by Grant Allen
Linnell was touched by his appealing look — the look for a moment of the real Haviland Dumaresq, who felt in his great heart the full pathos of his own unrequited sacrifice for the good of his kind, as he firmly believed it.
‘Indeed,’ the young man made answer earnestly, ‘I wasn’t vexed, Mr. Dumaresq. I only wanted you to accept a small tribute, in part payment, as a single instalment, from one who owes to you intellectually and morally more than he can ever find words to tell you. And as to the picture, it really didn’t take me long. I value my own work very lightly indeed. I should have thought myself more than repaid for my pains in painting it if a man whom I respect and revere so much would have condescended to accept it from me and keep it as a memento.’
‘You remember what I told you the other evening,’ the old man replied, with a more searching glance at his companion’s features. ‘Do as I say, my friend, and not as I do, if you wish to flourish. Don’t despise money foolishly — as I have done. My advice to a young man setting out in life is simply this: Follow the world; the world is wisest. You can’t afford to fling away sovereigns like water. You’re a painter, and you must live by the practice of your art. Now, why did you sell me that picture so cheap? Mansel came in after you’d left this morning, and told me you could have got fifty guineas for it any day in London.’ He clasped his hand gently round the painter’s arm. ‘Don’t be Utopian, my dear fellow,’ he went on with unwonted colloquialism. ‘Tell me why you let me have it for twenty.’
Linnell blushed and hesitated a moment. At last he determined to blurt out the truth and shame the devil. ‘Because I knew you couldn’t afford more, Mr. Dumaresq,’ he said shyly.
Haviland Dumaresq did not resent the unexpected remark. ‘You were right,’ he answered with a sigh. ‘I am poor, poor. The money I gave you was all I had in the house just then. You have been quite frank with me, and I’m quite frank with you in return. I have still to earn to-morrow’s dinner.’
A strange doubt flitted for a moment across Linnell’s mind. His eight hundred guineas, then? What on earth could have become of them? Was it possible that Haviland Dumaresq, the deepest and broadest of living thinkers, could stoop to tell him so despicable a lie? But no! impossible! He rejected the idea with scorn, as any man with one spark of nobility in his nature must needs have rejected it. No doubt Macmurdo and White hadn’t yet sent in their annual account. The secret of Dumaresq’s new-made opulence was not yet out; he was still unaware of the magnificent sum of which he was already potentially master.
‘It’s terrible,’ the young man said, breaking the short pause, ‘that after all you have wrought and done for the world you should still be able to say that to-day — you, the greatest thinker in our modern Europe.’
‘Not for me,’ the old stoic answered with a resigned nod: ‘not terrible for me: I’m used to it: it suits me; but for Psyche, I grant you, yes: for Psyche; for Psyche.’
‘Miss Dumaresq deserves all the world can give her,’ Linnell replied boldly.
The old man’s eye fired up once more with a brilliant flash, and then grew slowly dim again. If only he could see his way to make Psyche happy! He wasn’t sordidly anxious to sell her for gold: oh no, oh no; he would sell her to no man: but he wanted to see his Psyche happy. He clutched Linnell’s hand once more and spoke earnestly, fervently. ‘Listen here,’ he cried in more vivid tones; ‘you’re a friend — a disciple. I can tell you. I can trust you. I know I’ve thrown away my own life: I could endure that easily, if that were all; but that’s not all. I’ve thrown away hers too; I’ve failed in my duty to her. You can’t think how that wrong weighs upon my spirit now. I ought to have toiled and moiled and slaved and sweated, not to write the “Encyclopædic Philosophy” for the good of the race — how little that matters! — but to carve out for my child a place in the world well worthy of her. One or the other course I might rightly have pursued; but not both together. If I meant to devote my life to philosophy, I should never have been a father. Becoming a father, I ought to have devoted my life to her alone. I gave a hostage to fortune, and I failed to redeem it. I became responsible for a life, and I failed to guarantee it a proper future. And now in my helpless old age I see my error. I see it too late; I see it too late; I see it, and I pay for it.’
