CAPÍTULO 39.

 

            BY THE end of a fortnight from their arrival in England, Noel had performed all necessary duties in London and Devonshire. Dame Partridge had come from Linnwood, and fulfilled all requisite functions as factotum to Margaret and the children, to their mutual delight; and the whole party had, under Noel’s escort, reached the shores of the Mediterranean in search of their relatives, who, little anticipating such an approach, had wandered continually onwards and southwards, until it became a matter requiring some ingenuity and perseverance to track them.

 

            By Noel’s thoughtfulness and tact the journey was so arranged as to afford the greatest possible happiness and least possible inconvenience to Margaret and himself. On his discovering that his uncle and the Bevans had left Nice, where they had been last heard from, and telling Margaret that he proposed to follow until they came up with them, and would endeavour to spare her all trouble and fatigue, she simply said, –

 

            ‘As you please. I know you will act for the best;’ and thenceforward abstained from questioning any of his arrangements for the journey, or hesitating to accept any pleasure that

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he proposed by the way. The presence of the dame, so far from annoying Edmund by proving a restraint, was of the greatest service, inasmuch as it enabled him to enjoy far greater liberty of intercourse with Margaret than he would otherwise have deemed advisable. She was such an admirable old woman, too; so cheerful with the little ones, and so attentive to every little need; so unobtrusive and uninquisitive, and with such a pleasant way of taking it for granted that whatever they did was natural and right and becoming, and the best and only thing to be done.

 

            If she had at first been disposed to fear that the separation between James and Margaret might have had its origin in any incongruity of disposition, the notion was early dispelled by observing the habit of assent and compliance which pervaded all Margaret’s relations with Noel. And she only thought how well the marriage had turned out which was productive of the growth of such a friendly and sympathetic disposition.

 

            The drive from Nice to Genoa, in an open carriage, along the Riviera, was one of continual delight, the fineness of the weather allowing the scenery of land and sea to be displayed in all its most exquisite colouring. At Genoa they learnt that orders had been given, at least a fortnight back, to forward letters for Mr. Tresham to Florence. So, after a visit to whatever was worth seeing in Genoa, they proceeded by steamer to Leghorn, and thence by railway to Florence. Arrived there, Noel had the satisfaction of finding that he had not yet to yield the custody of his cherished ward; inasmuch as the fugitives had, after a brief sojourn in Florence, returned to Leghorn, and taken their departure by sea for Naples.

 

            Noel went back to his hotel, after obtaining this information, radiant with delight, crying, –

 

            ‘A reprieve! a reprieve! After all there fatigues of locomotion you must have a week’s rest, see Florence, and then on to Napoli la bella. And in the mean time we will save appearances by writing, and waiting for answers.’

 

            In Florence, during the season of flowers, nature and art are serious rivals to each other. Margaret and Noel divided their days between the indoor and outdoor attractions of the place. The mornings were given to the galleries and the churches; the evenings to pleasant walks and drives, and note-making of things seen, said, and done. The week in Florence flew by only too rapidly. In every phase and aspect Noel found Margaret perfect. The good dame, too, was delighted to see her young mistress

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once more the enthusiast of the studios and galleries as of old in Rome with ‘Mr. James.’ And the development that had taken place in her circumstances and character in the mean time, gave a fitness of appreciation and understanding that left nothing to be desired by her companion.

 

            It was a new revelation to Noel of the capacity of a really pure and elevated woman to be a companion to a man, to find that they could together visit and criticise objects which he had ever before shunned in the presence of ladies. The glories of Florence were new to her, though not to him. Yet she gave him a deeper insight into many things than he had ever before dreamt of. Above all, when, after gazing for some moments upon the famous Venus di Medici, she turned away murmuring, –

 

            ‘No; that is not the attitude either of purity or modesty. It is too self-conscious.’

 

            And Noel, overhearing her reflection, treasured it up for his own guidance against the time when he should carry out his design of representing his ideal of female beauty. For he still clung to his old passion for sculpture; and after Margaret rose upon him, the rays of beauty, physical and spiritual, which flowed from her form and her character, constituted for him the one standard of excellence, and dominated evermore his views of life and dreams of art.

 

            The more Noel and Margaret visited the galleries and studied the representations of loveliness, with which the masters, old and new, have illumined them, the more did Noel become impressed with a sense of the necessity for his fulfilling his long-meditated task, or rather mission, for such it appeared to his enthusiasm.

 

            ‘There are two classes of people in particular who visit great picture galleries and libraries,’ he observed to Margaret, as they were resting one day in the Uffizii; ‘those who are oppressed by the number of the books already written, or the number of the pictures already painted, and those who hold all that has already been done as of little account, because it fails to realise for them the ideal for which they crave.’

 

            ‘I wonder,’ said Margaret, ‘in how many instances the authors themselves have been satisfied with their own work. Was it because Andrea del Sarto was satisfied, or because he was dissatisfied, with his success in painting his pretty wife, that he painted her so often?’

