a minute or two, and then he lit a cigar and rose to go.
"I have heard of your kindness to Miss Grammont and little Cecilia," he said, turning at the door. "You"ll forgive me for saying a word about it, but they"re such dear old friends of mine, that I can"t help thanking anybody who has been good to them. Good-night, I"ll run in to-morrow, if I may. Good-night."
He came again next evening, and we dined together. He is a fine young fellow, and I got to like him greatly. He is fiery and enthusiastic and impulsive, and all his adjectives are superlatives, after the manner of earnest youth. But he is good-hearted and honourable to the core. We took to each other naturally, and he used to run up to my studio every evening at dusk. Very frequently we used to go upstairs and spend an evening with the ladies. Then we had music, and sometimes young Clyde would sing, and we would all laugh at him, for he knew no more of music than a crow. And yet I could see that it was to him Cecilia played and sang, and to her he listened as though she had been an angel out of heaven. When I played he had no great joy in the music, but when she played---- ah! it was plain enough--then Love gave him ears, and the music she created had power over him. This was hard for me, but I have my consolations.
I can stand up and say one or two things which it is well for a man to say. It is one of them that I do not whine like a baby because I cannot have my own way. It is another that I have strangled jealous hate and buried deep the baseness which would have led me to endeavour to estrange these hearts for my own purpose. I tell myself at times, "You have done well, my friend, and some day you will have your reward. And if the reward should not come, or if it should not be worth having, why--you have still done well." For it came to pa.s.s one night when I was quite convinced, that I came downstairs to my own room, and sat down and pulled a certain dream-house to pieces and beat the sawdust out of the foolish dolls who had had their abiding place in it. But, oh me, my friends, it is hard to pull down dream-houses; and Madame Circ.u.mstance exults over the bare rafters and the dismantled walls. And, ah! I loved her, and I love her still, and I shall love her till the day I die. But I am going to be an Italian old bachelor, with no wife but my pipe and no family but my canvas children. Do you triumph, madame? Do you triumph? Over my subdued heart? No! Over my broken life? No! Over any cowardly complaint of mine? Over any envy of this good young Englishman?
No! no! no! No! madame, I was not born a cad, and you shall not remould me. Accept, once more, my defiance!
Young Clyde came on the evening of the day on which the good fortune of the ladies" had been declared. He received the news very joyfully, but after a while he sobered down greatly, and when we took our leave together he was very depressed, and had grown unlike himself, I asked no questions, but he turned into my room and sat down and lit a cigar and held silence for a few minutes. Then he said--
"I say, Calvotti, old man, have you noticed that I have never once asked you to my rooms?"
I had never thought about it, and I told him so.
"Will you come up to-morrow, in the daytime? Don"t say No. I do particularly want you to come. Say twelve o"clock. Will you?"
He seemed strangely eager about this simple matter, and I promised to go. He went away a minute later, and next morning I walked to the address he had given me. He met me at the door, and I saw that he was pale and perturbed. I learned afterwards that he had not been to bed, but had sat up all night hara.s.sing himself with groundless misgivings.
He led me to his studio, a fine s.p.a.cious room, with a high north light.
He had a chair set in the middle of the room, and on the easel a large veiled picture.
"Now, Calvotti," he said, speaking with a nervous haste which was altogether foreign to him, "I have asked you here to settle a question which I cannot settle for myself. Sometimes I"m brimfull of faith and hope, and sometimes I"m in a perfect abyss of despair. You know I"ve been painting all my life, but I"ve never sold anything. Everything I paint goes to the governor. Some of the things he hangs about his own place, you know, and some of them--more than half, I suppose--he has cut into strips and sent back to me. He"s a very singular man, and has extraordinary ideas about pictures. But I"ve been working on one subject now for some months past, and now I"ve finished it, and---- Look here, Calvotti, I"ll tell you everything. When I got here last night, I found a letter from my governor telling me that my allowance is stopped after next quarter-day, and that I must get a living by painting. He always said he would give me the chance to make a living, and then leave me to make it. Well, I"m not afraid of that, but I want a candid judgment, because--because--Well, I"m engaged to be married, old man, and I can"t live on my wife, you know. And I want you to tell me candidly whether there"s any good stuff in me, and whether I can ever do anything, you know."
"You are engaged to Cecilia?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said simply, "I am engaged to Cecilia, and I want to begin work in earnest now."
"Let me look at your picture," I said, and took my seat in the chair he had placed ready for me.
He paused a minute as though he would have spoken, but checking himself, he turned to the picture, drew away the cloth by which it was covered, and pa.s.sed behind me. The picture represented a garret room, through the window of which could be seen the far-reaching roofs of a great city.
Against the window rose the figure of a girl who was seated at an old grand piano. Her fingers rested on the keys, and her eyes were looking a great way off. The face and figure were Cecilia"s, the garret was that in which I myself had lived, and the piano was mine. The outer light of the picture was so subdued and calm that the face was allowed to reveal itself quite clearly. I looked long and carefully, guarding myself from a too rapid judgment. Arthur, as by this time I had begun to call him, stood at the back of my chair. At last he laid a hand upon my shoulder--
"What do think about it?"
"Do you want my candid opinion?" I asked him.
"Yes, your candid opinion."
"You will not be offended at anything I shall say?"
"No. I want an honest judgment, and I can trust yours."
I used the common slang of criticism.
"Suppose, then, I were to say that the: composition is bad, the colour crude, the whole work amateurish, the modelling thin and in places, false, the----"
"Don"t say any more, Calvotti. I"ve been a fool, and the governor has been right all the time."
"If I said these things, you would believe them?"
"_If_ you said them?" he cried, coming from-behind my chair. "But do you say them?"
"Stand off!" I said, laughing. A man can rarely endure praise and blame with equal fort.i.tude. My young friend, you will some day paint great pictures. In four or five hundred years" time great painters will look at this and will reverently point out in it the faults of early manner; but they will read the soul in it--as I do now. You are a creature of a hundred years--a painter, an artist. This is not paint, but a face--a face of flesh and blood, with soul behind. And this is not paint, but a faded brown silk. And this is not paint, but solid mahogany. You have done more than paint a picture. You have made concrete an inspiration.
Your technique is all masterly, but it does not overpower. It gives only fitting body to a beautiful idea--its soul!"
He blushed and trembled whilst I spoke. Englishmen do not often talk poetry--off the stage. He answered--
"No, really, Calvotti, old man, that"s rot, you know. But do you like it?"