It was the day of the private view at the Royal Academy. The great courtyard of Burlington House was full of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests was pressing up the red-carpeted stairs, over which presided some of the most imposing individuals known to the eyes of Londoners, second only to Her Majesty's beefeaters in glory of scarlet apparel. Inside, however, as it was not yet luncheon-time, the rooms were but moderately filled. It was possible to see the pictures, to appreciate the spring dresses, and to single out a friend even across the Long Gallery. The usual people were there: Academicians of the old school and Academicians of the new; R.A.'s coming from Kensington and the 'regions of culture,' and R.A.'s coming from more northerly and provincial neighbourhoods where art lives a little desolately and barely, in want of the graces and adornings with which 'culture' professes to provide her. There were politicians still capable—as it was only the first week of May—of throwing some zest into their amusements. There were art-critics who, accustomed as they were by profession to take their art in large and rapid draughts, had yet been unable to content themselves with the one meagre day allowed by the Academy for the examination of some 800 works, and were now eking out their notes of the day before by a few supplementary jottings taken in the intervals of conversation with their lady friends. There were the great dealers betraying in look and gait their profound, yet modest, consciousness that upon them rested the foundations of the artistic order, and that if, in a superficial conception of things, the star of an Academician differs from that of the man who buys his pictures in glory, the truly philosophic mind assesses matters differently. And, most important of all, there were the women, old and young, some in the full freshness of spring cottons, as if the east wind outside were not mocking the efforts of the May sun, and others still wrapped in furs, which showed a juster sense of the caprices of the English climate. Among them one might distinguish the usual shades and species: the familiar country cousin, gathering material for the over-awing of such of her neighbours as were unable to dip themselves every year in the stream of London; the women folk of the artist world, presenting greater varieties of type than the women of any other class can boast; and lastly, a sprinkling of the women of what calls itself 'London Society,' as well dressed, as well mannered, and as well provided with acquaintance as is the custom of their kind.
In one of the farther rooms, more scantily peopled as yet than the rest, a tall thin man was strolling listlessly from picture to picture, making every now and then hasty references to his catalogue, but in general eyeing all he saw with the look of one in whom familiarity with the sight before him had bred weariness, if not contempt. He was a handsome man, with a broad brow and a pleasant gentleness of expression. The eyes were fine and thoughtful, and there was a combination of intellectual force with great delicacy of line in the contour of the head and face which was particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long—not of that pronounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable dress and general London air.
Mr. Eustace Kendal—to give the person we have been describing his name—was not apparently in a good temper with his surroundings. He was standing with a dissatisfied expression before a Venetian scene drawn by a brilliant member of a group of English artists settled on foreign soil and trained in foreign methods.
'Not so good as last year,' he was remarking to himself. 'Vulgar drawing, vulgar composition, hasty work everywhere. It is success spoils all these men—success and the amount of money there is going. The man who painted this didn't get any pleasure out of it. But it's the same all round. It is money and luxury and the struggle to live which are driving us all on and killing the artist's natural joy in his work. And presently, as that odd little Frenchman said to me last year, we shall have dropped irretrievably into the "lowest depth of mediocrity."'
'Kendal!' said an eager voice close to his ear, while a hand was laid on his arm, 'do you know that girl?'
Kendal turned in astonishment and saw a short oldish man, in whom he recognised a famous artist, standing by, his keen mobile face wearing an expression of strong interest and inquiry.
'What girl?' he asked, with a smile, shaking his questioner by the hand.
'That girl in black, standing by Orchardson's picture. Why, you must know her by sight! It's Miss Bretherton, the actress. Did you ever see such beauty? I must get somebody to introduce me to her. There's nothing worth looking at since she came in. But, by ill luck, nobody here seems to know her.'