 

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            ‘Ah! that is a problem to be solved only by means of chronological arrangement of his works. The most probable conclusion is, that, though at first proud of her beauty, he became dissatisfied with the low moral and intellectual character of the type, and then, for the sake of a quiet life, accepted the situation, and let himself down to her level.’

 

            ‘Oh, Edmund! never be tempted to do that in any work you undertake. Aim ever at your highest, no matter what personal inconvenience it may bring.’

 

            ‘You don’t think, that, supposing such to be a true account of the painter’s history, he exercised a loftier heroism in suppressing his own nature in order to keep down alongside of her to whom he was bound? Yet, if self-sacrifice be the highest virtue, what sacrifice can be greater than that which involves an abandonment of one’s own ideal of life or conduct? What can be a greater virtue than such abnegation of virtue?’

 

            ‘Once, I should have said,’ replied Margaret, ‘what are actual people as compared with one’s ideal: what are circumstances in comparison with principles? But since I have married, things have seemed to alter.’

 

            ‘You coincide at heart,’ said Noel, ‘with the opinion that an artist has no right to have any other wife than his art. Well, a great many have not. They content themselves with less settled relations, hoping to retain their liberty of ascent to higher ideals. Or would you debar them from love altogether?’

 

            ‘No, no; let them be men, and have all the hopes, and fears, and joys, and sorrows, too, of humanity, even beyond other men. The individuality of genius is more sacred than all conventions. And surely it is no mean compensation to a woman to have inspired one work of art that shall perpetuate a beauty to distant ages. What can it matter to her what becomes of her poor self, if she knows the world to be the richer by one gleam of beauty, or one warm tone for her having lived or suffered?’

 

            ‘There speaks the true artist-soul,’ exclaimed Noel: ‘self nothing, art everything. You would go heart and soul with the heroine that Florence and George Eliot have lately given to the world. Yet I lave not the least doubt that nearly every other young lady who has read the story is only angry with Romola for not putting up with her husband, no matter what he was, after she was once married.’

 

            ‘At least I should have tried to make him better,’ returned Margaret. ‘But I can’t quite forgive Romola for being so mistaken

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in his character in the first instance. However beautiful Tito was, there must have been a narrowness in his brow, or a flatness in his head; a want of steadfastness in his eye, or shiftiness and insincerity in his speech, which indicated his real character. No, I think the artist, great and noble as Romola is made, has endowed her with scarcely sufficient instinct to be in keeping with the rest of her woman’s nature.’

 

            ‘I suppose,’ said Noel, ‘that proportion is the supreme essential of art. Certainly the want of it vitiates everything. Perhaps the author meant to imply that a woman can develop intellect only at the expense of her instincts. Now, if you are rested, let us continue our inspection. I have not yet found the Madonna I am looking for; and I begin to feel sure that Raffaelle had no Margaret for his Mary. Though his painting improved, certainly the type of his Madonnas degenerated after he came to Florence. His ideal became lowered by contact with the real which he found in this worldly city. Would, however, that he were here now!’

 

            Margaret laughed merrily at his enthusiasm for her beauty, and it made her very happy to be able to give him so much pleasure by its means. It was no new experience of hers to overhear herself likened to the Madonna. In Rome, in Mexico, and now in Florence, it was the same; and only on the previous evening, as she walked with Noel up to San Miniato to gaze upon the fair city, and watch the fireflies gleaming among the olives, she had been startled by the earnest adjurations of an old, half-crazy peasant who insisted on her identity with the Holy Mother herself.

 

            Noel inferred from this universality of the impression that expression is a ‘constant quantity’ in the human face, a universal language everywhere similarly understood and interpreted. Mentioning this to Margaret, she told him that James had in one of his bitter moods turned the resemblance ascribed into a charge against her. ‘It is nothing to be proud of,’ he had said, ‘that people can in your very looks read maternity without love.’

 

            ‘The history of Savonarola had derived a fresh interest for Noel and Margaret from the story of Romola; which they had obtained in the West Indies, and read together during the voyage; and they made a point of visiting the scene of his death. ‘The most curious thing about him,’ Noel told Margaret, ‘is the parallel that has been drawn between his career and that

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of Christ. I have heard it suggested by a clergyman, who was, however, considered more learned than orthodox, that it was not only in his earnest desire to reform the Church and regenerate his country that Savonarola resembled Jesus; but also in his being so convinced that he was immediately actuated by Deity as to believe that, brave the constituted authorities as he might, a miracle would be worked for his deliverance at the last moment; and that the cry of despair “Why hast thou forsaken me?” which proceeded alike from both at the moment of execution, was but the natural expression of anguish at the discovery of the deceptive nature of the hopes which had impelled and sustained them.’

 

            ‘I do not think much,’ replied Margaret, ‘of the heroism that confides in a superior power for deliverance in the supreme moment of trial, however much I may admire the faith. Savonarola would have seemed greater to me had he gone on steadily contending for his ideal of duty, without such regard to his own fate in this world, as is indicated by his expectation and hope of a divine interposition. The most human often seems to me the most divine.’

 

 

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