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A Likely Story

by William De Morgan · English · Gutenberg #44773 · 513,614 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Likely Story

Author: William De Morgan


        
Release date: January 27, 2014 [eBook #44773]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44773

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LIKELY STORY ***

A LIKELY STORY


BY

WILLIAM DE MORGAN



LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1911




_All rights reserved_




DEDICATED TO
THE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRER




CONTENTS


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


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


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


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


CHAPTER V

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


CHAPTER VI

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


CHAPTER VII

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


CHAPTER VIII

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?


CHAPTER IX

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


CHAPTER X

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


CHAPTER XI

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.

Whether the young Captain Calverley, whom the
picture alluded to, was a hero because, when, one
day in the hunting-field, our young heiress and her
quadruped came to grief over a fence, he made his
horse swerve suddenly to avoid disastrous complications,
and thereby came to greater grief himself,
Mr. Pelly, at any rate, could form no judgment.  It
was out of his line, he said.  So, according to him,
was the sequel, in which the sadly mauled mortal
portion of the young soldier, with a doubt if the
immortal portion was still in residence, was carried
to Surley Stakes and qualified--though rather
slowly--to resume active service, by the skill of the
best of surgeons and the assiduity of an army of
nurses.  But, hero or not, he was credited with
heroism by the young lady, with all the natural
consequences.  And no doubt his convalescence
was all the more rapid that he found himself, when
he recovered his senses forty-eight hours after his
head struck the corner of a stone wall in his
involuntary dismount, in such very delightful
company, with such opportunities of improving his
relations with it.  In fact, the scheme for his
removal must have developed very soon, to give him
a text for a sermon to the effect that he was
Fortune's Toy and the Sport of Circumstances, that he
accounted concussion of the brain and a fractured
thigh-bone the only real blessings his lot had ever
vouchsafed to him, and that happiness would
become a Thing of the Past as soon as he rejoined
his regiment.  He would, however, devote the
remainder of his life to treasuring the memories of this
little hour of unalloyed bliss, and hoping that his
cherished recollections would at almost the rarest
possible intervals find an echo somehow and
somewhere that his adoration--badly in love as he
was--failed in finding a description for, as the climax of
a long sentence.  And perhaps it was just as well
that his resources in prose composition gave out
when they did, as nothing was left then but to
become natural, and say, "You'll forget all about
me, Miss Upwell, you know you will.  That's what
I meant"--the last with a consciousness that when
we are doing prose composition we are apt to say
one thing and mean another.

Madeline wasn't prepared to be artificial, with
this young dragoon or anyone else.  She gave him
the full benefit of her large blue eyes--because, you
see, she had got him down, as it were, and he couldn't
possibly become demonstrative with a half-healed
fracture of the thigh--and said, "I hope I _shan't_.
I shall try not to, anyhow."  But this seemed not
to give entire satisfaction, as the patient said, rather
ruefully, "_You could_, if you tried, Miss Upwell!"  To
which the young lady, who was not without a
mischievous side to her character, answered, "Of
course I could!" but immediately repented, and
added.  "One can do anything one likes, if one tries
hard enough, you know!"

It would only be the retelling of a very old
story, the retreading of very old ground, to follow
these young people through the remainder of their
interview, which was interrupted by the appearance
of Madeline's mamma; who, to say the truth, had
been getting apprehensive that so many _têtes-à-tête_
with this handsome patient might end seriously.
And though his family was good, he was only a
younger son; and she didn't want her daughter to
marry a soldier.  Fancy "Mad" being carried off
to India!  For in the bosom of her family this
most uncomfortable of namelets had caught on
naturally, without imputation of Hanwell or Colney
Hatch.

However, her ladyship was too late, this time.  No
clinical practice of any Hospital includes kissing or
being kissed by the patient, and "Mad" and her
lover were fairly caught.  Nothing was left for it
but confession at high tension, and throwing
ourselves on the mercy of the Court.  But always with
the distinct reservation that neither of us could
ever love another.

Lady Upwell, a very beautiful woman in her day,
was indulging in a beautiful sunset, and meant to
remain fine till midnight.  There was a gleam of
the yellow silver of a big harvest moon in the hair
that had been gold.  She was good, but very
majestic; in fact, _her_ majesty, when she presented
her daughter to her Queen, competed with that of
the latter, which has passed into the language.  To
do her justice, she let it lapse on hearing the full
disclosure of these two culprits, and had the presence
of mind to ask them if they had no suspicion that
they might be a couple of young fools, to fancy they
could know their own minds on so short an acquaintance,
etc.  For this was barely seven weeks after
the hunting-field accident.  "You silly geese!" she
said.  "Go your own way--but you'll quarrel in
a fortnight.  See if you don't!"  _She_ knew all
about this sort of thing, though Mr. Pelly didn't.

The latter was right, however, and prudent, when
in his dream he laid stress on the wish of Madeline's
parents that there should be "no engagement."  This
stipulation seemed to be accounted by both
of them--but especially by the Baronet--as a sort
of panacea for all parental responsibilities.  It could
not be reiterated too often.  The consequence was
that there were two concurrent determinations of
the relative positions of Madeline and the Captain;
one an esoteric one--a sort of sacramental
service of perpetual vows of fidelity; the other the
exoteric proclamations of a kind of many-headed
town-crier, who went about ringing his bell and
shouting that it was "distinctly understood that
there was no engagement."  Mr. Pelly's repetition
of this in his dream may have had an intransitive
character; but he was good and prudent, just the
same.  How we behave in dreams shows whether
the high qualities we pride ourselves on are more
than skin-deep.

