by George Moore
“It would be perfectly wretched,” she said, “to see him going off every morning, and would destroy the whole charm.”
Lewis having declared himself satisfied with the light, a lease was drawn and signed, and Lady Helen occupied herself more than ever in choosing the furniture. It was left entirely to her. Lewis had to go off to his studio early in the morning, for his marriage had brought him some orders, including two portraits.
Lady Helen was, of course, delighted, and yet it was very tiresome to see him always at work. She would have liked nothing better than to trot about with him from shop to shop, asking his advice; but, on the other hand, she hoped to surprise him by a display of good taste; and already she congratulated herself on the success of her French salon. She had confided her project to no one except Lady Marion, who offered no opinion on the subject. The old lady, although strong on the origin of the Irish castles, was weak in modern æstheticism.
Time went by very quietly; Lewis painted all day at his portraits of the two dowagers, who, he said, wearied him, both with their conversation and their lumpy shoulders. In the evening he asked his wife how the furnishing was getting on, but she answered him evasively, determined to surprise him.
This continued until one day, catching sight of her in a shop in Regent Street, he went in, and found her buying two vulgar, gold candelabras. He endeavoured to dissuade her, but believing in her own judgment, she argued the point with him, and gradually the truth came out.
Lady Helen was dreadfully disappointed. She had spent the better part of two hundred pounds, and felt very mortified.
Lewis consoled her; he assured her it was not her fault; she had lived out of England all her life, and could not be expected to understand the developments artistic tastes had taken in the last few years.
As luck would have it, they were going that evening to dine with the Hiltons, and Lewis said that she must see what an artist’s house was, before she could think of furnishing one. There she met the most distinguished of the Mediævalists. Lewis showed her Morris’s most artistic wall papers, chairs older than Chippendale, dados, the finest Worcester, Derby, Bristol, and Chelsea. She listened in amazement, believed at once, and strove vainly to grasp the meaning of all that was said to her. Having been thus baptised and received a convert, she asked to be taught. She implored Lewis to come with her, feeling, as she said, “hopelessly at sea.” For the present, he said, he could not possibly spare the time, and he advised her to ask Mrs. Bentham, whom he declared to be a far greater authority on such matters than he. Mrs. Bentham consented readily to this arrangement, and at eleven o’clock every morning Lady Helen went to fetch her; and then till lunch, in Pall Mall, or Bond Street, they discussed furniture.
As the days passed, the two women became dearer and firmer friends. After shopping, Mrs. Bentham would take Lady Helen home to lunch, and then, later in the afternoon, they would go to drive in the park, and as they leaned back, shading their faces with their sunshades, they talked together, and not unfrequently Lewis was the subject of their conversation. And Mrs. Bentham did not attempt to conceal her affection for Lewis, but the most careful observer could not detect in it anything that was not both motherly and friendly. Great as her passion had been, she had been able to subdue it. She went to balls and dinner parties dressed as a woman who wished to please, and no one except Mrs. Thorpe knew of the great change that had come upon her friend’s life. Sometimes she regretted that the past was the past; but time soothes us with hands which, although they may be murderous, are yet most merciful.
As for Lady Helen, she enjoyed herself immensely. Under Mrs. Bentham’s instructions she soon began to see the beauties of Wedge wood, to distinguish between Japanese and Worcester, and to pooh-pooh the new Saxony, which at first she thought as good as the old. The red French curtains were replaced by pale blue, and the poufs by Chippendale chairs. Mrs. Bentham was glad when her pupil had made sufficient progress to be trusted to rummage about and make purchases on her own account, for she naturally soon grew tired of this perpetual bric-à-brac hunting. But Lady Helen was indefatigable, and she grew daily more infatuated with the charm of collecting. Trouble she thought nothing of, and she extended her search for old chairs and china to thirty and forty miles round London. On these excursions she was always accompanied by her maid, Gwynnie Lloyd, to whom she had become greatly attached.
