Part 70 (1/2)
”Does not he! I begin to doubt it myself. But, at all events, you can't doubt of mine, and I am grateful for yours; and since you have given me the trouble of coming here to no purpose, I may as well take the next week's pay in advance--four sovereigns if you please, Dolly Poole.”
CHAPTER XII.
ANOTHER HALT--CHANGE OF HORSES--AND A TURN ON THE ROAD.
Colonel Morley, on learning that Jasper declined a personal conference with himself, and that the proposal of an interview with Jasper's alleged daughter was equally scouted or put aside, became still more confirmed in his belief that Jasper had not yet been blest with a daughter sufficiently artful to produce. And pleased to think that the sharper was thus unprovided with a means of annoyance, which, skilfully managed, might have been seriously hara.s.sing; and convinced that when Jasper found no farther notice taken of him, he himself 'would be compelled to pet.i.tion for the terms he now rejected, the Colonel dryly informed Poole ”that his interference was at an end; that if Mr. Losely, either through himself, or through Mr. Poole, or any one else, presumed to address Mr. Darrell direct, the offer previously made would be peremptorily and irrevocably withdrawn. I myself,” added the Colonel, ”shall be going abroad very shortly for the rest of the summer; and should Mr. Losely, in the mean while, think better of a proposal which secures him from want, I refer him to Mr. Darrell's solicitor. To that proposal, according to your account of his dest.i.tution, he must come sooner or later; and I am glad to see that he has in yourself so judicious an adviser”--a compliment which by no means consoled the miserable Poole.
In the briefest words, Alban informed Darrell of his persuasion that Jasper was not only without evidence to support a daughter's claim, but that the daughter herself was still in that part of Virgil's Hades appropriated to souls that have not yet appeared upon the upper earth; and that Jasper himself, although holding back, as might be naturally expected, in the hope of conditions more to his taste, had only to be left quietly to his own meditations in order to recognise the advantages of emigration. Another L100 a-year or so, it is true, he might bargain for, and such a demand might be worth conceding. But, on the whole, Alban congratulated Darrell upon the probability of hearing very little more of the son-in-law, and no more at all of the son-in-law's daughter.
Darrell made no comment nor reply. A grateful look, a warm pressure of the hand, and, when the subject was changed, a clearer brow and livelier smile, thanked the English Alban better than all words.
CHAPTER XIII.
COLONEL MORLEY SHOWS THAT IT IS NOT WITHOUT REASON THAT HE ENJOYS HIS REPUTATION OF KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYBODY.
”Well met,” said Darrell, the day after Alban had conveyed to him the comforting a.s.surances which had taken one thorn from his side-dispersed one cloud in his evening sky. ”Well met,” said Darrell, encountering the Colonel a few paces from his own door. ”Pray walk with me as far as the New Road. I have promised Lionel to visit the studio of an artist friend of his, in whom he chooses to find a Raffaele, and in whom I suppose, at the price of truth, I shall be urbanely compelled to compliment a dauber.”
”Do you speak of Frank Vance?”
”The same.”
”You could not visit a worthier man, nor compliment a more promising artist. Vance is one of the few who unite gusto and patience, fancy and brushwork. His female heads, in especial, are exquisite, though they are all, I confess, too much like one another. The man himself is a thoroughly fine fellow. He has been much made of in good society, and remains unspoiled. You will find his manner rather off-hand, the reverse of shy; partly, perhaps, because he has in himself the racy freshness and boldness which he gives to his colours; partly, perhaps, also, because he has in his art the self-esteem that patricians take from their pedigree, and shakes a duke by the hand to prevent the duke holding out to him a finger.”
”Good,” said Darrell, with his rare, manly laugh. ”Being shy myself, I like men who meet one half-way. I see that we shall be at our ease with each other.”
”And perhaps still more 'when I tell you that he is connected with an old Eton friend of ours, and deriving no great benefit from that connection; you remember poor Sidney Branthwaite?”
”To be sure. He and I were great friends at Eton somewhat in the same position of pride and poverty. Of all the boys in the school we two had the least pocket-money. Poor Branthwaite! I lost sight of him afterwards. He went into the Church, got only a curacy, and died young.”
”And left a son, poorer than himself, who married Frank Vance's sister.”
”You don't say so. The Branthwaites were of good old family; what is Mr.
Vance's?”
”Respectable enough. Vance's father was one of those clever men who have too many strings to their bow. He, too, was a painter; but he was also a man of letters, in a sort of a way--had a share in a journal, in which he wrote Criticisms on the Fine Arts. A musical composer, too.
”Rather a fine gentleman, I suspect, with a wife who was rather a fine lady. Their house was much frequented by artists and literary men: old Vance, in short, was hospitable--his wife extravagant. Believing that posterity would do that justice to his pictures which his contemporaries refused, Vance left to his family no other provision. After selling his pictures and paying his debts, there was just enough left to bury him.
Fortunately, Sir --------, the great painter of that day, had already conceived a liking to Frank Vance--then a mere boy--who had shown genius from an infant, as all true artists do. Sir -------- took him into his studio and gave him lessons. It would have been unlike Sir --------, who was open-hearted but close-fisted, to give anything else. But the boy contrived to support his mother and sister. That fellow, who is now as arrogant a stickler for the dignity of art as you or my Lord Chancellor may be for that of the bar, stooped then to deal clandestinely with fancy shops, and imitate Watteau on fans. I have two hand-screens that he painted for a shop in Rathbone Place. I suppose he may have got ten s.h.i.+llings for them, and now any admirer of Frank's would give L100 apiece for them.”
”That is the true soul in which genius lodges, and out of which fire springs,” cried Darrell cordially. ”Give me the fire that lurks in the flint, and answers by light the stroke of the hard steel. I'm glad Lionel has won a friend in such a man. Sidney Branthwaite's son married Vance's sister--after Vance had won reputation?”
”No; while Vance was still a boy. Young Arthur Branthwaite was an orphan. If he had any living relations, they were too poor to a.s.sist him. He wrote poetry much praised by the critics (they deserve to be hanged, those critics!)--scribbled, I suppose, in old Vance's journal; saw Mary Vance a little before her father died; fell in love with her; and on the strength of a volume of verse, in which the critics all solemnly deposed to his surpa.s.sing riches--of imagination, rushed to the altar, and sacrificed a wife to the Muses! Those villanous critics will have a dark account to render in the next world! Poor Arthur Branthwaite! For the sake of our old friend, his father, I bought a copy of his little volume. Little as the volume was, I could not read it through.”
”What!--below contempt?”