Novelist.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2477, 26 May 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelist.

Through Deep Waters,

BY INA LEON CAS3ILIS, Author of " lima Raphael, Actress," l; The Young Widower," " iM. Caddie's Carpet Bail," &c,, &c. CHAPTER VIII.

"Well, Cambacercs, how does the portrait get 011 V' asked Albrecht yon Elsinger, sauntering into the studio one day, and throwing himself into an arm-chair.

The Spanish painter looked up from the work upon which he was engaged, putting the finishing touches to a small picture of the meeting of Elijah and Ahab, and answered—" It is growing fast, there it stands, Albrecht; I expect my sitter in ten minutes," " And she is punctual—a singular virtue in her sex," said the German, rising to look at the easle indicated by Don Cola. "Ah ! Geineni !' lis added directly, "it will be a perfect work; what a treat, what a rare pleasure to paint such beauty ; how often has she been to you, Cambaceres V " This is the fourth sitting." "You have worked well in the intervals, then, to have got so far ; you must have drawn upon memory, an easy task to you ; the sittings are almost superfluous." " I shall only need two more after this, 011 the outside. No, not superfluous; it is better to have your copy before you from time to time." " Are they in a hurry for this portrait V' "Not that I am aware of," returned Cambaceres, " they have not told me, if they are, I should not hurry if they asked it." "You are high and mighty. By the way," said Elsinger, resuming his place in the arm-chair, " I received as I was coming here a signal evidence of the worth of on ,dils and club gossip." " What was that V' " I met in the park yonder—St. Jame^s —a young man whom we saw at Count M -'s the other night, Spencer, and lie told me there is an on dit going the round of the clubs, that Agnes de Clifford is to be the bride of that old rascal Grant-Faulkner. I laughed at the story, and so did Spencer ; but he declared that something of the sort had been said in Grant-Faulkner's hearing and he had not contradicted it, which looks as if it came from him."

" Possibly," said the painter, in'tlifferently, "but none the more ■credible for that. He might not object to sacrifice her youth and happiness to his love of wealth ; but I do not believe anything would induce her to consent to the sacrifice."

"She is certainly not likely to fall in love with the scelevat,' said Elsinger, half laughing, "she has liad far too many young and handsome suitors to choose from for that. It is the. multitude of riches rather than of poverty of choice that is likely lo bo the diiliculty."

He looked at the West Indian as lie spoke, but the painter went on with his work without seeming to pay much attention to the subject, lie was either really indifferent to it or was a good dissimulator ; that he was the former, Elsinger could hardly bring himself to believe, that he was the last he knew well ; but he only added—

" I suppose I had better absent myself when la diva and her mother come ?"

" I don't know why you should do so," said the painter, "you are no stranger, at least, they have met you ; hut do as you like, Albreeht." " That is Mademoiselle, I think," said the German rising, as he heard a knock at the hall door, " I will away for the present and return in an hour, if I may 1" "You are always welcome, "Always?" said Elsinger. "Is that so indeed 1 You call me more often Albreeht than Elsinger—with such a man as you the change is significant." " Value it at its true meaning," said the Spaniard, dropping his brush, and turning to the German, " I am slow to friendship—slow to believe in men, but I believe you are true gold."

The tears rose to the German's eyes, and his lips trembled— "Cola-Maria," he said, "you have grown into my heart, as no man ever did before, as no man ever will again. God keep this friendship green to the grave." "To live beyond the grave," said the Spanish painter, laying his slight delicate hand in the larger, but not more nervous clasp of the German, and as he spoke the eyes of the two men met. They understood each other; and Elsinger turned and went quietly out by one door just as Ansel mo entered by another, ushering into the studio Agnes de Clifford, and this time not her mother, but Lady Milred Dudley, an elderly cousin of Sir Herbert de Clifford, who looked more like a duenna stepped out of a Spanish play than a nineteenth century dame.

