Eli's Children Part 31

"Oh, Lord!" said Magnus, aloud.

"Hus.h.!.+ don't. Come along, though. Gently, man, or they'll see us, and we shall have to talk to the girls."

"I'm an ostrich," said the artist; "my head is metaphorically buried in sand. Whatever my pursuers see, I am blind."

As it happened a group of people came along, and under their cover the two young men escaped.

"He is an awful fool," said Artingale, "but the people believe in him."

"Bah! so they will in any lunatic who makes himself fas.h.i.+onably absurd.

I'll be reasonable, Harry, though that fellow has half driven me wild with his airs and patronage. He gave me a thumping price for one of my pictures, for he's immensely rich. Then he had the impudence to want me to alter it--the composition of months of hard, honest study--and began to lecture me on art."

"From his point of view."

"Yes, from his point of view. But as I said, I will be reasonable.

There is a deal in this pre-Raphaelitism, and it has done its part in reviving some of the best of the ancient art, and made its mark on our schools of to-day. But there it was not allowed to stop. A pack of idiots--there, I can call them nothing else--go into frantic wors.h.i.+p of all the worst portions of old art, and fall down and idolise things that are ugly, ill-coloured, and grotesque."

"True, O magnate! and they'll grow worse."

"They imitate it in their paintings, drawing impossible trees, landscapes, and houses for backgrounds, and people their foregrounds with resurrections in pigment of creatures that seem as if they had been dead and buried for a month, and clothe them in charnel-house garb."

"Bravo! charnel-house garb is good."

"Thankye, Polonius junior," said the artist; "I tell you, Harry, I get out of patience with the follies perpetrated under the name of art, to the exclusion of all that is natural and beautiful and pure. Now I ask you, my dear boy, would you like to see a sister of yours dressing up and posing like those two guys of girls?"

"Haven't got a sister, worse luck, or you should have her, old fellow."

"Thanks. Well, say, then, the woman you loved."

"Hus.h.!.+ stop here, old fellow. Here they come."

"Who? Those two stained-gla.s.s virgins?"

"No, no, be quiet; the Mallow girls."

There was so much subdued pa.s.sion in the young man's utterance that the artist glanced sidewise at him, to see that there was an intensity of expression in his eyes quite in keeping with his words, and following the direction of his gaze, he saw that it was fixed upon a barouche, drawn by a fine pair of bays, which champed their bits and flecked their satin coats with foam as they fretted impatiently at the restraint put upon them, and keeping them dawdling in a line of slow-moving carriages going east.

There was another line of carriages going west between the two young men and the equipage in question, and Magnus could see that his companion was in an agony of dread lest his salute should not be noticed, but, just at the right moment, the occupants of the barouche turned in their direction, acknowledged the raised hat of Lord Artingale, and, the pace just then increasing, the carriage pa.s.sed on.

"Feel better?" said Magnus, cynically.

"Better? yes," cried the young man, turning to him flushed and with a gratified smile upon his face. "There, don't laugh at me, old fellow, I can't help it."

"I'm not going to laugh at you. But you seem to have got it badly."

"Awfully," replied the other.

"Shouldn't have thought it of you, Harry. So those are the Mallow girls, eh?"

"Yes. Isn't she charming?"

"What, that girl with the soft dreamy eyes? Yes, she is attractive."

"No, man," cried Artingale, impatiently; "that's Julia. I mean the other."

"What, the fair-haired, bright-looking little maiden who looks as if she paints?"

"Paints be hanged!" cried Artingale, indignantly, "it's her own sweet natural colour, bless her."

"Oh, I say, my dear boy," said Magnus, with mock concern, "I had no idea that you were in such a state as this."

"Chaff away, old fellow, I don't care. Call me in a fool's paradise, if you like. I've flirted about long enough, but I never knew what it was before."

"Then," said Magnus, seriously, "you are what they call--in love?"

"Don't I tell you, Mag, that I don't care for your chaff. There, yes: in love, if you like to call it so, for I've won the sweetest little girl that ever looked truthfully at a man."

"And the lady--does she reciprocate, and that sort of thing?"

"I don't know: yes, I hope so. I'm afraid to be sure; it seems so conceited, for I'm not much of a fellow, you see."

"Let's see, it happened abroad, didn't it?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so. I met them at Dinan, and then at Baden, and afterwards at Rome and in Paris."

"Which means, old fellow, that you followed them all over the Continent."

"Well, I don't know; I suppose so," said the young man, biting his moustache. "You see, Mag, I used to know Cynthia when she was little and I was a boy--when the governor was alive, you know. I was at Harrow, too, with her brothers--awful cads though, by the by. She can't help that, Mag," he said, innocently.

"Why, Artingale, it makes you quite sheepish," laughed the artist. "I wish I could catch that expression for a Corydon."

"For a what?"

"Corydon--gentle shepherd, my boy."

"Get out! Well, as I was telling you, old fellow, I met them abroad, and now they've come back to England, and they've been down at the rectory--Lawford Rectory, you know, six miles from my place. And now they've come up again."

"So it seems," said Magnus, drily.

"Chaff away, I don't mind," said Artingale.

"Not I; I won't chaff you, Harry," said the other, quietly. "'Pon my soul I should miss you, for you and I have been very jolly together; but I wouldn't wish you a better fate than to have won some really sweet, lovable girl. It's a fate that never can be mine, as the song says, and I won't be envious of others. Come along."

"No, no, don't let's go, old fellow. They'll only drive as far as the corner, and then come back on this side. Perhaps they'll stop to speak.

If they do, I'll introduce you to Julia; she's a very nice girl."

"But not so nice as, as--"