CHAPTER XVI.

CHASTELARD.

"So you are really going to be an heiress, my dearest?" Mary Blanchet said to Minola, when our heroine was settled at home again. "I knew you ought to be, and would be if right were done; but right so often isn't done. My brother will be so glad to hear it! but not as other people might be glad, you know." For Mary began to be afraid that by a hasty word she might be filling the heart of her friend with suspicion of her brother.

"I don't know, Mary. Mr. Money, and others, I suppose, say so. I wish it were not true; I am all right as things are, and I hate the idea of gaining by this poor woman's death. I think I should not feel so if we had been friends, and if I could think that it was like a kindly gift from her, and that she wished me to have it. But it is all so different. And then what do I want of it?"

"One can do so much good with money," said little Mary sighing. She was thinking of her brother.

"Yes, that is true," Minola said, thinking of Mary herself and of what she might perhaps do for her. "But don't tell any one about this, Mary--not even your brother--if you can well help it," Minola added, knowing what little chance there would be of Mary's keeping such a thing secret from her brother. "It is all uncertain and only talk as yet, you know."

"These things are never secret, dearest," Mary said with a wise shake of the head. "Men always get to know of them. I think the birds of the air carry the news abroad that a woman has money, or that she has not," and Mary sighed again gently.

"Do you see much of an alteration in the ways of men toward me already, Mary? Do they hang around me in adoring groups? Do they lean enraptured over me as I sweep the chords of the harp? Do they who whispered that I sang like the crow before, now loudly declare that my voice puts the nightingale out of conceit with his own minstrelsy?"

"Now you are only talking nonsense, dear; for we know so few men--and then you don't play the harp, and you never sing in company. But, if you ask me, I think I do see some difference."

"Already, Mary?"

"Well, yes, I think so; in one instance at least. Not surely that you were not likely to have attentions enough paid to you in any case, if you cared about them or encouraged them, and that, even if you hadn't a sixpence in the world--but still----"

"But still it does enhance one's charms, you think? Come, Mary, tell me the name of this mercenary admirer. Depend upon it, all his arts shall fail."

"You are only laughing at me still, dearest, but there is something in it I can tell you for all that. It is not my idea alone, I can assure you. What do you think of a Duke's brother for an admirer, Minola?"

Little Mary Blanchet was a crafty little personage. She thought she could not too soon begin working for her brother's cause by trying to throw discredit on the motives of all other possible wooers. She had observed when going now and then to the house of the Moneys, during the last few days, that the returned cadet of the one great ducal house whereof she had any knowledge was there every day, and that he was very attentive to Minola. The same remark had been made by Mr. Money, and had called forth an indignant objection from Lucy, who protested against the thought of her Nola having a broken-down outcast like that for a lover. But Mary, who was almost terrified at the idea of sitting down in the same room with any member of the great family who owned the mausoleum at Keeton, was not certain how far the name of a family like that might not go with any girl, even Minola, and believed it not an unwise precaution to begin as soon as possible throwing discredit on his purposes.

Minola tried not to seem vexed. She had liked to talk to Mr. St. Paul when he came, as he did every day of her stay in Victoria street. She had liked it because it gave her no trouble in thinking, and it saved her from having to talk to others with whom she might have felt more embarrassed, and because it turned away attention from what might perhaps have otherwise been observed--as she feared at least--by too keen eyes. If Mary must suspect anything, it was a relief to find that she only suspected this, and Minola tried to make merry with her about her absurdity. But in her secret heart she sickened at such talk, and such thoughts, and felt as if the very shadow of the fortune which was expected for her, falling already on her path, was making it one of new pain and of still less accustomed shame.

"Poverty parts good company, used to be said," Minola thought; "a little money seems much more likely to part good company in my case."

