Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Indice da Obra Atual Anterior: XXI - “We are in Love’s Hand To-day” Seguinte: XXIII - DIES VENERIS
(p. 197)
CAPÍTULO XXII
FOR HER SAKE
“ENTREZ!” cried Tristan, standing before his easel, brush in hand. And from without, the door of the studio was opened, and the visitor entered accordingly, doffing his hat as he appeared, with the most polished air in the world, and executing a bow, the easy grace and educated style of which might have filled with envy the bosom of the first courtier in Europe.
It was believed by many able observers that Vane Vaurien owed his whole success in life to his perfect manner.
Tristan looked up from his canvas carelessly enough, but his glance no sooner lighted on the stranger than he experienced again that strange sensation with which Vaurien’s scrutiny had inspired him a few nights before at the Opera. A hot wind like the breath of a simoon seemed to sweep across him. He shuddered, sickened, and instinctively interposed his hand between his own eyes and his visitor’s.
“You do not recognise me, M. Le Rodeur,” said a suave tenor voice, remarkable for its gay and buoyant élan. "How should you? You know too many people! But perhaps my intrusion here will not seem to you to need an apology when l mention my long intimacy (Vane was stretching a point here), with your friend Brabazon and his delightful sister.”
Tristan brightened in a moment, and made an effort to recover himself.
“Ah! You know Fräulein Stern also? But I am yet ignorant of Monsieur’s name.”
“It is Vane Vaurien. And I have that great pleasure of which you
(p. 198)
speak. Indeed, it is principally the extreme interest I take in that charming lady – combined, perhaps, with my æsthetic tastes – which have made me a trespasser here to-day, and procured me the satisfaction of meeting you, M. Le Rodeur. (He bowed again.) It is whispered about Paris that you are painting her picture.”
Tristan flushed with surprise, and hesitated painfully. Some powerful and irresistible impulse compelled him to deny this man the favour he asked with so much grace.
“I am sorry I cannot show you this sketch – it is not much more than a sketch at present, and it is my particular wish that it should not be seen until it is completed. I had no idea anyone knew about it.”
“You forget, M. Le Rodeur, that the employments of genius cannot he kept secret in the midst of an æsthetic people.”
Vane accompanied the words with a bend of his head; he thought the boy would be fascinated by the magnificent compliment.
“You flatter me grossly, M. Vaurien,” said Tristan, “I know what I am.”
“That is exactly what I want to know also,” reflected Vane, but he only answered,
“Paris knows, my friend, that you are one of the men of the future.”
“Paris is wiser than I am,” responded Tristan, negligently. And he washed his brushes in a bottle of turpentine one after another, and began wiping them upon a paint-stained cloth which covered his knees.
“What?” said Vaurien, with a more genuine manner than he had yet displayed, “do you mean to tell me that your success or your failure can signify so little to you as your words seems to imply? Your fortunes must indeed be secure and happy to warrant so much indifference.”
Again the shadow of old age darkened Tristan’s melancholy face.
“You misunderstand me, Monsieur,” said he, “I do not trouble myself
(p. 199)
about my fortunes. I have faith in my Destiny. It will come to me as it comes. But I care little for the approval of criticism, because such success is a mere accident, resulting from a combination of circumstances and conditions which may or may not belong to and affect me.”
“So you have no ambition?” pursued Vane, regarding the boy with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
“I distrust all ambitions. Most are the offspring of mere Vanity, others called nobler, are but misdirected aspirations.”
“And does your friend, Madame the Countess, approve of these sentiments, Monsieur?”
The blood rushed into Tristan’s face; and with it the indefinable haunting sense of horror which had intuitively connected itself with his visitor’s presence, returned upon him in all its former intensity, and for a moment absolutely deprived him of speech. In this man’s hands, and under this man’s eye, Le Rodeur felt he might become a mere puppet, a fool, a contemptible hysteric imbecile. Already it seemed to the boy that his power of thought was beginning to desert him, that he was no longer capable of expressing himself in intelligible language; and even that the words he was compelled to adopt, perverted, instead of conveying his ideas. While he remained silent, endeavouring to combat the growing weakness, Vaurien, hungry to got at some substantial information, again took up his parable.
“M. Le Rodeur, you must dine with me to-night.” (“Plenty of wine,” he thought, “and a repast of some half-dozen courses will open the boy’s heart to me.”)
For in his experience of life, Vaurien had always found men most inclined to be friendly over the dinner-table, whence it followed, naturally enough, that a Lucullan symposium was not less his solution for all human difficulties than his panacea for all mortal disorders.
