CHAPTER XVII. HE April mornings are sunlit at six, even in the heart of London, and there is a fine painting light for those who are able to get up for it. The early morning was Marion's time of peace and quiet labour; she would be alone. How great a blessing it is to be alone for an hour or two in the day can only, I suppose, be appreciated by women who live together. It is one of the many evils of poverty that the poor have no solitude possible. As the social ladder descends, the necessity of a life in common becomes more marked. The suburban villa has its three sitting-rooms for a family of half a dozen; but the ladies of the "lower middle class" have to sleep, eat, read, work, and play in the same room. In the early morning, when the air is clear and bright, Marion took fresh courage, and clothed herself with new faith and hope. Above all, she worked: that soul is never quite unhappy which can take a healthy pleasure in work for its own sake. Marion was, for the first time, after four years of copying, engaged upon an original picture. She was ambitious, as most young painters are. She did not yet fully understand that a work of art must be a copy of Nature itself, and not a reminiscence or a reflection; and her picture had the fault of being drawn from the inspiration of other masters. There are plenty of such pictures in every Royal Academy-you find a familiar touch here, and another there; you are reminded of one master here, and another there. Nature is at second hand-the light hardly fits the season; the flowers do not fit with each other; the primrose and the nightshade are painted blossoming side by side; and yet, for some subtle grace and secret charm of their own, the pictures are bought and loved. It was so with Marion. She had chosen an Italian subject, who had never been in Italy; she had put in Italian flowers, who knew not an Italian summer; country figures, who had never seen a contadina; an Italian sky, who had never been out of England; a dress which was never worn under the canopy of heaven; a light which never shone on earth or ocean; and yet, for one redeeming touch it had, the picture was warm with life and feeling. She had taken a scene from Browning's "Pippa passes," a poem which-if its author had only for once been able to wed melodious verse to the sweetest poetical thought; if he had only tried, just for once, to write lines which should not make the cheeks of those that read them to ache, the front teeth of those who declaim them to splinter and fly, the ears of those that hear them to crackwould have been a thing to rest himself upon for ever, and receive the applause of the world. To the gods it seemed otherwise. Browning, who might have led us like Hamelin. the piper, has chosen the worse part. He will be so deeply wise that he cannot express his thought; he will be so full of profundities that he requires a million of lines to express them in; he will leave music and melody to Swinburne; he will leave grace and sweetness to Tennyson; and in fifty years' time, who will read Browning? Let us return to our sheep. Marion had chosen the place where Pippa passes singing: "The year's at the spring, The day's at the morn, The hill-side's dew pearled; The lark's on the wing, The snail's on the thorn, God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world." Oh, strong poet of the densest tympanum, to write those third and fourth lines "The hili-side's dew pearled!" Was there ever such a stuttering collocation of syllables to confound the reader and utterly destroy a sweet little lyric? Pippa was Adrienne, Marion's model. She was passing in the bright early morning, singing as she went, unconscious of her words, and dangling her grapes before her; a figure full of health, youth, and beauty; Adrienne with the least possible darkening of the eyebrows and the hair; not an Italian face at all; sweet-lipped Adie, tall, delicate, graceful -not a silk-weaver, not Pippa, not a workwoman, not the heroine of Browning's noble dream; an English girl, in a bright clear sunshine, with strong shadows, which lay black under the vine-leaves and behind the stones, and set off her sweetness as a crystal mounted in an ebony setting; and behind the unconscious girl a face and the back of a head— the face of a man who catches the words. They strike his ear with a force the girl knows nothing of; the glamour of a devilish passion falls from him, and he sees the awful thing -too late-in its true light. In the head of the woman that looks to him you may, if you can, imagine the wonder that is in her unseen face, and the horror of the awaking. Pippa sings her song and passes "God's in His Heaven, All's right with the world." The picture was nearly finished; the principal figure—a half figure was completed; the heads were worked up; only the flowers and accessories were as yet to be filled in. Marion worked contentedly from half-past five to eight at her canvas. She was not unhappy, provided there was money to give her two children enough to eat it was all she worked for now. If she dreamed of anything better, it seemed a long way off. She was their natural protector: to her they were the two children always, helpless, not quite to be trusted; a little perverse at least, one of them-but always lovable, always to be treated with a fond consideration. At eight Adie appeared, and began to make the breakfast. This was the happiest time that the girls had. In the evening there was always the drop of bitterness in the cup, the discontent of comparison, the absence of their brother. In the morning they were alone, for Fred seldom rose till nine or ten, and they could talk. Presently Marion, keeping silence on the doctor's proposals, began to talk, as usual, of money matters. |