Ardath, Marie Corelli [e ink ebook reader txt] 📗

to the full the mental excitement of the discordant struggle, and comfortably conscious that as his residence was “detached,” no obtrusive neighbor could either warn him to desist, or set up an opposition nuisance next door by constant practice on the distressingly over-popular piano. One thing very much in his favor was, that he never manifested any desire to perform in public. No one had ever heard him play, . . he pursued his favorite amusement in solitude, and was amply satisfied, if when questioned on the subject of music, he could find an opportunity to say with a conscious-modest air, “MY instrument is the ‘cello.” That was quite enough self-assertion for him, . . and if any one ever urged him to display his talent, he would elude the request with such charming grace and diffidence, that many people imagined he must really be a great musical genius who only lacked the necessary insolence and aplomb to make that genius known.

 

The ‘cello apart, Villiers was very generally recognized as a discerning dilettante in most matters artistic. He was an excellent judge of literature, painting, and sculpture, . . his house, though small, was a perfect model of taste in design and adornment, . . he knew where to pick up choice bits of antique furniture, dainty porcelain, bronzes, and wood-carvings, while in the acquisition of rare books he was justly considered a notable connoisseur. His delicate and fastidious instincts were displayed in the very arrangement of his numerous volumes, … none were placed on such high shelves as to be out of hand reach, . . all were within close touch and ready to command, ranged in low, carved oak cases or on revolving stands, … while a few particularly rare editions and first folios were shut in curious little side niches with locked glass-doors, somewhat resembling small shrines such as are used for the reception of sacred relics. The apartment he called his “den”—where he now sat practising the “Cavatina” for about the two-hundredth time—was perhaps the most fascinating nook in the whole house, inasmuch as it contained a little bit of everything, arranged with that perfect attention to detail which makes each object, small and great, appear not only ornamental, but positively necessary. In one corner a quaint old jar overflowed with the brightness of fresh yellow daffodils; in another a long, tapering Venetian vase held feathery clusters of African grass and fern, . . here the medallion of a Greek philosopher or Roman Emperor gleamed whitely against the sombrely painted wall; there a Rembrandt portrait flashed out from the semi-obscure background of some rich, carefully disposed fold of drapery,—while a few admirable casts from the antique lit up the deeper shadows of the room, such as the immortally youthful head of the Apollo Belvedere, the wisely serene countenance of the Pallas Athene that Goethe loved, and the Cupid of Praxiteles.

 

Judging from his outward appearance only, few would have given Villiers credit for being the man of penetrative and almost classic refinement he really was,—he looked far more athletic than aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested, with a round, blunt head firmly set on a full, strong throat, he had, on the whole, a somewhat obstinate and pugilistic air which totally belied his nature. His features, open and ruddy, were, without being handsome, decidedly attractive—the mouth was rather large, yet good-tempered; the eyes bright, blue, and sparklingly suggestive of a native inborn love of humor. There was something fresh and piquant in the very expression of naive bewilderment with which he now adjusted his eyeglass—a wholly unnecessary appendage—and set himself strenuously to examine anew the chords of that extraordinary piece of music which others thought so easy and which he found so puzzling, . . he could manage the simple melody fairly well, but the chords!

 

“They are the very devil!”.. he murmured plaintively, staring at the score, and hitching up his unruly instrument more securely against his knee, . . “Perhaps the bow wants a little rosin.”

 

This was one of his minor weaknesses,—he would never quite admit that false notes were his own fault. “They COULDN’T be, you know!”

he mildly argued, addressing the obtrusive neck of the ‘cello, which had a curious, stubborn way of poking itself into his chin, and causing him to wonder how it got there, . . surely the manner in which he held it had nothing to do with this awkward occurrence!

“I’m not such a fool as not to understand how to find the right notes, after all my practice! There’s something wrong with the strings,—or the bridge has gone awry,—or”—and this was his last resource—“the bow wants more rosin!”

 

Thus he hugged himself in deliciously wilful ignorance of his own shortcomings, and shut his ears to the whispered reproaches of musical conscience. Had he been married his wife would no doubt have lost no time in enlightening him,—she would have told him he was a wretched player, that his scrapings on the ‘cello were enough to drive one mad, and sundry other assurances of the perfectly conjugal type of frankness,—but as it chanced he was a happy bachelor, a free and independent man with more than sufficient means to gratify his particular tastes and whims. He was partner in a steadily prosperous banking concern, and had just enough to do to keep him pleasantly and profitably occupied. Asked why he did not marry, he replied with blunt and almost brutal honesty, that he had never yet met a woman whose conversation he could stand for more than an hour.