But all the efforts of the exoteric town-crier were
of no avail against the esoteric sacramental services.
The most unsettling condition lovers can have
imposed upon them--that of being left entirely to their
own devices, and never stimulated by so much as a
hint of a _chaperon_--failed to bring about a coolness.
And when within a year after his accident Jack
Calverley was ordered away with his Company to
South Africa, where war had all but broken out,
the sacramental service the picture--or someone--had
witnessed, just by the glass case with the big
fish in it, was the farewell of a couple of
heartbreaks, kept under by the upspring of Hope in
youth, that clings to the creed that the stricken
classes, the mourning classes, are Other People, and
that to them pity shall be given from within our
pale of well-fenced security.  It was a wrench to
part, certainly, but Jack would come back, and be
a great soldier and wear medals.  And the Other
People would die for their country.

And then came the war, and the many unpleasant
discoveries that always come with a war,
the most unpleasant of all being the discovery of
the strength of the enemy.  The usual recognitions
of the obvious, too late; and the usual denunciations
of everybody else for not having foreseen it all the
time.  The usual rush to the money-chest of
unexhausted Credit, to make good with pounds
deficiencies shillings spent in time would have
supplied; the usual storms of indignation against
the incompetence in high places that never spent,
in time, the shillings we refused to provide.  The
usual war-whoops from sheltered corners, safe out
of gunshot; and the usual deaths by scores of men
on both sides who never felt a pang of ill-feeling to
each other, or knew the cause of quarrel--yes, a
many of whom, had they known a quarrel was
pending, would have given their lives to avert it!
The usual bearing, on both sides, of the brunt of the
whirlwind by those who never sowed a wind-seed,
and the usual reaping of a golden harvest by the
Judicious Investor, he who buys and sells, but
makes and meddles not with what he sells or buys,
measuring its value alone by what he can get and
must give for it.  And a very respectable person
he is, too.

The history of Madeline's next few months made
up for her a tale of anxious waitings for many mails;
of pangs of unendurable tension over journals that,
surrendered by the postman, would not open; that,
opened at last, seemed nothing but advertisements;
that, run to earth and convicted of telegrams, only
yielded new food for anxiety.  A tale of three
periods of expectation of letters from Jack, by every
mail.  The first of expectation fulfilled; of letters full
of hope and confidence, of forecast of victories easily
won and a triumphant quick return.  The second
of expectation damped and thwarted; of victories
revised; of Hope's rebukes to Confidence, the
coward who fails us at our need; of the slow dawn
of the true horrors of war--mere death on the
battlefield the least of them--that will one day change
the reckless young soldier to an old grave man that
has learned his lesson, and knows that the curse of
Cain is on him who stirs to War, and that half the
great names of History have been borne by Devils
incarnate.  And then the third--a weary time of
waiting for a letter that came not, for only one little
word of news to say _yes_ or _no_ to the question we
hardly dare to ask:--"Is he dead?"  For our poor
young friend, after distinguishing himself brilliantly,
and yet coming almost scathless out of more than
one action, was _missing_.  When the roll was called
after a memorable action from which the two
opponent armies retreated simultaneously, able to
bear the slaughter by unseen guns no longer, no
answer came to the name--called formally--of
Captain Calverley.  The survivors who still had
breath to answer to their names already knew that
he was missing--knew that he was last seen apparently
carried away by his horse, having lost control
over it--probably wounded, said report.  That was
all--soon told!  And then followed terrible hours
that should have brought more news and did not.
And the hearts of those who watched for it went
sick with the fear that no news would ever come,
that none would ever know the end of that ride
and the vanished rider.  But each heart hid away
its sickness from its neighbour, and would not tell.

And so the days passed, and each day's end was
the grafting of a fresh despair in the tree nourished
in the soil of buried hopes; and each morning
Madeline would try to reason it away and discover
some new calendar rule, bringing miscalculation to
book--always cutting short the tale of days, never
lengthening them.  She talked very little to
anyone about it, for fear her houses of cards should be
shaken down by stern common sense; or, worse
still, that she should be chilled by the hesitating
sympathy of half-hearted Hope.  But her speech
was free to her great dog Cæsar, when they were
alone together.

Cæsar was about the size of a small cart-horse,
and when he had a mind--and he often had--to lie
on the hearthrug, and think with his eyes shut, he
was difficult to move.  Not that he had an opposive
or lazy disposition, but that it was not easy to make
him understand.  The moment he knew what was
wanted of him he was only too anxious to comply.
As, for instance, if he could be convinced of Cats,
he would rise and leave the room abruptly, knocking
several persons down, and leaving behind him the
trail of an earthquake.  But his heart was good and
pure, and he impressed his admirers somehow that
he was always on the side of Ormuzd against
Ahriman: he always took part with the Right.

So Madeline, when she found herself alone with
Cæsar, in those days, would cry into his fur as he
lay on the rug, and would put sentiments of
sympathy and commiseration into his mouth, which
may have been warranted by the facts, only really
there was nothing to show it.  In these passages
she alleged kinship with Cæsar, claiming him as her
son.

"Was he," she would say, "his own mamma's
precious Angel?  And the only person in the house
that had any real feeling!  All the other nasty
people keep on being sorry for her, and he says he
knows Jack's coming back, and nobody need be
sorry at all.  And when Jack comes home safe and
well, his mamma's own Heavenly Angel shall run
with the horses all over Household Common--he
shall!  And he shall catch a swallow at last, he
shall, and bring it to his own mamma.  Bless him!
Only he mustn't scratch his darling head too
suddenly; at least, not till his mamma can get her own
out of the way, because she's not a bull or an
elephant, and able to stand anything....  That's
right, my pet!  Now he shall try and get a little
sleep, he shall."  This was acknowledgment of a
deep sigh, as of one who had at last deservedly
found rest.  But it called for a recognition of its
unselfish nature, too.  "And he never so much as
thought of going to sleep till he'd consoled his poor
mamma--the darling!"  And really her interviews
with Cæsar grew to be almost Madeline's only speech
about her lost lover; for her father and mother,
though they talked to each other, scarcely dared
to say a word to her, lest their own disbelief
in the possibility of Jack's return should show itself.