Agues introduced this prim personage to the painter, and I lie latter at once perceived that tli" sitter was not quite herself. She seemed somewhat grave and pre-oceupied, and did not say a word while Cainbaceres was getting ready the

materials for work, but stood looking vaguely at a group of statues, Lady Milred meanwhile seating herself "at a short distance from the easel, placed on her prominent nose a pair of gold spectacles preparatory to drawing forth some knitting work, with which she evidently intended to solace her hour of playing propriety. The old lady had, indeed, on the way to the artist's house, treated her beautiful young cousin to a lecture on what she considered the danger and even

impropriety of the whole proceeding, remarking that she believed long residence in Italy had blinded both Florence de Clifford and her daughter to the true perception of what was " proper," or so young a man and so " dangerous" a ntan would not have been allowed to paint the portrait of a very young and handsome lady. But the Lady Milred Dudley was nearly seventy, and lived the greater part of her time in the country, Agnes cared very little for her admonitions and opinions, and shocked the old lady by what that respectable matron termed the " Southern levity" of

her ways, and she frowned reprovingly -when she saw the perfectly easy and unembarrassed manner in which Agnes greeted the Spaniard. The latter saw the frown, and guessed at once what had called it forth. "Do you want me to stand yet?" asked Agnes, turning round as the painter approached her. She spoke in English, and Don Cola looked at first a little surprised, but divining at once that Lady Milred understood 110 continental language. " No, not yet. You can sit down for the present. Next time you will stand, please, Mademoiselle." " What is it. Oh,' - ' she said suddenly, " I have forgotten the scarf, please forgive me. I ought to have remembered it. What shall Ido V' "N'importe—it does not matter anything. I can supply the defi ciency, I think," says Cam'oaceres, asseycz-vous Mademoiselle." He crossed to a table at the further end of the room, and took up a crimson scarf that lay upon it—

" This will do, I think," he said. " How am I to put it on V' said Agnes, smiling, " plaidwisc ?' " Comment cat No, not that way ; will you allow me f' "I think you had better," said Agnes, "it will take a shorter time than telling me what you want." Lady Milred laid down her knitting and looked over her goldrimmed spectacles as Oambaceres threw the graceful mantle round the girl's shoulders, and with a few deft touches and skilful arrangement of folds completed the desired effect. " You have done it a good deal better than a milliner would have done," said Agnes, as Oambaceres turned to the easel.

" But milliners have no taste," said the painter, " they follow the mode, they do not care for beauty." " Yet we would hardly dress after the artistic model," said Lady Mildred, who thought " proper " to join in the conversation. "Why not, Madame? only the ladies love the French fashions; but the Signorina—she will excuse

me —she follows the artistic models ; but she is Italian."

Lady Mildred glanced at Agnes, looked prim, and resumed her knitting ; she did not approve of any comments upon hev young cousin's attire ; to be sure Cambaceres was an artist, but then he should not have as good as told a young lady that he admired her mode of dress. Poor Lady Mildred ! all her ideas moved like a single file of soldiers, in one narrow groove, and she could not imagine anything commendable outside of her groove. Anything and everything " foreign " was connected in her mind with what she somewhat broadly termed " levity," and though she was free to admit (as she did admit afterwards), that no one could be more grave and circumspect in his manner than the Spanish painter, yet his very beauty and his charm of voice and manner warned her, by winning upon her, that they must be exceedingly "dangerous" to a younger person, and she thought it a great pity that in the fashionable world so much was risked in order to do as every one else did.

A silence followed the painter's last speech ; Lady Mildred's needles clicked merrily, and Agnes sat very quiet with drooping eyes, thinking and dreaming, so far away from the present scene, or so absorbed in her own thoughts, that the soft voice of the painter made her start.

"Mademoiselle, pardon; if you please, will you lift your eyes for a moment ?"

