Even Alethea did not know whether Hans realized what a sensation he would have made if he had appeared in the gallery. No one knew his secret feelings about his small size. He never spoke of it, and never seemed to give it a thought, while it was not easy to judge whether he was shy or not, for he so seldom saw any strangers. He lived among people who were so accustomed to his appearance, that they really forgot that there was anything unusual in his being hardly four feet high. He had therefore never been made self-conscious.
But he was sincerely modest about his work, and he was, accordingly, quite unprepared for the success of his exhibition. The serious critics were enthusiastic about his pictures. As Hans read the notices in the papers, he found to his amazement that he was spoken of as an artist on the way to a place in the first rank. The pictures which he had painted in his far-away studio in Cornwall had made him famous.
It was a wonderful and an unexpected happiness. Hans had always painted because he loved it, and all his life he had been singularly unconcerned over the world’s opinion of himself. He simply hadn’t thought of it. But now that it was suddenly declared, and proved to be so unexpectedly eulogistic, he was delighted beyond words. And the most joyful part of his triumph was the gratification which it gave to Alethea. How they enjoyed it together!
During the following week or two, Hans was inundated with letters from artists and critics, who wrote to tell him of their admiration of his work. No one knew who he was, or where he lived, but Mr. Crosby was the medium through whom these letters reached Hans. Many of them were from men whose names were well-known to him, and whom he looked upon as immeasurably above him; and now he found that they wrote to him as to a brother artist. Hans, who had thought himself nothing but a schoolboy, found that he was admitted to a new world. The posts became the great events of the day, and each one brought him some exciting letters.
Nicholas was not at his ease during these days, although in his heart he was extremely pleased about his son’s success. From the moment when he saw Hans’ portrait of Alethea, his feelings towards the boy had been completely changed. That picture had been a revelation to him. This pitiable child of his, who, because of his small size, had never seemed to him to have grown out of babyhood, had suddenly appeared as a man with a life of his own, and a life too, which would play a part in his generation. He was no more the poor little dwarf to be hidden away out of sight. Nicholas had ignored him, but on that Christmas morning he had seen that Hans was no more a person to be ignored.
But there was more in it than this. Nicholas not only found himself recognizing the talent of his son: that portrait of Alethea revealed to him something more. It made him aware of an unexpected sympathy between himself and the boy. Hans saw Alethea as Nicholas thought that he alone had seen her. He had divined in her that hidden beauty of spirit which lay behind the beauty she showed to the world; and it was this dear and secret loveliness which Nicholas saw expressed in the portrait. It drew him to Hans.
But he had found it difficult to say any of this to the boy. It was never easy for him to speak of his inner feelings, and the long reserve between himself and Hans was hard to break down. Before he had made up his mind to speak, Hans had gone back to Cairn Gorm.
Now he had come back, recognized by the world. Nicholas’s pride rebelled against choosing this moment for a change of attitude. It must appear, he thought, as if he had been influenced only by Hans’ public success.
So he remained aloof, and even seemed rather glum, much to the disappointment of Alethea, who had thought that Hans’ happiness must at last break down his father’s defences. She saw, instead, what almost seemed like jealousy over the boy’s acknowledged genius. Here, she misjudged her husband, but for once she was not able to follow the subtleties of his mental state. She had known how delighted he had been with the picture of herself, but what she did not know was that Nicholas had regretted his inability to tell Hans what he felt about it. It was the one blot on her own happiness.
And at Cairn Gorm, Miss Nash was more delighted than anyone. She was now an old woman, and one by one, her many household activities had been taken over by Greta, who had returned to Cornwall as soon as the war was over. And as the old lady was able herself to do less and less, the achievements of Hans became more entirely the interest of her life. She admired everything that he did, and for the past ten years she had been waiting for the time when the world would admit that her foster-child was the greatest artist of his day. As she read the criticisms in the papers, she felt that she had at last been proved right. The world had recognized in Hans what she had always seen in him.
Miss Nash was surrounded by neighbours who cared for her, and she had quite a triumph of her own over Hans’ exhibition. Never before had so many carriages and motors stopped at her door, for everyone in the country round seemed to come to congratulate her. She had never before worn her black silk dress for eight afternoons in succession; but, as she said to Greta, every day in that week was a party day.
And at the end of this stream of visitors, there arrived a young man who was a stranger to her. He appeared at first a little diffident about coming to see her without an introduction, but he was soon drinking tea out of her best china teacups, and chatting away as if he had known her all his life. He said he was staying in the neighbourhood, and had not been able to resist calling upon her, in the hope of seeing Hans himself, and expressing to him some of the admiration felt for his work by a man of his own generation. The stranger was evidently a hero-worshipper, for he was interested in every detail about Hans, and was full of sympathetic questioning. Miss Nash took him into Hans’ studio, and she could not help being flattered by her guest’s whole-hearted admiration of those old water-colours of her own, which still hung upon the walls. It was delightful to talk of Hans with someone who did not already know all there was to tell, and Miss Nash thoroughly enjoyed her afternoon. She showed her visitor many photographs of Hans, as well as sketches she had made of him at every age; but, as she said, not one of them gave any idea of what an exquisite little being he was.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ALETHEA came one morning into Hans’ studio at Brokeyates and found him reading a newspaper. He did not look up as she opened the door, and she was alarmed by the expression on his face. He was very white, and in his eyes she saw a bitter misery which made him, for the first time, remind her of his father.
