Читать книгу Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family - George Manville Fenn - Страница 22

Two young men leaning over the park railings on a bright spring morning, when the soot-blackened, well-worn grass that had been suffering from a winter’s chronic cold was beginning to put forth its tender green shoots and dress itself for the season.

The rather muddy drive was on one side, the Serpentine on the other, and indications that London was coming to town could be seen in the increasing string of carriages.

One of the young men was undoubtedly dressed by Poole—well dressed; and he looked worthy of his tailor’s care. Frank, manly, handsome, there was a pleasant look in his grey eyes; and if his fair moustache had not been quite so heavy, a well-cut firm mouth would have been better seen. Perhaps that very glossy hat was worn a trifle too much on one side, and with the well set up appearance it suggested military, but the gold horse-shoe pin with diamond nails directly after hinted equine: the result being a compromise, and the looker-on concluded cavalry.

The other was of a heavier build, and was decidedly not dressed by a good tailor. He was not shabby, but careless; and while his companion was carefully gloved, he carried his hand-shoes in his hands, and certainly his hat had not been touched by a brush that morning.

He was a good-looking, manly fellow, with very short hair and a very long beard, thick enough to hide three parts of his chest.

The judge of human nature who had tried to read him at a glance, would, if right, have said, “Good fellow, somewhat of a cynic, don’t care a sou for appearances.”

Two of the characters in this comedy, to wit, Henry Lord Artingale, man of fashion with a good income; and James Magnus, artist of a manly school, who had cut deeply his mark upon the time.

Another character was seated upon a bench some twenty yards away, cutting his mark, not on the time, but upon the park seat, with an ugly, sharp-pointed clasp-knife, which he closed with a snap, and then threw one great leg over the newly-cut wood, as he seemed to feel more than see the appearance of a policeman, who ran his eye shrewdly over the fellow as if considering him a “party” likely to be “wanted.”

Jock Morrison looked decidedly like the proverbial fish out of water as he stared sullenly about, but not as one might stare who finds himself in an incongruous position by accident. About the only ill-dressed person in his neighbourhood, Jock seemed in no wise abashed, nor yet the worse for his course of imprisonment, his dark beard having rapidly grown and got well over the blacking-brush stage so affected by the Parisian “swell.” Far from seeming abashed, Jock Morrison was ready with a cool, defiant look for every one not in the law, and as a rule those who stared at the great swarthy fellow once were satisfied not to repeat the look.

Jock was evidently in the park for a purpose, and every now and then his eyes wandered over the lines of carriages, but without seeing that of which he was in quest, and as soon as the policeman was gone he once more opened his knife, and began to carve, handily enough, a new design—this time a couple of hearts locked together after the time-honoured fashion shown in a valentine.

“That’s about as picturesque-looking a blackguard as I’ve seen for months,” said Magnus, looking across the road at where the fellow lounged. “I wonder whether he’d come and stand for me.”

“H’m, yes,” said his companion; “nice-looking youth.”

“He’d make a splendid bull-fighter in a Spanish scene.”

“H’m, bull-dog fighter, I should have said, Mag. By the way, I’d have a certificate from the baths and wash-houses before I admitted him to the studio. He looks disgustingly dirty.”

“Yah! horrible! Take me away, Harry. I feel as if I were going to be sick.”

“Why, what’s the matter now?”

“Talk about that great blackguard looking disgusting: here’s my great horror!”

“What, Perry-Morton?”

“Yes. Look at his hideously fat, smooth face, and his long greasy hair tucked behind his ears. Look at his open throat, and—confound the animal, yes—a crimson satin tie. Harry, I shall be had up one of these days for an atrocious assault upon that creature. I shall lie in wait for him like a bravo, and armed with a pair of new scissors I shall cut his hair. Is it possible to prevail upon him to go about clothed, and in his right mind?”

“For shame, Jemmy! and you a brother artist.”

“Brother artist be hanged! You don’t call that thing an artist.”

“Why, my dear boy, he’s acknowledged in society as the apostle of the poet-painters’ school.”