‘You are wrong,’ Linnell answered firmly. ‘So great a life as yours demands a great account to be given at last of it. The vast organizing genius, the wonderful brain that conceived and wrought out the “Encyclopædic Philosophy,” was not only your own to do as you would with: it was a gift held in trust by you for the world and for the ages. You played your part well. It is for us, the remainder, who profit by your just and due yet none the less splendid and self-sacrificing use of your own great powers, to see that neither you nor she is a loser by your grand and unselfish action.’
‘You think so?’ the old man asked, looking up at him with a passing expression of doubt.
Linnell hesitated, like one caught in a trap. Was the philosopher trying to probe his secret? ‘I think so,’ he answered aloud after a short struggle.
‘Then that brings me back at once to what I wanted to say to you in confidence to-day,’ Dumaresq continued, glancing at him with a strangely remorseful face. ‘Mr. Linnell, I’m going to trust you. You understand exactly how I feel towards Psyche. I know how sweet and rare a flower it is that blooms around the wreck of my ruined life. I know it, and I cherish her as she ought to be cherished — jealously, scrupulously, reverently, tenderly. I want my child to fill her proper place in life: I want to see her happy before I die. Unless she goes away to fill it and to be happy — well, I hope she may cling to the ruin still while there’s anything left of it to hold together.’
‘Yes,’ Linnell answered, half chilled by his words. He sympathized, in a way, with that strange old man; but Dumaresq had struck by accident the feeblest of all the resonant chords in his complex nature for a father to work upon. No apt response could there be expected.
‘Yes,’ the old man answered, his eyes growing tenderer each moment as he spoke, and his lips quivering. ‘Pardon me if I’ve noticed your feelings towards my daughter. I know you’ve been seeing a great deal of Psyche lately. I know Psyche’s been thinking a great deal of you. It surprises you that I should have noticed it! Ah, well, that shows you don’t know how closely I watch over Psyche. You fancy I’m blind to these things, because I’m old, and a dreamer, and a philosopher, and a stoic. No doubt, where human trivialities are concerned, I’m often blind; I see nothing. You can’t keep your whole soul fixed at once upon the main order of the cosmos and the minutest details of Mrs. Grundy’s dinner-parties. But where even the veriest trivialities touch my Psyche, my eyes are at once as sharp as a lynx’s. Then the blind bat wakes up and sees: the mole opens his narrow eyelids, shakes the dust of grimy burrowings from his coat, creeps out from his hole, and peers about him with the sharp vision of a very Argus. That’s how it is when Psyche’s in question.’ He took Linnell’s hand in his own for a moment once more. ‘Bear with me,’ he went on pleadingly— ‘bear with a father who asks you only because he loves his daughter. I don’t want to see her affections too deeply engaged without knowing what are the prospects of her future happiness. You love Psyche; oh yes, I know it. You can’t conceal that from me. I have eyes. I see it. But before Psyche commits herself to loving you, I must earnestly ask you — as a father, I feel compelled to ask you — are you in a position to marry? — have you the means and the power to make Psyche happy?’
It was not an unnatural question for a father to put, as fathers go: even a man less hardly tried by fortune and less devoted to his daughter than Haviland Dumaresq might easily have asked it. But nothing could have been worse adapted for meeting a man of Linnell’s nature. The painter’s quick suspicion was aroused at once. Dumaresq’s ardour chilled him.
‘I never said,’ he answered, disengaging his hand with difficulty from the old man’s grasp, ‘that I made any pretensions to be regarded as one of Mi
ss Dumaresq’s suitors. That honour is one I never ventured to claim. It would be the more usual course to ask me such a question as you now ask me when I came before you of my own accord to beg your consent, after I had already made sure of your daughter’s wishes. As it is, you discount the future somewhat too brusquely — you have no reason to suppose my feelings towards Miss Dumaresq are anything warmer than those of the merest polite admiration.’
