Part 12 (1/2)

”Oh, my dear child,” said he, ”don't speak of it. It is my memory--I fear my memory is going. But we will not trouble our guest about it. I think you were saying, Sir Keith, that you had seen the latest additions to the National Gallery--”

”But what is it, papa?” his daughter insisted.

”My dear, my dear, I know I have the lines somewhere; and Lord ---- says that the very first jug fired at the new pottery he is helping shall have these lines on it, and be kept for himself. I know I have both the Spanish original and the English translation somewhere; and all the morning I have been hunting and hunting--for only one line. I think I know the other three,--

'Old wine to drink.

Old wrongs let sink, * * * *

Old friends in need.'

It is the third line that has escaped me--dear, dear me! I fear my brain is going.”

”But I will hunt for it, papa,” said she; ”I will get the lines for you.

Don't you trouble.”

”No, no, no, child,” said he, with somewhat of a pompous air. ”You have this new character to study. You must not allow any trouble to disturb the serenity of your mind while you are so engaged. You must give your heart and soul to it, Gerty; you must forget yourself; you must abandon yourself to it, and let it grow up in your mind until the conception is so perfect that there are no traces of the manner of its production left.”

He certainly was addressing his daughter, but somehow the formal phrases suggested that he was speaking for the benefit of the stranger. The prim old gentleman continued; ”That is the only way. Art demands absolute self-forgetfulness. You must give yourself to it in complete surrender.

People may not know the difference; but the true artist seeks only to be true to himself. You produce the perfect flower; they are not to know of the anxious care--of the agony of tears, perhaps you have spent on it.

But then your whole mind must be given to it; there must be no distracting cares; I will look for the missing lines myself.”

”I am quite sure, papa,” said Miss Carry, spitefully, ”that she was far more anxious about these cutlets than about her new part this morning.

She was half a dozen times to the kitchen. I didn't see her reading the book much.”

”The _res angustae domi_,” said the father, sententiously, ”sometimes interfere, where people are not too well off. But that is necessary.

What is not necessary is that Gerty should take my troubles over to herself, and disturb her formation of this new character, which ought to be growing up in her mind almost insensibly, until she herself will scarcely be aware how real it is. When she steps on to the stage she ought to be no more Gertrude White than you or I. The artist loses himself. He transfers his soul to his creation. His heart beats in another breast; he sees with other eyes. You will excuse me, Sir Keith, but I keep insisting on this point to my daughter. If she ever becomes a great artist, that will be the secret of her success. And she ought never to cease from cultivating the habit. She ought to be ready at any moment to project herself, as it were, into any character. She ought to practise so as to make of her own emotions an instrument that she can use at will. It is a great demand that art makes on the life of an artist. In fact, he ceases to live for himself. He becomes merely a medium. His most secret experiences are the property of the world at large, once they have been transfused and moulded by his personal skill.”

And so he continued talking, apparently for the instruction of his daughter, but also giving his guest clearly to understand that Miss Gertrude White was not as other women but rather as one set apart for the high and inexorable sacrifice demanded by art. At the end of his lecture he abruptly asked Macleod if he had followed him. Yes, he had followed him, but in rather a bewildered way. Or had he some confused sense of self-reproach, in that he had distracted the contemplation of this pale and beautiful artist, and sent her downstairs to look after cutlets?

”It seems a little hard, sir,” said Macleod to the old man, ”that an artist is not to have any life of his or her own at all; that he or she should become merely a--a--a sort of ten-minutes' emotionalist.”

It was not a bad phrase for a rude Highlander to have invented on the spur of the moment. But the fact was that some little personal feeling stung him into the speech. He was prepared to resent this tyranny of art.

And if he now were to see some beautiful pale slave bound in these iron chains, and being exhibited for the amus.e.m.e.nt of an idle world, what would the fierce blood of the Macleods say to that debas.e.m.e.nt? He began to dislike this old man, with his cruel theories and his oracular speech. But he forbore to have further or any argument with him; for he remembered what the Highlanders call ”the advice of the bell of Sc.o.o.n”--”_The thing that concerns you not meddle not with._”

CHAPTER IX.

THE PRINCESS RIGHINN.

The people who lived in this land of summer, and suns.h.i.+ne, and flowers--had they no cares at all? He went out into the garden with these two girls; and they were like two young fawns in their careless play. Miss Carry, indeed, seemed bent on tantalizing him by the manner in which she petted and teased and caressed her sister--scolding her, quarrelling with her, and kissing her all at once. The grave, gentle, forbearing manner in which the elder sister bore all this was beautiful to see. And then her sudden concern and pity when the wild Miss Carry had succeeded in scratching her finger with the thorn of a rose-bus.h.!.+ It was the tiniest of scratches: and all the blood that appeared was about the size of a pin-head. But Miss White must needs tear up her dainty little pocket-handkerchief, and bind that grievous wound, and condole with the poor victim as though she were suffering untold agonies. It was a pretty sort of idleness. It seemed to harmonize with this still, beautiful summer day, and the soft green foliage around, and the still air that was sweet with the scent of the flowers of the lime-trees. They say that the Gaelic word for the lower regions _ifrin_, is derived from _i bhuirn_, the island of incessant rain. To a Highlander, therefore must not this land of perpetual summer and suns.h.i.+ne have seemed to be heaven itself?

And even the malicious Carry relented for a moment.

”You said you were going to the Zoological Gardens,” she said.

”Yes,” he answered, ”I am. I have seen everything I want to see in London but that.”

”Because Gerty and I might walk across the Park with you, and show you the way.”