Eustace Kendal, to whom the warm artist's temperament of his friend was well known, turned with some amusement towards the picture named, and noticed that flutter in the room which shows that something or some one of interest is present. People trying to look unconcerned, and catalogue in hand, were edging towards the spot where the lady in black stood, glancing alternately at her and at the pictures, in the manner of those equally determined to satisfy their curiosity and their sense of politeness. The lady in question, meanwhile, conscious that she was being looked at, but not apparently disturbed by it, was talking to another lady, the only person with her, a tall, gaunt woman, also dressed in black and gifted abundantly with the forbidding aspect which beauty requires in its duenna.
Kendal could see nothing more at first than a tall, slender figure, a beautiful head, and a delicate white profile, in flashing contrast with its black surroundings, and with lines of golden brown hair. But in profile and figure there was an extraordinary distinction and grace which reconciled him to his friend's eagerness and made him wish for the beauty's next movement. Presently she turned and caught the gaze of the two men full upon her. Her eyes dropped a little, but there was nothing ill-bred or excessive in her self-consciousness. She took her companion's arm with a quiet movement, and drew her towards one of the striking pictures of the year, some little way off. The two men also turned and walked away.
'I never saw such beauty as that before,' said the artist, with emphasis. 'I must find some one who knows her, and get the chance of seeing that face light up, else I shall go home—one may as well. These daubs are not worth the trouble of considering now!'
'See what it is to be an "ideal painter,"' said Kendal, laughing. 'At home one paints river goddesses, and tree-nymphs, and such like remote creatures, and abroad one falls a victim to the first well-dressed, healthy-looking girl—chaperone, bonnet, and all.'
'Show me another like her,' said his friend warmly. 'I tell you they're not to be met with like that every day. Je me connais en beauté, my dear fellow, and I never saw such perfection, both of line and colour, as that. It is extraordinary; it excites one as an artist. Look, is that Wallace now going up to her?'
Kendal turned and saw a short fair man, with a dry keen American face, walk up to the beauty and speak to her. She greeted him cordially, with a beaming smile and bright emphatic movements of the head, and the three strolled on.
'Yes, that is Edward Wallace,—very much in it, apparently. That is the
way Americans have. They always know everybody it's desirable to know.
But now's your chance, Forbes. Stroll carelessly past them, catch
Wallace's eye, and the thing is done.'
Mr. Forbes had already dropped Kendal's arm, and was sauntering across the room towards the chatting trio. Kendal watched the scene from a distance with some amusement; saw his friend brush carelessly past the American, look back, smile, stop, and hold out his hand; evidently a whisper passed between them, for the next moment Mr. Forbes was making a low bow to the beauty, and immediately afterwards Kendal saw his fine gray head and stooping shoulders disappear into the next room, side by side with Miss Bretherton's erect and graceful figure.
Kendal betook himself once more to the pictures, and, presently finding some acquaintances, made a rapid tour of the rooms with them, parting with them at the entrance that he might himself go back and look at two or three things in the sculpture room which he had been told were important and promising. There he came across the American, Edward Wallace, who at once took him by the arm with the manner of an old friend and a little burst of laughter.
'So you saw the introduction? What a man is Forbes! He is as young still as he was at eighteen. I envy him. He took Miss Bretherton right round, talked to her of all his favourite hobbies, looked at her in a way which would have been awkward if it had been anybody else but such a gentlemanly maniac as Forbes, and has almost made her promise to sit to him. Miss Bretherton was a little bewildered, I think. She is so new to London that she doesn't know who's who yet in the least. I had to take her aside and explain to her Forbes's honours; then she fired up—there is a naïve hero-worship about her just now that she is fresh from a colony—and made herself as pleasant to him as a girl could be. I prophesy Forbes will think of nothing else for the season.'
'Well, she's a brilliant creature,' said Kendal. 'It's extraordinary how she shone out beside the pretty English girls about her. It is an intoxicating possession for a woman, such beauty as that; it's like royalty; it places the individual under conditions quite unlike those of common mortals. I suppose it's that rather than any real ability as an actress that has made her a success? I noticed the papers said as much—some more politely than others.'
