by Grant Allen
As for Colin, now that Sam had gone back to England, on his way home to America (Sam used the expression himself quite naturally now), he had thrown himself with the utmost fervour into the work of Maragliano’s studio, where he soon rose to the acknowledged position of the great master’s most favourite pupil. The model of the Calabrian Peasant which he built up upon the blacksmith’s framework was the last copy he had to do for Maragliano. As soon as it was finished, the master scanned the clay figure with his quick critical eye, and cried almost contemptuously, ‘Why, this is mere child’s play for such a man as you, I see, Churchill. You must do no more copying. To-morrow you shall begin modelling from the life.’ Colin was well pleased indeed to go on to this new and untried work, and he made such rapid progress in it that even Maragliano himself was quite surprised, and said confidentially to Bazzoni more than once, ‘The young Englishman will go far. He has the spark of genius in him, my friend; he is a born sculptor.’
It was all so different too in Rome, from London, where Colin had been isolated, unknown, and almost friendless. There was nobody there except Cicolari — and Minna; dear little woman, he had almost omitted her — with whom he could talk on equal terms about his artistic longings and ideas and interests. But at Rome it was all so different. There was such a great society of artists! Every man’s studio was open to his fellows; a lively running fire of candid criticism went on continually about every work completed or in progress. To live in such an atmosphere of art, to move amongst it and talk about it all day long, to feast his eyes upon the grand antiques and glorious Michael Angelos of the Vatican — all this was to Colin Churchill as near an approach to unmixed happiness as it is given to human beings to know in this nether world of very mixed experiences. If only he had had Minna with him! But there! Colin Churchill loved art so earnestly and singlemindedly that for its sake he could well endure even a few years’ brief absence in Rome away from poor, little, loving, sorrowing Minna.
Gwen meanwhile, in spite of the colonel, had managed to see a great deal from time to time both of Colin and of Audouin. The colonel had indeed peremptorily forbidden her in so many words to hold any further communications of any sort with either of them. Colin, he said, was a person clearly beneath her both in birth and education, while Audouin was the most incomprehensible prig of a Yankee fellow he had ever had the misfortune to set eyes upon in the whole course of his lifetime. But the colonel was one of those forcible-feeble people who are very vehement always in language, but very mild in actual fact; who threaten and bluster a great deal about what they will never do, or what they will never permit, but who do or permit it all the same on the very next occasion when opportunity arises. The consequence was that Gwen, who was a vigorous young lady with a will of her own, never took much serious notice of the colonel when he was in one of his denunciatory humours, but went her own way peacefully, and did as she chose to do herself the very next minute.
Now, at the same hotel where the Howard-Russells were stopping there was a certain Mrs. Wilmer, a lady with two daughters (perfect sticks, Gwen called them), to whom Gwen, being herself alone and motherless, thought it well to attach herself for purposes of society. It’s so convenient, you know, to have somebody by way of a chaperon who can take you about and get invitations for you. Happily Mrs. Wilmer, though herself as commonplace a village Lady Bountiful as ever distributed blankets and read good books to the mothers’ meeting every Wednesday, was suddenly seized at Rome, under the influence of the genius loci, with a burning desire to know something about art and artists; and Gwen made use of this new-born fancy freely to go round the studios with Mrs. Wilmer, and of course to meet at times with Colin and Audouin.
At last April came, and Audouin, who had been getting very tired of so much city life (for his hermit love for the woods and solitude was only one half affected), began to long once more for the lonely delights of his own beloved solitary Lakeside. He would have been gone long before, indeed, had it not been for a curious feeling which for the first time in his life, he felt growing up within him — Audouin was falling in love with Gwen Howard-Russell. The very first day he ever met her by the Lake of the Thousand Islands, he had greatly admired her frank bold English beauty, and since he had seen a little more of her at Rome, he had found himself insensibly gliding from admiration into a less philosophical and more human attitude. Yes, he had almost made up his mind that before he left Rome, he would ask Gwen whether she would do him the supreme honour of accompanying him back to America as the mistress of Lakeside.
‘Papa,’ Gwen said, one bright morning in April, ‘Mrs. Wilmer wants me to go with her to-day to a picnic at the Lago d’Albano.’
‘A picnic!’ the colonel cried severely. ‘And in the Campagna, too! My dear child, as sure as fate, you’ll all get the Roman fever.’
‘Albano isn’t in the Campagna, papa,’ Gwen answered quietly. ‘At least it’s right up ever so high among the mountains. And Mrs. Wilmer’s going to call for me at halfpast eleven.’
‘Who gives the picnic?’
Gwen bit her lip. ‘Mr. Audouin,’ she answered shortly.
‘Mr. Audouin! What, that mad Yankee man again! Then, mind, Gwen, I say you’re not to go on any account.’
‘But, papa, Mrs. Wilmer has accepted for me.’
‘Never mind. I say, I won’t allow you. Not a word more upon the subject: I won’t allow you. Now, remember, I positively forbid it, and pray don’t re-open the question.’
