Delphi collected works o.., p.25
Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated), page 25
“Voilà!” said De Vigne. “Am I wrong? Don’t you like it?”
“Like it!” echoed Violet. “Oh, how beautiful!”
Quite forgetful that she was the centre of a crowd who were looking at her much more than at the paintings on the walls, she stood, the colour back in her cheeks, her eyes lifted to the picture. The painting deserved it It was Love — old in story, yet new to every human heart — the love of Francesca and Paolo, often essayed by artists, yet never rendered, even by Ary Scheffer, as Dante would have had it, and as it was rendered here.
There were no vulgarities of a fabled Hell; there were the two, alone in that true torture —
Ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria —
yet happy, because together. Her face and form were in full light, his in shadow. Heart beating against heart, their arms round each other, they looked down into each other’s eyes. On his face were the fierce passions, against which he had had no strength, mingled with deep and yearning regret for the fate he had drawn in with his own. On hers, lifted up to him, was all the love at sight of which he who beheld it “swooned even as unto death;” the love —
— placer si forte,
Che come vedi ancor non m’abbandona —
the love which made hell, paradise; and torture together, dearer than heaven alone. Her face spoke, her clinging arms circled him as though defying power in eternity strong enough to part them; her eyes looked into his with unutterable tenderness, anguish for his sorrow, ecstacy in his presence! — and on her soft lips, still trembling with the memory of that first kiss which had been their ruin, was all the heroism and all the passion, all the fidelity, devotion, and joy in him alone, spoken in that one sentence —
Quest! che mai da me non fia diviso!
The picture told its tale; crowds gathered round it; and those who could not wholly appreciate its wonderful colouring and skill were awed by its living humanity, its passionate tenderness, its exquisite beauty.
Violet stood, regardless of the men and women around her, looking up at the Francesca, a fervent response to it, a yearning sympathy with the warm human love and joys of which it breathed, written on her mobile features.—’
She turned away from it with a heavy sigh, and the flush deepened in her cheeks as she met Sabretasche’s eyes, who now stood behind her.
“You are pleased with that picture,” he said, bending his head.
“Is it not beautiful?” cried Violet, passionately. “It is not to be criticised; it is to be loved. It is art and poetry and human nature blended in one. Whoever painted it, interprets art as no other artist here can do. He has loved and felt his subject, and makes others in the force of his genius feel and love it too. Listen how every one is praising it! They all admire it, yet not nine out of ten of these people can understand it Tell me who painted it, quick! Oh! give me the catalogue!”
She took it out of his hands with that rapid vivacity which worried her mother so dreadfully as bad ton, and turned the leaves over till she reached “226. Paolo and Francesca — Vivian Sabretasche.
‘Amor ehe a nullo an into amar perdona.
Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
Che come vedi an cor non m’abbandona
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.’”
She dropped the book; she could not speak, but she held out her hand to him, and Sabretasche took it for an instant as they leaned over the rail together in the security and “solitude of a crowd.”
“Do not speak of it here,” he whispered, as he bent down for the fallen catalogue.
“‘Pon my honour, Sabretasche,” whispered little Regalia, “we’re all so astonished — turning artist, eh? Never knew you exhibited. Splendid picture — ah — really!”
“You do me much honour,” said Sabretasche, coldly — he hated the little puppy who was always dawdling after Violet— “but I should prefer not to be congratulated before a room full of people.”
“On my life, old fellow, I envy you,” said De Vigne, too low for any one to hear him; “not for being the talk of the room, for that is neither to your taste nor mine, but for having such magnificent talent as you have given us here.”
“Cui bono?” said Sabretasche, with his slight smile, that was too gentle for discontent, and too sad for cynicism.
“I had not an idea whose Francesca I was bringing Miss Molyneux to see,” De Vigne continued. “How came you to exhibit this year?”
“Oh, I have been a dabbler in art a long time,” laughed the Colonel. “Many of the Forty are my intimate friends; they would not have rejected anything I sent.”
