|
Prev
| Next
| Contents
CHAPTER XXIII: PAINTER AND GROOM
The address upon the note Malcolm had to deliver took him to a
house in Chelsea--one of a row of beautiful old houses fronting
the Thames, with little gardens between them and the road. The one
he sought was overgrown with creepers, most of them now covered
with fresh spring buds. The afternoon had turned cloudy, and a
cold east wind came up the river, which, as the tide was falling,
raised little waves on its surface and made Malcolm think of the
herring. Somehow, as he went up to the door, a new chapter of his
life seemed about to commence.
The servant who took the note, returned immediately, and showed
him up to the study, a large back room, looking over a good sized
garden, with stables on one side. There Lenorme sat at his easel.
"Ah!" he said, "I'm glad to see that wild animal has not quite torn
you to pieces. Take a chair. What on earth made you bring such an
incarnate fury to London?"
"I see well enough now, sir, she's not exactly the one for London
use, but if you had once ridden her, you would never quite enjoy
another between your knees."
"She's such an infernal brute!"
"You can't say too ill of her. But I fancy a gaol chaplain sometimes
takes the most interest in the worst villain under his charge. I
should be a proud man to make her fit to live with decent people."
"I'm afraid she'll be too much for you. At last you'll have to part
with her, I fear."
"If she had bitten you as often as she has me, sir, you wouldn't
part with her. Besides, it would be wrong to sell her. She would
only be worse with anyone else. But, indeed, though you will hardly
believe it, she is better than she was."
"Then what must she have been!"
"You may well say that, sir!"
"Here your mistress tells me you want my assistance in choosing
another horse."
"Yes, sir--to attend upon her in London."
"I don't profess to be knowing in horses: what made you think of
me?"
"I saw how you sat your own horse, sir, and I heard you say you
bought him out of a butterman's cart, and treated him like a human
being: that was enough for me, sir. I've long had the notion that
the beasts, poor things, have a half sleeping, half waking human
soul in them, and it was a great pleasure to hear you say something
of the same sort. 'That gentleman,' I said to myself, '--he and
I would understand one another.'"
"I am glad you think so," said Lenorme, with entire courtesy.--It
was not merely that the very doubtful recognition of his profession
by society had tended to keep him clear of his prejudices, but
both as a painter and a man he found the young fellow exceedingly
attractive;--as a painter from the rare combination of such
strength with such beauty, and as a man from a certain yet rarer
clarity of nature which to the vulgar observer seems fatuity until
he has to encounter it in action, when the contrast is like meeting
a thunderbolt. Naturally the dishonest takes the honest for a fool.
Beyond his understanding, he imagines him beneath it. But Lenorme,
although so much more a man of the world, was able in a measure
to look into Malcolm and appreciate him. His nature and his art
combined in enabling him to do this.
"You see, sir," Malcolm went on, encouraged by the simplicity
of Lenorme's manner, "if they were nothing like us, how should we
be able to get on with them at all, teach them anything, or come
a hair nearer them, do what we might? For all her wickedness I
firmly believe Kelpie has a sort of regard for me--I won't call
it affection, but perhaps it comes as near that as may be possible
in the time to one of her temper."
"Now I hope you will permit me, Mr MacPhail," said Lenorme, who had
been paying more attention to Malcolm than to his words, "to give
a violent wrench to the conversation, and turn it upon yourself.
You can't be surprised, and I hope you will not be annoyed, if I
say you strike one as not altogether like your calling. No London
groom I have ever spoken to, in the least resembles you. How is
it?"
"I hope you don't mean to imply, sir, that I don't know my business,"
returned Malcolm, laughing.
"Anything but that It were nearer the thing to say, that for all
I know you may understand mine as well."
"I wish I did, sir. Except the pictures at Lossie House and those
in Portland Place, I've never seen one in my life. About most of
them I must say I find it hard to imagine what better the world
is for them. Mr Graham says that no work that doesn't tend to make
the world better makes it richer. If he were a heathen, he says,
he would build a temple to Ses, the sister of Psyche."