‘What is it, dearest?’ she asked, crossing to him, and putting out her hand for the paper.
He held it away.
‘No,’ he answered.
She sat down on the arm of his chair.
‘But I want to see it,’ she said; and again she laid a hand upon the paper.
‘Don’t look at it,’ said Hans. His voice was deep and strangled.
She said no more, but she took the paper from him and carried it to the window. Standing there, she read it. It was one of those cheap newspapers which seem to exist in order to interpose a perverted parody of life between their readers and the perception of truth. One side of a sheet was entirely occupied by an article about Hans. The page was broken up into short paragraphs, each introduced by a head-line in very large print. Alethea saw:
MYSTERY OF UNKNOWN ARTIST SOLVED
CORNISH DWARF GENIUS
TINY PAINTER OF GREAT PICTURES
BARONET’S DWARF HEIR PAINTS
PICTURE OF THE YEAR
MODERN TOM THUMB’S MASTERPIECE
NATIVE OF LILLIPUT TAKES
LONDON BY STORM
She felt sick. She hastily ran her eye over the article, and saw that it was, from first to last, a description of Hans, not as an artist, but as a freak. Nothing was omitted. His exact height was given in inches, and he was said to feel so acutely the fact of his diminutive size, that he had always hidden himself from the world, painting his pictures in a remote cottage on the coast of Cornwall, where the walls of his studio were hung with the portraits of other mis-shapen little objects.
Alethea
looked back at Hans. He was still sitting in the same attitude of complete dejection, and as he sat there, he did indeed look a pathetic little dwarf. The life had gone out of him—that radiant vitality which usually shone about him like a swift emanation of light, making Alethea, at least, forget when she was with him whether he was measured by inches or by feet. She always saw the spirit in him. Now that spirit was crushed, leaving him only a crumpled little midget, his feet dangling absurdly far from the ground as he sat in the deep arm-chair.
She went back to him, and put a hand upon his shoulder. He did not move, but, still staring gloomily into space, he said:
‘Is being a dwarf the only thing that counts?’
‘Only with people who don’t count, like second-rate journalists.’
‘People who don’t count! And who does count? Most people agree with … that.’
‘My dear boy, nobody does.’
‘What about Daddy and Portia?’
‘No darling.’
‘Don’t say “ No darling”. You can’t deceive me any more. But what a fool I must have been all these years, if nothing but a newspaper like that could open my eyes for me, and show me that I’m nothing but a freak. O Mummy, you’ve been an angel, making my life into a Paradise; but why did you do it? Didn’t you know all the time that it was only a Fool’s Paradise, and that I was bound to wake up some day, and learn the truth?’
‘Hans, you can’t consider what is said by a vulgar writer like this. You mustn’t. Remember what the real critics have said. You have “ woken up to learn the truth”, and it is that you are compared with the great men of the past.’
‘With Tom Thumb!’
‘By someone who has never seen you or, I should think, any of your work.’
‘No. Of course it isn’t that I care what is said by this particular man. But it has shown me what I must look like in the eyes of everyone but you. I see now why daddy has always hated me. He is ashamed of me, and no wonder. Portia once called me “a disgrace to the family”, and that’s what daddy feels.’
‘No darling,’ said Alethea again.
‘Don’t go on saying “No Darling”. I can’t bear it. It shows me that you haven’t got anything else to say. I ought to have known it all my life. The sight of me has always made him miserable. He has never tried to hide it.’
‘Hans, you are quite wrong,’ Alethea tried to say.
‘No mummy, it’s because of me that he has always looked so unhappy. I can’t think of his face now, without realizing what he feels every time he sees me. Heavens! How he must hate me!’
‘Listen Hans. You must hear what I have to say. It’s true that your father has been an unhappy man, but that’s a far older story than your life. It goes back to the time before he and I were married. I think it was one of the things that made me fall in love with him—that he looked so lonely and sad. And it has been the battle of our married life, trying to conquer a melancholy which began when he was a boy in Melbourne. His mother was a cruel woman, and she started him with a prejudice against the world. But far from this trouble coming from you, he has been gradually growing out of it all the time that you have been growing up. You can’t possibly tell how much better he is; but it does prove, to me who have known him all along, that it is not caused by you.’
Hans looked up at his mother, and she knew that she had impressed him.
‘Still, the sight of me must have added considerably to his gloom,’ he said with bitterness.
‘It will do so, if you go on looking as gloomy as himself at his worst.’
‘What an egoist I must be, never to have thought what I must look like in the eyes of the world.’
‘What an egoist you will be if you begin to think about it now!’ she said, caressing his hair.
He took the paper, which had fallen out of her hand onto the floor, and he looked at it once again. Then he dropped it with a groan.
‘“Baronet’s Dwarf Heir” Oh, poor daddy!’