And so the hours passed and passed, and the days
grew to weeks, and the weeks to months; and now, at
the time of the cold January night when Mr. Pelly
dreamed the picture talked, the flame of Hope was
dying down in the girl's tired heart like the embers
he sat by, and none came bringing fuel and a new
lease of life.

But the way she nursed the flame that flickered
still was brave.  She kept up her spirits entirely
on the knowledge that there was no direct proof of
Jack's death.  She fostered a conception in her
mind of a perfectly imaginary Veldt, about the size
of Hyde Park, and carefully patrolled day and
night.  They would have been certain to find
him if he were dead--was her thought.  What
a handy little Veldt that was!--and, oh, the
intolerable leagues of the reality!  But it did
help towards keeping her spirits up, somehow or
other.

Her father and mother ascribed more than a fair
share of these kept-up spirits to their great panacea.
They laid to their souls the flattering unction that
if there _had_ been a regular engagement their daughter
would have given way altogether.  Think what a
difference it would have made if she had had to go
into mourning!  Lady Upwell took exception to
the behaviour of Jack's family at Calverley Court,
who had rushed into mourning six weeks after his
disappearance, and advertised their belief in his
death, really before there was any need for it.  Her
daughter, on the contrary, rather made a parade of
being out of mourning.  Perhaps it seemed to her
to emphasize and consolidate her own hopes, as
well as to rebuke dispositions towards premature
despair in others.

Therefore, when this young lady came upon old
Mr. Pelly, just aroused from his dream, she was
certainly not clad in sackcloth and ashes.  She had
on her rose colour _voile de soie_; only, of course,
Mr. Pelly didn't see it until she took off her seal-colour
musquash wrap, which was quite necessary because
of the cold.  And the third evening after that,
which was to be a quiet one at home for Mr. Pelly
to read them the memoranda of his dream in the
Library, she put on her Jap kimono with the
embroidered storks, which was really nearly as smart
as the _voile de soie_; and, of course, there was no need
to fig up, when it was only Mr. Pelly.  And
whatever tale her looks might tell, no one could have
guessed from her manner she had such a sorrow at
heart, so successfully did she affect, from fear of
it, a cheerfulness she was far from feeling; knowing
perfectly well that if she made any concession, she
must needs break down altogether.

"Fancy your being able to remember it all, and
write it out like that!" said she to Mr. Pelly when
they adjourned into the Library after dinner.

"We must bear in mind," he replied, "that the
story is a figment of my own mind, and therefore
easier to recall than a communication from another
person.  Athenæus refers to an instance of..."

"Never mind Athenæus!  How do you know it
is a figment of your imagination?"

"What else can it be?"

"Lots of things.  Besides, it doesn't matter.
Look here, now, you say it was a dream, don't you?"

"I certainly think so."

"Well!--and aren't dreams the hardest things to
recollect there are?  Look at the Prophet Daniel,
and Nebuchadnezzar."  Mr. Pelly thought to
himself that he would much sooner look at the speaker.
But he only said, "Suppose we do!"  To which
the reply was, "Well, then--of course!..."

"Of course what?"

"Why--of course when you can recollect things
that proves they're not dreams."

"Then, when Daniel recollected--or, I should
rather say, recalled his dream to Nebuchadnezzar--did
that prove that it wasn't a dream?"

"Certainly not, because he was a Prophet.  The
Chaldeans _couldn't_ recollect, and that proved that
it was."

The Baronet and his Lady remained superiorly
silent, smiling over the heads of the discussion.
The attitude of Debrett towards human weaknesses--such
as Philosophical Speculation, or the Use of
the Globes--was indicated.

When Mr. Pelly had finished reading his account
of the dream--on which our relation of it, already
given, was founded--discussion ensued.  It
embodied, intelligently enough, all the things that it
is dutiful to say when we are disconcerted at the
inscrutable.

The Baronet said we must guard ourselves
carefully against being carried away by two or three
things; superstition was one of them.  It did not
require a Scientific Eye to see that there was nothing
in this narrative which might not be easily ascribed
to the subconscious action of Mr. Pelly's brain.
It was quite otherwise in such a case as that of his
great-aunt, Dorothea, whose wraith undoubtedly
appeared and took refreshment at Knaresborough
Copping at the very time that she was confined of
twins here in this house.  The testimony to the
truth of this had never been challenged.  But when
people came and told him stories of substantial
tables floating in the air and accordions being
played, he always asked this one question, "Was
it in the dark?"  That question always proved a
poser, etc., etc.--and so forth.  From which it
will be seen that Sir Stopleigh belonged to that
numerous class of persons which, when its attention
turns towards wondermongering of any sort, loses
its heads promptly, and runs through the nearest
available gamut of accepted phrases.

Her ladyship said she was not the least surprised
at anything happening in a dream.  She herself
dreamed only the other night that Lady Pirbright
had gone up in a balloon shaped like a gridiron, and
the very next day came the news that old Canon
Pirbright, at Trenchards Plaistowe, had had a
paralytic stroke.  It was impossible to account for
these things.  The only wonder to her was that
Mr. Pelly should have recollected the whole so plainly,
and been able to write it down.  She would give
anything to recollect that dream about the
Circulating Library and the potted shrimps.  Her
ladyship discoursed for some time about her own
dreams.

