Part 33 (1/2)
And then her thoughts came out.
”I like the Guido Renis, Cheiron,” she said; ”his Magdalen in the Reale Palazzo is exquisite--she is pure and good. But I do not like the saints and martyrs in the throes of their agony, they say nothing to me, I have no sympathy for them. I adore the Madonna and the Child; they touch me--here,” and she laid her hand upon her heart. ”The Sa.s.soferarto Virgin in the Reale Palazzo is like Miss Lutworth, she is full of kindness and youth. The early masters' works, which are badly drawn and beautifully colored, I have to take apart--and it is unsatisfying.
Because, while I am trying not to see the wrong shape, I have only half my faculties to appreciate the exquisite colors, and so a third influence has to come in--the meaning of the artist who painted them and perhaps put into them his soul. But that is altruistic--I could as well admire something of very bad art for the same reason. For me a picture should satisfy each of these points of view to be perfect and lift me into heights. That is why perhaps I shall prefer sculpture on the whole, when I shall have seen it, to painting.”
And Mr. Carlyon felt that, learned in art and old as he was, Halcyone might give him a new point of view.
Next day they left for Pisa.
CHAPTER XXVIII
When Arabella Clinker and her mother were settled together at Wendover, a strange peace seemed to fall upon the place. John Derringham was conscious of it upstairs as he lay in his Louis XV bed. By the time he was allowed to be carried to a sofa in the sitting-room which had been arranged for him, July had well set in.
He had parted from his Cecilia with suitable things said upon either side. Even in his misery and abas.e.m.e.nt, John Derringham was too a.s.sured a spirit and too much a man of the world to have any hesitation or awkwardness. Mrs. Cricklander had been all that was sympathetic. She looked superbly full of vigor and the joy of life as she came to say farewell.
”John, darling,” she purred, ”you will do everything you are told to by the doctors while I am away, won't you?” and she caressed his forehead with her soft hand. ”So that I may not have to worry as dreadfully as I have been doing, when I come back. It has made me quite ill--that is why I must go to Carlsbad. You will be good now; so that I may find you as strong and handsome as ever on my return.” Then she bent and kissed him.
He promised faithfully, and she never saw the whimsical gleam in his eyes, because for the moment having gained her end her faculties had resumed their normal condition, which was not one of superlative sensitiveness. Like everything else in her utilitarian equipment, fine perceptions were only a.s.sumed when the magnitude of the goal in view demanded their presence. And even then they merely went as far as sentinels to warn or encourage her in the progress of her aims, never wasting themselves upon irrelevant objects.
When her scented presence had left the room, John Derringham clasped his hands behind his head, and, before he was aware of it, his lips had murmured ”Thank G.o.d!”
And then Nemesis fell upon him--his schoolboy sensation of recreation-time at hand left him, and a blank sense of failure and hopeless bondage took its place.
Surely he had bartered his soul for a very inadequate mess of pottage.
And where would he sink to under this scorpion whip? Where would go all his fine aspirations which, even in spite of all the juggling of political life, still lived in his aims. Halcyone would have understood.
”Oh! my love!” he cried. ”My tender love!”
Then that part of him which was strong rea.s.serted itself. He would not give way to this repining, the thing was done and he must make the best of it. He asked for some volumes from the library. He would read, and he sent the faithful and adoring Brome to request Miss Clinker to send him up the third and fourth volume of ”The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” He often turned to Gibbon when he was at war with things. The perfect balance of the English soothed him--and he felt he would read of Julian, for whom in his heart he felt a sympathy.
Arabella brought the volumes herself, and placed them on his table, and then went to settle some roses in a vase before she left the room.
A thin slip of paper fell out of one of the books as he opened it, and he read it absently while he turned the pages.
On the top was a date in pencil, and in a methodical fas.h.i.+on there was written in red ink:
”Notes for the instruction of M. E.,” and then underneath, ”Subjects to be talked of at dinner to-night--Was there cause for Julian's apostasy?
What appealed most to Julian in the old religions--etc., etc.”
For a second the words conveyed no meaning to his brain, and for something to say, he said aloud to Arabella: ”This is your writing, I think, Miss Clinker. I see you have a taste for our friend Gibbon, too,”
and then, observing the troubled confusion of Arabella's honest face, a sudden flash came over him of memory. He recollected distinctly that upon the Sunday before his accident, they had talked at lunch of Julian the Apostate, and Mrs. Cricklander had turned the conversation, and then had referred to the subject again at dinner with an astonis.h.i.+ng array of facts, surprising him by her erudition.
He looked down at the slip again--yes, the date was right, and the red-ink heading was evidently a stereotyped one; probably Arabella kept a supply of these papers ready, being a methodical creature. And the questions!--were they for her own education? But no--Arabella was a cultivated person and would not require such things, and, on that particular Sunday, had never opened the door of her lips at either meal.
”She prompts Cecilia,” in a flash he thought, with a wild sense of bitter mirth. ”No wonder she can reel off statistics as she does.
'Subjects to be talked of at dinner'--forsooth!”
And Arabella stood there, her kind plain face crimson, and her brown eyes blinking pitifully behind her gla.s.ses.