‘The more usual course!’ Haviland Dumaresq answered, looking across at him with a profoundly surprised air. ‘The more usual course! and Psyche’s happiness at stake! Ah, Linnell, Linnell, you don’t know how I watch over her! Where Psyche’s concerned, do you think it matters to me one farthing what’s usual? I know how you feel. You’re young, and you love her. For you, and for her, that would be quite enough, of course. At your ages, that’s all young blood should think about. In the fitness of things, I acknowledge your attitude. But me! I tell you, it’s my duty to guard her with all my soul from her own too hasty or too foolish feelings. I know what it all means — poverty; long waiting; a cheek grown pale with hope deferred; an imprudent marriage at last; my darling worn out with infinite petty cares and sordid shifts of a young family, brought up too scantily. I’ve seen it and known it. Would it be right of me to let Psyche expose herself to all that? If I see you’re beginning to think of my Psyche, mustn’t I make sure for myself beforehand who and what you are, and what you can do to make her happy? Don’t suppose I’m so blind as not to know you think of her. No man reads emotional expression worse than I do, I know — my mind moves on a different plane from that — but I must be a poor reader and speller indeed if I couldn’t spell out what’s written in letters as big as my fist across your very forehead — what pervades every act and look and word of yours whenever I see you one moment near her. So I venture to ask you now in plain words beforehand, if my Psyche loves you as you love her, are you in a position to make her happy?’
‘Mr. Dumaresq,’ Linnell cried, taken aback, ‘I beg of you, I pray you, whatever you do, not to breathe or whisper one word of this to — to Psyche. I can’t bear to think that Haviland Dumaresq should be capable of speaking to me in such a strain; for many reasons which you will readily guess, it would surprise and distress your daughter even more profoundly. Don’t let her know — pure, and beautiful, and shrinking as she is — don’t let her know you have so thrust her name in such a connection upon a perfect stranger. For her sake, for the sake of her maidenly dignity, which I at least respect if you do not, forbear to speak to me any more about her. I will not admit I have any other feeling on earth towards Miss Dumaresq; but I have at least too much reverence and regard for her position to breathe her name to any man living before I have asked her own permission to discuss her.’
Haviland Dumaresq paused irresolute for a moment; then he answered once more, in a very soft voice:
‘You say well,’ he murmured; ‘but — you admit the impeachment. What you allow is more than what you deny. I won’t put my question, therefore, on the ground to which you object; but I will ask you plainly, as a matter of general abstract information, which I’m anxious to obtain, have you any means of your own of a private sort, or do you live — well, entirely by the practice of your profession?’
‘And I will answer you,’ Linnell replied, drawing himself up with a determined air, ‘that the question of my income is one which lies entirely between myself and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.’
‘Your answer is evasive,’ Dumaresq said, drawing back and eyeing him hard with that keen clear glance of his. ‘If anything except Psyche’s happiness were at stake, I ought to take the hint and forbear to press you. But there I can’t help myself: for the very way in which you say it makes me see you’re trying to hide from me, for some inexplicable reason, the fact that you have money.’ He drew his hand across his forehead with a vague dim air. Again the strange dreaminess seemed to come like a cloud across him. His eye grew glazed. ‘For myself,’ he went on slowly, ‘I care nothing for money. You know I care nothing. For myself I despise it. Have I not worked like a galley-slave all my life long, on bread and water sometimes, in the service of truth, caring for nothing — money, honour, fame — if only I could fulfil my appointed life-task? When did any man bribe me with gold or with position? When did any man turn me from my high purpose? But for Psyche, oh, for Psyche, I’m very jealous. I can’t bear to think that Psyche should lead a life of drudgery. I toil hard for her now; but I can’t toil much longer. I’m almost worn out. I want to know that after my time Psyche will be happy. It would be wrong for me to let her get her affections engaged with anyone who hasn’t the means to keep her as she deserves to be kept. That must be my excuse for reading your secret. At any rate, I’ve read it. I can see it — I can see it: I can see you have money.’ He repeated the word dreamily once or twice to himself, ‘Money, money, money, money.’
Linnell recoiled from him with a startled look of surprise and annoyance. Had he known under what strange influence Haviland Dumaresq spoke, he might have been less astonished: as it was, he could hardly believe these words came from the lips of the Encyclopædic Philosopher and Psyche’s father! The painter’s disillusionment was indeed for the moment complete. His idol had truly feet of clay.