Yet that there are advantages in a command of money was soon made very clear to Minola. When she returned from a walk a day or two after she found a specimen copy of Herbert Blanchet's poems awaiting her, with a note from Victor Heron. The letter was somewhat awkward and rueful. Mr. Heron explained that, by her express instructions, he had allowed Blanchet to have it all his own way in the arrangement of the style of his appearance in paper and print; and that the cost had become something far greater than he had anticipated.

"You should never have been troubled about this," Victor went on to say, "but that you made me promise that you alone should pay for this thing; I wish I hadn't made any such promise, or consented that Blanchet should have his way in the business. To think of a grown man, who has seen the world, leaving a matter of money and business in the hands of a girl and a poet! Blanchet has been going it."

Minola in all her trouble found room for wonder, delight, and something like alarm in looking at the superb edition in which the poems of Mr. Blanchet were to go before a world scarcely prepared for so much artistic gorgeousness. All that vellum paper, rare typography, costly and fantastic binding, and lavish illustration could do for poetry, had been done without stint on behalf of Herbert Blanchet. The leaves were as thick as parchment and as soft as satin. Only a very few lines of verse appeared on each broad luxurious page. Every initial letter of a sentence was a fantastic design. The whole school of Blanchet's artistic friends had rushed into combination to enrich the pages, the margins, and the covers, with fanciful illustration. If they only had been great, or even successful and popular artists, the book might have been worth its weight in gold. Unfortunately Mr. Blanchet's artistic friends were not yet great or famous. The outer world--the world which, in the opinion of the school, was wholly composed of dullards and Philistines--knew as yet nothing about these artists, and neither blamed them nor praised them. The volume was as large in its superficial extent as an ordinary atlas, and some of the poems which occupied a whole page were not more than four lines in length. The whole thing seemed truly, in the words of a poet whom Mr. Blanchet especially despised, "all a wonder and a wild desire."

Thinking of herself as the patroness and in some sort the parent of such a volume, Minola felt some such mixture of pride and timidity as a modest girl might own who has suddenly been made a princess, and is not quite certain whether she will be able to support her position with becoming nerve and dignity.

There came a little letter too from the poet himself. It ran in this fashion:

"DEAR PATRONESS AND QUEEN: The poet has not dared to send in unfitting casket the offering which your approval has made precious. The poems which are addressed to you must at least offer themselves in form not unworthy to be touched by your hand.

"In all devotion yours,

"HERBERT BLANCHET."

Nor did the volume want a poetical dedication. The second leaf contained the following:

UNTO MY LADY PATRONESS AND QUEEN.

Upon my darkness may there well be fall Light of all darkness, darkness of all light; Starfire of amber, dew of deathlike sheen; Waters that burn, pale fires that sicken all, And shadows all aglow with saffron light; But comes my lady who is Glory's queen, And all the bright is dark, and pallid dark the bright.

Minola read this dedication again and again, puzzled, amused, angry, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry. "Am I glory's queen?" she asked of her own soul. "And if I am, am I letting light or darkness in upon my poor poet? Am I depriving him of the amber, the dew, and the saffron light, or not? Is it praise or blame, this dedication? I suppose it must be praise, but I don't think anybody could tell from its words. Oh, my dear little Mary Blanchet, why must you have a brother--and why must that brother be a poet?"

There was one consolation--the dedication did not set forth her name, and nobody could know who the lady patroness of the poet might be. Minola felt inclined to be offended that she should be in any way brought into this folly, but she was not certain whether remonstrance or complaint might not be more ridiculous than utter silence. After all nobody knew anything about her or cared, she said. If she were to complain in any way, it would only grieve poor Mary, whom the thought that her brother could have offended her friend and leader would drive well-nigh distracted. "What does it matter if I am made a little ridiculous in my own eyes?" she asked herself. "It is only in my own eyes, I suppose. Mary will look on it all as delightful; her brother of course means it for the best, and thinks it superb poetry; and there is no one else likely to care either way. It is not much to be a little more ridiculous in my own eyes than I have already made myself."