'Oh, she's not much of an actress; she has no training, no finesse. But you'll see, she'll be the great success of the season. She has wonderful grace on the stage, and a fine voice in spite of tricks. And then her Wesen is so attractive; she is such a frank, unspoilt, good-hearted creature. Her audience falls in love with her, and that goes a long way. But I wish she had had a trifle more education and something worth calling a training. Her manager, Robinson, talks of her attempting all the great parts; but it's absurd. She talks very naïvely and prettily about "her art"; but really she knows no more about it than a baby, and it is perhaps part of her charm that she is so unconscious of her ignorance.'
'It is strange how little critical English audiences are,' said Kendal. 'I believe we are the simplest people in the world. All that we ask is that our feelings should be touched a little, but whether by the art or the artist doesn't matter. She has not been long playing in London, has she?'
'Only a few weeks. It's only about two months since she landed from
Jamaica. She has a curious history, if you care to hear it; I don't think
I've seen you at all since I made friends with her?'
'No,' said Kendal; 'I was beginning to suspect that something absorbing had got hold of you. I've looked for you two or three times at the club, and could not find you.'
'Oh, it's not Miss Bretherton that has taken up my time. She's so busy that nobody can see much of her. But I have taken her and her people out, two or three times, sight-seeing, since they came—Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, and so forth. She is very keen about everything, and the Worralls—her uncle and aunt—stick to her pretty closely.'
'Where does she come from?'
'Well, her father was the Scotch overseer of a sugar plantation not far from Kingston, and he married an Italian, one of your fair Venetian type—a strange race-combination; I suppose it's the secret of the brilliancy and out-of-the-wayness of the girl's beauty. Her mother died when she was small, and the child grew up alone. Her father, however, seems to have been a good sort of man, and to have looked after her. Presently she drew the attention of an uncle, a shopkeeper in Kingston, and a shrewd, hard, money-making fellow, who saw there was something to be made out of her. She had already shown a turn for reciting, and had performed at various places—in the schoolroom belonging to the estate, and so on. The father didn't encourage her fancy for it, naturally, being Scotch and Presbyterian. However, he died of fever, and then the child at sixteen fell into her uncle's charge. He seems to have seen at once exactly what line to take. To put it cynically, I imagine he argued something like this: "Beauty extraordinary—character everything that could be desired—talent not much. So that the things to stake on are the beauty and the character, and let the talent take care of itself." Anyhow, he got her on to the Kingston theatre—a poor little place enough—and he and the aunt, that sour-looking creature you saw with her, looked after her like dragons. Naturally, she was soon the talk of Kingston: what with her looks and her grace and the difficulty of coming near her, the whole European society, the garrison, Government House, and all, were at her feet. Then the uncle played his cards for a European engagement. You remember that Governor Rutherford they had a little time ago? the writer of that little set of drawing-room plays—Nineteenth Century Interludes, I think he called them? It was his last year, and he started for home while Isabel Bretherton was acting at Kingston. He came home full of her, and, knowing all the theatrical people here, he was able to place her at once. Robinson decided to speculate in her, telegraphed out for her, and here she is, uncle, aunt, and invalid sister into the bargain.'
'Oh, she has a sister?'
'Yes; a little, white, crippled thing, peevish—cripples generally are—but full of a curious force of some hidden kind. Isabel is very good to her, and rather afraid of her. It seems to me that she is afraid of all her belongings. I believe they put upon her, and she has as much capacity as anybody I ever knew for letting herself be trampled upon.'
'What, that splendid, vivacious creature!' said Kendal incredulously. 'I think I'd back her for holding her own.'
'Ah, well, you see,' said the American, with the quiet superiority of a three weeks' acquaintance, 'I know something of her by now, and she's not quite what you might think her at first sight. However, whether she is afraid of them or not, it's to be hoped they will take care of her. Naturally, she has a splendid physique, but it seems to me that London tries her. The piece they have chosen for her is a heavy one, and then of course society is down upon her, and in a few weeks she'll be the rage.'
'I haven't seen her at all,' said Kendal, beginning perhaps to be a little bored with the subject of Miss Bretherton, and turning, eye-glass in hand, towards the sculpture. 'Come and take me some evening.'