 

“Silly or clever,” he said, “they are all possessed of the same infinite tedium. Either they say nothing, or they say everything; they are always at the two extremes, and announce themselves as dunces or blue-stockings. One wants the just medium,—the dainty commingling of simplicity and wisdom that shall yet be pure womanly,—and this is precisely the jewel ‘far above rubies’ that one cannot find. I’ve given up the search long ago, and am entirely resigned to my lot. I like women very well—I may say very much—as friends, but to take one on chance as a comrade for life! … No, thank you!”

 

Such was his fixed opinion and consequent rejection of matrimony; and for the rest, he studied art and literature and became an authority on both; so much so that on one occasion he kept a goodly number of people away from visiting the Royal Academy Exhibition, he having voted it a “disgrace to Art.”

 

“English artists occupy the last grade in the whole school of painting,” he had said indignantly, with that decisive manner of his which somehow or other carried conviction, . . “The very Dutch surpass them; and instead of trying to raise their standard, each year sees them grovelling in lower depths. The Academy is becoming a mere gallery of portraits, painted to please the caprices of vain men and women, at a thousand or two thousand guineas apiece; ugly portraits, too, woodeny portraits, utterly uninteresting portraits of prosaic nobodies. Who cares to see ‘No. 154. Mrs.

Flummery in her presentation-dress’.. except Mrs. Flummery’s own particular friends? … or ‘283. Miss Smox, eldest daughter of Professor A. T. Smox,’ or ‘516. Baines Bryce, Esq.’? … Who IS

Baines Bryce? … Nobody ever heard of him before. He may be a retired pork-butcher for all any one knows! Portraits, even of celebrities, are a mistake. Take Algernon Charles Swinburne, for instance, the man who, when left to himself, writes some of the grandest lines in the English language, HE had his portrait in the Academy, and everybody ran away from it, it was such an unutterable hideous disappointment. It was a positive libel of course, . . Swinburne has fine eyes and a still finer brow, but instead of idealizing the POET in him, the silly artist painted him as if he had no more intellectual distinction than a bill-sticker! … English art! … pooh! … don’t speak to me about it!

Go to Spain, Italy, Bavaria—see what THEY can do, and then say a Miserere for the sins of the R A’s!”

 

Thus he would talk, and his criticisms carried weight with a tolerably large circle of influential and wealthy persons, who when they called upon him, and saw the perfection of his house and the rarity of his art collections, came at once to the conclusion that it would be wise, as well as advantageous to themselves, to consult him before purchasing pictures, books, statues, or china, so that he occupied the powerful position of being able with a word to start an artist’s reputation or depreciate it, as he chose,—a distinction he had not desired, and which was often a source of trouble to him, because there were so few, so very few, whose work he felt he could conscientiously approve and encourage.

He was eminently good-natured and sympathetic; he would not give pain to others without being infinitely more pained himself; and yet, for all his amiability, there was a stubborn instinct in him which forbade him to promote, by word or look, the fatal nineteenth century spread of mediocrity. Either a thing must be truly great and capable of being measured by the highest standards, or for him it had no value. This rule he carried out in all branches of art,—except his own ‘cello-playing. That was NOT

great,—that would never be great,—but it was his pet pastime; he chose it in preference to the billiards, betting, and bar-lounging that make up the amusements of the majority of the hopeful manhood of London, and, as has already been said, he never inflicted it upon others.

 

He rubbed the rosin now thoughtfully up and down his bow, and glanced at the quaint old clock—an importation from Nurnberg—

that ticked solemnly in one corner near the deep bay-window, across which the heavy olive green plush curtains were drawn, to shut out the penetrating chill of the wind. It wanted ten minutes to nine. He had given orders to his man servant that he was on no account to be disturbed that evening, . . no matter what visitors called for him, none were to be admitted. He had made up his mind to have a long and energetic practice, and he felt a secret satisfaction as he heard the steady patter of the rain outside, . .

the very weather favored his desire for solitude,—no one was likely to venture forth on such a night.

 

Still gravely rubbing his brow, his eyes travelled from the clock in the corner to a photograph on the mantel-shelf—the photograph of a man’s face, dark, haughty, beautiful, yet repellent in its beauty, and with a certain hard sternness in its outline—the face of Theos Alwyn. From this portrait his glance wandered to the table, where, amid a picturesque litter of books and papers, lay a square, simply bound volume, with an ivory leaf-cutter thrust in it to mark the place where the reader left off, and its title plainly lettered in gold at the back—“NOURHALMA.”

 

“I wonder where he is!” … he mused, his thoughts naturally reverting to the author of the book.. “He cannot know what all London knows, or surely he would be back here like a shot! It is six months ago now since I received his letter and that poem in manuscript from Tiflis in Armenia,—and not another line has he sent to tell me of his whereabouts! Curious fellow he is! … but, by Jove, what a genius! No wonder he has besieged Fame and taken it by storm! I don’t remember any similar instance, except that of Byron, in which such an unprecedented reputation was made so suddenly! And in Byron’s case it was more the domestic scandal about him than his actual merit that made him the rage, . . now the world knows