Babylon. Volume 2. Allen Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ was just going to be converted into an actual living reality. He could hardly believe even now that he would ever get there. Would there be an accident at the summit level of the Mont Cenis tunnel, to prevent his ever reaching the goal of his ambition? It almost seemed as if there must be some hitch somewhere, for the idea of actually getting to Rome – that Rome that Cicolari had long ago told him was the capital of art – seemed too glorious and magnificent to be really true, for Colin Churchill.

      For a while, the delightful exhilaration of knowing that that very carriage in which he sat was actually going straight through to Rome left him little room to notice the faces or personalities of his fellow-travellers. But as they gradually got well outside the Paris ring, and launched into the country towards Fontainebleau, Colin had leisure to look about him and take stock of the companions he was to have on his way southward. Three of them were Frenchmen only going to Lyon and Marseille —only, Colin thought to himself, naively, for he despised anybody now who was bound for anywhere on earth save the city of Michael Angelo and Canova and Thorwaldsen; but the other two were bound, by the labels on their luggage, for Rome itself. One of them was a tall military-looking gentleman, with a grizzled grey moustache, a Colonel somebody, the hat-box said, but the name was covered by a label; the other, apparently his daughter, was a handsome girl of about twenty, largely built and selfpossessed, like a woman who has lived much in the world from her childhood upward. Colin saw at once, that, unlike little Minna (who had essentially a painter’s face and figure), this graceful full-formed woman was entirely and exquisitely statuesque. The very pose of her arm upon the slight ledge of the window as she leaned out to look at the country was instinct with plastic capabilities. Colin, with his professional interest always uppermost, felt a perfect longing to have up a batch of clay forthwith and model it then and there upon the spot. He watched each new movement and posture so closely, in fact (of course in his capacity as a sculptor only), that the girl herself noticed his evident admiration, and took it sedately like a woman of the world. She didn’t blush and shrink away timidly, as Minna would have done under the same circumstances (though her skin was many shades lighter than Minna’s rich brunette complexion, and would have shown the faintest suspicion of a blush, had one been present, far more readily); she merely observed and accepted Colin’s silent tribute of admiration as her natural due. It made her just a trifle more self-conscious, perhaps, but that was all; indeed, one could hardly say whether even so the somewhat studied attitudes she seemed to be taking up were not really the ones which by long use had become the easiest for her. There are some beautiful women so accustomed to displaying their beauty to the best advantage that they can’t even throw themselves down on a sofa in their own bedrooms without instinctively and automatically assuming a graceful position for all their limbs.

      After a while, they fell into a conversation; and Colin, who was the most innocent and unartificial of men, was amused to find that even he, on the spur of the moment, had arrived at a very obvious, worldly-wise principle upon this subject. Wishing to get into a talk with the daughter, he felt half-unconsciously that it wouldn’t do to begin by addressing her outright, but that he should first, with seeming guilelessness, attack her father. A man who is travelling with a pretty girl, in whatever relation, doesn’t like you to begin an acquaintanceship of travel by speaking to her first; he resents your intrusion, and considers you have no right to talk to ladies under his escort. But when you begin by addressing himself, that is quite another matter; lured on by his quiet good sense, or his conversational powers, or his profound knowledge, or whatever else it is that he specially prides himself upon, you are soon launched upon general topics, and then the ladies of the party naturally chime in after a few minutes. To start by addressing him is a compliment to his intelligence or his social qualities; to start by addressing his companion is a distinct slight to himself, at the same time that it displays your own cards far too openly. You can convert him at once either into a valuable ally or into an enemy and a jealous guardian. Of course every other man feels this from his teens; but Colin hadn’t yet mixed much in the world, and he smiled to himself at his acumen in discovering it at all on the first trial.

      ‘Beautifully wooded country about here,’ he said at the earliest opportunity the military gentleman gave him by laying down his Times (even in France your Englishman will stick to his paper). ‘Not like most of France; so green and fresh-looking. This is Millet’s country, you know; he always works about the outskirts of Fontainebleau.’

      ‘Ah, indeed, does he?’ the colonel responded, having only a very vague idea floating through his mind that Millet or Millais or something of the sort was the name of some painter fellow or other he had somewhere heard about. ‘He works about Fontainebleau, does he, now? Dear me! How very interesting!’

      Whenever people dismiss a subject from their minds by saying ‘How very interesting!’ you know at once they really mean that it doesn’t interest them in the slightest degree, and they don’t want to be bothered by hearing anything more about it; but Colin’s observations upon mankind and the niceties of the English language had not yet carried him to this point of interpretative science, so he took the colonel literally at his word, and went on enthusiastically (for he was a great admirer of the peasant painter whose story was so like his own), ‘Yes, he works at Fontainebleau. It was here, you know, that he painted his Angelus. Have you ever seen the Angelus?’

      The colonel fidgeted about in his seat uneasily, and fumbled in a nervous way with the corner of the Times. ‘The Angelus!’ he repeated, meditatively. ‘Ah, yes, the Angelus. Gwen, my dear, have we seen Mr. Millet’s Angelus P Was it in the Academy?’

      ‘No, papa,’ Gwen answered, smiling sweetly and composedly. ‘We haven’t seen it, and it wasn’t in the Academy. M. Millet is the French painter, you remember, the painter who wears sabots. So delightfully romantic, isn’t it,’ turning to Colin, ‘to be a great painter and yet still to wear sabots?’ This was a very cleverly delivered sentence of Miss Gwen’s, for it was intended first to show that she at least, if not her father, knew who the unknown young artist was talking about (Gwen jumped readily at the conclusion that Colin was an artist), and secondly, to exonerate her papa from culpable ignorance in the artist’s eyes by gently suggesting that a slight confusion of names sufficiently accounted for his obvious blunder. But it was also, quite unintentionally, delivered point-blank at Colin Churchill’s tenderest susceptibilities. This grand young lady, then, so calm and selfpossessed, could sympathise with an artist who had risen, and who, even in the days of his comparative prosperity, still wore sabots. To be sure, Colin didn’t exactly know what sabots were (perhaps the blue blouses which he saw all the French workmen were wearing?), for he was still innocent of all languages but his own, unless one excepts the Italian he had picked up in anticipation from Cicolari; but he guessed at least it was some kind of dress supposed to mark Millet’s peasant origin, and that was quite enough for him. The grand young lady did not despise an artist who had been born in the ranks of the people.

      ‘Yes,’ he said warmly, ‘it’s very noble of him. Noble not merely that he has risen to paint such pictures as the Gleaners and the Angelus, but that he isn’t ashamed now to own the peasant people he has originally sprung from.’

      ‘Oh, ah, certainly,’ the colonel replied in a short sharp voice, though the remark was hardly addressed to him. ‘Very creditable of the young man, indeed, not to be ashamed of his humble origin. Very creditable. Very creditable. Gwen, my dear, would you like to see the paper?’

      ‘No, thank you, papa,’ Gwen answered with another charming smile (fine teeth, too, by Jingo). ‘You know I never care to read in a train in motion. Yes, quite a romantic story, this of Millet’s; and I believe even now he’s horribly poor, isn’t he? he doesn’t sell his pictures.’

      ‘The highest art,’ Colin said quietly, ‘seldom meets with real recognition during the lifetime of the artist.’

      ‘You’re a painter yourself?’ asked Gwen, looking up at the handsome young man with close interest.

      ‘Not a painter; a sculptor; and I’m going to Rome СКАЧАТЬ