But Tristan’s reply considerably disconcerted him.
(p. 200)
“You must excuse me, Monsieur, I never dine,” said he, curtly.
“Not dine!” exclaimed Vaurien. He would have been less astonished if Tristan had told him that he never breathed.
“At least, not in your sense of the word, probably,” added the younger man, ”because I neither eat flesh nor drink alcohol.”
Vaurien lifted his shoulders and almost laughed. He began to think this mad boy decidedly entertaining.
“Ah!” said he, with dulcet cynicism. “Vegetarianism and total abstinence! Happy combination!”
“Does it seem so ridiculous a thing to you?” rejoined Tristan indifferently. “You spoke just now of your æsthetic tastes. Well, I have my æsthetic tastes also. I worship the Beautiful. And one of the articles of my creed is a belief in the beauty of supporting my life without the shedding of innocent blood.”
“Mais, mon cher ami, que voulez-vous donc?”
“I would enjoy to the utmost all the delight in creation of which my spirit and my senses are capable. I would realize to the full my gift of inborn harmony with the universe of being. I would be able to say to every creature upon earth, ‘It is my privilege to participate in your joys and to symphathise with your misfortunes, for I do you no wilful injury.’ "
“All this is admirable,” said Vaurien, smoothing the perfurmed wax on his moustaches to conceal a smile, “but what are you, my dear fellow, to the millions of men who will always continue to slay and eat?”
“What are the millions to me?” retorted Tristan. “I seek my own salvation – salvation in the sense in which Plutarch and the old Stoic moralists used the word – my own health of soul and body. The ancient story of Paradise, which placed the original home of man in a garden, and gave him for his natural food the herbs and fruits of the ground, is no mere fantastic romance, but a significant lesson for a lost humanity. With the Fall only, came the desire for blood. It is upon Reverence that the religion of a nobler age must be hereafter based, –
(p. 201)
reverence for everything which draws the breath of life in earth or sea or air, reverence for the marvellous powers of Nature, reverence for the incarnate God, above, around, and beneath us, for the living Logos, manifested, not in the form of one solitary seer and prophet some two thousand years ago, but the Word made flesh among us now, the Word whose glory we may behold with our own eyes every day of every year, the glory of the Only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. For that Logos is the great Omniscient Pan, in whom we ourselves live and move and have our being. Then when this tender reverence fills our spirits, will Paradise be ours again.”
“Ah! You should cross the Atlantic, my dear fellow,” said Vaurien, perfectly unmoved by Tristan’s evident emotion; “what an apostle you would make for the New Americans! Recollect that to fulfil the conditions of success, it is not sufficient to be the right man, you must also be in the right place. Always remember that!”
“Success again!” muttered the boy irritably, “nothing but that!”
“At least,” resumed Vaurien, after a pause, “pour revenir à nos moutons; if you will not dine, you can breakfast with me. There can be nothing to urge against an omelette and coffee! Let us say noon to-morrow?”
“Ah, that is my dinner-hour,” said Tristan, smiling in his turn.
“Well, make it your dinner then my dear boy – only come.”
While Tristan, wavering between his fear of seeming discourteous and his unconquerable repugnance to Vaurien, feigned to busy himself with his palette and colour tubes, a kindly hand was laid on his shoulder and another voice – the welcome baritone of Diana’s diplomatic brother, reassured him.
“If you accept your new friend’s invitation, Le Rodeur, you must faithfully promise to be with us half-an-hour later! You have an appointment with my sister, you know, and ladies are always
(p. 202)
exigeantes! Ah, Vaurien, how are you? You are quite the last man I expected to find here!”
“Really?” responded Vane in his blandest and most offensive style; “I cannot return your pleasantry, for – en effet – my knowledge of your character absolutely led me to expect you. I suppose now, that with that enthusiasm for art which so eminently distinguishes you, you have adopted our young friend, Le Rodeur, as a sort of – what shall I say? – as a companion luminary to the fair Teutonic Star; eh? Positively, your family appears to have quite a genius for Mentorship! eh?”
His quick observant eye carried him as he spoke from Tristan’s reddened cheek to the blanched indignant face of Vivian, and the hasty examination seemed to satisfy him. But the trepidation of the younger man arose from more causes than Vane suspected, and was due, less to the consciousness of love than to a sensitive alarm that by some mysterious means this odious stranger had become acquainted with the facts of Adelheid’s actual history and parentage. Or was this last remark only a chance hit – an airy pun upon her German pseudonym?