Gwynnie’s kind, gentle nature was very sympathetic to Lady Helen’s ardent and impulsive disposition. Gwynnie’s calm, quiet little ways interested her, and when she caught sight of her in the glass, as she humbly twisted flowers into the pale hair, Lady Helen wondered what the girl’s past had been. Once or twice she had asked her; but Gwynnie only looked shy, and answered in generalities. But if Gwynnie did not speak much of herself, she tried in her timid way to get Lady Helen to talk to her about Lewis. Her head was full of vague surmises, and night and day she wondered how he had managed to succeed so thoroughly. She especially sought to find out who Mrs. Bentham was, and in the hope of hearing something about her, Gwynnie consented to walk out with the footman on many a Sunday afternoon.
The man was glad to tell her all he knew, which amounted to this, that it was common talk that Mrs. Bentham had bought Mr. Seymour’s pictures, and helped him in his “beginnings;” this was not very precise, but with Lady Helen on one side, and the different ladies’ maids on the other, Gwynnie succeeded gradually in piecing together the greater part of Lewis’s past life. She did this from the interest she felt in him, without any other motive; and even when she arrived at what she believed to be the facts, she failed to draw any conclusion from them. For years his memory had exercised a dim and indecribable influence over her, and she was unable either to blame or praise him. She accepted him as she had always done, as the guiding power of her life, and she could not disassociate their meeting, and living under the same roof, unknown to each other, from some strange fatality. Every link of the chain that bound her seemed to have been forged in mystery.
At first she fancied he would recognise her; but when he passed her on the stairs unheeding, she stole away to her room in bitter disappointment, tears flowing down her pock-marked cheeks. Her name, too, had been changed to Westhall, that of Lady Helen’s former maid, so there was no trace of her past left, and she felt too weak to struggle against what seemed fated to be. She would have given worlds to tell him she was the Gwynnie Lloyd who used to walk with him on the London Road, but the grandeur with which she was surrounded had so impressed her with a sense of her own insignificance, that she could not bring herself to the point of making herself known. Besides she had very few opportunities of doing so; once or twice at Twickenham she had been very near it, but, when the words were on her lips, something had occurred to remind her so forcibly that she was only his servant, that her courage had slipped away from her. She supposed he would be glad to see her, but when she felt the most tempted to reveal herself she remembered that she would have to tell how she had sat for him — then she paused trembling. Lady Helen, she thought, would most assuredly grow to dislike her, and feeling that the end would be dismissal, she resolved to keep her counsel, and wait for something that would “put it all right.” She hoped he would some day recognise her; and as the time passed she grew to feel the poetry of her position, and the sadness of living near him, unknown, was not without its charm: often she would escape from the servants’ hall, and, deaf to the footman’s entreaties, would go upstairs and read a sentimental romance, striving all the while to trace a likeness between the characters described and Lewis and Lady Helen and herself.
The “Last Days of Pompeii” especially delighted her, and after reading a favourite passage, looking out into the summer night, she saw herself as the blind girl, and Lady Helen as Iona. The vague sentiment which had impoverished her life, and rendered her incapable of appreciating what fate had given her, still held its mastery over her.
CHAPTER XXIX.
MARRIED LIFE.
MEANWHILE EVERYTHING
WENT well with the Seymours. Contrary to their expectations, their house was finished before the end of July, and they were enabled to give a ball. Everybody came, and Lords and Marquises jabbered of art as well as they knew how. Lady Helen was much admired and when the bills came in, they found that they had spent nearly three hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds for one ball, Lewis said, was a great deal, and yards of canvas waiting to be covered with dowagers shoulders rose before his eyes. He looked a little frightened, but his wife threw her arms round his neck. “My dear,” she said, “you had to give something, you know, and it was as well to do it well. Never mind; you will get it back with a portrait or two.”