Mr. Pelly entirely concurred in the view that the
whole thing was a dream.  In fact, it would be
absurd to suppose it anything else.  When he got
an opportunity to read Professor Schrudengesser's
translation of the Italian MS. to his friends, they
would readily see the source of most of the events
his mind had automatically woven into a
continuous narrative for the picture-woman to tell.
He would rather read it to them himself than leave
them the MS. to read, as there were points that
would require explanation.  He could not offer to
do so till he came back from his great-grandniece
Constance's wedding at Cowcester.  A little delay
would not matter.  They would not have forgotten
the dream-story in a fortnight.  To this, assent was
given in chorus.

But Madeline was not going to have the story
pooh-poohed and made light of.  "I believe it was
a _ghost_, Uncle Christopher," said she.  "The ghost
of the woman in the picture.  And you christened
her after me by subconscious thingummy.  _Maddalena's_
Italian for Madeline.  But they never give
their names right.  Ask anyone that has
phenomena."  Then she lit candles for all parties to
go to bed, and kissed them all, including her alleged
uncle, who laid stress on his claim for this grace in
duplicate, as he had no one to kiss him at home.
"Poor Uncle Christopher," said she, "he's been shut
up in the dark with a ghost....  Oh yes!--I'm in
earnest, and you're all a parcel of sillies."  Then
she borrowed his written account of the dream to
re-read in bed, and take care the lamp didn't set
fire to the curtains.  She said she particularly
wanted to look at that last sentence or two, about
when the picture was in Chelsea.




CHAPTER V

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.


The story's brief reference to Mr. Aiken's life after
his good lady forsook him, may be sufficient for
its purposes, but the author is in a certain sense
bound to communicate to the reader any details
that have come to his knowledge.

Mr. Aiken's first step was to take an intimate
friend or two into his confidence.  But his intimate
friend or two had a quality in common with the
Pickwickian bottle or two.  An intimate friend or
six would be nearer the mark--or even twelve.
He did not tell his story separately to each; there
was no need.  If the mention of a private affair
within the hearing of cat or mouse leads to its
being shouted at once from the top of the
house--and that was the experience of Maud's young man
who went to the Crimea--how much more public
will your confidences become if you make them to
a tenant of a Studio that is one of a congeries.

Pimlico Studios was a congeries, built to
accommodate the Artists of a great age of Art, now
pending, as though to meet the needs of locusts.  For
there can be no doubt that such an age is at hand,
if we are to judge by the workshop accommodation
that appears to be anticipating it.

An ingenious friend of the author--you must have
noticed how many authors have ingenious friends?--has
been able to determine by a system of averages
of a most convincing nature, that the cubic area
of the Studios in Chelsea and Kensington alone
exceeds that of the Lunatic Asylums of the Metropolis
by nearly seven and a quarter per cent.  This
gentleman's researches on the subject are
consequent upon his singular conviction that the output
of the Fine Arts, broadly speaking, is small in
proportion to the amount of energy and capital
devoted to them.  We have reasoned with him in
vain on the subject, pointing out that the Fine Arts
have nothing in common with the economics of
Manufacture, least of all in any proportions between
the labour expended and the results attained.
Were it otherwise, the estimation of a painter's
merit would rise or fall with his colourman's bill
and the rent of his studio.  This gentleman--although
he is a friend of the author--has no Soul.
If he had, the spectacle of the life-struggle which
is often the lot of Genius would appeal to him, and
cause him to suspend his opinion.  It is always,
we understand, desirable to suspend one's opinion.

He would do so, for instance, in the case of an
Artist, a common acquaintance of ours, whom at
present he condemns freely, calling him names.
This Artist has five Studios, each of them full of
easels and thrones.  The number of his half-used
colour tubes that won't squeeze out is as the sands
of the sea, while his bundles of brushes that only
want washing to be as good as new, may be likened
to corn-sheaves, in so far as their stems go--a mere
affair of numeration.  But their business ends are
another pair of shoes altogether; for the hairs of the
brushes have become a coagulum as hard as agate,
calling aloud for Benzine Collas to disintegrate
them--to the tune, this Artist admits, of threepence
each--whereas the ear of corn yields to less drastic
treatment.  Contrivances of a specious nature in
japanned tin and celluloid abound, somewhat as
spray abounds on oceans during equinoxes, and
each of these has at one time fondly imagined it
was destined to become that Artist's great resource
and stand-by, the balustrade his genius would not
scorn to be indebted to.  But he has never drawn
a profile with the copying-machine that has legs,
nor availed himself of the powers of the
graphoscope--if that is its name--that does perspective,
nor done anything with the countless wooden
figures except dislocate their universal joints; nor,
we fear, for a long time paid anything on account
of the quarterly statements that flutter about, with
palette-knives full of colour wiped off on them, that
are not safe to sit down upon for months.  But no
impartial person could glance at any of the
inaugurations of pictures on the thousand canvases
in these five Studios without at once exclaiming,
"This is Genius!"  The Power of the Man is everywhere
visible, and no true lover of Art ever regrets
that so few of them have been carried into that
doubtful second stage where one spoils all the
moddlin' and the colour won't hold up, and somehow
you lose the first spirit of the Idear and don't
get any forwarder.  It never occurs to any mature
Critic to question the value of this Artist's results,
even of his least elaborated ones.  And, indeed, an
opinion is current among his friends that restriction
of materials and of the area of his Studios might
have cramped and limited the free development of
a great mind.  They are all unanimous that a
feller like Tomkins must have room to turn round,
or where are you!  And, if, as we must all hope, the
growth of genius such as his is to be fostered as it
deserves, no one should look with an ungenerous
eye upon such agglomerations of Art-workshops as
the Pimlico Studios, or sneer at them as uncalled
for, merely because a Philistine Plutocracy refuses
to buy their produce, and has no walls to hang it on
if it did.  We for our part can only note with
regret that any Studios should be so badly adapted
to their purpose, and constructed with so little
consideration for the comfort of their occupants, as
these same Pimlico Studios.

