Works of Ellen Wood, page 255
He was thrown much with Maria Saxonbury — far more than he need have been. The fault was hers. A great admirer of beauty, like her father, and possessing a high reverence for genius, the exquisite face of Raby Raby attracted her admiration as it had never yet been attracted; whilst his eager aspirations, and love for the fine arts, were perfectly consonant to her own mind. His companionship soon grew excessively pleasing, and she gave her days up to it without restraint, absorbed in the pleasure of the moment. Nothing more: of all people in the world, Maria Saxonbury was the last to think seriously of one beneath her. So, leaving consequences to take care of themselves, or be remedied by time, she dwelt only on the present. She would flit about when he was at work in the picture-gallery, she would linger by his side in the gardens, one or other of the little Ashtons generally being their companion: in short, it seemed that the object of Maria’s life, just now, was to be with the artist-visitor.
Even this night, when her father and sister had gone out to dinner, she had excused herself: she would stay at home with her mother, she said: but Lady Saxonbury was in her chamber, and Maria remained in the drawing-room with Mr. Raby. It is probable that Lady Saxonbury, if she thought of him at all, believed him to be painting then. Was it in remembrance of some one else that Sir Arthur had named his youngest child “Maria?” But they sometimes called her by her other name, Elizabeth.
“Do you admire this purse?” she suddenly inquired, holding out one of grass-green silk, with gold beads, tassels, and slides; a marvel of prettiness.
Raby rose and took it from her, and turned it about in his white and slender hands. Those remarkable hands! feeble to look at, elegant in structure, always restless; so strongly characteristic of genius, as well as of delicacy of constitution.
“It is quite a gem,” he said, in answer.
“You may have it in place of your ugly one,” continued Miss Saxonbury: “that frightful portemonnaie, of grim leather, I saw you with, the other day. I made this for somebody else, who does not seem in a hurry to come for it; so I will give it to you.”
A rush of suspicious emotion flew to his face, and her eyes fell beneath the eloquent gaze of his. “How shall I thank you?” was all he said. “It shall be to me an everlasting remembrance.”
“That’s in return for the pretty sketch you gave me yesterday,” she went on. “One you took at Rome, and filled in from memory.”
“You mistake, Miss Saxonbury. I said I drew it from description. I have never been to Rome. That is a pleasure to come.”
“As it is for me,” observed Maria. “I was there once, when a little girl, but I remember nothing of it. A cross woman, half governess, half maid, who was hired to talk Italian to us, is all my recollection of the place. Last year and the year before, when we were wasting our time in Paris and at the baths of Germany, doing mamma more harm than good, I urged them to go on to Rome, but nobody listened to me. I have an idea that I shall be disappointed whenever I do go: we always are, when we expect so much.”
“Always, always,” murmured Raby.
“I long to see some of those features I am familiar with from paintings,” added Miss Saxonbury. “The remains of the Caesars’ palaces — the real grand St Peter’s — the beautiful Alban Hills — and all Rome’s other glories. I grow impatient sometimes, and tell papa there will be nothing left for me to see: that Sallust’s garden will be a heap of stinging nettles — I dare say it is nothing else; and Cecilia Metella’s tomb destroyed.”
And thus they conversed till it grew dark, and the servants came in to light the chandeliers. Miss Saxonbury remembered her mother then, and rose to go to her, to see why she had not come down.
When Maria returned, the room was empty, and she stood in the bow of the window and looked out. It was the custom at Saxonbury House to leave the curtains of this window open on a favourable night; for the moonlight landscape, outside, was indeed fair to look upon. Mr. Raby was then walking on the terrace; his step was firm and self-possessed, his head raised: it was only in the presence of his fellow-creatures that Raby Raby was a shy and awkward man. He saw her, and approached the window.
“I have been studying the Folly all this time,” he said; “fancying it must look like those ruined Roman temples we have been speaking of; as they must look in the light and shade of the moonlight.”
“Does it?” she answered, laughingly. “I will go and look, too.”