“Good God!”

“My dear boy, do restrain yourself,” laughed the other.

“I can’t help it. I do like a man to be a man, and for goodness’ sake look at that thing.”

“That thing,” as Magnus so contemptuously dubbed him, was certainly striking in appearance, as the open carriage in which he was riding came to a standstill, and he signed to the footman to let him out. For as he descended it was to stand upon a very thin pair of legs that in no sense corresponded with his plump, white, boyish face.

It was a handsome, well-appointed carriage from whose front seat he had alighted, the back being occupied by two ladies of between twenty and thirty, who looked as if their costume had been copied from a disinterred bas-relief; so cold and neutral were their lines that they might have been lady visitors to the Grosvenor Gallery, instead of maidens to whom the word “aesthetic” was hardly known. For the Graeco-Roman extended to their hair, which stood out from their foreheads, looking singed and frizzed as if scorched by the burning thoughts that were in their brains; for even in those days there were ladies who delighted to belong to the pre-Raphaelic cum fleshly school of painting and poetry, and took pains to show by their uniform that they were of the blessed.

As the footman folded the steps and closed the door, the gentleman—to wit, Mr. Perry-Morton, of Saint Agnes’, Park Road—posed himself in an artistic attitude with one arm upon the carriage-door, crossed one leg over the other, and gazed in the faces of his sisters, one delicately-gloved hand in correct harmony of tint playing with a cambric handkerchief, specked with toy flowers of the same tone.

As he posed himself, so did the two ladies. The nearer curled herself gracefully, all but the legs, in a pantherine style in the corner of the carriage, and looked at her brother sweetly through the frizz of hair, as if she were asking him to see if there were a parting. The further drooped over florally in a manner that in another ordinary being would have suggested crick in the neck, but here, as with her brother and sister, everything was so deliriously unstudied—or well studied—that she only gave the idea of a bending flower—say, a bud—or a pallid virgin and martyr upon painted glass.

“Oh, Lord!” said Magnus, aloud.

“Hush! don’t. Come along, though. Gently, man, or they’ll see us, and we shall have to talk to the girls.”

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

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

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

“Bah! so they will in any lunatic who makes himself fashionably absurd. I’ll be reasonable, Harry, though that fellow has half driven me wild with his airs and patronage. He gave me a thumping price for one of my pictures, for he’s immensely rich. Then he had the impudence to want me to alter it—the composition of months of hard, honest study—and began to lecture me on art.”

“From his point of view.”

“Yes, from his point of view. But as I said, I will be reasonable. There is a deal in this pre-Raphaelitism, and it has done its part in reviving some of the best of the ancient art, and made its mark on our schools of to-day. But there it was not allowed to stop. A pack of idiots—there, I can call them nothing else—go into frantic worship of all the worst portions of old art, and fall down and idolise things that are ugly, ill-coloured, and grotesque.”

“True, O magnate! and they’ll grow worse.”

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

“Bravo! charnel-house garb is good.”

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

“Haven’t got a sister, worse luck, or you should have her, old fellow.”

“Thanks. Well, say, then, the woman you loved.”

“Hush! stop here, old fellow. Here they come.”

“Who? Those two stained-glass virgins?”

“No, no, be quiet; the Mallow girls.”

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

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

“Feel better?” said Magnus, cynically.

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

“I’m not going to laugh at you. But you seem to have got it badly.”

“Awfully,” replied the other.

“Shouldn’t have thought it of you, Harry. So those are the Mallow girls, eh?”

“Yes. Isn’t she charming?”

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

“No, man,” cried Artingale, impatiently; “that’s Julia. I mean the other.”

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

“Paints be hanged!” cried Artingale, indignantly, “it’s her own sweet natural colour, bless her.”

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

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

“Then,” said Magnus, seriously, “you are what they call—in love?”

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

“And the lady—does she reciprocate, and that sort of thing?”

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

“Let’s see, it happened abroad, didn’t it?”

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

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

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

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

“For a what?”

“Corydon—gentle shepherd, my boy.”

