The Galaxy, June 1877 Part 4

Blanchet called on his friend. He found the friend a little put out by the unexpected lavishness of the manner in which the poetic enterprise had been carried on.

"This will be an awfully expensive business, I'm afraid," Heron said, in an embarra.s.sed tone, for he felt that it was a sort of profanation to talk of money matters with a young poet. "I wish you had let me do this thing myself, Blanchet. I'd not have minded so far as I'm concerned. But I don't know about her, you see--she may not have much money. Then young ladies are generally so enthusiastic; she may not have thought of what the thing would cost."

"You need not think about that," Herbert said loftily. "Miss Grey will be a rich woman one of these days----"

"But I don't see that that much alters the matter, although I am decidedly glad to hear it for her own sake, if it will make her any happier than she is now--which I take it is not by any means certain.

But I don't see throwing away her money without her knowing all about it any the more."

"Throwing away her money?" Herbert asked, in tones of lofty protest.

"Well, I don't mean that of course," the good-natured Heron hastened to explain in all sincerity. "You know very well, my dear Blanchet, what I think of your merits and your poems, and of all true poets. I know that it is an honor for any one, whether man or woman, to be allowed to help a poet to come out before the world and make a success. I only wish I had had a chance of doing such a thing for you; but this young lady, you know--I don't feel quite certain whether I ought to have spent her money so freely."

"I can rea.s.sure you, I think," the poet said, with chilling dignity. "I should never have allowed any one to do anything for me without having satisfied myself that it was done in the unstinting spirit of friends.h.i.+p, and by some one whom such kindness would not hurt."

"All right; I am glad to hear you say so, of course, but you won't wonder at my scruples, perhaps----"

"Your scruples, my dear fellow, do you infinite honor," Mr. Blanchet said, with a slight dash of irony in his tone, which Heron did not at the moment perceive, being in truth engrossed by some other thoughts.

"But you may accept my a.s.surance that there is no further occasion for them, and we will, if you please, change the subject."

Victor did not feel by any means well satisfied that there was no occasion for scruple, nor did he at all like his poetic friend's way of looking at the matter. But he reflected that Blanchet might after all have good warrant for what he had said, and that it was not for him to cavil at the generosity of a rich girl--if she were rich--toward a poor poet.

So they went along, the poet and his distinguished political friend, to the scene of the artistic and literary gathering, which the latter was so proud to see, and the former so proud to show.

We have all read in story about the effect of some little magic word, which once spoken makes that which was lovely before seem but loathly, and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did not seem to const.i.tute an a.s.sembly of n.o.ble minds in whose midst he was to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of cla.s.sic tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life, and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander of her rivals.

If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much, very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will look back without bitterness on the time when they tried to impress a dull world, and have no feeling of hatred for those who have done better, but will marry and bring up children, and be Philistines and happy. Youth has only one season--luckily for a good many of us, who are decent fellows enough as long as we are content to be ourselves, and can do without affectation.

CHAPTER XVII.

"UNDER BONNYBELL'S WINDOW-PANES."

But there was something more in Victor Heron's feeling of depression that night than came from the mere fact that he had found a few young artists not quite such heroic spirits as he thought they ought to be.

It was the demeanor of Herbert Blanchet that especially spoiled the evening for him. In truth the head of the poet was not a strong one, and was very easily turned by any little stimulant of whatever kind.

His volume of poems this night affected all his being. He felt sure that he was at last about to force himself upon the recognition of the world, and he made up his mind that Miss Grey was in love with him. He conveyed hints of his approaching good fortune to his companions; and he received at first with benign courtesy their compliments on the success that seemed to await him in life and love. But when some too forward person suggested that he could possibly guess at the name of the heiress whose heart and hand were to bless the lucky poet, then Blanchet became gravely and even severely dignified.

"You will excuse me, Mellifont," he said grandly, the brandy and soda having, as was the wont of any such liquor taken by our poor poet, gone straight upward to his head--"you will excuse me, I am sure, if I say this is not exactly a subject for jocularity; or even, permit me to add, for general conversation, although among friends. My distinguished friend, Mr. Heron, will, I am sure, exactly appreciate what I say.

Things may not be so completely settled as to make it proper that they should be spoken of as if--as if in short they were settled; you will excuse me, Mellifont, my dear fellow--you will excuse me."

Victor Heron thought it time for him to go, and rose accordingly, and Mr. Blanchet insisted on accompanying him down the stairs and to the door of the house.

"I thought it right, you know," the over-dignified poet said, "to put a stop to that sort of thing. Men have no right to make such inferences.

I should have no right myself to a.s.sume that things were settled in that sort of way. It is not just to others--to another at least. You appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"

"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."

"Quite my idea--I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"

"The man you talked to just now?"

"Yes, Mellifont--a very good fellow, though a little too fond of talking--I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now alive. He is a composer--you must hear him play some bits from his opera. He is at work on an opera, you know--or perhaps you have not heard?"