Miss Saxonbury stepped on to the terrace, and he gave her his arm. Did she feel the violent beating of his heart, as her bracelet lay against it? They walked, in the shade cast by the house, to the railings at the end of the terrace, and there came in view of the fanciful building in question, “Lady Saxonbury’s Folly.” It rose, high and white, on the opposite hills, amidst a grove of dark trees.
“I do not like the building by day,” he observed; “but, as it looks now, I cannot fancy anything more classically beautiful in the Eternal City, even when it was in its zenith.”
“It does look beautiful,” she mused. “And the landscape, as it lies around, is equally so: look at its different points shewing out. You have not seen many scenes more gratifying to the imaginative eye than this, Mr. Raby.”
“I shall never see a second Saxonbury,” was the impulsive answer. “Take it for all in all, I shall never see — but look at this side,” he abruptly broke off, turning in the opposite direction. —
“Oh, I don’t care to look there. It is all dark. I only like the bright side of things.”
“Has it never struck you that these two aspects, the light and the dark of a moonlight night, are a type of human fortunes? While some favoured spirits bask in brightness, others must be cast, and remain, in the depths of shade.”
“No. I never thought about it. My life has been all brightness.”
“May it ever remain so!” he whispered with a deep sigh: but Miss Saxonbury turned to the pleasant side again.
“What a fine painting this view would make!” she exclaimed. “I wonder papa has never had it done. One of your favourite scenes, Mr. Raby, all poetry and moonlight, interspersed with a dash of melancholy.
Some of you artists are too fond of depicting melancholy scenes.”
“We depict scenes as we find them. You know the eye sees with its own hue. There may be a gangrene over the gladdest sunshine.”
“Artists ought to be always glad: living, as they do, amidst ideal beauties: nay, creating them.”
“Ideal! That was a fitting word, Miss Saxonbury. We live in the toil and drudgery of the work; others, who but see the picture when it is completed, in the ideal. When you stand and admire some favourite painting, do you ever cast a thought to the weary hours of labour which created it?”
“No doubt the pursuit of art has its inconveniences, but you great painters must bear within you your own recompense.”
“In a degree, yes,” answered Raby; the expression “you great painters” echoing joyfully on his ear. “The consciousness of possessing that rare gift, genius, is ample recompense — save in moments of despondency.”
“And yet you talk of melancholy and gangrene, Mr. Raby, and such like unpleasant topics!”
“The lives of great men are frequently marked by unhappiness,” observed Raby. “In saying ‘great men,’ I mean men inwardly great, men of genius, of imaginative intellect. Look at some of our dead poets — at what is said of them.”
“I think their fault lay in looking at the dark side of things, instead of the bright,” laughed Maria. “Like yourself at present. You will keep turning to that gloomy point, where the scenery is all obscure, nothing bright but the great moon itself; and that shines right in your face.”
“They could not look otherwise than they did,” he argued, his own tone sounding melancholy enough.
“Well, well, I suppose it is the fate of genius,” returned Maria. “I was reading lately, in a French work, some account of the life of Leonardo da Vinci. He was not a happy man.”
“He was called Da Vinci the Unhappy. How many of his brethren might have been called so!”
“Were I you, I should not make up my mind to be one of them; I should be just the contrary,” said Maria, gaily. “Fancy goes a great way in this life. And so,” she added, after a pause, “you think some of the queer old temples in Italy must look like that?” pointing to the Folly. “How I wish I could see them!”
“How I wish we could see them!” he murmured— “that we could see them together!”
Perhaps he wondered whether he had said too much. She did not check him, — only turned, and began to move back towards the drawing-room, her arm within his.
“We may see them together,” she said, at length. “You will, of necessity, visit Italy; I, of inclination, and we may meet there. I hope we shall know you in after life, Mr. Raby; but of that there will be little doubt. Everybody will know you, for you will be one of England’s famous painters.”
They reached the window, and he took her hand in his, though there was no necessity, to assist her over the low step; he kept it longer than he need have done. Not for the first time, by several, had he thus clasped it in the little courtesies of life. Oh, Raby Raby! can you not see that it had been better for you to clasp some poisonous old serpent? He did not enter, but turned away.