'By all means. But you must come and meet the girl herself at my sister's next Friday. She will be there at afternoon tea. I told Agnes I should ask anybody I liked. I warned her—you know her little weaknesses!—that she had better be first in the field: a month hence, it will be impossible to get hold of Miss Bretherton at all.'
'Then I'll certainly come, and do my worshipping before the crowd collects,' said Kendal, adding, as he half-curiously shifted his eye-glass so as to take in Wallace's bronzed, alert countenance, 'How did you happen to know her?'
'Rutherford introduced me. He's an old friend of mine.'
'Well,' said Kendal, moving off, 'Friday, then. I shall be very glad to see Mrs. Stuart; it's ages since I saw her last.'
The American nodded cordially to him, and walked away. He was one of those pleasant, ubiquitous people who know every one and find time for everything—a well-known journalist, something of an artist, and still more of a man of the world, who went through his London season with some outward grumbling, but with a real inward zest such as few popular diners-out are blessed with. That he should have attached himself to the latest star was natural enough. He was the most discreet and profitable of cicerones, with a real talent for making himself useful to nice people. His friendship for Miss Bretherton gave her a certain stamp in Kendal's eyes, for Wallace had a fastidious taste in personalities and seldom made a mistake.
Kendal himself walked home, busy with very different thoughts, and was soon established at his writing-table in his high chambers overlooking an inner court of the Temple. It was a bright afternoon; the spring sunshine on the red roofs opposite was clear and gay; the old chimney-stacks, towering into the pale blue sky, threw sharp shadows on the rich red and orange surface of the tiles. Below, the court was half in shadow, and utterly quiet and deserted. To the left there was a gleam of green, atoning for its spring thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man could leave it.
Inside, the room was such as fitted a studious bachelor of means. The book-cases on the walls held old college classics and law-books underneath, and above a miscellaneous literary library, of which the main bulk was French, while the side-wings, so to speak, had that tempting miscellaneous air—here a patch of German, there an island of Italian; on this side rows of English poets, on the other an abundance of novels of all languages—which delights the fond heart of the book-lover. The pictures were mostly autotypes and photographs from subjects of Italian art, except in one corner, where a fine little collection of French historical engravings completely covered the wall, and drew a visitor's attention by the brilliancy of their black and white. On the writing-table were piles of paper-covered French books, representing for the most part the palmy days of the Romantics, though every here and there were intervening strata of naturalism, balanced in their turn by recurrent volumes of Sainte-Beuve. The whole had a studious air. The books were evidently collected with a purpose, and the piles of orderly MSS. lying on the writing-table seemed to sum up and explain their surroundings.
The only personal ornament of the room was a group of photographs on the mantelpiece. Two were faded and brown, and represented Kendal's parents, both of whom had been dead some years. The other was a large cabinet photograph of a woman no longer very young—a striking-looking woman, with a fine worn face and a general air of distinction and character. There was a strong resemblance between her features and those of Eustace Kendal, and she was indeed his elder and only sister, the wife of a French senator, and her brother's chief friend and counsellor. Madame de Châteauvieux was a very noticeable person, and her influence over Eustace had been strong ever since their childish days. She was a woman who would have justified a repetition in the present day of Sismondi's enthusiastic estimate of the women of the First Empire. She had that mélange du meilleur ton, 'with the purest elegance of manner, and a store of varied information, with vivacity of impression and delicacy of feeling, which,' as he declared to Madame d'Albany, 'belongs only to your sex, and is found in its perfection only in the best society of France.'