Perhaps--perhaps--let it be said with hesitation and much caution--there was something not wholly unwelcome to our heroine in the idea that she could be glory's queen and all the rest of it, to any human creature, not to say any poet, just now. She felt humbled and deeply depressed. In her own eyes she was lowered by what she knew of her own heart. Her pride had received a terrible wound, almost a death wound. The little world she had made so proudly for herself had all crumbled into dust. It is not wonderful if at such a time there should be, in spite of her sense of the ridiculous and her senses generally, a certain soothing influence in the fact that there still was some one in whose eyes she appeared a person of account and even of dignity. At all events, let it be frankly said, that when the first shock and stir of the ridiculous were passed, Minola was not inclined to think more harshly than before of the poor poet who called her his patroness and his queen. As to the expense of the publication, she was a little startled at first, but that sensation very quickly passed away. She was not enough of a woman of business yet to care about the cost of anything so long as she had the money to pay. It would run her hard in her first year of independent life, to pay this much, but then she could pay it and live somehow, and it would only be a case for strict economy in the future for some time. Besides, it seemed that whether she would or not, she was likely to have much more money than she wanted or could use for any purposes of her own. Then she was further stimulated to carelessness by Mr. Heron's letter.

"If he thinks I care about money, or the cost of serving a friend, he is mistaken," she said. "His caution and his protestations are thrown away on me."

For she was much inclined to be unjust and harsh in her mind toward Heron now. He had committed, all unconsciously, a terrible offence. He had, without knowing it, made her fall in love with him. So she made the best of the whole affair, cost, dedication, glory's queen, and all; and when Mary Blanchet came to look at the precious volume, and to go into raptures over it, Minola did her very best to seem contented, and not even to suggest a criticism, or to ask what this or that meant. She reminded herself that the late Lord Lytton had written contemptuously of the "fools on fools" who "still ask what Hamlet means."

"This may be as far off from me as Hamlet from other people," she told herself. "Why confess myself a fool by asking what anything means? And in any case Mary Blanchet would not know any better than I."

By this resolve she made one woman happy.

But it was not only a woman on whom she had conferred happiness. Herbert Blanchet was as happy as even his sister could have wished him to be. The head of the poet swam in delight. He had never before been so proud and blest. He hung over his volume for hours; he could hardly get away from it. When he left it for a moment and tried to escape from its fascinations, he found himself drawn back again into its presence. He touched fondly its soft, satiny leaves as though they were the cheek of beauty; he pressed his own cheek against them; he committed all the follies which we understand and admire in the immemorial raptures of the young lover or the father of the first born.

"They must see this," he cried aloud. "They can't overlook a volume like this." "They" being, of course, that public whose opinion he had always despised--those critics whose praise he had always declared to be the worst censure to a man of true genius.

To do our poet justice, it must be owned that there was in his breast for the first time a deep, strong feeling of gratitude. That emotion came there with a strange, overwhelming force, like that of intoxication to a man always rigidly sober before. If Minola had had him crowned a king, she could hardly have done any greater thing for him. Few men on earth can ever have had their dearest ambition so sweetly gratified as it was the lot of Herbert, the poet, to find his ambition gratified now. To have his poems so set before the world would have been a glory and a rapture, no matter though the patron's hand had been that of a withered old man or some fat frump of a dowager; but to be thus lifted to his longed-for pedestal by the hand of a young and beautiful woman was something which he had never dreamed of asleep, and seldom allowed even into the dreams of his wild, vain waking hours. The emotion called up by experience was as new as the experience itself. Mr. Blanchet felt profoundly grateful. In that moment of excitement he would probably, if need were, have laid down his life for Minola.

If Minola knew what strange effect had been wrought in the breast of her poet, she would assuredly have thought her money well laid out, even although she had wanted it far more than she did. "To making a man happy, ten pounds," is the peculiar entry on which a famous essay in the "Spectator" was founded. To make a man grateful for the first time is surely a nobler piece of work than to make him merely happy, and it ought fairly to cost a good deal more. Minola had made a man for the first time both grateful and happy. The work was a little expensive in this case, but what miser will say that the money was thrown away?