We have, however, been tempted away from our
subject, which at present is the community of
Artists that occupied them; and must return to it
to say that these very drawbacks were not altogether
without their compensations.  For though these
Studios were, like the arguments of Dissent,
unsound--being constructed to admit rainwater and
retain products of combustion, each of its own
stove and the Studio beneath it--these structural
shortcomings were really advantages, in so far as
they promoted interchange of social amenities
between the resident victims of the speculative
builder who ran up the congeries.  Sympathy
against their common enemy, the landlord, brought
all the occupants of Pimlico Studios into a hotchpot
of brotherly affection, and if the choruses of
execration in which they found comfort have reached the
ears for which they were intended, that builder will
catch it hot, one of these odd-come-shortlies.  This
expression is not our own.

When Mr. Reginald Aiken, with his domestic
perplexity burning his tongue's end and crying
aloud for utterance, called upon the Artist from
whom we have borrowed it, that gentleman, Mr. Hughes,
one of his most intimate friends, was
thinking.  He had been thinking since breakfast--thinking
about some new Aspects of Nature, which
had been the subject of discussion with some friends
the evening before.  They were those new Aspects
of Nature which have been presented so forcibly by
Van Schronk and Le Neutre; and of which, in this
Artist's opinion, more than a hint is to be found
in Hawkins.  He was thinking deeply when Mr. Aiken
came in, and not one stroke of work had he
done, would that gentleman believe him, since he
set out his palette.  Mr. Aiken's credulity was not
overtaxed.

Mr. Hughes wanted to talk about himself, and
said absently, "You all right, Crocky?" addressing
Mr. Aiken by a familiar name in use among his
intimate friends.  He was not well disposed towards
a negative answer when Mr. Aiken gave one; an
equivocal one certainly, but not one to whose
meaning it was possible to affect blindness.  The
words were "Middlin'--considerin'!"  But Mr. Hughes
was not going to be too coming.

"Wife well?" said he remotely.

Mr. Aiken sprang at his inattentive throat, and
nailed him.  "Ah, that's it," said he.  "That's
the point."

Mr. Hughes was forced to inquire further, and
stand his Idea over, for later discussion.  But he
might just as well have let it alone--better, if you
come to that.  He really was a stupid feller, Hughes,
don't you know?  "I say," said he, "don't you
run away and say I didn't tell you what would
happen."  For he had interpreted his friend's
agitated demeanour and equivocal speech as the
result of a recent insight into futurity, showing him
in the position of a detected and convicted parent,
without the means of providing for an increasing
family.  For they do that, families do.

"Don't be an ass, Stumpy," said he, using a
familiar name no fact in real life warranted.  "It's
not that sort of thing, thank God!  No--I'll tell
you what it is, only you mustn't on any account
mention it."

"All right, Crocky!  I never mention things.
Honest Injun!  Go ahead easy."  Mr. Hughes was
greatly relieved that his surmise had been wrong.
Good job for Mr. Aiken, as also for his wife!
Mr. Hughes desired his congratulations to this lady, but
withdrew them on second thoughts.  Because, you
see, her escape from the anxieties of maternity was
entirely constructive.  Mr. Hughes felt that he had
put his foot in it, and that his wisest course would
be to take it out.  He did so.  But Mr. Aiken had
something to say about his wife, and made it a
corollary to her disappearance from the conversation.

"She's bolted!" said he lugubriously.  "Went
away Thursday, and wrote to say she wasn't coming
back, Friday.  It's a fact."

Mr. Hughes put back his foot in it.  "Who's she
bolted with?  Who's the feller?"

Mr. Aiken flushed up quite red, like any
turkey-cock.  "Damn it, Stump!" said he, "you really
ought to take care what you're saying.  I should
like to see any fellow presume to run away with
Euphemia.  Draw it mild!"  He became calmer,
and it is to be hoped was ashamed of his irritability.
But really it was Mr. Hughes's fault--talking just
like as if it was in a novel, and Euphemia a character.

"I beg your pardon," said that offender humbly.
"It was the way you put it.  Besides, they are
generally supposed to."

Mr. Aiken responded, correctively and loftily:
"Yes, my dear fellow, on the stage and in novels."  He
added, with something of insular pride, "Chiefly
French and American."

"What's her little game, then?" asked Mr. Hughes.
"If it's not some other beggar, _what_ is
it she's run away with?"

"She has not run away with anybody," said
Mr. Aiken with dignity.  "Nor anything.  Perhaps
I should explain myself better by saying that she
has refused to return from her Aunt's."

"Any reason?" said Mr. Hughes, who wanted to
get back to his Idea.

"I'm sorry to say it was my fault, Stumpy,"
came very penitently from the catechumen.

Interest was roused.  "I say, young man," said
Mr. Hughes, with a tendency of one eye to close,
"what have you been at?"

"Absolutely nothing whatever!"

"Yes, of course!  But along of who?  Who's
the young woman you _haven't_ been making love to?
Tell up and have done with it."

"You are under a complete misconception,
Stump.  Really _nobody_!"

Mr. Hughes thought a moment, as though he
were at work on a conundrum.  Then he pointed
suddenly.  "Fanny Smith!" said he convictingly.

Mr. Aiken quite lost his temper, and got
demonstrative.  "Fanny Smith--Fanny grandmother!"
he exclaimed meaninglessly!  "How can you talk
such infernal rot, Stumpy.  Do be reasonable!"

"Then it was _somebody_," said his tormentor, and
Mr. Aiken felt very awkward and humiliated.