In the days when she and Eustace had been the only children of a distinguished and wealthy father, a politician of some fame, and son-in-law to the Tory premier of his young days, she had always led and influenced her brother. He followed her admiringly through her London seasons, watching the impression she made, triumphing in her triumphs, and at home discussing every new book with her and sharing, at least in his college vacations, the secretary's work for their father, which she did excellently, and with a quick, keen, political sense which Eustace had never seen in any other woman. She was handsome in her own refined and delicate way, especially at night, when the sparkle of her white neck and arms and the added brightness of her dress gave her the accent and colour she was somewhat lacking in at other times. Naturally, she was in no want of suitors, for she was rich and her father was influential, but she said 'No' many times, and was nearly thirty before M. de Châteauvieux, the first secretary of the French Embassy, persuaded her to marry him. Since then she had filled an effective place in Parisian society. Her husband had abandoned diplomacy for politics, in which his general tendencies were Orleanist, while in literature he was well known as a constant contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes. He and his wife maintained an interesting, and in its way influential, salon, which provided a meeting ground for the best English and French society, and showed off at once the delicate quality of Madame de Châteauvieux's intelligence and the force and kindliness of her womanly tact.
Shortly after her marriage the father and mother died, within eighteen months of each other, and Eustace found his lot in life radically changed. He had been his father's secretary after leaving college, which prevented his making any serious efforts to succeed at the bar, and in consequence his interest, both of head and heart, had been more concentrated than is often the case with a young man within the walls of his home. He had admired his father sincerely, and the worth of his mother's loquacious and sometimes meddlesome tenderness he never realised fully till he had lost it. When he was finally alone, it became necessary for him to choose a line in life. His sister and he divided his father's money between them, and Eustace found himself with a fortune such as in the eyes of most of his friends constituted a leading of Providence towards two things—marriage and a seat in Parliament. However, fortunately, his sister, the only person to whom he applied for advice, was in no hurry to press a decision in either case upon him. She saw that without the stimulus of the father's presence, Eustace's interest in politics was less real than his interest in letters, nor did the times seem to her propitious to that philosophic conservatism which might be said to represent the family type of mind. So she stirred him up to return to some of the projects of his college days when he and she were first bitten with a passion for that great, that fascinating French literature which absorbs, generation after generation, the interests of two-thirds of those who are sensitive to the things of letters. She suggested a book to him which took his fancy, and in planning it something of the old zest of life returned to him. Moreover, it was a book which required him to spend a part of every year in Paris, and the neighbourhood of his sister was now more delightful to him than ever.
So, after a time, he settled down contentedly in his London chambers with his books about him, and presently found that glow of labour stealing over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every true son of knowledge. His book reconciled him to life again, and soon he was as often seen in the common haunts of London society as before. He dined out, he went to the theatre, he frequented his club like other men, and every year he spent three of the winter months in Paris, living in the best French world, talking as he never talked in London, and cultivating, whether in the theatre or in the salons of his sister's friends or in the studios of some of the more eminent of French artists, a fastidious critical temper, which was rapidly becoming more and more exacting, more and more master of the man.
Now, on this May afternoon, as he settled himself down to his work, it would have given any of those who liked Eustace Kendal—and they were many—pleasure to see how the look of fatigue with which he had returned from his round of the Academy faded away, how he shook back the tumbling gray locks from his eyes with the zest and the eagerness of one setting forth to battle, and how, as time passed on and the shadows deepened on the white spire opposite, the contentment of successful labour showed itself in the slow unconscious caress which fell upon the back of the sleeping cat curled up in the chair beside him, or in the absent but still kindly smile with which he greeted the punctual entrance of the servant, who at five o'clock came to put tea and the evening paper beside him and to make up the fire, which crackled on with cheery companionable sounds through the lamp-lit evening and far into the night.
Two or three days afterwards, Kendal, in looking over his engagement-book, in which the entries were methodically kept, noticed 'Afternoon tea, Mrs. Stuart's, Friday,' and at once sent off a note to Edward Wallace, suggesting that they should go to the theatre together on Thursday evening to see Miss Bretherton, 'for, as you will see,' he wrote, 'it will be impossible for me to meet her with a good conscience unless I have done my duty beforehand by going to see her perform.' To this the American replied by a counter proposal. 'Miss Bretherton,' he wrote, 'offers my sister and myself a box for Friday night; it will hold four or five; you must certainly be of the party, and I shall ask Forbes.'
