The Vicar's Daughter, George MacDonald [important books to read .txt] 📗

news he laughed merrily, and was evidently a good deal relieved. Then I asked him where he had been.

“To the city,” he answered.

“Have you sold another picture?” I asked, with an inward tribulation, half hope, half fear; for, much as we wanted the money, I could ill bear the thought of his pictures going for the price of mere pot-boilers.

“No,” he replied: “the last is stopping the way. Mr. –- has been advertising it as a bargain for a hundred and fifty. But he hasn’t sold it yet, and can’t, he says, risk ten pounds on another. What’s to come of it, I don’t know,” he added. “But meantime it’s a comfort that Jemima can wait a bit for her money.”

As we sat at supper, I thought I saw a look on Percivale’s face which I had never seen there before. All at once, while I was wondering what it might mean, after a long pause, during which we had been both looking into the fire, he said,—

“Wynnie, I’m going to paint a better picture than I’ve ever painted yet. I can, and I will.”

“But how are we to live in the mean time?” I said.

His face fell, and I saw with shame what a Job’s comforter I was. Instead of sympathizing with his ardor, I had quenched it. What if my foolish remark had ruined a great picture! Anyhow, it had wounded a great heart, which had turned to labor as its plainest duty, and would thereby have been strengthened to endure and to hope. It was too cruel of me. I knelt by his knee, and told him I was both ashamed and sorry I had been so faithless and unkind. He made little of it, said I might well ask the question, and even tried to be merry over it; but I could see well enough that I had let a gust of the foggy night into his soul, and was thoroughly vexed with myself. We went to bed gloomy, but slept well, and awoke more cheerful.

 

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE SUNSHINE.

 

As we were dressing, it came into my mind that I had forgotten to give him a black-bordered letter which had arrived the night before. I commonly opened his letters; but I had not opened this one, for it looked like a business letter, and I feared it might be a demand for the rent of the house, which was over due. Indeed, at this time I dreaded opening any letter the writing on which I did not recognize.

“Here is a letter, Percivale,” I said. “I’m sorry I forgot to give it you last night.”

“Who is it from?” he asked, talking through his towel from his dressing-room.

“I don’t know. I didn’t open it. It looks like something disagreeable.”

“Open it now, then, and see.”

“I can’t just at this moment,” I answered; for I had my back hair half twisted in my hands. “There it is on the chimney-piece.”

He came in, took it, and opened it, while I went on with my toilet. Suddenly his arms were round me, and I felt his cheek on mine.

“Read that,” he said, putting the letter into my hand.

It was from a lawyer in Shrewsbury, informing him that his godmother, with whom he had been a great favorite when a boy, was dead, and had left him three hundred pounds.

It was like a reprieve to one about to be executed. I could only weep and thank God, once more believing in my Father in heaven. But it was a humbling thought, that, if he had not thus helped me, I might have ceased to believe in him. I saw plainly, that, let me talk to Percivale as I might, my own faith was but a wretched thing. It is all very well to have noble theories about God; but where is the good of them except we actually trust in him as a real, present, living, loving being, who counts us of more value than many sparrows, and will not let one of them fall to the ground without him?

“I thought, Wynnie, if there was such a God as you believed in, and with you to pray to him, we shouldn’t be long without a hearing,” said my husband.

There was more faith in his heart all the time, though he could not profess the belief I thought I had, than there ever was in mine.

But our troubles weren’t nearly over yet. Percivale wrote, acknowledging the letter, and requesting to know when it would be convenient to let him have the money, as he was in immediate want of it. The reply was, that the trustees were not bound to pay the legacies for a year, but that possibly they might stretch a point in his favor if he applied to them. Percivale did so, but received a very curt answer, with little encouragement to expect any thing but the extreme of legal delay. He received the money, however, about four months after; lightened, to the great disappointment of my ignorance, of thirty pounds legacy-duty.

In the mean time, although our minds were much relieved, and Percivale was working away at his new picture with great energy and courage, the immediate pressure of circumstances was nearly as painful as ever. It was a comfort, however, to know that we might borrow on the security of the legacy; but, greatly grudging the loss of the interest which that would involve, I would have persuaded Percivale to ask a loan of Lady Bernard. He objected: on what ground do you think? That it would be disagreeable to Lady Bernard to be repaid the sum she had lent us! He would have finally consented, however, I have little doubt, had the absolute necessity for borrowing arrived.