Lewis hoped that it would turn out as she said, but confessed that three hundred pounds for one ball was not reassuring as a first experience of domestic administration. For a couple of days the incident threw a gloom over their happiness. However, Lewis was the first to weary of unpleasant foreboding, and he consoled Lady Helen with the assurance that it was an acknowledged fact, that to make money one had to spend money, and since they were going to stay with the Sedgwicks in Scotland, they would be living on nothing for the next two months. A week after, in the Highlands of Scotland, they had forgotten all about their lost three hundred. The house was full of nice people, and as a newly-married couple who had sacrificed everything for art and love, they were the centre of attraction. People were asked from far and wide to meet them; and they enjoyed themselves immensely.
Lewis painted a portrait or two, made a few sketches of Highland scenery, and talked a great deal of the picture of Clytemnæstra he was going to paint. She was to be represented in the full moonlight watching for the beacon fires that would announce the death of her son.
Lewis thought highly of the subject, and decided that neither time nor money were to be spared. He declared that this time he would fire a broadside into the whole lot. Moderns and Mediævalists, that would oblige the academicians to elect him an associate at once. For a long time he had been cherishing this idea, and had come to the conclusion that it would be as well to give the RA.’s an opportunity of doing him this act of simple justice. He declared that a sound classical picture, of undeniable merit, was sorely needed, for it would give many the long-desired opportunity of dealing a death blow at “The moderns,” whose influence, he regretted to perceive, was daily increasing.
Holt, who had lately been made an K.A., had entirely espoused their cause; and there were others among the forty who secretly sympathised with the new sect “The mediævalists,” it was true, out of hatred to “The modems,” made common cause with “The classics;” but it was known that they cared little for the trailing white draperies of the heroes and heroines of ancient Greece; and this, Lewis said, was the worst feature of the case. He declared that Mr. Hilton was the only one of the lot that could be depended upon; and he was often asked to dinner, for the purpose of calmly discussing the best means of resisting this modern vandalism, which, they agreed, was sapping the very base of English art. In the studio, after dinner, the conversation was continued in front of Clytemnæstra, whom Mr. Hilton was expected to criticise gently and admire vigorously.
In reality he cared but little for Lewis’s pictures, but he was obliged to support him in the Academy for three reasons: The first was his hatred of “The moderns;” the second that Lord Worthing was an extensive purchaser of his mediaeval pictures; and the third, that Mrs and Miss Hilton received certain invitations solely on account of their friendship with the Seymours.
It was now spring; the pictures had all been sent in, and Lewis profited by the temporary absence of Lady Helen, who was staying on a short visit with Lady Marion, to ask a number of artists to dinner, with the intention of formally talking over the prospects of the exhibition. It had been rumoured for some time past, in artistic circles, that Thompson, who had now a party behind him, was going to send a very large work, which might not only be considered as a final exemplification of all his latest theories, but as a direct challenge flung to “The mediævalists and classics.” It was also known that Mr. Hilton had for a long time been preparing a large picture, to be called “The Land of Hesperia;” it was already spoken of in the art world as the rival picture; and everybody was busy wondering if the hanging committee would take cognizance of the matter, and place Modern and Mediævalist side by side. Mr. Hilton himself, when questioned on the subject, took a very lofty air. He declared that his opinions and tastes were well known; that he was not aware that Mr. Thompson had painted his picture in any spirit of rivalry; and, he affirmed, loudly, that as far as he himself was concerned, such an idea had never entered his head; that he had painted, and would exhibit, “The Land of Hesperia,” just as he would any other picture he might be pleased to paint, without reference to any other artist’s work. When questioned more minutely, he did not deny that the “Hesperia” was, as far as size went, of about the same dimensions as Mr. Thompson’s picture; but said that he would strenuously object to their being hung in the same room; and that if, after that, the public still insisted on attaching any particular significance to the size of his pictures, he could not be held responsible.
Everyone listened deferentially until the academician had finished speaking; and Mr. Ripple, who had been all the while elaborating a compliment, said:
“The interest the public take in such controversies is quite too contemptible, and you may be sure that before the first of May the newspapers, no longer contented with a duo, will be demanding a trio, and that our friend’s Clytemnæstra will be put forward as the watchword of ‘The classics.’”