"Ses?--I don't remember her," said Lenorme.
"The moth, sir;--'the moth and the rust,' you know."
"Yes, yes; now I know! Capital! Only more things may tend to make
the world better than some people think.--Who is this Mr Graham
of yours? He must be no common man."
"You are right there, sir; there is not another like him in the
whole world, I believe."
And thereupon Malcolm set himself to give the painter an idea of
the schoolmaster.
When they had talked about him for a little while,
"Well, all this accounts for your being a scholar," said Lenorme; "but--"
"I am little enough of that, sir," interrupted Malcolm. "Any Scotch
boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him."
"I am aware of that. But were you really reading Epictetus when we
left you in the park this morning?"
"Yes, sir: why not?"
"In the original?"
"Yes, sir; but not very readily. I am a poor Greek scholar. But my
copy has a rough Latin translation on the opposite page, and that
helps me out. It's not difficult. You would think nothing of it if
it had been Cornelius Nepos, or Cordery's Colloquies. It's only a
better, not a more difficult book."
"I don't know about that. It's not every one who can read Greek
that can understand Epictetus. Tell me what you have learned from
him?"
"That would be hard to do. A man is very ready to forget how he
came first to think of the things he loves best. You see they are
as much a necessity of your being as they are of the man's who
thought them first. I can no more do without the truth than Plato.
It is as much my needful food and as fully mine to possess as his.
His having it, Mr Graham says, was for my sake as well as his own.
--It's just like what Sir Thomas Browne says about the faces of
those we love--that we cannot retain the idea of them because
they are ourselves. Those that help the world must be served like
their master and a good deal forgotten, I fancy. Of course they don't
mind it.--I remember another passage I think says something to
the same purpose--one in Epictetus himself," continued Malcolm,
drawing the little book from his pocket and turning over the leaves,
while Lenorme sat waiting, wondering, and careful not to interrupt
him.
He turned to the forty-second chapter, and began to read from the
Greek.
"I've forgotten all the Greek I ever had," said Lenorme.
Then Malcolm turned to the opposite page and began to read the
Latin.
"Tut! tut!" said Lenorme, "I can't follow your Scotch pronunciation."
"That's a pity," said Malcolm: "it's the right way."
"I don't doubt it. You Scotch are always in the right! But just
read it off in English--will you?"
Thus adjured, Malcolm read slowly and with choice of word and phrase
"'And if any one shall say unto thee, that thou knowest nothing,
notwithstanding thou must not be vexed: then know thou that thou
hast begun thy work.'--That is," explained Malcolm, "when you
keep silence about principles in the presence of those that are
incapable of understanding them.--'For the sheep also do not
manifest to the shepherds how much they have eaten, by producing
fodder; but, inwardly digesting their food, they produce outwardly
wool and milk. And thou therefore set not forth principles before
the unthinking, but the actions that result from the digestion of
them.'--That last is not quite literal, but I think it's about
right," concluded Malcolm, putting the book again in the breast
pocket of his silver buttoned coat. "--That's the passage I
thought of, but I see now it won't apply. He speaks of not saying
what you know; I spoke of forgetting where you got it."
"Come now," said Lenorme, growing more and more interested in his
new acquaintance, "tell me something about your life. Account for
yourself.--If you will make a friendship of it, you must do that."
"I will, sir," said Malcolm, and with the word began to tell him
most things he could think of as bearing upon his mental history
up to and after the time also when his birth was disclosed to him.
In omitting that disclosure he believed he had without it quite
accounted for himself. Through the whole recital he dwelt chiefly
on the lessons and influences of the schoolmaster.
"Well, I must admit," said Lenorme when he had ended, "that you
are no longer unintelligible, not to say incredible. You have had
a splendid education, in which I hope you give the herring and
Kelpie their due share."
He sat silently regarding him for a few moments. Then he said:
"I'll tell you what now: if I help you to buy a horse, you must
help me to paint a picture."