About a week or ten days after the blessed news, he had a note from Mr. –-, whom he had authorized to part with the picture for thirty guineas. How much this was under its value, it is not easy to say, seeing the money-value of pictures is dependent on so many things: but, if the fairy godmother’s executors had paid her legacy at once, that picture would not have been sold for less than five times the amount; and I may mention that the last time it changed hands it fetched five hundred and seventy pounds.

Mr. –- wrote that he had an offer of five and twenty for it, desiring to know whether he might sell it for that sum. Percivale at once gave his consent, and the next day received a check for eleven pounds, odd shillings; the difference being the borrowed amount upon it, its interest, the commission charged on the sale, and the price of a small picture-frame.

The next day, Percivale had a visitor at the studio,—no less a person than Mr. Baddeley, with his shirt-front in full blossom, and his diamond wallowing in light on his fifth finger,—I cannot call it his little finger, for his hands were as huge as they were soft and white,—hands descended of generations of laborious ones, but which had never themselves done any work beyond paddling in money.

He greeted Percivale with a jolly condescension, and told him, that, having seen and rather liked a picture of his the other day, he had come to inquire whether he had one that would do for a pendant to it; as he should like to have it, provided he did not want a fancy price for it.

Percivale felt as if he were setting out his children for sale, as he invited him to look about the room, and turned round a few from against the wall. The great man flitted hither and thither, spying at one after another through the cylinder of his curved hand, Percivale going on with his painting as if no one were there.

“How much do you want for this sketch?” asked Mr. Baddeley, at length, pointing to one of the most highly finished paintings in the room.

“I put three hundred on it at the Academy Exhibition,” answered Percivale. “My friends thought it too little; but as it has been on my hands a long time now, and pictures don’t rise in price in the keeping of the painter, I shouldn’t mind taking two for it.”

“Two tens, I suppose you mean,” said Mr. Baddeley.

“I gave him a look,” said Percivale, as he described the interview to me; and I knew as well as if I had seen it what kind of a phenomenon that look must have been.

“Come, now,” Mr. Baddeley went on, perhaps misinterpreting the look, for it was such as a man of his property was not in the habit of receiving, “you mustn’t think I’m made of money, or that I’m a green hand in the market. I know what your pictures fetch; and I’m a pretty sharp man of business, I believe. What do you really mean to say and stick to? Ready money, you know.”

“Three hundred,” said Percivale coolly.

“Why, Mr. Percivale!” cried Mr. Baddeley, drawing himself up, as my husband said, with the air of one who knew a trick worth two of that, “I paid Mr. –- fifty pounds, neither more nor less, for a picture of yours yesterday—a picture, allow me to say, worth”—

He turned again to the one in question with a critical air, as if about to estimate to a fraction its value as compared with the other.

“Worth three of that, some people think,” said Percivale.

“The price of this, then, joking aside, is—?”

“Three hundred pounds,” answered Percivale,—I know well how quietly.

“I understood you wished to sell it,” said Mr. Baddeley, beginning, for all his good nature, to look offended, as well he might.

“I do wish to sell it. I happen to be in want of money.”

“Then I’ll be liberal, and offer you the same I paid for the other. I’ll send you a check this afternoon for fifty—with pleasure.”

“You cannot have that picture under three hundred.”

“Why!” said the rich man, puzzled, “you offered it for two hundred, not five minutes ago.”

“Yes; and you pretended to think I meant two tens.”

“Offended you, I fear.”

“At all events, betrayed so much ignorance of painting, that I would rather not have a picture of mine in your house.”

“You’re the first man ever presumed to tell me I was ignorant of painting,” said Mr. Baddeley, now thoroughly indignant.

“You have heard the truth, then, for the first time,” said Percivale, and resumed his work.

Mr. Baddeley walked out of the study.

I am not sure that he was so very ignorant. He had been in the way of buying popular pictures for some time, paying thousands for certain of them. I suspect he had eye enough to see that my husband’s would probably rise in value, and, with the true huckster spirit, was ambitious of boasting how little he had given compared with what they were really worth.

Percivale in this case was doubtless rude. He had an insuperable aversion to men of Mr. Baddeley’s class,—men who could have no position but for their money, and who yet presumed upon it, as if it were gifts and graces, genius and learning, judgment and art, all in one. He was in the habit of saying that the plutocracy, as he called it, ought to be put down,—that is, negatively and honestly,—by showing them no more respect than you really entertained for them. Besides, although he had no great favors for Cousin Judy’s husband, he yet bore Mr. Baddeley a grudge for the way in which he had treated one with whom, while things went well with him, he had been ready enough to exchange hospitalities.

Before long, through Lady Bernard, he sold a picture at a fair price; and soon