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

“So it seems,” said Magnus, drily.

“Chaff away, I don’t mind,” said Artingale.

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

“No, no, don’t let’s go, old fellow. They’ll only drive as far as the corner, and then come back on this side. Perhaps they’ll stop to speak. If they do, I’ll introduce you to Julia; she’s a very nice girl.”

“But not so nice as, as—”

“Cynthia,” said the other, innocently. “No: of course not.”

Magnus burst out laughing, and his friend looked at him inquiringly.

“I could not help it, old fellow,” exclaimed Magnus; “you did seem so innocent over it. But never mind that. Plunge head foremost into the sweetest life idyll you can, and, worldly-minded old sinner as I am, I will only respect you the more.”

He spoke so sincerely, and in such a feeling tone, that the younger man half turned and gazed at him, saying directly after—

“Thank you, old fellow; I’m not demonstrative, so just consider that I have given you a hearty grip of the hand.”

“All right,” was the gruff reply. “Hallo! here comes my brigand. By Jove, he’s a fine-looking specimen of the genus homo. He’s six feet two, if he’s an inch.”

Jock Morrison, who seemed at home beneath the trees, came slouching along with his hands deep in his pockets, with a rolling gait, the whole of one side at a time; there was an end of his loose cotton neckerchief between his teeth, and a peculiar satisfied smile in his eye which changed to a scowl of defiance as he saw that he was observed.

“I say, my man,” said Magnus, “would you give me a sitting, if I paid you?”

“Would I give you what?” growled the fellow. “I don’t let out cheers.”

Before Magnus could explain himself, the man had turned impatiently away, and gone on towards Kensington Gardens.

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Artingale. “Our friend is not a model in any way. Have a cigarette, old fellow?”

The artist took one, and they stood smoking for a few minutes, till Artingale, who had been watchfully looking in the direction of the Achilles statue, suddenly threw down his half-smoked cigarette, for the Mallow carriage came into sight, and, as the young man had hoped, a voice cried “stop!” and the coachman drew up by the rails.

“Ah, Harry!” cried Cynthia, leaning forward to shake hands, and looking very bright and charming in the new floral bonnet that had caused her such anxiety that morning; “I didn’t know you had come up to town.”

“Didn’t you,” he replied, earnestly. “I knew you had. I went over to the rectory yesterday, and saw your brothers.”

“Oh, Harry!” cried Cynthia, blushing with pleasure.

“It didn’t matter; I drove over to do the horse good,” said the young man, shaking hands warmly with Julia in turn. “Here, let me introduce my friend Magnus. Julia, this is James Magnus. Cynthia, Magnus the artist.”

“Lord Artingale has often spoken of you, Mr. Magnus,” said Cynthia, looking at him rather coquettishly, in fact as if she was better used to London society than the quietude of a country rectory. “He has promised to bring me some day to see your pictures.”

“I shall only be too proud to show you what I am doing,” said the artist, meeting frankly the bright eyes that were shooting at him, but which gave him up directly as a bad mark, as he turned and began talking to Julia Mallow, who seemed to have become singularly quiet and dreamy, but who brightened up directly and listened eagerly, for she found that Magnus could talk sensibly and well.

“Are you going to stay up long?” said Lord Artingale, gazing imploringly in Cynthia’s eyes.

“I don’t know, indeed,” she replied, pouting. “Papa has brought mamma to see a fresh physician, but is so cross and strange now. He has been reforming the parish, as he calls it.”

“Yes; so I heard,” said Lord Artingale, laughing.

“And that has meant quarrelling with all the stupid townspeople, and setting them against us.”

“Not against you, Cynthia,” said the young man in a low voice. “I don’t believe that.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Harry,” she replied, laughing; “not now. But really it is very unpleasant, you know, for it makes papa so cross.”

“Of course it would,” said Lord Artingale, sympathisingly.

“And he talks about being so poor, and says that we shall all be ruined, and makes poor mamma miserable.”

“But he is not in want of money, is he?” cried the young man, eagerly.