It is not likely, however, that Minola would have been quite so much delighted if she could have known all the feelings that her generous, improvident patronage had awakened in the poet's breast. For Mr. Blanchet knew women well, he thought; and he did not believe that mere kindness alone could have impelled Minola to such an act of bounty. Nor, making every needful allowance for the friendship between Miss Grey and his sister, did he find in that a sufficing explanation of Minola's liberality. He set himself to think over the whole matter coolly and impartially, and he could come to no other conclusion than that Miss Grey admired him. He was a handsome fellow, as he knew very well, and tall, and romantic in appearance: what could be more natural than that a poetic young woman should fall in love with him? He felt sure that he had fallen in deepest love with her, but it is doubtful whether he was yet in a condition to analyze his own excited feelings very clearly. It is certain that he was madly in love with his poems, with their gorgeous first edition, with the pride and the prospect of the whole affair; and of course likewise in love with the patroness to whom he was indebted for so much of a strange delight. But how much was love of himself and how much of Minola, he did not take time to consider.

There was an artistic and literary association to which Blanchet belonged, and amid which he passed most of his nights. It was not exactly a club, for it had neither definite rules nor even a distinct habitation. It was a little sect rather than a club. It was an association of men who believed each in himself, and all, at least for the present, in each other. Their essential condition of existence was scorn of the world's ways, politics, and theories of art. They held that man himself was a poor creature, unworthy of the artist's serious consideration. All that related to the well-being of that wretched animal in the way of political government they looked down upon with mere contempt. The science which professed to concern itself about his health, the social philosophy which would take any account of his moral improvement, were alike ridiculous in the eyes of this æsthetic school. If, however, any uninitiated person should imagine that in setting up art as the only serious business of life they were likely to accept any common definition of art, he would find himself as open to their scorn as if he had tried to improve a bad law or subscribed to the funds of some religious organization. Art with them was their own art. The enlightened parson, Thwackum, in "Tom Jones," observes that "When I mention religion I mean of course the Christian religion, and when I speak of the Protestant religion I mean the religion of the Church of England." It was in this spirit that the confraternity to which Mr. Blanchet belonged defined art. They only meant their own particular sect; out of that there was no salvation. Art, it is said, hath no enemy but the ignorant. These artists, however, were the enemies of all art but their own.

At the present these genial brothers regularly met of nights in the lodgings of one of them, who happened to have a large studio in the west central region of London, where so much of this unfashionable story happens to be cast. Victor Heron had many times been told of the genius that burned by night in that favored haunt, and had expressed a modest wish to be allowed to pass for an hour within its light. Mr. Blanchet was glad of the opportunity of introducing such a friend; for it somehow seemed as if the consideration of any member of the fraternity was enhanced among his brothers not a little by the fact that he could introduce into their midst some distinguished personage from the despised outer world. With them Victor Heron might very well pass for a distinguished public man, as in fact he already did, with no design of his own that way, in the eyes of Herbert Blanchet. To Victor the school was all composed of gifted and rising men, whom it was a pride to know or even to meet. To the school, on the other hand, Victor was a remarkable public man, a tremendous "swell," who had done some wondrous things in some far-off countries, and who, for all they knew at the time, might be regarded by the world as the prospective Prime Minister of England.

There was a peculiar principle of reciprocity tacitly recognized among these brothers in art. No one of them would admit that there was anything which his brother knew and he did not know. If one of them read an author for the first time, and came to meet his fellows proud of his freshly-acquired knowledge, he found no man among them who would admit that he had not from his birth upward been equally familiar with the author in question. It would be easy, surely, some one may say, to expose such pretension. Just so; of course it would. But when one brother had shown tonight that his friends had never read Schopenhauer, and in point of fact could not read him if they tried, who should guarantee that same brother against a similar exposure of his own harmless little false pretences to-morrow when he professed to know all about Euripides? It was not found convenient in this little circle to examine too closely into the pretensions of each other. Live and let live was the motto of the school so far as their esoteric professors were concerned.