‘“Paints Picture of the Year”, Oh, happy mummy!’
‘It’s no good mummy. You can’t make it into nothing. That hateful paper has opened my eyes, however much I may despise it in itself. I now know that daddy does mind terribly, and always has minded.’
‘Don’t imagine that a vulgar journalist can explain your own father to you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
She tried to smile, and to treat the subject with a light-hearted raillery.
‘I am ashamed of myself,’ was what Hans replied, and once again she saw his father in him.
She drew his head down upon her shoulder.
‘Darling Hans,’ she said, ‘I know that this must hurt you quite horribly. You have never before come against this coarse and vulgar side of the world. But don’t make it worse for yourself, and too frightful for me, by thinking that this man can tell you what your own people think of you. Don’t you know, my darling, how beautiful you are in my eyes? You can never, never, understand how completely you have always made the joy of my life. When daddy’s old misery was nearly breaking my heart and his, it was only you, my beloved boy, who never failed to make me happy. Hans, I can’t bear it if these things, written by a stranger and an outsider, are going to come in upon us, and cloud our lives together.’
Her voice shook. She could not go on. She struggled with herself, for it seemed that after all the years in which she had screened him from the world, she was now going to break down when the enemy was upon them.
‘I wish I could despise it,’ he said.
‘You will,’ she answered, conquering the vibration in her voice, and putting into it all the decision she possessed.
He saw the tears in her eyes, and he suddenly realized that he was making his mother even more unhappy than he was himself.
‘I expect we are taking it too seriously,’ he said.
She smiled down upon him.
‘I know we are. We have been spoilt by all the lovely things that we have been reading about you all this time.’
‘I shall throw the hateful paper away, and let us go for a walk.’
Alethea gladly agreed, and they walked in the Park till the gong sounded for luncheon.
Arthur Fanshawe had come over, so Portia was in high spirits and very talkative.
‘My dear Hans,’ she said almost at once, ‘ have you seen the article about you in the Newsmonger? Isn’t it a scream!’
‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Hans. His voice was dead, and he spoke as if the subject did not interest him.
‘I thought it was frightfully funny,’ Portia went on. ‘And I can’t imagine how they found it all out. Very clever of them, wasn’t it? And my dear, how killing about those ridiculous paintings of poor old Miss Nash’s. They are evidently supposed to be portraits of your ancestors.’
Till now, Alethea had not known whether Nicholas had seen the obnoxious article, but now his face showed her that he had. He was watching Hans, who was very white, although red patches had appeared here and there upon his face and neck. Alethea tried in vain to think of something which she could say to create a diversion.
‘Yes my boy. This is fame at last. A whole page in the Newsmonger,’ said Arthur, with a heavy attempt at jocularity.
‘Who in the world reads such things?’ Nicholas now broke in, showing very obvious annoyance.
Portia was quite unaffected by her father’s irritation.
‘We all do of course,’ she answered pertly. ‘And you have evidently read it as much as any of us, in spite of your trying to be so superior about it.’
‘Whether you have read it or not, it’s not worth talking about,’ Alethea intervened.
‘It doesn’t seem very important,’ said Hans. He was still bent on appearing indifferent.
Alethea felt that Nicholas had made a sudden movement. She heard his foot strike on the floor under him. She saw his hand clutch the edge of the table. She was suddenly frightened. The look on his face brought back to her mind two scenes in his life, the times when sh
e had seen him lose control—when he had been beyond himself with fury. She remembered how he strode up the path to knock on the door of the Warrens’ cottage; and she saw again his face when he stood over his mother, as if he meant to kill her.
No one else was looking at him. Hans’ eyes were fixed on his plate. His face was rigid, and only its curious pallor and the rapid movements of the blood under the skin, betrayed that he was suffering. Portia and Arthur felt nothing ominous in the air. They had both been amused by the article in the paper, and they thought it was good fun to tease Hans about it.
‘Poor Hans,’ said Portia. ‘It is really bad luck on you that you are such a tiny little thing. It gives the papers a chance, doesn’t it. And you are the only small member of the family. It’s very odd, because we are such a tall race.’
She was looking across the room at a looking-glass which hung upon the wall, and she was proud of what she saw there. It was a direction in which she often turned her eyes.
Then Nicholas spoke, and to Alethea’s surprise his voice had seldom been more serene.
‘You evidently don’t know much about the family history, Portia,’ was what he said. ‘There have been several dwarfs in it. My own mother was one. But it is the small people who always have had the brains, while the tall ones have been fools. My mother was the most hard-headed woman I ever knew; and now comes Hans, to make us all feel small beside him.’
He gave Hans a smile of real affection, and laid his hand affectionately upon the little fist which was clenched upon the table.
‘Small beside Hans!’ exclaimed Portia. ‘How ridiculous. I could never feel that.’
‘Possibly not. But I shouldn’t boast about it, if I were you,’ said her father drily.
‘But it isn’t true, is it, about the dwarfs in our family?’
‘Indeed it is.’
‘Then why have I never heard about it?’
‘That I cannot say,’ said Nicholas.
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