CHAPTER XI.

THE GAY SCIENCE IN A NEW ILl.u.s.tRATION.

Mary Blanchet was, for the time, one of the happiest women on the earth when she had to bestir herself, on their returning home next day, to make preparations for the test-reading of her brother's poems. To hear Herbert's poems read was a delight which could only be excelled by the pride and joy of having them read to such an audience. She had so long looked up to Minola as a leader and a princess that she at last came to regard her as the natural arbitress of the destiny of any one belonging to the Blanchet family. In some vague way she had made up her mind that if Miss Grey only gave the word of command, the young poet's works must go forth to the world, and going forth must of course be estimated at their proper worth. Her pride was double-edged. On this side there was the poet-brother to show to her friends; on that side the friend who was to be the poet-brother's patroness. Her "animula vagula, blandula"

floated all that day on the saffron and rose clouds of rising joy and fame.

Nor was her gratification at all diminished when Herbert Blanchet called very early to crave permission to bring Mr. Heron with him, and when he obtained it Blanchet had thought it prudent not to rely merely on the close friendship with Miss Grey, of which he had spoken a little too vauntingly to Victor the night before, and it seemed to him a very necessary precaution to call and ask permission to introduce his friend.

He was fortunate enough to find Minola not only willing, but even what Mary might have thought, if she had considered the matter, suspiciously willing, to receive Mr. Heron. In truth, Minola had in her mind a little plot to do a service to Mary Blanchet and her brother in the matter of the poems, and she had thought of Mr. Heron as the kindliest and likeliest person she knew to give her a helping hand in the carrying out of her project. Mary, not thinking anything of this, was yet made more happy than before by the prospect of having a handsome young man for one of the audience. As has been said already, she had the kindliest feelings to handsome young men. Then the presence of another listener would make the thing quite an a.s.sembly; almost, as she observed in gentle ecstasy more than once to Minola, as if it were one of the poetic contests of the middle ages, in which minstrels sang and peerless ladies awarded the prize of song.

So she busied herself all the morning to adorn the rooms and make them fit for the scene of a poet's triumph. She started away to Covent Garden, and got pots of growing flowers and handfuls of "cut flowers,"

to scatter here and there. She had an old guitar which she disposed on the sofa with a delightfully artistic carelessness, having tried it in all manner of positions before she decided on the final one, in which the forgetful hand of the musician was supposed to have heedlessly dropped it. All the books in the prettiest bindings--especially poems--she laid about in conspicuous places. Any articles of apparel--bonnets, wraps, and such like, that might upon an ordinary occasion have been seen on tables or chairs--were carefully stowed away in their proper receptacles--except, indeed, for a bright-colored shawl, which, thrown gracefully across an arm of the sofa, made, in conjunction with the guitar, quite an artistic picture in itself. Near the guitar, too, in a moment of sudden inspiration, she arranged a glove of Nola's--a glove only once worn, and therefore for all pictorial effect as good as new, while having still the pretty shape of the owner's hand expressed in it. What can there be, Mary Blanchet thought, more winsome to look at, more suggestive of all poetic thought, than the carelessly-lying glove of a beautiful girl? But she took good care not to consult the owner of the glove on any such point, dreading with good reason Minola's ruthless scorn of all shams and prearranged affectations.

Mary was a little puzzled about the art fixtures, if such an expression may be used, of the room--the framed engravings, which belonged to the owner of the house and were let with the lodgings, of which they were understood to count among the special attractions. She had a strong conviction that her brother would not admire them--would think meanly of them, and say so; and although Minola herself now and then made fun of them, yet it did not by any means follow that she should be pleased to hear them disparaged by a stranger. About the wall paper she was also a little timorous, not feeling sure as to the expression which its study might call into her brother's critical eye. She could not, however, remove the engravings, and doing anything with the paper was still more completely out of the question. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to hope that his poetry and his audience would so engross the poet as to deprive his eyes of perception for cheap art and ill-disciplined colors.

There was to be tea, delightfully served in dainty little cups, and Mary could already form in her mind an idea of the graceful figure which Minola would make as she offered her hospitality to the poet. An alarm, however, began to possess her as the day went on, about the possibility of Minola not being home in time for the reception of the strangers. In order that she might have the place quite to herself to carry out her little schemes of decoration, the artful poetess had persuaded Minola not to give up her usual walk in the park, and now suppose Minola forgot the hour, or lost her way, or was late from any cause, and had not time to make any change in her walking dress, or actually did not come in until long after the visitors had arrived! What on earth was she, Mary, to do with them?

This alarm, however, proved unfounded. Minola came back in very good time, looking healthy and bright, with some raindrops on her hair, and putting away with good-humored contempt all suggestions about an elaborate change of dress. Miss Blanchet would have liked her leader to array herself in some sort of way that should suggest a queen of beauty, or princess of culture, or other such imposing creature. At all events she would have liked trailing skirts and much perfume. She only sighed when Minola persisted in showing herself in very quiet costume.