However, he saw inevitable confession ahead, and
braced himself to the task.  "Really, Stump,"
said he, "it would make you cry with laughing to
know who it was that was at the bottom of it.  I
said 'Fanny grandmother,' just now, but at any
rate Fanny Smith's a tailor's wife with no legs to
speak of, who sits on the counter, and a very nice
girl if you know her.  I mean there's no
fundamental absurdity in Fanny Smith.  This
was."  Which wasn't good speechwork, but, oh dear, how
little use accuracy is!

"Who was it then?"  Mr. Hughes left one eye
shut, under an implied contract to reopen it as soon
as the answer came to his question.

"Well!" said Mr. Aiken reluctantly.  "If you
_must_ have it, it was Sairah!"  He was really
relieved when his friend looked honestly puzzled,
repeating after him "Sairah!  What!--the gurl!"
in genuine astonishment.  It was now evident that
the Idea would have to stand over.

Mr. Hughes said farewell to it, almost audibly;
then said "Stop a minute!" and lit a pipe; then
settled down in a rocking chair to listen, saying,
"Now, my boy!--off you go."  He was a long and
loose-limbed person who picked his knees up
alternately with both hands, as though to hold his
legs on.  Whenever he did this, the slipper in that
connexion came off, with the effect of bringing its
owner's sock into what is called keeping with the
rest of the Studio, one which many persons would
have considered untidy.

After which Mr. Aiken went off, or on--whichever
you prefer.  "Of course I don't expect you
fellers to do anything but chaff, you know.  But
it's jolly unpleasant, for all that.  It was like this,
don't you see?  A young female swell had brought
her sweetheart--I suppose, unless he was her cousin--to
see a picture I'm cleaning for her parent, who's
a Bart.  In Worcestershire.  Know him?  Sir
Stopleigh Upwell."

Mr. Hughes didn't, that he could call to mind,
after a mental search which seemed to imply great
resources in Barts.

"Well--she was an awfully jolly girl, but quite
that sort."  Mr. Aiken tried to indicate by gesture,
a fashionably dressed young lady with a stylish
figure, and failed.  But Mr. Hughes, an Impressionist
Artist, could understand, and nodded prompt
appreciation.  So Mr. Aiken continued:

"When they cleared out, Euphemia said the
young woman was 'up-to-date.'  And I suppose
she was...."

"Oh certainly--quite up to date--not a doubt of it!"

"Well--I made believe not to know the meaning
of the expression, just to take a rise out of Euphemia.
And you know she has just _one_ fault--she's so
matter-of-fact!  She said everyone knew the
meaning of 'up-to-date,' that knew anything.  Ask
anybody!  Ask her Aunt Priscilla--and I certainly
wasn't going to run the risk--like bearding
a tigress in her den with impertinent questions!--or
Mrs. Verity the landlady.  Or, for that matter,
ask the gurl, Sairah!  That's where _she_ came in,
Stump."  Mr. Aiken seemed to hang fire.

"But," said Mr. Hughes, "she only comes in as
an abstraction, so far.  I can't see her carcass in
it."  From which we may learn that Mr. Hughes
thought that abstract meant incorporeal; or, at
least, imponderable.  It is a common error.  "What
did _you_ say?" he asked.

"I said 'Suppose I ask Sairah!' and rang for
her, for a lark.  Euphemia was in an awful rage
and pretended to go, but stopped outside to listen."  The
speaker's hesitation appeared to increase.

"Well--and when she came?..."

"Why, the stupid idiot altogether misunderstood
me.  Damn fool!  What the dooce she thought
I meant, I don't know...."

"What did you say?  Out with it, old chap!"  Mr. Hughes
seemed to be holding intense amusement
back, with a knowledge that it would get the
bit in its teeth in the end.

Mr. Aiken, seeing this, intensified and enlarged
his manner.  "I _merely_ said--no, really it's the
simple honest truth, every word--I _merely_ said,
'Your mistress says you know the meaning of
"up-to-date," Sairah.'  And what does the beast
of a girl do but turn vermilion and stand staring
like a stuck pig!"

Mr. Hughes began shaking his head slowly from
side to side.  But he did not get to the direction
_accelerando_, for he stopped short, and said abruptly,
"Well--what next?"

Mr. Aiken assumed a responsible and mature
manner, rather like that of a paterfamilias on his
beat.  "I reasoned with the girl.  Pointed out that
her mistress wouldn't say things to turn vermilion
about.  I tried to soothe her suspicions...."

Mr. Hughes interrupted, saying dubiously: "I
see.  No tong-dresses, of course?"

Mr. Aiken explained that that was just where the
misapprehension had come in.  If his wife had
been inside the room instead of on the _stairs_, she
would have seen that there was absolutely _nothing_.
Mr. Hughes looked incredulous.

"There must have been somethin', old chap, to
set your missis off.  Don't tell me!"

But Mr. Aiken _would_ tell Mr. Hughes--would
insist on doing so.  "It was the horrible, shameless
brute's diabolical malice!" he shouted.  "Nothing
more nor less!  What does she do but say out loud
just as my wife was coming into the room, 'You
keep your 'ands off of me, Mr. Aching!' and of
course, when Euphemia came in, she thought I had
just jumped half a mile off.  And it was rough on
me, Stump, because really my motive was to save
my wife having to get another house-and-parlourmaid."

"Motive for what?" said Mr. Hughes shrewdly.
He had touched the weak point of the story.  "Did
you, or did you not, young man, take this young
person round the waist or chuck her under the
chin?"

"My dear Hughes," said Mr. Aiken, with
undisguised impatience, "I wouldn't chuck that
odious girl under the chin with the end of a
barge-pole.  Nor," he added after reflection, "take her
round the waist with one of the drags in readiness
at the Lodge."  The barge-pole had conducted his
imagination to the Regent's Canal, and left it there.