“Nonsense! No: that’s how he always talks when Frank and Cyril are at home. Oh, Harry, I’m afraid they are dreadful boys.”

“Well, let’s try and make them better, eh, Cynthia?”

“I said you were not to talk nonsense now,” said Cynthia, shaking her pretty little head at him.

“Oh, murder!” he exclaimed, suddenly. “Hadn’t you better drive on? Here’s Perry-Morton.”

“No, no,” exclaimed the younger girl, “it would look so rude. You silly thing, don’t blush so,” she whispered to her sister; “it looks so strange.”

“Good-morning—” said the subject of the thoughts of the group; and Mr. Perry-Morton descended poetically upon them, for he did not seem to walk up like an ordinary being. “Cynthia,” he continued, with an air of affectionate solicitude, and leaving out the full-stops he had placed after his two first words, “you look too flushed this morning, my child. Julia, is not the morning charming? Did you notice the effect of light and shade across the water?”

Julia Mallow, who looked troubled and bored, replied that she had not.

“You observed it, of course, Mr. Magnus?” continued the new-comer, with a sweet smile.

“No,” said the gentleman addressed, shortly. “I was talking to the ladies.”

“Ah! yes,” said Mr. Perry-Morton, sweetly; and he held his head on one side, as if he were posing for a masculine Penseroso. “But Nature will appeal so to our inmost heart.”

“Yes, she’s a jolly nuisance sometimes,” said Lord Artingale, but only to evoke a pitying smile from Mr. Perry-Morton, who, in spite of the decidedly annoyed looks of Cynthia and her lover, leaned his arm upon the carriage-door, and began talking to Julia, making James Magnus look like Harry Hotspur must have appeared when the “certain lord” came to him, holding the “pouncet box, which ever and anon he gave his nose.”

Cynthia Mallow made a pretty little grimace at Artingale, and, then turning with a smile to the worshipper of Nature, she stretched out her hand for the check-string so unmistakably that the gentlemen drew back, and raised their hats as the carriage rejoined the stream.

“Won’t you come and speak to the girls, Artingale?” said Mr. Perry-Morton in a softly imploring tone; and suppressing a sigh of annoyance, the young man suffered himself to be led off with his unwilling friend, while the carriage went slowly on towards Kensington Gardens, stopping with the stream again and again.

“Julia,” cried Cynthia, flushing with annoyance, as soon as they were alone, “has papa gone mad?”

“Hush! the servants will hear you,” said her sister, reprovingly.

“I can’t help it, dear, it makes me so excited that I can’t bear it. How you can let that hateful creature come and patronise and monopolise, and seem to constrict you as he does, like a horrible short fat snake, I can’t imagine. Papa must be going mad to encourage it. If he were as rich as Cassius or Croesus, or whatever the man’s name was, it ought to be no excuse. I declare if you do not pluck up spirit and make a fight, I will. You can’t like him.”

“Oh, no,” cried her sister, with a look of revulsion.

“Then you must—you shall put a stop to his pretensions. Why, I declare to-day he behaved before Harry’s friend as if he were engaged to you. I felt as if I’d have given my pearls to have been at liberty to box his ears.”

“I think him detestable,” said Julia, sadly.

“Then you shall speak up, dear, or I will. I declare I’ll revolt, or no—Harry shall shoot him. I shall command him never to approach our presence again till he has rid society of that dreadful monster with his Nature worship and stuff. Good gracious, Julia, what is the matter?”

The carriage had stopped, as the younger sister prattled on, close by the railings near the Gardens, and Julia Mallow crouched shrinking in the carriage, gazing with a horrified, fascinated fixity of eye at the great half-gipsy-looking vagabond, who, with his folded arms resting upon one of the iron posts, and his bearded chin upon them, was staring at her in an insolent mocking fashion.

The spell only lasted for a few moments before the carriage went on, and with a low hysterical cry, Julia caught at her sister’s hand to whisper hoarsely—

“Oh, Cynthia, that dreadful man again!”

End of Volume One.