A sweet smile of approval, with various fragments of the word “appropriate,” went round the table, and inwardly blessing Ripple for the suggestion, Lewis fondly hoped that the paragraphist would not delay a minute to indite a par for the World. But Mr. Hilton had great difficulty in looking amiable. Much as he might hate Thompson’s work, he knew the suggestion of rivalry would secure for “The Land of Hesperia” an amount of notice it could not otherwise possibly obtain; but to have the Clytemnæstra dragged into the competition would, he thought, only throw ridicule on the whole thing. Lewis murmured that the honour assigned to him was too great, and asked Mr. Hilton if he had yet seen this picture of Thompson’s.
“Oh, yes,” replied the academician, “I saw it to-day.”
“And what is it like?” asked several voices from the top of the table.
“It is, of course, very objectionable,” suggested Mr. Ripple.
“Naturally,” returned Lewis, as he bent forward to listen.
The butler ceased to ask the guests which they would take — sherry or Madeira, and a deep silence came over the dinner table.
“Mr. Thompson’s Academy picture this year,” said Mr. Hilton, emphatically, “represents a very dirty maid-of-all-work, in a dirty print dress, cleaning a dirty doorstep, or, rather, idling in her work, and talking to the milkman.”
A look of horror went round the table, and everyone laid down his soup spoon.
“You must be joking,” said Lewis, in a voice of mingled incredulity and disgust.
“I assure you such is the fact,” replied the academician, going back to his soup.
“You don’t mean to say you have hung such an abomination on the walls of the Academy?” exclaimed an artist from the top of the table.
“I protested, but we can no longer close our doors to this man. Holt has several supporters, and he insisted that it should be hung on the line at the end of the long room. I assure you it is not an edifying spectacle, but we had to give way.”
Lewis shrugged his shoulders.
“But, my dear fellow, look at the success he would have had, if we had not given way,” continued Mr. Hilton. “Holt threatened to resign, and if that happened the public would have flocked to see Thompson’s picture, no matter where he exhibited it.” Lewis did not answer, but Mr. Ripple said he would use all his power to get the picture “slated” — that the World could be counted upon.
Then “The modems,” and the influence they were beginning to exercise on the public taste, were passionately discussed. Mr. Hilton declared that it was perfectly shameful that — thanks to the undisguised patronage of Holt, and the secret sympathy of some other R,A.’s — not only Thompson, but the whole of his tribe, Frazer, Stanley, &c., had made a regular descent upon Burlington House. Stanley had a picture of two washer-women, one ironing and the other yawning; Crossley, a pic-nic party — a flare up of blue and pink dresses; Frazer, a railway junction; and as for Holt, his picture was neither more nor less than a group of peasant women bathing, and Mr. Hilton declared that he could give no idea of its abominable coarseness. “Soon,” he said, “it will be impossible for us to take our daughters to the Academy; and I should not be surprised if we found ourselves boycotted by the givers of school treats; these people have to be considered. Then Lewis explained that he had entertained hopes that “The moderns” would respect the sanctity of the nude, but that now the last sacrilege had been committed.
During the next fortnight, everyone was on tip-toe with excitement. The news of the coming contest between “The moderns” and Mediaevalists had — thanks to the paragraphists — been spread through the regions of Mayfair and Belgravia, and it already formed one of the ingredients of fashionable table talk.
Ripple had written and re-written the “par.” stating that Mr. Seymour’s Clytemaestra was to do battle for “The classics” in the impending contest — now so much talked about — but he could not get it printed anywhere, except in a wretched rag called Fashion, that no one ever read. He had begged the editor of the World, for the sake of all the descriptions of scandals and weddings he had supplied him with, to insert the “par.” but to no purpose — the man in the leather arm-chair had obstinately refused. Lewis was in despair, and Kipple was mortified; he said he would give up journalism. But notwithstanding the threat, the days went by, and one grey morning about ten o’clock, a group of men, talking excitedly, crossed the courtyard of Burlington House,