Mr. Aiken had had no intention when he called
on his friend Hughes to take the whole of Pimlico
Studios into his confidence.  But what was he to
do when another Artist dropped in and Mr. Hughes
said, "You won't mind Triggs?  The most
discreet beggar _I_ ever came across!"  What could
he say that would arrest the entry of Mr. Triggs
into the discussion of his family jar that would not
appear to imply that that gentleman was an
indiscreet beggar?  And what course was open to
him when Mr. Hughes told yet another artist, whose
name was Dolly, that he might come in, but he
wasn't to listen?  And yet another, whose name
was Doddles?

Even if there had been no other chance visitors
to the Studio during the conclave on Mr. Aiken's
private affairs, there would have been every
likelihood of complete publicity for them in the course of
a day or two at most.  For nothing stimulates
Rumour like affidavits of secrecy.  It's such fun
telling what is on no account to go any farther.  But
as a matter of fact more than one gentleman who
would have resented being called a _flâneur_, looked
in at Mr. Hughes's Studio casually that morning
to talk over that gentleman's Idea, mooted yesterday
at The Club, and found himself outside a circle
whose voices subsided down to inaudible exchanges
of postscripts to finish up.  As each newcomer acted
upon this in the sweet and candid manner of this
community, saying unaffectedly, "What's the fun?"
and some friend of his within the circle usually said
to him, "Shut up!  Tell you after!" and as moreover
it was invariably felt that a single exclusion
only embarrassed counsel, no opportunity was
really lost of making Europe acquainted with the
disruption of Mr. Aiken's household.  And it was
a pity, because so much gossip doesn't do any good.
Besides, the time might have been profitably
employed ventilating Mr. Hughes's Idea, and getting
a sort of provisional insight into the best means of
carrying it out.  As it was, when, some time after
midday, someone said, "I say, Stump, my boy,
how about that Idea of yours we were talking about
at The Club yesterday?" everyone else looked at
his watch, and said it was too late to get on to that
now; we must have lunch, and have a real serious
talk about it another time.  Then we went to lunch
at Machiavelli's, and it was plenty early enough if
we were back by three.

Mr. Aiken received a good deal of very sound
advice from his friends as to how he might best deal
with his emergency.  He turned this over in his
mind as he turned himself over on his couch when
he got home about three in the morning, and was
rather at a loss to select from it any samples from
different Mentors which agreed upon a course.  In
fact, the only one thing they had in common was
the claim made by their respective promulgators
to a wider and deeper knowledge of that mysterious
creature Woman than Mr. Aiken's inexperience
could boast.  One said to him--speaking as from
long observation of a Sex you couldn't make head
or tail of--that, depend upon it, she would come
round, you see if she didn't.  They always did.
Another, that this said Sex was obstinacy itself,
and you might depend upon it she would stick out.
They always did.  Another, that a lot the best
thing for a husband in like case to do was to go
and cosset the offended lady over with appropriate
caresses, before which she would be sure to soften.
They always did.  Another, that if you could
convince her by some subtle machinations that
you didn't care a twopenny damn how long she
stayed away, back she would come on the nail.
They always did.  In the multitude of counsellors
there is Wisdom, no doubt, but when the multitude
is large enough to advise every possible course, it is
just as easy to run through all the courses open to
adoption by oneself, and choose one on the strength
of its visible recommendations.  More particularly
because so many advisers insist on your taking their
advice, and go on giving it, cataballatively, if you
don't.  Mr. Aiken felt, when he retired for the
night, like the sheet Aunt Sally hangs up behind
her when she folds it up at the end of a busy day
on Epsom Downs.

It was a great pity that Mr. Aiken's domestic
upset did not occur a few days later, because then
Mr. Hughes's Idea would have had such a much
clearer stage for its _début_.  As it was, what with one
thing and what with another, the mature discussion
of this subject was delayed a full week.  Next day
Triggs had to go to Paris, and of course it was
nonsense to attempt anything without him--for
look at the clearness of that man's head!  Then,
when Triggs came back, a day later than expected,
his aunt must needs invite her nephew down to
Suddington Park, which is her place in Shropshire,
which had earned for Mr. Triggs the name of The
Pobble--you remember Aunt Jopiska's Park, if
you read your Lear in youth--and which was an
expectation of his, if he kept in favour with the old
lady.  Of course, the Idea didn't depend on Triggs,
or any one man.  No, thank you!  But Triggs
had a good business head on his shoulders, and was
particularly sound on the subject of Premises.  It
is a singular and noticeable thing that whenever
any great motive or scheme germinates in the
human brain, that brain, before it has formulated
the conditions thereof, or fully defined its objects,
will begin to look at Premises, and while it is
examining some very much beyond its means--in
Piccadilly, for instance, or Old Bond Street--will feel
that the project is assuming form, and that now
we shall get on to really _doing_ something, and come
to the end of this everlasting talk, talk, talk, that
leads to nothing, and only sets people against us.
So really very little could be done till The Pobble
came back from Aunt Jopiska.  When he did come
back there was some other delay, but it's always
well to be beforehand.  The enthusiasts of this
Idea could look at Premises; and did so.

All this has little or nothing to do with the story.
But it serves to individualize Mr. Hughes, who, but
for it, would be merely a long artist with a goatee
beard, who not infrequently looked in to smoke a
pipe on the split wild boar whose head endangered
the safety of self-warmers on Mr. Aiken's floor in
the Studio near the stove where he found the Vestas
that were all stuck together.

Mr. Hughes was standing there, a good many
weeks after our last date, chatting with Mr. Aiken,
who was becoming quite slovenly and dirty with
nobody to look after him--because, of course,
Mrs. Parples, who came in by the day, hadn't the sense to
see to anything; and, moreover, he was that snappy
at every turn, there wasn't, according to
Mrs. Parples, many would abear him.