"I have not heard--no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all, a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do such things.

"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner--all wrong except Mellifont."

Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great man.

"What is his opera to be called?" he asked, not venturing to hazard any compromising observation.

"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' It is to be in seven acts, and each act is to give an entirely new ill.u.s.tration of a deadly sin--which Mellifont will show to be the only true virtues of mankind. It will make a revolution, I can tell you."

Victor thought it could hardly fail to do that if it were at all successful in the object set out by its author.

"It is to have seven heroines," the poet went on, still at the door, and refusing to allow Victor to depart. "Lot's daughters--let me see--Messalina, Locusta; Jezebel I think, Theodora, and I believe, Mrs.

Brownrigg. It will be a splendid thing."

It was not easy for Victor to get away, for the poet had to tell him of other great works of art that were in the contemplation of members of the school. At length Blanchet released him, thanking him grandly for the a.s.sistance he had lent to the bringing out of his book, but adding even more grandly some words that fell painfully on Victor's ear.

"I hope to be independent of publishers and drudgery before long; I fancy--I rather believe it depends upon myself, and I think I owe it to my own genius to raise myself above the necessity of drudgery. Then I could do something worthy of myself, and the few whose praise I value."

Victor escaped at last and walked away. He was in a very discontented mood, an unusual thing for him. He could not help believing that there must be, or at least might be, something in the idea which Blanchet so evidently wished people to receive. He feared that there must be something more than mere kindly patronage in Miss Grey's generosity toward Blanchet. The thought was strangely disagreeable to him. He could not think with patience of such a girl being in love with such a man. He was now disposed to exaggerate the demerits of the poet, and to believe anything mean of one who could take a girl's money and give out as an excuse for taking it that she was in love with him. "If I had a sister," he thought, "and any fellow were to give such hints about her, I wonder how I should like it, and I wonder how much of it I should stand!"

He felt sorry, very sorry, for Minola, and perhaps a little angry with her too for allowing to any man the chance of suggesting such things.

The more he thought of her and all he had seen of her, the less she seemed fitted for such a lover as Mr. Blanchet. She had impressed Victor greatly by her manners, her fresh and frank character, and the simple, trusting generosity which was her transparent attribute. He began to look on the poet now as a mere fortune-hunter, who was fastening upon the girl because of the money which he expected her to have. He did not know how consuming a pa.s.sion is the vanity of the small artistic mind--the mind which has art's ambition only and not art's inspiration. Mr. Blanchet was not a fortune-hunter in the ordinary sense. His poems were to him as yet much dearer than any fortune. He was drawn to Minola not because she had money, but because having money she was willing to spend some of it in bringing out his poems in a handsome edition.

Our hero's quixotic temper was thoroughly roused by the thought of some wrong which he fancied was about to be done to Minola. He was not one of those lucky beings who can let things alone. He never could let things alone. Had he had the gift of those who can, he would just then have been governor of some rising colony, and would have been in a fair way of promotion. He was tormented by the thought that there was something he ought to do to save Minola from some vaguely terrible fate, and by not being able to see what the something was which lay within his power to do. Before he had walked many yards he had worked himself into the idea that a plot of some sort was in preparation to entrap Minola into a marriage with one who, poet or not, was wholly unworthy of her.

His energetic spirit at length suggested something to be done. It was not, perhaps, a very practical or useful stroke of policy, but it was the only thing which occurred to him and the only thing which he did just then. He started off at full speed to walk under the windows of the house where Miss Grey was living. It was now fully midnight, and of course he had not the slightest idea of seeing Minola, and, indeed, would have been greatly embarra.s.sed if he had seen her. But he started off, nevertheless, to walk under her windows with as eager a step and as steady a purpose as if he were really hastening to rescue her from some imminent danger. It was only a short walk from where he then was to Minola's lodgings; but Heron was so eager in his purpose that the way seemed miles, which he was covering with hasty strides.

When he reached the house where Minola lived, the aspect of the place was just such as, if he had been a lover, he might have expected or desired to find. The house was all in darkness save for one window.

There was a looking-gla.s.s in that window, making it plain to the least observant of human creatures that it must be the window of a bedroom.

How could a lover doubt that that must be the window of the room which was hers, and that she then watched the stars of midnight, and that she thought of love, and that her soul was, as Jean Paul puts it, in the blue ether? For the moment Victor Heron found himself wis.h.i.+ng that he were a lover--were the lover of whom the lady, fancy-fixed in that one lighted room, might be thinking. But if it were Minola's room, he thought, she certainly had not him or any memory of him in her mind. It was a clear, soft midnight, and the moon that shone on the near roof of the British Museum seemed as poetic and as sad as though it fell on the ruins of the Parthenon. No practice in colonial administration can wholly squeeze the poetic and the romantic out of the breast of a young man of Heron's time of life. As he stood there his grievance seemed as far off as the moon herself, but not by any means so poetic and beautiful. He paced up and down, feeling very young and odd, and unlike his usual self. He was happy in a queer, boyish way that had a certain shamefaced sensation about it, as when a youth for the first time drinks suddenly of some sparkling wine, and feels his brain and senses all aflame with delicious ecstasy, and is afraid of the feeling although he delights in it.