The rattle of a hansom cab was heard at last--at last, Mary thought--in reality a few minutes before the time appointed; and the poet and Mr.

Heron entered. The poet was somewhat pale, and a little preoccupied. He had a considerable bulk of ma.n.u.script in his hand. The ma.n.u.script was in itself a work of art, as he had already explained to Victor. Each page was a large leaf of elaborately rough and expensive paper, and the lines of poetry, written out with exquisitely careful penmanship, occupied but a small central plot, so to speak, of the field of white. The margins were rich in quaint fantasies of drawing, by the poet himself, and various artists of his brotherhood. Sometimes a thought, or incident, or phrase of the text was ill.u.s.trated on the margin, in a few odd, rapid strokes. Sometimes the artist, without having read the text, contributed some fancy or whimsy of his own; sometimes it was a mere monogram, sometimes a curious, perplexed, pictorial conceit; now merely the face of a pretty woman, and again some bewildering piece of eccentric symbolism, about the meaning whereof all observers differed. It must be owned that as Minola looked at these ornaments of the ma.n.u.script, she could not help feeling a secret throb of satisfaction at the evidence they gave that the reading would not be quite so long as the first sight of the ma.s.s of paper had led her to expect.

Mr. Blanchet did not do much in the way of preliminary conversation. He left all that to Minola and Victor; and the latter was seldom wanting in talk when he believed himself to have sympathetic listeners. It should be said that the well-ordered guitar effect proved a failure; for Mr.

Blanchet soon after entering the room flung himself into what was to have been a poetic att.i.tude on the sofa, and came rather awkwardly on the guitar, and was a little vexed at the thought of being made to seem ridiculous.

Every one was anxious that a beginning of the reading should be made, and no one seemed to know exactly how to start it. Suddenly Mr. Blanchet arose, as one awakened from a dream.

"May I beg, Miss Grey, for three favors?"

Minola bowed and waited.

"First, I cannot read by daylight. My poems are not made for day. They need a peculiar setting. May I ask that the windows be closed and the lamps lighted? I see you have lamps."

"Certainly, if you wish," and Minola promptly rang the bell.

"Thank you very much. In the second place I would ask that no sign of approval or otherwise be given as I read. The whole must be the impression, not any part. It must be felt as a whole, or it is not felt at all. Until the last line is read no judgment can be formed."

This was discouraging and even depressing, but everybody promised.

Minola in particular began to fear that poets were not so much less objectionable than other men as she had hoped. She could not tell why, but as she listened to the child of genius she was filled with a strange memory of Mr. Augustus Sheppard. Everything that seemed formal and egotistic reminded her of Mr. Augustus Sheppard.

"Then," continued Herbert, "when I have finished the last line, you will perhaps allow me to leave you at once, without formality, and without even speaking? I ask for no sudden judgment; that I shall hear another time; too soon, perhaps," and he indulged in a faint smile. "But I prefer to go at once, when I have read a poem; it is a peculiarity of mine," and he pa.s.sed his hand through his hair. "Reading excites me, and I am overwrought. It may not be so with others, but it is so with me."

"I can quite understand," the good-natured Victor hastened to say.

"Quite natural--quite so. I have often worked myself into such a state of excitement, thinking of things--not poetry, of course, but colonial affairs, and such dry stuff--that I have to go out at night, perhaps, and walk in the cool air, and recover myself. Don't you feel so sometimes, Miss Grey?"

"Oh, no; I am neither poet nor politician, and I have nothing to think about." At the moment she thought Blanchet a sham, and Heron rather a weak and foolish person for encouraging him. What would you have of men?

"I have felt so often," Mary Blanchet said with a gentle sigh.

Miss Grey did not doubt that people felt so; that everybody might feel so under appropriate conditions. It was the deliberate arranging of preliminaries by Mr. Blanchet that vexed her; it seemed so like affectation and play-acting. She was prepared to think his poetry rubbish.

It was not rubbish, however; not mere rubbish, by any means. Mr.

Blanchet had a considerable mastery of the art of arranging together melodious and penetrating words, and he caught up cleverly and adopted the prevailing idea and purpose of the small new group of yet hardly known artists in verse and color, to whom it was his pride to belong.

His poems belonged to what might be called the literature of disease. In principle, they said to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my mother and my sister." They dealt largely in graves and corpses, and the loves of skeletons, and the sweet virtues of sin, and the joys of despair and dyspepsia. They taught that there is no truth but paradox. Mr. Blanchet read his contributions with great effect: in a voice now wailing, now threatening, now storming fiercely, now creeping along in tones of the lowest hoa.r.s.eness. What amazed Minola was, to find that any man could have so little sense of the ridiculous as to be able to go through such a performance in a small room before three people. In a crowd there might be courage; but before three! It was wonderful. She felt horribly inclined to laugh; but the gleaming eyes of the poet alighted on hers and fastened them every now and then; and poor Mary too, she knew, was watching her.