‘You make a mistake,’ he answered coldly, with a repellent air. ‘But I myself am in no way answerable for it. I have never given either you or Miss Dumaresq the slightest reason for believing that I laid any claim in any way to the possession of riches. If the thought ever occurred to me — and I do not say it did — that I might perhaps venture to aspire — that I might ask Miss Dumaresq to share her life with me, then certainly it occurred to me only in the form that I might ask her to share a journeyman painter’s early struggles — and perhaps in the end his success also. I thought she would sympathize with such an attitude. I thought she would not refuse to aid me in my first endeavours. If I asked at all, I would ask Miss Dumaresq to accept me just as I am; to take me for the sake of myself and my art; to inspire my work and to accept my devotion. It surprises me to hear you talk as you do.’ He paused for a moment. ‘If I had not heard it from your own lips,’ he added slowly, ‘I could never have believed it of Haviland Dumaresq. Even now, I cannot believe but that Haviland Dumaresq’s daughter would surely behave in a way more befitting her father’s character. If ever she marries any man, she will marry him, I firmly hold, not for money, not for position, not even for happiness, but just because she loves him. And if ever I asked Miss Dumaresq to accept me, it would be on that ground, and on that ground alone, that I could think of asking her.’
Were ever unconformable natures more inopportunely thrown together? By pure accident, either’s angles offended the other mortally. They came so close in most ways, yet with such unfortunate capacities for creating mutual misunderstandings.
The old man’s face relaxed rapidly. The collapse from an opium paradise is often almost miraculous in its suddenness. The gay bubble bursts even more quickly and strangely than it swelled. As Haviland Dumaresq sat and listened to Linnell’s cold and guarded answer, the effect of the drug, which was already beginning naturally to wear off under the influence of exercise, cleared away all at once in a horrid awakening, when the disenchanted dreamer recognised at a single stroke his own needless degradation, and the total downfall of the magnificent palace he had been rearing for an hour or two on such an airy basis. In a second the illusion was utterly dispelled. Space shrank once more like an empty bladder to its normal dimensions. The mountains fell slowly into long flat Downs. The colour faded from earth and sky. The sea subsided to its natural level. The perspective of the world restored itself at once in all its ordinary meanness. And Linnell the mysterious stood revealed before him after all as a mere hard-working, penniless, struggling painter, with nothing but the chances of his art to subsist upon. Not such the dream he had cherished for Psyche. She must marry someone who could keep her at least in modest luxury — or else cling to the ruin.
> ‘Then — you — have — no — means?’ he gasped out slowly, clutching the stem of the elder-bush at his side for support, and gazing hard into the painter’s face.
‘Miss Dumaresq would not ask for money,’ Linnell replied with an evasive smile.
The old man’s face fell slowly.
‘Have you nearly finished your picture?’ he asked at last in a very quiet voice.
With a start of unwelcome surprise, Linnell divined his meaning at once. But he repressed his feelings.
‘Another day will finish it,’ he answered in the self-same unemotional tone, as coldly as the philosopher himself had spoken.
‘That is well. Come to-morrow and get it finished,’ Haviland Dumaresq said with reluctant determination.
Linnell bowed.
‘And after that?’ he asked, looking hard into the old man’s face.
‘And after that,’ Dumaresq answered, leaning forward apologetically, ‘I think, for Psyche’s sake, for all our sakes — it would be better she and you should not meet again. Ah yes, I pain you! You fancy I’m hard. You fancy I’m cruel. That’s just because I’m really so tender. I feel it my duty to guard my daughter from the bare chance of misery, poverty, drudgery. Drudgery! I know what it means, my friend. For a man, those things are easy enough to bear; but for a woman — tenderly, delicately nurtured — how could I expose her to them? I must not; I cannot. I’ve gained experience myself on my path through life. I paid for it dear. Psyche shall have the benefit of it for nothing. No penniless man shall drag her down, down, down, to a wretched struggle with sordid poverty. Psyche is beautiful; Psyche is intelligent; Psyche is animated; Psyche is clever. She has been much admired. She’s reaching the age when a girl should come out. If I take her to London — and I’d work my fingers to the bone to do it — she can mix in society and meet the sort of man she ought to meet with. I may be poor, but I’m not unknown. My name is worth much. I can get introductions, invitations, acquaintances for Psyche. Once seen in London, she’s sure to marry, and to marry as she ought. I must guard her for the present from throwing away her life for a future of drudgery.’