It was a natural part of the half fantastic chivalry of his character that he should have felt a sort of satisfaction in thus for the moment being near Minola, as if by that means he were in some sort protecting her against danger. If at that time any softer and warmer feeling than mere friends.h.i.+p were mingling itself with Heron's sensations, he did not then know it. He thought of the girl as a sweet friend, new to him, indeed, but very dear, in whose happiness he felt deeply interested, and over whom he had taken it into his head that he had a right to watch. She seemed to be strangely alone in the world of London, and, indeed, to be at the same time not suited for anything in London but just such isolation. He never could think of her as mixing in the ordinary society of the metropolis. He could not think of her as one of the common crowd, following out mechanically the registered routine of the season's amus.e.m.e.nts, listening to the commonplace talk, and compliments, and cheap cynicism of the drawing-room and the five o'clock tea. To him she appeared as different from all that, and as poetically lifted above it, as if she were Hawthorne's Hilda, high up in her Roman tower, among her doves, and near to the blue sky. Except in the home of the Moneys, Heron had never seen Minola in anything that even looked like society; and there was a good deal of the odd and the fresh in that home which took it out of the range of the commonplace, and did not interfere with his poetic idealization of Minola. Her presence and her way of life appeared alike to him a poetic creation.

So quiet, self-sufficing a life, alone in the midst of the crowd, such simple strength of purpose, such a tranquil choice of the kind of existence that suited her best, such generosity and such gracious, loving kindness--all this together made up a picture which had a natural fascination for a chivalrous young man, who had never before had time to allow the softer and more romantic elements of his nature any chance of expression. It may be that for the present Minola was to him but the first suggestion of an embodiment of all the vague, floating thoughts and visions of love and womanhood that must now and then cross the spiritual horizon of every young man, no matter how closely he may be occupied with colonial affairs and the condition of the colored races. The hero of a French story, whereof there is not otherwise over-much good to be said, speaks with a feeling as poetic as it is true when he says that in the nightingale's song he heard the story of the love that he ought to have known, but which had not yet come to him. Perhaps in the eyes and in the voice of Minola Victor Heron unconsciously found this story told for him.

However that might be, it is certain that Heron found a curious satisfaction this night in pa.s.sing again and again before Minola's door, and making believe to himself as if he were guarding her against danger. He might have remained on guard in this way, heaven knows how long--for, as we know, he was not fond of early going to bed--but that he suddenly "was aware," as the old writers put it, of another watcher as well as himself. It was unmistakable. Another man came up and pa.s.sed slowly once or twice under the same windows, and on the side of the street where Heron had put himself on guard. Then the new comer, observing, no doubt, that he was not alone, had crossed to the other side of the street, and Heron thought he was only a chance pa.s.ser and was gone altogether. Presently, however, he crossed the road again, and stood a short distance away from Heron as if he were watching him. Now, though Victor Heron was not a lover, he had just as much objection as any lover could have to being seen by observant eyes when watching under a girl's window. The mere thought recalled him at once to chilling commonplace. He was for going away that moment; all the delight was gone out of his watching. But he was a little curious to know if the new comer were really only a casual stranger whom his movements had stirred into idle curiosity. So he went straightway down the street and pa.s.sed the unwelcome intruder. He felt sure the face of the man was known to him, although he could not at first recall to mind the person's ident.i.ty. He felt sure, too, by the way in which the man looked at him and then turned suddenly off, that the new comer had recognized him as well. This was tormenting for the moment, as he went on perplexing himself by trying to think who it was that he had seen in this unexpected and unwished-for way. He walked slowly, and looked back once or twice. He could not see his disturber any more. The man had either gone away or was, perhaps, standing in the shadow of a doorway.

Suddenly an idea flashed upon Heron.

"Why, of course," he exclaimed, "it's he! I ought to have known! It's the man from Keeton--the hated rival."

By "hated rival," however, Heron did not mean a rival in love, but only in electioneering; for he now knew that it was Mr. Sheppard he had seen, and he remembered how Mr. Sheppard, when he met him in Minola's room, had seemed oddly sullen and unwilling to fraternize. This was the reason why Heron called him the hated rival. His own idea of a rival in an election contest was that of a person whom one ought to ask to dinner, and treat with especial courtesy and fair offer of friends.h.i.+p.

Suddenly, however, another idea had occurred to him.

"What on earth can he be doing there," he asked, "under her window? Can it be possible that he too is a lover?"