"I don't know how I'm to do that," said Malcolm, "but if you do,
that's enough. I shall only be too happy to do what I can."
"Then I'll tell you.--But you're not to tell anybody: it's a
secret.--I have discovered that there is no suitable portrait of
Lady Lossie's father. It is a great pity. His brother and his father
and grandfather are all in Portland Place, in Highland costume,
as chiefs of their clan; his place only is vacant. Lady Lossie,
however, has in her possession one or two miniatures of him, which,
although badly painted, I should think may give the outlines of
his face and head with tolerable correctness. From the portraits
of his predecessors, and from Lady Lossie herself, I gain some
knowledge of what is common to the family; and from all together
I hope to gather and paint what will be recognizable by her as
a likeness of her father--which afterwards I hope to better by
her remarks. These remarks I hope to get first from her feelings
unadulterated by criticism, through the surprise of coming upon
the picture suddenly; afterwards from her judgment at its leisure.
Now I remember seeing you wait at table--the first time I saw
you--in the Highland dress: will you come to me so dressed, and
let me paint from you?"
"I'll do better than that, sir," cried Malcolm, eagerly. "I'll get
up from Lossie Home my lord's very dress that he wore when he went
to court--his jewelled dirk, and Andrew Ferrara broadsword with
the hilt of real silver. That'll greatly help your design upon my
lady, for he dressed up in them all more than once just to please
her."
"Thank you," said Lenorme very heartily; "that will be of immense
advantage. Write at once."
"I will, sir.--Only I'm a bigger man than my--late master, and
you must mind that."
"I'll see to it. You get the clothes, and all the rest
of the accoutrements--rich with barbaric gems and gold, and--"
"Neither gems nor gold, sir;--honest Scotch cairngorms and plain
silver," said Malcolm.
"I only quoted Milton," returned Lenorme.
"Then you should have quoted correctly, sir.--'Showers on her kings
barbaric pearl and gold,'--that's the line, and you can't better
it. Mr Graham always pulled me up if I didn't quote correctly.--
By the bye, sir, some say it's kings barbaric, but there's barbaric
gold in Virgil."
"I dare say you are right," said Lenorme. "But you're far too
learned for me."
"Don't make game of me, sir. I know two or three books pretty well,
and when I get a chance I can't help talking about them. It's so
seldom now I can get a mouthful of Milton. There's no cave here to
go into, and roll the mimic thunder in your mouth. If the people
here heard me reading loud out, they would call me mad. It's a mercy
in this London, if a working man get loneliness enough to say his
prayers in!"
"You do say your prayers then?" asked Lenorme, looking at him
curiously.
"Yes; don't you, sir? You had so much sense about the beasts I
thought you must be a man that said his prayers."
Lenorme was silent. He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers;
but of late years it had grown a more formal and gradually a rarer
thing. One reason of this was that it had never come into his
head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest
whether he painted well or ill. If a man's earnest calling, to
which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is
altogether dissociated in his mind from his religion, it is not
wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die. The
question is whether they ever had much vitality. But one mighty
negative was yet true of Lenorme: he had not got in his head, still
less had he ever cherished in his heart, the thought that there was
anything fine in disbelieving in a God, or anything contemptible
in imagining communication with a being of grander essence than
himself. That in which Socrates rejoiced with exultant humility,
many a youth nowadays thinks himself a fine fellow for casting from
him with ignorant scorn.
A true conception of the conversation above recorded can hardly be
had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast
between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and
prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of
Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance
of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the
difference between the blank verse of Young and the prose of Burke.
The silence endured so long that Malcolm began to fear he had hurt
his new friend, and thought it better to take his leave.
"I'll go and write to Mrs Courthope--that's the housekeeper,
tonight, to send up the things at once. When would it be convenient
for you to go and look at some horses with me, Mr Lenorme?" he
said.
"I shall be at home all tomorrow," answered the painter, "and ready
to go with you any time you like to come for me."
As he spoke he held out his hand, and they parted like old friends.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|