At half-past eleven, however, Gwen came down, dressed and ready. ‘Papa dear,’ she said, as unconcernedly as if nothing at all had been said about it, ‘here’s Mrs. Wilmer waiting for me outside, and I must go. I hope we shan’t be back late for dinner. Good morning.’
The colonel only muttered something inarticulate as she left the room, and turned to his cigar for consolation.
‘What, you here, Mr. Churchill,’ Gwen cried, as they all met together a few minutes later at the Central Railway Station. ‘I had no idea you were to be of the party. I thought you were so perfectly wedded to art that you never took a minute’s holiday.’
‘I don’t often,’ Colin answered, smiling; ‘I have so much leeway to make up that I have to keep always at it, night and morning. But Maragliano, who’s the best and most considerate of men, when he heard that Mr. Audouin had been kind enough to invite me, insisted upon it that I must give myself a day’s recreation. Besides, you see,’ he added after a momentary pause, looking down as if by accident into Gwen’s beautiful eyes, ‘there were such very special attractions.’
Gwen made a little mock curtsey. ‘What a pretty speech!’ she said laughingly. ‘Since you’ve come to Rome, Mr. Churchill, you seem to have picked up the Roman habit of paying compliments.’
Colin blushed, with some inward embarrassment. The fact was, Gwen had misunderstood his simple remark: he was thinking, not of her, but only of the tomb of Pompey and the old Roman Emissary. But Gwen noticed the faint crimson rising to his cheek, and said to herself, not without a touch of pardonable vanity, ‘Our young sculptor isn’t quite so wholly swallowed up in his art as he wants us to believe, then. He dreams already of flying high. If he flies high enough, who knows but he may be successful.’
What a handsome young fellow he was, to be sure, and what a natural gentleman! And what a contrast, too, in his easy unselfconscious manner, to that shy, awkward, gawky slip of a Yankee painter, Mr. Hiram Winthrop! Hiram! where on earth did he get the name from? It sounded for all the world just like a fancy character out of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit.’
‘And you too, Mr. Winthrop! Of course we should have expected you. I don’t wonder you’re always about so much with Mr. Audouin. I think him, you know, the most charming talker I’ve ever met with.’
Hiram could have sunk into the ground with mortification at having thus always to play second fiddle to Audouin, whose grizzling hair made him seem to Gwen so much a confirmed old bachelor that she didn’t think there could be any danger at all in openly speaking ou
t her admiration for his powers as a talker.
They went by train to the station at Albano, and then drove up to the shores of the lake in carriages which Audouin had ready in waiting. Recluse and hermit as he was, when he went in for giving an entertainment, he gave it regally; and the picnic was universally pronounced to be the most splendid success of the Roman season. After lunch they dispersed a little, as people always do at picnics (or else what would be the use of that form of reunion?) and Colin somehow found himself, he didn’t quite know how, strolling with Gwen down the Galleria di Sopra, that beautiful avenue of shady evergreen oaks which leads, with innumerable lovely glimpses of the lake below, from Albano towards Castel Gandolfo. Gwen, however, knew well enough how it had all happened; for she had angled most cleverly so as to avoid the pressing attentions of Audouin, and to pair off in apparent unconsciousness with the more favoured Colin. Mrs. Wilmer, walking behind with another guest to do the proprieties, had acquiesced most heartily in this arrangement, and had even managed to promote it diligently: for did it not compel Mr. Audouin to link himself for the afternoon to dear Lilian, and was it not well known that Mr. Audouin, though an American, was otherwise a most unexceptionable and eligible person, with quite sufficient means of his own to marry most comfortably upon? Whereas this young Mr. Churchill, though no doubt wonderfully clever, and a most estimable young man in his own way, was a person of no family, and with all his fortune still to make by his own exertions. And Mr. Audouin had really hardly a trace, after all, of that horrid American singsong.
‘Yes,’ Gwen was saying, as they reached the point of view near the Emissario: ‘Signor Maragliano told me that before many months were over, he should advise you to begin modelling a real life-size figure from the life of your own invention; for he thinks you would be only wasting your time in working much longer at mere copying or academy work. He wants to see you begin carrying out some of your own beautiful original conceptions. And so do I too, you know: for we feel in a way, papa and I, as if we had discovered you, Mr. Churchill. — Shall we sit down here awhile, under the oak trees? This broad shade is so very delicious.’
She gave Colin her hand, to help her down the first bit of the side path to the old Roman conduit; and as she did so, she looked into his face with her lovely eyes, and smiled her thanks to him expressively. Cohn took her hand and helped her gently down. ‘You’re very good to interest yourself so much in my work,’ he said, with no trace of shyness or awkwardness in his manner. ‘I shall be glad indeed when I’m able to begin producing something worthy in real earnest.’
Gwen was really very beautiful and very kind and very cordial. He never for a moment remembered with her the original disparity of their stations, as he did with so many other grand ladies. She seemed to put him at his ease at once, and to be so frank and complimentary and even pressing. And then, her profile was magnificent, and her eyes were really splendid!