She looked up directly, and for full a second the large earnest eyes met without flinching ; yet not without an effort; for the first time since she had known him she shrank from lookin-? frankly in the Spanish painter's face —and the gentle, " Merci, that will do," was an actual relief to her. The grey eyes of Lady Mildred were watching her through the gold-rimmed spectacles, but that lady, who drew her idea of young ladies from country maidens, could not understand any modest damsel facing a young man without blushing, and when the artist deliberately told Agnes to look at him, she thought southern training had made her kinswoman very bold that she obeyed so coolly and with but little change of colour. She could not, at any rate, thought Lady Mildred, regard the Spaniard with any sentiments stronger than friendship and admiration for his talents, though how long this platonic state of things was likely to last, she was shrewd enough to be doubtful.

Don Cola said little during that sitting ; it might be that his restriction to a language with which he was not familiar operated as a chain upon his ideas, or it might be that his own thoughts were company enough, as the saying goes. Agm was silent too, and it was not (ill near the close of the sitting that Lady Mildred laid down her needles and asked if the portrait was nearly finished.

" There is a good deal more work in it, Madame," the painter answered; " but I think I will not want more than two sittings." lie looked up at Agnes as he spoke ; there was a slight shade on her brow, but she said nothing.

Catnbaceres added, " Perhaps you would like to look at the picture in a few minutes, Mademoiselle V

• l Thanks; and may I see that one which you were painting when we came in,said Agnes, "oris it to be hidden from all but professional eyes for the present ?" " Nothing here can be hidden from you that you wish to see," was the Spaniard's thought, but aloud he said : "De tout won co'ur ; you honour me by making the request." The needles began again. Five minutes more and the voice of Big Bon boomed out the hour; the painter dropped his brush— " Mademoiselle, vous ctes librc— pardon, your time is up for to-day." Agnes rose as he drew back from the easel to let her approach it, but she did not allow a sigh to escape her, poor child ! She felt at homo hero; a sense of protection, even when the painter was absent, and still more strongly in his presence ; the hour had passed so quickly, and she must return home, to meet, perhaps, Grant-Faulkner, to hide the dislike, which grew upon her day by day, with which she regarded him; at best to feel restless and apprehensive; restless, she knew not why, apprehensive of she knew not what.

She did not look long at her own picture ; the perfection of the execution she could and did admire ; the beauty of the face that looked upon her from the canvas she could not appreciate, and soon turned to the small painting of Elijah and Aliab. Lady Mildred, who knew more about the roses and embroidery work than about the line arts, came to look at the portrait, and its wonderous beauty, its absolute fidelity, struck even her.

" If. is an excellent likeness, said she, with her prim manner and mode of expression. She would not say it was beautiful in the hearing of Agnes, less because it would embarrass Oambaceres to frame a suitable reply than because she thought llattery dangerous for the young, and Agnes heard quite enough of it to turn any girl's head. The painter bowed. Lady Mildred turned to Agnes, who was gazing in silence on the beautiful paiiifciug of the " Prophet and the King of Israel " Come, my dear,"

she said, " perhaps we are detaining M. de Cambaceres."

"Oh; no, Madame," interposed the Spaniard, quickly. " Mademoiselle knows she is welcome to spend what time she will here—she does me too much honour."

Lady Mildred did not like flowery speeches and did not know how to answer them, but Agnes said— " You are very kind, Don Cola; I am afraid I was forgetting your time ; I must crave your pardon, but it is your own fault after all, for your painting beguiled me,"

"It has already won its laurels, then, Mademoiselle," returned the courtly Spaniard, " it gives me pain that you should apologise—my timo is always at your service." Even in uttering these words of common-place courtesy, Cola-Maria was guarcl d ; he did not speak them too earnestly, he would not allow his lips to convey the full meaning of his mind, and Agnes smiled and answered, " Then I shall take advantage of your generosity to give one last look at ' Elijah what a splendid face ! I like to see such a face; it gives one something to think of, and this is an old friend, for it is exactly like ' Elijah ' in the great painting of the "Prophets of Baal."

" Well, it is the same man." "Yes; but you have preserved the likeness so perfectly, and you did not copy it, did you T " No, I remember the other."