Lady Saxonbury was in the room then, in her easy-chair, which had its back to the window. The tea was on the table, and Miss Saxonbury began to pour it out “My dear,” cried Lady Saxonbury, a simple-hearted, kind woman, “where’s that poor painter? I daresay he would like some tea.”
“He was on the terrace just now,” replied Maria. “He must feel very dull,” resumed Lady Saxonbury. “I fear, child, we neglect him. Send one of the servants to ask him to come in.”
The “poor painter,” lost in anticipations of the time when he should be a rich one, was leaning against the railings, whence he had stood and gazed abroad with Miss Saxonbury, — the purse she had given him lying in his bosom. In the last few weeks his whole existence had changed, for he had learnt to love Maria Saxonbury with a wild, passionate love. To be near her was bliss, even to agitation; to hear her speak set his frame trembling; to touch her hand sent his heart’s blood thrilling through his veins. It is only these imaginative, unearthly natures, too sensitive and refined for the uses of common life, that can tell of this intense, pure, etherealised passion, which certainly partakes more of heaven than of earth. He stood there, indulging a vision of hope — a deceitful, glowing vision. He saw not himself as he was, but as he should be — the glorious painter, to whose genius the whole world would bow. Surely there was no such impassable barrier between that worshipped painter and the daughter of Sir Arthur Saxonbury!
Alas for the improbable dream he was suffering himself to nourish! alas for its fatal ending! Three or four weeks more of its sweet delusion, and then it was rudely broken. Mr. Yorke, a relative of Sir Arthur’s, and the heir presumptive to a portion of his estates, arrived at Saxonbury. He had been named Arthur Mair, after Sir Arthur. Raby Verner recognised him, for they had been at Christ Church together, but he had not recalled him to his memory since, and had never known him as the relative of Sir Arthur Saxonbury. He was a tall, strong, handsome young fellow; but ere he had been two days at Saxonbury, a rumour, or suspicion, (in the agitation of Raby’s feelings he hardly knew which,) reached the artist that his visit was to Maria, that she was intended for her cousin’s wife. The same evening, calm and lovely as the one when they had looked forth together at the Folly, the truth became clear to Raby.
They were seated in the drawing-room, all the family, when Maria stepped on to the terrace, and the artist followed her. Presently Arthur Yorke saw them pacing it together, Raby having given her his arm. Mr. Yorke drew down the corners of his lips, and stalked out.
“Thank you,” he said to Raby, with freezing politeness, as he authoritatively drew away Maria’s arm and placed it within his own, “I will take charge of Miss Saxonbury if she wishes to walk.”
He strode away with her, and Raby, with a drooping head and sinking heart, descended the middle steps of the terrace. He stole along under cover of its high wall — anywhere to hide himself and his outraged feelings. That action, those words of Mr. Yorke’s, had but too surely betrayed his interest in Maria. He came to the end of the terrace, and found they had halted there, right above him. He was to hear worse words now, and he could not help himself.
“Then you had no business to do it — you had no right to do it,” Maria was saying, in a petulant tone. “He was not going to eat me, if I did walk with him.”
“Excuse me, Maria, I am the best judge. Raby was in the position of a gentleman once, but things have changed with him.”
“Rubbish!” retorted Miss Saxonbury. “He is papa’s guest; and he is as good as you. A gentleman once, a gentleman always.”
“I am not saying he is not a gentleman. But he is no longer in the position of one.”
“He was born and reared one; he will always be one; quite as much as you are,” persisted Maria, in her tantalising spirit “Well, I don’t care, then, to put my objection on that score. But it is not agreeable to me to see you walking and talking so familiarly with him.”
“Just say you are jealous at once, Arthur. If you think to control me, I can tell you” —
“Hallo, Arthur! Step here a moment.”
The voice was Sir Arthur Saxonbury’s. Maria paused in her speech, and Mr. Yorke unwillingly retired towards the drawing-room. Raby, in the frenzy of the moment, darted up the end steps, startling her by his sudden appearance.