“They would have been mad to reject the Francesca; they have nothing to compete with it on the walls. I wish you were in Poland-street, Sabretasche, that one could order of you. You are the first fine gentleman, since Sir George Beaumont, who has turned ‘artiste véritable,’ and you grace it better than he.”
Sabretasche and his Grace of Regalia, De Vigne, and I, went to luncheon that day with Lady Molyneux in Lowndes-square, at which meal the Colonel made himself so charming, lively, and winning, that the Viscountess, strong as were her leanings to her pet Duke, could not but admit that he shone to very small advantage, and made mental mem never to invite the two together again. The Molyneux were devoting that morning to picture-viewing. And from the Royal Academy, after luncheon, they went to the French aquarelles, in Pall Mall, and thence to the Water-Colour Exhibition, whither De Vigne and I followed them in his tilbury.
“I wonder what they will say to Alma’s picture,” said De Vigne, as we alighted. “I wish it may make a hit, as it is her livelihood now, poor child!”
Strange enough, it was before Alma’s picture that we found most people in the room congregated; and Violet turned to us:
“Come and look here, Major De Vigne; this ‘Louis Dix-sept in the Tower of the Temple,’ by Miss Trevelyan — Trevanion — no, Tressillian — whoever she be — is the gem of the collection to my mind. There is an unlucky green ticket on it, else I would purchase it. What enviable talent! I wish I were Miss Tressillian!”
“How rash you are!” said De Vigne. “How can you tell but that Miss Tressillian may be some masculine woman living in an entresol, painting with a clay pipe between her teeth, and horses and cows for veritable models in a litter adjoining, dressing like George Sand, and deriving inspiration from gin?”
“What a shameful picture!” cried Violet, indignantly. “I do not know her, nor anything about her, it is true, but I am perfectly certain that the woman who idealised and carried out this painting, with so much delicacy and grace, must have a delicate and graceful mind herself.”
“Or,” continued De Vigne, ruthlessly, “she may now, for anything you can tell, be a vieille fille who has consecrated her life to art, and grown old and ugly in the consecration, and who—”
“Be quiet, Major De Vigne,” interrupted Violet. “I am perfectly certain that the artist would correspond to the picture: Raphael was as beautiful as his paintings, Michael Angelo was of noble appearance, Mozart and Mendelssohn had faces full of music—”
“Fuseli, too, was,” said De Vigne, mischievously, “remarkably like his grand archangels; Reynolds, in his brown coat and wig, is so poetic that one could have no other ideal of the ‘Golden Age;’ Turner’s appearance was so artistic that one would have imagined him a farmer bent on crops; fat and snuffy Handel is the embodiment of the beauty of the Cangio d’Aspetto—”
“How tiresome you are!” interrupted Violet again. “I am establishing a theory; I don’t care for facts — no theorists ever do in these days! I maintain that a graceful and ennobling art must leave its trace on the thought and mind and manners of its expositors (I know you are going to remind me of Morland at the hedge-alehouse, of Opie, and the ‘little Jew-broker,’ and of Nollikens making the writing-paper label for the single bottle of claret); never mind, I keep to my theory, and I am sure that this Miss Tressillian, who has had the happiness to paint the lovely face of that little Dauphin, would, if we could see her, correspond to it; and I envy her without the slightest hesitation.”
“You have no need to envy any one,” whispered Regalia.
Violet turned impatiently from him, and began to talk to Sabretasche about one of those ever-charming pictures of Mr. Edmund Warren. De Vigne looked at me and smiled, thinking with how much more grounds the little Tressillian had envied Violet Molyneux.
“I wish I could tell you half I feel about your Francesca,” said Violet, lifting her eyes to Sabretasche’s face, as they stood apart from anybody else in a part of the room little frequented, for there were few people there that morning, and those few were round Alma’s pet picture. “You can never guess how I reverence your genius, how it speaks to my heart, how it reveals to me all your inner nature, which the world, much as it admires you, never sees or dreams of seeing.”
Sabretasche bent his head; her words went too near home to him to let him answer them.
