Part 10 (1/2)
And aloud she added: ”Brooke, come and be introduced to Miss Campion.
You used to know her at Angleford.”
”It seems a long time since I saw you,” Mr. Dalton said, rather clumsily, as he took Lettice's hand into a very cordial clasp. ”It was that day in December when your brother had just got his scholars.h.i.+p at Trinity.”
”Oh, yes; that day! I remember it very well,” said Lettice, drawing a long breath, which was not exactly a sigh, although it sounded like one.
”I gave up being a child on that day, I believe!”
”There have been many changes since then.” Brooke Dalton was not brilliant in conversation.
”You have heard of them all, I suppose? Yes, my mother and I are in London now.”
”You will allow me to call, I hope?”
Lettice had but time to signify her consent, when Mrs. Hartley seized on her again, but this time Lettice did not so much object to be cross-examined. She recognized the fact that Mrs. Hartley's aim was kindly, and she submitted to be asked questions about her work and her prospects, and to answer them with a frankness that amazed herself. But in the very midst of the conversation she was conscious of being much observed by two or three people in the room; notably by Brooke Dalton, who had planted himself in a position from which he could look at her without attracting the other visitors' remark; and also by a tall man with a dark, melancholy face, deep-set eyes, and a peaked Vand.y.k.e beard, whose glances were more furtive than those of Dalton, but equally interested and intent. He was a handsome man, and Lettice found herself wondering whether he were not ”somebody,” and somebody worth talking to, moreover; for he was receiving, in a languid, half-indifferent manner, a great deal of homage from the women in the room. He seemed bored by it, and was turning away in relief from a lady who had just quoted half-a-dozen lines of Sh.e.l.ley for his especial behoof, when Mrs.
Hartley, who had been discussing Feuerbach and the German materialists with Lettice, caught his eye, and beckoned him to her side.
”Mr. Walcott,” she said, ”I never heard that you were a materialist, and I don't think it is very likely; so you can condole with Miss Campion on having been condemned to translate five hundred pages of Feuerbach. Now, isn't that terrible?”
”I don't know Feuerbach,” said the poet, after he had bowed to Lettice, ”but it sounds warm and comfortable on a wintry day. Nevertheless, I do condole with her.”
”I am not sure that I need condolence,” said Lettice. ”The work was really very interesting, and one likes to know what any philosopher has to say for himself, whether one believes in his theories or not. I must say I have enjoyed reading Feuerbach,--though he _is_ a German with a translatable name.”
This was a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but, then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she wanted to give as good as she got.
”You read German, then?” said Walcott, sitting down in the chair that Mrs. Hartley had vacated, and looking at Lettice with interest, although he did not abandon the slight affectation of tone and manner that she had noted from the beginning of her talk with him. ”How nice that must be! I often wish I knew something more than my schoolboy's smattering of Greek, Latin, and French.”
Lettice had read Mr. Walcott's last volume of poems, which were just then exciting considerable interest in the literary world, and she could not help recalling one or two lyrics and sonnets from Uhland, Filicaja, and other Continentals. As though divining her thoughts, Walcott went on quickly, with much more sincerity of tone:
”I do try now and then to put an idea that strikes me from German or Italian into English; but think of my painful groping with a dictionary, before the cramped and crippled idea can reach my mind! I am the translator most in need of condolence, Miss Campion!”
”Yet, even without going to other languages,” said Lettice, ”there is an unlimited field in our own, both for ideas and for expression--as well as a practically unlimited audience.”
”The artists and musicians say that their domains are absolutely unlimited--that the poet sings to those who happen to speak his language, whilst they discourse to the whole world and to all time. I suppose, in a sense, they are right.”
He spoke listlessly, as if he did not care whether they were right or wrong.
But Lettice's eyes began to glow.
”Surely in a narrow sense! They would hardly say that Handel or Beethoven speaks to a wider audience than Homer or Shakspeare, and certainly no musician or painter or sculptor can hope to delight mankind for as many centuries as a poet. And, then, to think what an idea can accomplish--what Greek ideas have done in England, for instance, or Roman ideas in France, or French ideas in nearly every country of Europe! Could a tune make a revolution, or a picture destroy a religion?”
”Perhaps, yes,” said Walcott, wis.h.i.+ng to draw her out, ”if the tunes or the pictures could be repeated often enough, and brought before the eyes and ears of the mult.i.tude.”
”I do not think so. And, at any rate, that could not be done by way of systematic and comprehensive teaching, so that your comparison only suggests another superiority in literary expression. A poet can teach a whole art, or establish a definite creed; he can move the heart and mould the mind at the same time; but one can hardly imagine such an effect from the work of those who speak to us only through the eye or ear.”
By this time Alan Walcott was fairly interested. What Lettice said might be commonplace enough, but it did not strike him so. It was her manner that pleased him, her quiet fervor and gentle insistance, which showed that she was accustomed to think for herself, and suggested that she would have the honesty to say what she thought. And, of course, he applied to himself all that she said about poets in general, and was delighted by her warm champions.h.i.+p of his special vocation. As they went on talking for another quarter of an hour he recognized, without framing the admission in words, that Miss Campion was an exceedingly well-read person, and that she knew many authors--even poets--with whom he had the slightest acquaintance. Most of the people whom he met talked idle nonsense to him, as though their main object was to pa.s.s the time, or else they aired a superficial knowledge of the uppermost thoughts and theories of the day, gleaned as a rule from the cheap primers and magazine articles in which a bustled age is content to study its science, art, economy, politics, and religion. But here was a woman who had been a voracious reader, who had gone to the fountain-head for her facts, and who yet spoke with the air of one who wanted to learn, rather than to display.
”We have had a very pleasant talk,” he said to her at last. ”I mean that I have found it very pleasant. I am going now to dine at my club, and shall spend my evening over a monologue which has suggested itself since I entered this room. As you know the Grahams I may hope to meet you again, there if not here. A talk with you, Miss Campion, is what the critics in the _Acropolis_ might call very suggestive!”
Again Lettice thought the manner and the speech affected, but there was an air of sincerity about the man which seemed to be fighting down the affectation. She hardly knew whether she liked him or not, but she knew that he had interested her and made her talk--for which two things she half forgave him the affectation.