It was very trying to her. She endeavored to fill her mind with serious and sad thoughts; and she could not keep herself from thinking of the scene in Richter's "Flegeljahre" where the kin of the eccentric testator are trying in fierce rivalry who shall be the first to shed a tear for his loss, in presence of the notary and the witnesses, and thereby earn the legacy to which that exasperating condition was attached. After all it is probably easier to restrain a laugh than to pump up a tear, especially when the coming of the tear must bring the drying glow of a glad success with it. Minola's condition was bearable; and indeed, when she saw the genuine earnestness of the poet, her inclination to laugh all died away, and she became filled with pity and pain. Then she tried hard to admire the verses, and could not. At first the conceits and paradoxes were a little startling, and even shocking, and they made one listen. But the mind soon became attuned to them and settled down, and was stirred no more. Once you knew that Mr. Blanchet liked corpses, his peculiarity became of no greater interest than if his liking had been for babies. When it was made clear that what other people called hideousness he called beauty, it did not seem to matter much more than honest Faulconbridge's determination, if a man's name be John, to call him Peter.

The poet sometimes closed his eyes for a minute together, and pressed his hand upon his brow, while drops of perspiration stood distinctly on his livid forehead. But he took breath again, and went on. He evidently thought his audience could not have enough of it. The poem was, in fact, a chaplet of short poem-beads. Many of its pa.s.sages had the peculiarity that they came to a sudden end exactly when the listeners supposed that the interest of the thing was only going to begin. When a page was ended the poet lifted it, so to speak, with the sudden effort of one hand and arm, as though it were something heavy like a shield, and then flung it from him, looking fixedly into the eyes of some one of the three listeners the while. This formality impressed Mary Blanchet immediately.

It seemed the very pa.s.sion and wrestling of poetic inspiration; the prophetic fury rushing into action through the prophet.

Minola once or twice glanced at the face of Victor Heron. At first it was full of respectful and anxious attention, animated now and then by a sudden flicker of surprise. Of late these feelings and moods had gradually changed, and after a while the settling-down condition had clearly arrived. At length Miss Grey could see that while Mr. Heron still maintained an att.i.tude of the most courteous attention, his ears were decidedly with his heart, and that was far away--with his own grievance and the St. Xavier's Settlements.

At last it was over. The close, for all their previous preparation, took the small audience by surprise. It came thus:

I asked of my soul--What is death?

I asked of my love--What is hate?

I asked of decay--Art thou life?

And of night--Art thou day?

Did they answer?

The poet looked up with eyes of keen and almost fierce inquiry. The audience quailed a little, but, not feeling the burden of response thrown upon them, resumed their expectant att.i.tudes, waiting to hear what the various oracles had said to their poetic questioner. But they were taken in, if one might use so homely an expression. The poem was all over. That was the beginning and the end of it. The poet flung away his last page, and sank dreamy, exhausted, back into his chair. A moment of awful silence succeeded. Then he gathered up his illuminated scrolls, rose from his chair, bowed gravely, and left the room, Mary Blanchet hurried after him.

Minola was perplexed, depressed, and remorseful. She thought there must be something in the productions which made their author so much in earnest, and she was afraid she had not seemed attentive enough, or that Blanchet had detected her in her early inclination to smile. There was an embarra.s.sed pause when Victor and she were left together.

"He reads very well," Heron said at last. "A capital reader, I think.

Don't you? He throws his soul into it. That's the great thing."

"It is," said Minola, "if it's much to throw--oh, I don't know what I mean by that. But how do you like the poems?"

"Well, I am sure they must be very fine. I should rather hear the judgment of some one else. I should like to hear you speak first. You tell me what you think of them and then I'll tell you, as the children say."

"I don't care about them," said Minola, shaking her head sadly. "I have tried, Mr. Heron; but I can't admire them. I can't see any originality, or poetry, or anything in them. I could not admire them--unless a command came express from the Queen to tell me to think them good."

"So you read the 'Misanthrope'--Moliere's 'Misanthrope?'" Victor said eagerly, and having caught in a moment Minola's whimsical allusion to the duty of a loyal critic when under royal command.

"Yes, I used to pa.s.s half my time reading it; I have almost grown into thinking that I have a sort of copyright in it. Alceste is my chief hero, Mr. Heron."

"I wish I were like him," said Mr. Heron.

"I wish you were," she answered gravely.

"But I am not--unfortunately."

"Unfortunately," she repeated, determined to pay no compliment.

"You must let me come some day and have a long talk with you about Moliere," Victor said, nothing discouraged, having wanted no compliment, nor thought of any.

"I shall be delighted; you shall talk and I will listen. I am so glad to find a companion in Moliere. But I wish I could have admired Mr.

Blanchet's poems. I prefer my own ever so much."