“All your pictures,” Violet went on, “bear the stamp of a master’s talent, but this — how beautiful it is! I might have known no other hand but yours could have called it into life. Have you long finished it!”
“I finished the painting two years ago; but three months ago I saw for the first time the face that answered my ideal, the face that expressed all that I would have expressed in Francesca. I effaced what I had painted, and in its stead I placed — yours.”
Violet’s eyes dropped; the delicate colour in her cheeks deepened. She had been dimly conscious of a resemblance in the painting, and De Vigne’s glance from Francesca to herself had told her that he at the least saw it also; and, indeed, the face of the painting, with its delicate and impassioned features, and the form, with its voluptuous grace, were singularly like her own. Sabretasche looked closer at her.
“You could love like Francesca,” he said involuntarily.
It was not above his breath, but his face gave it all the eloquence it lacked, as hers all the response it needed.
She heard his short quick breathing as he stood beside her; she felt the passionate words which rose to his lips; she knew that if ever a man’s love was hers his was then. But he was long silent, and when he spoke his voice was full of that utter anguish which had startled her twice before.
“Keep it, then, and give it to some man more worthy of it than I!”
“Violet, my love, are you not tired of all this?” said Lady Molyneux, sweeping up. “It is half-past four, and I want to go to Swan and Edgar’s. Pictures make one’s head ache so; I was never so ill in my life as I was after the Sistine chapel.”
Sabretasche took her to their carriage without another word between them.
The next day, to our surprise, the Colonel asked for leave, got it, and went away.
“What the deuce is that for, Colonel?” said I. “Never been out of town in the season before, have you?”
“Just the reason why I should be now, my dear fellow,” responded Sabretasche, lazily. “Twenty years of the same thing is enough to tire one of it, if the thing were paradise itself; and when it comes to be only dusty pavés, whitebait dinners, and club gossip, ennui is very pardonable. The medical men tell me, if I don’t give up Pleasure for a little time, Pleasure will give up Me. You know I am not over-strong; so I shall go to the Continent, and look at it in spring, before there are the pests of English touring about, with Murray’s, carpetbags, and sandwiches.”
He vouchsafed no more on the subject, but went. His departure was talked of in clubs and boudoirs; women missed him as they would have missed no other man in London, for Sabretasche was universal censor, referee, regulator of fashion, his bow was the best thing in the Park, his fêtes at Richmond the most charming and exclusive of the season; but people absent on tours are soon forgotten, like dead leaves sucked under a waterwheel and whirled away; and after the first day, perhaps, nobody save De Vigne and I remarked how triste his house in Park Lane looked with the green persiennes closed over its sunny bay-windows.
Whatever his motive, the Colonel was gone to that golden land where the foamy Rhône speeds on her course, and Marseilles lies by the free blue sea, and the Pic du Midi rears its stately head. The Colonel was gone, and all the clubs, and drawing-rooms, and journals were speaking of his Francesca; speaking, for once, unanimously, in admiration for its wonderful union of art and truth. The Francesca was the theme of the day in artistic circles, its masterly conception and unexceptionable handling would for any pencil have gained it fame; and in fashionable circles it only needed the well-known name of Vivian Sabretasche to give it at once an interest and a brevet of value. The Francesca was talked of by everybody, and, strangely enough, the picture most appreciated in another line by the papers and the virtuosi was the Little Tressillian’s, which, with its subject, its treatment, and the truthful rendering of the boy’s face, attracted more attention than any woman’s picture had done for a long time; the art reviews were almost unanimous in its praise; certain faults were pointed out — reviewers must always find some as a sort of voucher of their own discernment — but, for all that, Alma’s first picture was a very decided success.