“Miss Saxonbury! will you answer me? — Forgive me,” he panted, as he laid his hand upon her arm, in his painful eagerness— “forgive me that I must ask the question! Has Arthur Yorke a right to take you from me, as he did but now?”
“Of course he has not, Mr. Raby. How can he have?”
“I mean — pray forgive me — the right of more than cousinship?”
She was half terrified at his parted lips, his laboured breathing, his ghastly face, from which suspense took every vestige of colour, and she saw that she might not dare to tamper with him; that the kinder course, now, was to set his ambitious dream at rest “Well, then,” she whispered, “though of course he had not the right to interfere, and it was very bad taste, and I will not submit to his whims, yet, yet — the time may come when he will be to me more than a cousin.”
His hand unloosed its clasp of her arm, and Maria Saxonbury hastened towards the drawing-room. He watched her in, and then, when no human eye or ear was near, his head sunk upon the cold railings, and a low wail of anguish went forth on the quiet evening air. Too surely, though Maria Saxonbury might never know it, had the iron entered into his soul.
CHAPTER IV.
The Blow telling Home.
IN December, business took Sir Arthur Saxonbury to London. He paid a visit to the artist Coram, but he did not see Raby. His easel and chair were there, but the former had no work in its frame, and the chair was empty.
“Has he abjured the art, or found another studio?” inquired Sir Arthur.
The great painter shook his head. “He has not abjured it. A different art — or power — is claiming him now; one to which we must all succumb — Death.” —
“Death!” echoed Sir Arthur. —
“He has gone off very rapidly; in a decline, or something of that sort. I saw him two days ago, and I did not think, then, he would last until now. I wonder I have not heard of his death.”
“What can be the cause of its coming on so suddenly? He was remarkably well when at Saxonbury. I saw no symptom of decline or any other illness! about him then.”
“Do you remember my telling you, Sir Arthur, that a blow to the feelings would kill him?”
Sir Arthur considered. “I think I do.”
“He has had it, unless I am mistaken. He got it at Saxonbury.”
“What do you mean?” inquired the baronet.
“I do not understand it, — and indeed it is no business of mine, — but when he came up from Saxonbury, he had certainly received his death-blow. A suspicion has crossed me whether your lovely daughter had anything to do with it. Pardon me, Sir Arthur, we are old friends — it is a thought only mentioned to you.”
“I should like to see him,” said Sir Arthur. “Will you go with me?”
They went. Raby was still alive, but it was getting towards his last day of life. He lay panting on his humble bed, alone. A hectic flush, even then, lighted up his wasted cheek at sight of her father. Sir Arthur, inexpressibly shocked, sat down by him, and took his poor damp hand.
“What can you have been doing to yourself,” he asked, “to get into this state?”
“I think it was inherent,” murmured Raby. “My mother died in a decline.”
“You have had the best advice, I hope?”
Raby made a movement of dissent. “A medical student, whom I know, comes in sometimes. I could not call in good advice, for I had not the means to pay for it.”
“Oh, my boy!” uttered Sir Arthur, in a tone of anguish, as he leaned over him, “why did you not let me know this? Half my purse should have been yours, for your mothers sake.”
“All the skill in England would not have availed me,” he earnestly said. “Sir Arthur, it is best as it is, for I am going to her. She has been waiting for me all these years. She told me my lot would not be a happy one. But it will soon be over now,” he added, his voice growing fainter; “earthly pain of all kinds has nearly passed away.”
Curious thoughts were perplexing Sir Arthur Saxonbury as he quitted the scene. If a rude blow to his feelings had indeed caused Raby to sink into bodily illness, and thence to death, and that blow had been dealt by Maria Saxonbury, how very like it was to retribution for the blow Maria Raby had dealt out to him! He was a strong man, and had weathered it, but it had left more permanent traces on his heart than he had suffered the world to know. Sir Arthur lost himself in these thoughts, and then shook them off as a disagreeable and unsatisfactory theme.