Vane rose from his chair.
“Well then, M. Le Rodeur, since you are so agreeably engaged to-morrow, I must await some future time when Fate perhaps will be kinder to me and permit us to effect arrangements for another rendezvous.” (“Not in your hearing though,” he added, mentally, flinging a glance at Vivian. “Confound that fellow, he always gets in my way!”)
Taking his elaborate leave as gracefully as he had introduced himself, Vane departed. Pausing a moment on the doorstep below as he lit the inevitable manilla, he said to himself, ”We are all three in the race, I perceive; however I will take care that the favorite is scratched before very long. Curious! that I should feel so much interest in an affair of this sort – absurd for a fellow of my experience. But she’s a charming little fairy, and l never give up a thing for which I’m once entered.”
(p. 203)
That last phrase contained the secret of all the real power in Vaurien’s character. He had it in him to be as true to the object of his aspirations as the compass needle to the north pole, but this strength of purpose misapplied to ungenerous ends, became in him mere inflexibility.
Vaurien’s head was very singularly shaped. Phrenologically, the attributes of firmness and self-esteem were extraordinarily prominent, and over the organ of reverence was a sudden depression, like a landslip in a hilly country. In fact this peculiarity of top-knot was an heirloom of Norman origin, and had distinguished the noble craniums of the Sires de Vaureine in feudal times before Dr. Donovan was dreamed of. No wonder then that the latest scion of such fallen greatness was proud of this incontrovertible proof of his own legitimacy, and with filial determination to make the most of his hereditary distinction, was fain to encourage a picturesque baldness which had long laid bare, à l’antique, the upper part of his illustrious forehead.
But while Vaurien sauntered jauntly away in the direction of the Café Riche, this is the dialogue which was taking place above, in Tristan’s studio.
“I would not talk to that fellow if I were you, Le Rodeur. Remember the old warning of the wise man: ‘Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.’ Mind, I only say this by way of caution for the future; I don’t know whether you have done anything imprudent yet in the conversational line. ‘Fore-warned is fore-armed.’ ”
Tristan looked up at him in grateful surprise. “I thought,” said he, “that you were a man of the world and a diplomatist, Sir Vivian.”
“So I am, I hope. But you are neither, or you would know that one of the earliest lessons which both the world and diplomacy teach is precisely that aphorism I have just quoted. Le Rodeur, you must learn to know when, where, and to whom you may reveal yourself.”
(p. 204)
“You take an interest in me, Sir Vivian?” cried Tristan, turning abruptly round and looking earnestly at his companion. ”How then have I been fortunate enough to secure your regard?”
The generous heart of the baronet throbbed, for its wound was a very recent one yet; but he only answered:
“You have genius, my dear boy, and you have fallen into the hands of a man of talent. Is that not reason enough for my sympathy?”
“Is he a man of talent, then?” asked Tristan, playing with his brushes.
“Undoubtedly. He is also a man of experience. And he wants to make use of you in some way, else he would not have sought your acquaintance.”
“Of what use can I possibly be to him?” pursued the boy. “I, with my ignorance of the world?”
“Probably he wishes to gain information about some person or even whose history he fancies may be familiar to you. And if this should be his design, your ignorance of the world is the very bait which would most allure him. I am a diplomatist – you see, Le Rodeur, so I can give a pretty shrewd guess at the motives of a fellow-adept. ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’ ”
With an enthusiastic gesture and shining eyes, Tristan leaped from his chair and warmly clasped the baronet’s hand.
“Ah-h mon Dieu!” sighed the boy almost overcome by his agitation, “mon Dieu – a thousand thanks! You do not know from what ruinous imprudence it is possible that your wise advice is destined to save me. From this hour, I assure you, your friendship is a necessity to my happiness, for you have laid me under one of the deepest obligations of my life!” For the first time since he had become a man, Vivian smiled for pure joy.
Was it possible he had succeeded in being already of use to Adelheid? already perhaps a motive power in her happiness? But the
(p. 205)
young painter did not leave him much time for speculations. The boy was all aglow now with an effulgence of gratitude and confidence, and the next minute he burst into a rapid overflowing river of speech.