There was indeed a legend that some malign person acquainted with the peculiarities of the school had once compelled them to invent a patron poet. It was done in this fashion: the malign person talked confidently and fluently to one of the order concerning a French poet, whom he described as a gifted apostle of a kindred school, and whom he was pleased to name De Patroque. The youth thus talked to was not to be outdone, or even to be instructed. He gave out that he had long had his eyes fixed reverently on the genius of the gifted De Patroque. He talked largely, not to say bouncingly, of the great De Patroque among his friends, who, not to be outdone in their turn, talked to him and to others of the new apostle. The fame of De Patroque grew and grew, until at last ill-natured persons affirmed that several essays on his genius, and fraternal hymns of honor, were composed for him by the admirers of his mythical career.

To this select circle Mr. Blanchet had for some time proposed to introduce his friend Victor Heron. On the very day when the first copies of the gorgeous poems were submitted to privileged eyes, Mr. Blanchet called on his friend. He found the friend a little put out by the unexpected lavishness of the manner in which the poetic enterprise had been carried on.

"This will be an awfully expensive business, I'm afraid," Heron said, in an embarrassed tone, for he felt that it was a sort of profanation to talk of money matters with a young poet. "I wish you had let me do this thing myself, Blanchet. I'd not have minded so far as I'm concerned. But I don't know about her, you see--she may not have much money. Then young ladies are generally so enthusiastic; she may not have thought of what the thing would cost."

"You need not think about that," Herbert said loftily. "Miss Grey will be a rich woman one of these days----"

"But I don't see that that much alters the matter, although I am decidedly glad to hear it for her own sake, if it will make her any happier than she is now--which I take it is not by any means certain. But I don't see throwing away her money without her knowing all about it any the more."

"Throwing away her money?" Herbert asked, in tones of lofty protest.

"Well, I don't mean that of course," the good-natured Heron hastened to explain in all sincerity. "You know very well, my dear Blanchet, what I think of your merits and your poems, and of all true poets. I know that it is an honor for any one, whether man or woman, to be allowed to help a poet to come out before the world and make a success. I only wish I had had a chance of doing such a thing for you; but this young lady, you know--I don't feel quite certain whether I ought to have spent her money so freely."

"I can reassure you, I think," the poet said, with chilling dignity. "I should never have allowed any one to do anything for me without having satisfied myself that it was done in the unstinting spirit of friendship, and by some one whom such kindness would not hurt."

"All right; I am glad to hear you say so, of course, but you won't wonder at my scruples, perhaps----"

"Your scruples, my dear fellow, do you infinite honor," Mr. Blanchet said, with a slight dash of irony in his tone, which Heron did not at the moment perceive, being in truth engrossed by some other thoughts. "But you may accept my assurance that there is no further occasion for them, and we will, if you please, change the subject."

Victor did not feel by any means well satisfied that there was no occasion for scruple, nor did he at all like his poetic friend's way of looking at the matter. But he reflected that Blanchet might after all have good warrant for what he had said, and that it was not for him to cavil at the generosity of a rich girl--if she were rich--toward a poor poet.

So they went along, the poet and his distinguished political friend, to the scene of the artistic and literary gathering, which the latter was so proud to see, and the former so proud to show.

We have all read in story about the effect of some little magic word, which once spoken makes that which was lovely before seem but loathly, and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did not seem to constitute an assembly of noble minds in whose midst he was to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of classic tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life, and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander of her rivals.

If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much, very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will look back without bitterness on the time when they tried to impress a dull world, and have no feeling of hatred for those who have done better, but will marry and bring up children, and be Philistines and happy. Youth has only one season--luckily for a good many of us, who are decent fellows enough as long as we are content to be ourselves, and can do without affectation.