" I must see ' Elijah and Ahab ' again, if thoy are still here next time," said Agnes, turning from the picture, "Don Cola, we shall see you on Thursday night, I suppose ?"

"At tho opera? I shall be most happy ; but after that I have a prior engagement."

"What a pity! Well, it must lie another time, then. Cousin Mildred I am willing to attend you." Lady Mildred held out her hand to Cambaceres. "Good morning," said she, with her priin smile, and to turn from her to Agnes was like emerging from a winter's frost into the sunny glory of a summer's morning. The girl gave him her hand with her usual frankness, but she did not look up into his face, and her " Grazia, Signor, adio," as he handed her into the brougham was spoken rather absently, lie did not pause to look after the carriage, but went back at once to the studio, not to the easel with the half finished portrait, but to the little painting, and then stopped—"Not just yet," he said, within himself, " not just yet." Ho threw down the brush he had taken up, and covered his face for a few moments, as if by veiling his physical sense he could shut out some vision from his mind; yet when he looked up (as he heard a well-known step without), there

was no change in his features that any eye but, perchance, that of a woman who loved him, would have noted. The door opened, and Eisinger came in again.

"They have just left you," he said, " I passed the brougham a minute ago. Who is that old duenna with In clival"

" Hor kinswoman, Lady Mildred Dudley, a country woman, I should suppose." '• I pity the poor girl. I am"sure she will be lectured on propriety the wholo way homo," said Elsingor. "I daresay; Lady Mildred is very prim and stiff, and was fully persuaded that hor cousin ought not to have come to me for her portrait," said tho West Indian. " A shrewd old lady," remarked tho Gorman. "You will go with the Clifford's on Thursday night." " To ' Oberon'—yes. Are you going'?" Elsingor did not answer the question, but muttered ' Hem !' with so much significance of tone and manner that Cola lifted his eyes and fixed one of those keen steady looks on his friend's face before which a bolder gaze than Elsinger's might well shrink, from the consciousness that the inuor citadel of thought was gained. But the Spanish paintor did not speak, and Elsingor after a short uneasy silence, loaned forward (for lie had resumed his old placo in tho arm-chair) and said earnestly— "Forgive mo, Cola; I did not mean to speak lightly on a serious subject, you know me too well to suppose that, I think. Perhaps I am mistaken after all. I was only guessing from probabilities, not divining from observation." " Guesswork is a deceitful seer," said Ciimbaceres, quietly, " but I think we understand each other, as to friendship, Albrecht. Eor the rest, believe yourself mistaken." " Must I, am I T for your sake I hope so; but why so unjust to yourself?" " Unjust, how ?" " I mean—" Elsingor began and hesitated, hardly knowing how to to continue, tho more as ho saw that crimson flush that rose to the West Indian's olive cheek, "that with regard.—" Say on, Albrooht," said Cambacores, gently, "you mean that tho sou's life, the son's fame ought to havo redeemed the father's sin and mother's wrong ; ought it V can it ? l)o you remember tho blood spot ou tho cheek of Gulnaro, ' tho light but guilty streak V Can murder cast so foid a stain as tho taint of Creole birth ? I am not speakiug bitterly—the Holy Mother forbid it I have the blood of Castilian nobles in uiy veins—would to God the stream were pure —and were I as these nobles i should feel with them. It is the curse of Heaven and it is just. Then, because I blume no man I aui content to