Not long after the Exhibition, De Vigne, one morning after early parade, ordered his horse round, put some of the journals in his coat-pocket, and rode towards Richmond, with the double purpose of having a cool morning gallop before the bother of the day commenced, and of seeing Alma, which he had not done since the success of her picture. He rode fast; — I believe it would have been as great a misery to him to be obliged to do a thing slowly as it would have been to Sabretasche to do it quickly! — and he enjoyed the fresh morning, with the free, pure air of spring. His nature was naturally a very happy one; his character was too strong, vigorous, and impatient to allow melancholy to become habitual to him; he was too young for his fate, however it preyed upon his pride, to be constantly before him; his wife was, indeed, a bitter memory to him, but she was but a memory to him now, and a man imperceptibly forgets what is never recalled to him. Except occasional deep fits of gloom and an unvarying cynical sarcasm, De Vigne had cured himself of the utter despondency into which his marriage had first thrown him; the pace at which he lived, if the pleasures were stale, was such as does not leave a man much time for thought, and now, as he rode along, some of his natural spirits came back to him, as they generally do in the saddle to a man fond of riding.
“At home of course?” he said to Mrs. Lee, as she opened the door to him — said it with that careless hauteur which was the result of habit, not of intention. De Vigne was very republican in his theories, but the patrician came out in him malgré lui!
“Yes, sir,” said the old nurse, giving him her lowest curtsey. “Yes, sir, she’s at home, and there’s a young gentleman a-calling on her. I’m glad of it; she wants somebody to talk to bad enough. ‘Tain’t right, you know, sir, for a merry child like that to be cooped up alone; you might as well put a bird in a cage and tie its beak up, so that it couldn’t sing! It’s that young gentleman as came with you, sir, the other day.”
De Vigne stroked his moustaches.
“Oh, ho! Master Curly’s found his way, has he? I dare say she’ll be a confounded little flirt, like all the rest of them, when she has the opportunity,” was his reflection, more natural than complimentary, as he opened the door of Alma’s room, where the little lady was sitting, as usual, in the window, among the birds and flowers De Vigne had sent her; Curly, lying back in a chaise longue, talking to her quite as softly and far more interestedly than he was wont to talk to the beauties in his mother’s drawing-room.
But Alma cut him short in the middle of a sentence as she tinned her head at the opening of the door, and sprang up at the sight of De Vigne.
“How glad I am! How good you are to come so early!”
“Not good at all; the air is beautiful to-day, one only wants to be fishing in a mountain burn to enjoy it thoroughly. Hallo, Curly!” said De Vigne, throwing himself into an arm-chair; “how are you! How did you manage to get up so early? I thought you never were up till after one, except on Derby Day?”
“Or other temptation greater still,” said Curly, with an eloquent glance of his long, violet eyes at Alma.
“Do you mean that for a compliment to me?” said the Little Tressillian, with that gay, rebellious air which was so pretty in her. “In the first place, I do not believe it, for there is no woman on the face of the earth who could attempt to rival a horse; and in the second, I should not thank you for it if I did, for compliments are only fit for empty heads to feed on!”
“Meaning, you think yours the very reverse of empty?” said De Vigne, quietly.
“Certainly, I am not a boarding-school girl, monsieur,” said Alma, indignantly. “I have filled it with what food I can get for it, and I know at least enough to feel that I know nothing — the first step to wisdom the sages say.”
“But if you dislike compliments you might at least accept homage,” said Curly, smiling.
“Homage? Oh! yes, as much as you like. I should like to be worshipped by the world, and petted by a few.”
“I dare say you would,” said De Vigne. “I can’t say your desires are characterised by great modesty!”
“Well, I speak the truth,” said Alma, naïvely. “I should like to be admired by the thousands, and loved just by one or two.”
“You have only to be seen to have your first wish,” said Curly, softly, “and only to be known to have much more than your second.”
Alma turned away impatiently; she had a sad knack of showing when she was annoyed.
“Really you are intolerable, Colonel Brandling. You spoil conversation utterly. I say those things because I mean them, not to make you flatter me. I shall talk only to Sir Folko, for he understands me, and answers me properly.”
With which lecture to Curly she twisted her low chair nearer to De Vigne, and looked up in his face, much as spaniels look up in their master’s, liking a kick from them better than a caress from a stranger.