He had been hoping that the first of his advisers
whom we cited was right, and that if he waited a
reasonable time he would see if his wife wouldn't
come round.  If they always did, she would.  But
he was beginning to be afraid they sometimes
didn't.  He had even impatiently expressed a
view equivalent to that which identified her with
obstinacy itself, the quality.  But this was only
temper, though no doubt she might stick out.
They might sometimes, those curious examples of
a perfectly unique Sex.  He really wanted to go
to her with persuasive arts and procure a
reconciliation.  But he was too proud.

Besides, if that was possible now, it would be
equally so three months hence.  As to the fourth
alternative, that of showing he didn't care, that
would be capital on the stage, but he wasn't going
to burn his fingers with it in real life.  So he passed
his days working, in his own conceit; and smoking
in a chair opposite to his work, in Mrs. Parples'.
Perhaps neither conception was quite correct.  His
evenings he mostly passed seeing bad plays well
acted, or good plays ill acted--these are the only
sorts you can get free paper for.  It was ridiculous
for him, knowing such a lot of actors, to pay at the
door.  Now and again, however, he stayed at
home, and a friend came in for a quiet smoke.
Even so Mr. Hughes, this evening.

"Things improvin' at all, Crocky?" said he, not
exactly as if he thought he wasn't inquisitive.

Mr. Aiken kept an answer, which was coming,
back for consideration.  He appeared to reject it,
going off at a tangent by preference.  He had made
up his mind, he said, not to fret his kidneys any
more over his wife's absence.  She would come
round before long, and eat humble-pie for having
made such a fool of herself.  He preferred the
expression "damn fool," but chivalry limited its
utterance to a semi-_sotto voce_.  "I might get a
letter from her any minute," said he.  "Why,
when the post came just now, I fully expected it
was a letter from her."  He appeared to confuse
between expectation's maximum and its realization.
"There he is again.  I shouldn't be the
least surprised if this one _was_."

He left the room with a transparent parade of
deliberation.  But before he had reached the
staircase the postman knocked again, and Mr. Aiken
came back saying: "It isn't her.  It's something
that won't go in the box."  This was slack language
and slack reasoning--confusion confounded.  But
Mr. Aiken retired on it with dignity, saying:
"Mrs. Parples attends to the door."

The something continued to refuse, audibly, to
go in the box, and Mrs. Parples didn't attend to the
door.  The postman put all his soul into a final
knock, which seemed to say, "I am leaving,
half-out, what may be only an advertisement, or may
be vital to your hereafter, or somebody's;" and
then washed his hands of it and took up Next
Door's case.  Mr. Aiken listened for Mrs. Parples,
who remained in abeyance, and then went out again
and returned with a very ill-made-up consignment
indeed, and a normal square envelope with a
bespoken "M" embossed on its flap, directed in
an upright hand, partly robust, partly æsthetic,
an expression applied nowadays to anything
with a charm about it.  This handwriting had one.

"Parples is sleeping peacefully," said Mr. Aiken.
"It would be a shame to disturb Parples.  I know
who this is."  He opened the envelope with
difficulty, but looked stroked and gratified.  The
latter was from his very sincerely Madeline Upwell.
Just you notice any male friend of yours next time
you have a chance of seeing one open a letter from
youth and beauty which remains--however
theoretically--his very sincerely, and see if he doesn't
look stroked and gratified.

Mr. Hughes picked up the delivery that had given
the letter-box so much trouble, and looked through
it at each end.  Mr. Aiken was busy reading his
letter over and over; so he could only throw out
a sideways carte-blanche to Mr. Hughes to unpack
the inner secret of the roll.  This was what he was
reading:


"DEAR MR. AIKEN,

"I think you may like a copy of the photo
Captain Calverley (who perhaps you will remember
came with me to your Studio) made of this beautiful
picture, which I am never tired of looking at.  I
think it so good.  Please accept it from us if you
care to have it.  Believe me, dear Mr. Aiken, with
kind regards to yourself and Mrs. Aiken, in which
my mother joins,

"Yours very sincerely,
   "MADELINE UPWELL.

"P.S.--I know you will be sorry to hear that
Captain Calverley's regiment is ordered out to
South Africa.  Of course, it makes us very anxious."


"Transparent sort of gurl!" said Mr. Hughes,
when Mr. Aiken read the letter aloud to him.  "Of
course, Captain Carmichael's her sweetheart.
Anybody can see that with half an eye."

"Calverley," said Mr. Aiken.  "Yes--they get
like that when it's like that."  And both pondered
a little, smoking, over the peculiarities of humanity,
especially that inexplicable female half of it.
"Chuck it over here and let's have a look at it," he
added, and Mr. Hughes chucked him over the
photograph.  He contemplated it for a moment in
silence; then said: "I expect she wasn't far out,
after all.  Euphemia, I mean."

"Chuck it back again and let's have another
look," said Mr. Hughes.  Mr. Aiken did so, and let
him have the other look.  "Yes," said he.  "They
went it in Italy about that time, don't you know!
Fifteenth or sixteenth century.  That sort of
thing!"  For Mr. Hughes knew a lot about Italy,
and could quote Browning.  He uncrickled a result
of the shape of that letter-box, or tried to, and then
stood the photograph so that they could both see
it, while they talked of something else, against the
gres-de-Flandres straight-up pot that was so handy
to stand brushes in, like umbrellas.

They had plenty to talk about, because at this
time the Idea of Mr. Hughes that was destined to
fill so important an horizon in the History of Modern
Art, and was also pregnant with incalculable
consequences to several things or persons, besides
having an indirect bearing on several oth

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