Kendal felt himself a little entrapped, and would have preferred to see the actress under conditions more favourable to an independent judgment, but he was conscious that a refusal would be ungracious, so he accepted, and prepared himself to meet the beauty in as sympathetic a frame of mind as possible.
On Friday afternoon, after a long and fruitful day's work, he found himself driving westward towards the old-fashioned Kensington house of which Mrs. Stuart, with her bright, bird-like, American ways, had succeeded in making a considerable social centre. His mind was still full of his work, phrases of Joubert or of Stendhal seemed to be still floating about him, and certain subtleties of artistic and critical speculation were still vaguely arguing themselves out within him as he sped westward, drawing in the pleasant influences of the spring sunshine, and delighting his eyes in the May green which was triumphing more and more every day over the grayness of London, and would soon have reached that lovely short-lived pause of victory which is all that summer can hope to win amid the dust and crowd of a great city.
Kendal was in that condition which is proper to men possessed of the true literary temperament, when the first fervour of youth for mere living is gone, when the first crude difficulties of accumulation are over, and when the mind, admitted to regions of an ampler ether and diviner air than any she has inhabited before, feels the full charm and spell of man's vast birthright of knowledge, and is seized with subtler curiosities and further-reaching desires than anything she has yet been conscious of. The world of fact and of idea is open, and the explorer's instruments are as perfect as they can be made. The intoxication of entrance is full upon him, and the lassitude which is the inevitable Nemesis of an unending task, and the chill which sooner or later descends upon every human hope, are as yet mere names and shadows, counting for nothing in the tranquil vista of his life, which seems to lie spread out before him. It is a rare state, for not many men are capable of the apprenticeship which leads to it, and a breath of hostile circumstance may put an end to it; but in its own manner and degree, and while it lasts, it is one of the golden states of consciousness, and a man enjoying it feels this mysterious gift of existence to have been a kindly boon from some beneficent power.
Arrived at Mrs. Stuart's, Kendal found a large gathering already filling the pleasant low rooms looking out upon trees at either end, upon which Mrs. Stuart had impressed throughout the stamp of her own keen little personality. She was competent in all things—competent in her criticism of a book, and more than competent in all that pertained to the niceties of house management. Her dinner-parties, of which each was built up from foundation to climax with the most delicate skill and unity of plan; her pretty dresses, in which she trailed about her soft-coloured rooms; her energy, her kindliness, and even the evident but quite innocent pursuit of social perfection in which she delighted—all made her popular; and it was not difficult for her to gather together whom she would when she wished to launch a social novelty. On the present occasion she was very much in her element. All around her were people more or less distinguished in the London world; here was an editor, there an artist; a junior member of the Government chatted over his tea with a foreign Minister, and a flow of the usual London chatter of a superior kind was rippling through the room when Kendal entered.
Mrs. Stuart put him in the way of a chair and of abundant chances of conversation, and then left him with a shrug of her shoulders and a whisper, 'The beauty is shockingly late! Tell me what I shall do if all these people are disappointed.' In reality, Mrs. Stuart was beginning to be restless. Kendal had himself arrived very late, and, as the talk flowed faster, and the room filled fuller of guests eager for the new sensation which had been promised them, the spirits of the little hostess began to sink. The Minister had surreptitiously looked at his watch, and a tiresome lady friend had said good-bye in a voice which might have been lower, and with a lament which might have been spared. Mrs. Stuart set great store upon the success of her social undertakings, and to gather a crowd of people to meet the rising star of the season, and then to have to send them home with only tea and talk to remember, was one of those failures which no one with any self-respect should allow themselves to risk.
However, fortune was once more kind to one of her chief favourites. Mrs. Stuart was just listening with a tired face to the well-meant, but depressing condolences of the barrister standing by her, who was describing to her the 'absurd failure' of a party to meet the leading actress of the Comédie Française, to which he had been invited in the previous season, when the sound of wheels was heard outside. Mrs. Stuart made a quick step forward, leaving her Job's comforter planted in the middle of his story; the hum of talk dropped in an instant, and the crowd about the door fell hastily back as it was thrown open and Miss Bretherton entered.