“Sir Vivian, you have studied men, – it has been your vocation, your profession to understand them and translate them as the savants do their books. Teach me some of your knowledge; for in my present condition of blindness and folly I shall perhaps make some dreadful, – some irretrievable error some day when you are not here to warn me of my danger. Oh, why did Madame bring me to Paris, – me, with all my miserable history tied about my throat? In my little atelier in the Rione Ponte I was altogether safe from observation and curiosity. Baldassare and I were everything to one another, and we saw nobody else all day long. But here, you see, it is quite different, and I meet so many people, – so many! – and they all ask hundreds of questions, and everybody seems to be keeping some secret or other. And trying to find out the secrets of everybody else! Oh, Baldassare, my dear good Baldassare, why was I ever wicked enough to leave you!”
He had become quite a child in the simplicity of his despair, and yet its very pathos carried with it so strong an element of comedy, that the baronet, accustomed though he was to Diana’s dramatic sallies, could scarcely forbear a laugh.
“It is very fortunate for you, my dear Le Rodeur,” said he, “that I am not precisely one of these fashionable Macchiavellis of whom you complain. For if I were, it occurs to me I might with very little exertion of my diplomatic abilities possess myself of your whole biography! Certainly if you have a secret to keep, I fully admit the imprudence of adventuring such an effervescent temperament as yours upon the social cauldron of Paris. But seriously, my very young friend, – knowledge of men and things is not communicable in the manner you seem to suppose it is. I can indeed indicate to you the method by which you also in time may acquire such knowledge; and that method is Observation.
(p. 206)
Meanwhile you may safely rest upon the scriptural advice I gave you a little while ago; and remember whenever you think you have cause to doubt that speech will prove silver, – you may then be absolutely certain silence is golden.”
“Yet, Sir Vivian, you must have meant to convey some definite idea when you said a few minutes since that I deserved your sympathy because I had fallen into the hands of a man of talent. Explain that to me at least. – have you then observed that genius and talent are antagonistic?”
“That is a strong expression, – but at least their paths lie widely asunder. Talent pleases men because it makes use of them for its own gain; Genius offends them, because it ignores them, and is independent of gain. You think that a paradox? But the practical lessons which are to be gleaned from the facts are these; that men of Talent are uniformly to be treated with caution, because they are usually unscrupulous. And that if one of their kidney succeed in making a man of genius his prey, the victim need expect neither help nor compassion from the world, because as he has always despised it and has made his life a continual reproach to it, the world will be glad enough to see him humbled by a man of its own favourites.”
“Then,” said Tristan, pensively retouching a shadow in the picture before him, “it appears to me that after all, Talent is superior to Genius, inasmuch as it is more powerful. Power is the measure of supremacy: – the sign and note of a Master. I revere it.”
“Le Rodeur,” said Vivian rising and regarding him more gravely, "take care, - you stumble. What Power? 'The children of this world are in their generation, wiser than the children of light.' The children of this world are the men of Talent – the children of light are the sons of God – of Genius. Well the men of Talent have their reward. They use men for their gain, they curry favour with the hirelings, – the multitude, – the meaner retainers of the house, they make themselves friends of Mammon. But their habitations are not lasting, their works have no tenure of immortality when their one generation
(p. 207)
has passed away. Bitter indeed was that sarcasm of the wise man!”
“I understand you, dear friend!” interrupted the boy passionately, – “you rebuke me well! That I could have been so blind! – I – with my scorn of the world! To have Power in one’s spirit, that is the thing! – to have power whether the world rise or fall, – to be as a God apart in one’s own heaven, independent of chance or of men! Ah!” he cried, wringing his hands in a transport of supreme emotion: – “if only such Power could be mine!”
“As Labour is the only price to be paid for worldly Fame,” said Vivian, observing him, – “so also Thought is the only means of attaining spiritual greatness. Years of Labour; – years of Thought.”
“My God!” murmured Tristan, – “what tumultuous imaginations pour in upon me! what hopes! what assurances arise in my heart! I feel myself destined not only for some noble life, but for the noblest life of all! I behold the existence of Truth within me, – I know that no revelation is external. Power must he evolved from within ourselves, not gathered from outward sources, for from without comes no divine illumination, no miraculous descent of God upon the soul, no sudden opening up of the supernal Eden! Nearer and nearer unto the Perfect Day, through wheels of planets floating like motes in the sunlight of Infinite Glory, from star to star, through sphere after sphere: – by myriad circles of ever widening thought, and Wonder, and Aspiration, the Spirit of Man must eternally rise!” . . . .
Índice Geral das Seções Índice da Seção Atual Indice da Obra Atual Anterior: XXI - “We are in Love’s Hand To-day” Seguinte: XXIII - DIES VENERIS