strive, by a life, free at least from the sin that brought me into the world with a curso, to clairn from divine mercy what human justice cannot, and human mercy will not give. lam content to demand of the world, which must ;despise my birth, the homage due to fame, to hand down to the future a name which came to me by no right of inheritance, but which others after me (of my kin, no children of mine) may bo proud to own. Albreeht, I have said more to you than I have ever said to living man. Are you answered ?" ■' Answered ? No," said the German, passionately. "Answered? when every word you have uttered only shows me more of the gold which you are locking up in a caskot. Patrician you are to tho heart's core —110 sin of father or mother can destroy that; it is in 3'our looks, your bearing, in every line of your voice, in every line of your face. You are more than this, you have talents that have lifted you far above the level of thousands who would despise your birth, but it cannot despise you; you have the entree where they would not be received; you are courted where their names are not known. Turn from the outer life to tho inner life ; you have not wasted your existence as thousands waste it, and are never called to account by the world for it, though for a pure and spotless love they can, in truth, give no worthy return. The world does not value this, you will say. Not as a rule ; yet some few do. Cola, you are too sensitive; you feel too keenly one side of the question. You do not appreciate the other, and yet you do not even blame the world in which you believe yourself, in this one thing at least, an outcast; alone among men who have suffered as you suffer you do not blame the social law that draws the sharp line ; you even defend it aud suffer in silence, as if you, and not your parents had sinned ■" " Albreeht, Albreeht, you try me too much!"

Tho painter paused for a moment, too deeply moved to speak calmly, but after a strong effort he went on—

" There is a theoretical truth in all you say—but—but—•" he stopped again, then added desperately— " There is that in me that wars with my own knowledge of what I am. While I feel it most keenly— Madonua! is the thought ever absent from me? The blood of my father's race seems to bound quickest through my veins, as if to make mo forget the taint that nothing—nothing can wipe out. When I was a boy at school—l remember it well—for it seems branded on my memory, the lads one day (it was in Italy, at Rome), were living over—as boys will— the deeds of valour recorded in the 1 Gerusalemme,' and I sat silent till one of them appealed to me about the correctness of a passage which he had quoted. I knew the poet almost by heart, and set him right, and then one of them—Savello, a Roman—said with a sneer, ' Fie can hardly know the Gerusalemme, he can hardly sympathise with knightly deeds.' Albrecht, my whole being rebelled against such words—not because they were cruel and cowardly, but because they contained a truth which was more bitter to me that my nature was at war with it."

"I would have struck the coward to the earth !" said Elsinger.

"Struck him? no; he was poor spirited, like all his race; I despised him too much to treat him as an equal; I simply said, 'You are too like your ancestor, Luca Savello, who crouched in abject pleading for dear life before a baseborn Tribune of Rome, for me to strike you as I would have struck anyone but you, if anyone but you had dared to utter the taunt; but cowards are in some things braver than brave men, for they know that their cowardice is their armour of proof, as weakness is a woman's." Elsinger's blue eyes actually gleamed— " Ah !" he raid, " well merited ; I. had rather have lost my right liana than have to endure such a retort as that."

" You are Von Elsingor—he Savello; the spirit that will stoop to a cruel insult is not the spirit that will resent a just or even an unjust retort. But Albrecht, the insult was uttered—-it could be uttered. You cannot know," he said, with a sudden change of manner, with a passion in look and tone that startled Elsinger, revealing as it did a glimpse of the volcano that seemed to slumber but was only hidden — " you cannot know how this curse burns into uiy very soul and turns all that is sweet to bitterness, all that is bright to darkness. Heaven I may seek—God, blessed be His Name—knows no distinction of earthly birth. Fame I may claim and possess, talent is the gift of God, love of man may be minesuch love as yours, Albrecht, but beyond that—while I stand alone I stand unquestioned : they will ad mit that 1 have made my own name, that Cola-Maria has woti his own way to a pinnacle that even noble birth and high position cannot attain ; but will Colonnas and Donati, will Howards and Stanleys forget that Cola-Maria has no name to give a wife a right to bear, that he can quarter no arms without the barsinister? I know that these English nobles do not now value birth as it is valued in Italy and Spain ; but there is one taint they will not forgive—the taint

of Creole birth—the curse of slave blood."

He paused, and Elsinger could not for some moments answer him ; before these strong passions of the south his own seemed like a tiny raft swept down the course of a mighty cataract, and yet he could understand the high sense of honour, the pride which the world marvelled why the Spanish painter remained apparently insensible to the love which he could only too easily win.

(To be continued.)