Ah, Minna, Minna, poor little Minna, in your big noisy schoolroom away over yonder in big noisy London, well may you tremble with a cold shiver running strangely through you, you know not why, and murmur to yourself, in your quaint old-world superstition, that somebody must be walking over your grave to-day somewhere or other!
‘Rome’s a perfect paradise to me, you know, Mr. Churchill,’ Gwen went on, musingly. ‘I never fully knew, before I came here, how much I loved art. I perfectly revel in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, and in studios such as Signor Maragliano’s. What a fortunate life yours will be — to live always among so much exquisite beauty! I should love an artist’s life myself — only I suppose I should never get beyond the most amateur water-colours. But a sculptor, especially! A sculptor’s career seems to me to be the grandest thing on earth a man can live for! I’d willingly give half my days, do you know, if only I could be a sculptor.’
‘It’s a glorious profession, certainly,’ Colin answered, with kindling eyes. ‘It’s such a grand thing to think one belongs, however humbly, to the same great troop as Pheidias, and Michael Angelo, and Gibson, and Thorwaldsen. That, alone, of course, is something in one’s life to be really proud of.’
‘Poor boy! he’s obtuse,’ Gwen thought to herself, commiseratingly. ‘He doesn’t follow up the openings one gives him. But never mind. He’s very young still, and doesn’t know when one’s leading up to him. There’s plenty of time yet. By-and-by he’ll grow older and wiser. — What a beautiful reflection down there in the water, Mr. Churchill! No, not there: on the broader part beyond the Roman mason-work. I wish Mr. Winthrop could see it. It’s just the thing he’d like so much to put on paper or canvas.’
‘You’re interested in Winthrop, then, are you?’ Cohn asked innocently.
‘Interested in him? Oh, yes, I’m interested in all art and in all artists — though not of course in all equally. I mean, I like sculpture even better than painting. But I saw a water-colour drawing of Mr. Winthrop’s when I was in America, you know, where I first met him, which I thought very pretty. I can remember it yet — a sketch of blended trees and water among the channels of the Thousand Islands.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ Cohn answered: ‘he’s brought it with him, as well as several other American landscapes. Winthrop draws admirably, I know, and his treatment of foliage and water seems to me quite extraordinarily good. He’ll make a fine artist, I’m quite confident, before he’s done with it.’
Gwen pouted a little to herself. ‘It’s plain,’ she thought, ‘that Mr. Churchill isn’t a person to be easily piqued by praising anybody else.’ And must it not be candidly admitted that in most women’s eyes such complete absence of jealousy is regarded rather as a fault in a man’s nature than as a virtue? (Mind, fair and courteous reader, if I may for a moment address you personally, I say ‘in most’ not ‘in all women’s.’ You yourself, like present company generally, always, of course, form one of the striking and praiseworthy exceptions to every vile masculine innuendo aimed at the real or supposed peculiarities of ‘most women.’ Indeed, it is on purpose to allow you that flattering loophole of escape that I always artfully employ the less exclusive or general expression.)
They sat for a while talking idly on the slope by the path that leads to the Emissary, till at last Audouin, having managed to shift off dear Lilian for a while upon another man of the party, strolled up as though by accident to join them. ‘Do I intrude upon a tete-a-tete?’ he asked with apparent carelessness, as he sat down upon the rocky ledge beside them. ‘Is Mr. Churchill discoursing high art to you, Miss Russell, and peopling the romantic glen below with yet unhewn Egerias and Faunuses? How well this Italian scenery lends itself to those pretty half-theatrical Poussinesque embellishments! and how utterly out of place they would all look among the perfectly unkempt native savagery of our American woods and waters!’
Gwen smiled. ‘We weren’t discussing high art, Mr. Audouin,’ she said as she drew a circle in the dust with the tip of her parasol. ‘In fact we want you here to throw a little touch of fancy and idealism into the conversation. To tell you the truth, Mr. Churchill and I were only pulling to pieces the Miss Wilmers’ dresses.’
‘Ah, but even dress itself is in its way a liturgy, Miss Russell,’ Audouin went on quickly, glancing half aside as he spoke at her own dainty bodice and little frill of coffee-coloured laces. (Gwen hadn’t the least idea what he meant by a liturgy in this connection; but she thought it was something very beautiful and poetical to say, and she felt sure it was meant for a compliment; so she smiled graciously at it). ‘People sometimes foolishly say that young ladies think a great deal too much about dress. For my part, it often occurs to me, when I look at other women; that they think a great deal too little of it. How rarely, after all, does one see art subservient here to nature — a beautiful woman whose dress rather expresses and accentuates than mars or clashes with her own individual type of beauty.’
‘How complimentary he is,’ thought Gwen; ‘and at his age too! Why, I positively believe he must be very nearly forty!’
‘
Shall we go down and look at the Emissary?’ Colin asked, interrupting Audouin’s flow of pretty sentimentalities. ‘It’s very old, you know, Miss Russell: one of the oldest existing works of Roman engineering anywhere in Europe.’
