CHAPTER II.
It was one of those lovely noons towards the end of May in which a rural
suburb has the mellow charm of summer to him who escapes awhile from the
streets of a crowded capital. The Londoner knows its charm when he feels
his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at
Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the
warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief
trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet
more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached,
and I know not why, but they seem more rural,--perhaps because the
contrast of their repose with the stir left behind, of their redundance
of leaf and blossom compared with the prim efflorescence of trees in the
Boulevards and Tuileries, is more striking. However that may be, when
Graham reached the pretty suburb in which Isaura dwelt, it seemed to him
as if all the wheels of the loud busy life were suddenly smitten still.
The hour was yet early; he felt sure that he should find Isaura at home.
The garden-gate stood unfastened and ajar; he pushed it aside and
entered. I think I have before said that the garden of the villa was
shut out from the road and the gaze of neighbours by a wall and thick
belts of evergreens; it stretched behind the house somewhat far for the
garden of a suburban villa. He paused when he had passed the gateway,
for he heard in the distance the voice of one singing,--singing low,
singing plaintively. He knew it was the voice of Isaura-_he passed on,
leaving the house behind him, and tracking the voice till he reached the
singer.
Isaura was seated within an arbour towards the farther end of the
garden,--an arbour which, a little later in the year, must indeed be
delicate and dainty with lush exuberance of jessamine and woodbine; now
into its iron trelliswork leaflets and flowers were insinuating their
gentle way. Just at the entrance one white rose--a winter rose that had
mysteriously survived its relations--opened its pale hues frankly to the
noonday sun. Graham approached slowly, noiselessly, and the last note of
the song had ceased when he stood at the entrance of the arbour. Isaura
did not perceive him at first, for her face was bent downward musingly,
as was often her wont after singing, especially when alone; but she felt
that the place was darkened, that something stood between her and the
sunshine. She raised her face, and a quick flush mantled over it as she
uttered his name, not loudly, not as in surprise, but inwardly and
whisperingly, as in a sort of fear.
"Pardon me, Mademoiselle," said Graham, entering; "but I heard your voice
as I came into the garden, and it drew me onward involuntarily. What a
lovely air! and what simple sweetness in such of the words as reached me!
I am so ignorant of music that you must not laugh at me if I ask whose is
the music and whose are the words? Probably both are so well known as to
convict me of a barbarous ignorance."
"Oh, no," said Isaura, with a still heightened colour, and in accents
embarrassed and hesitating. "Both the words and music are by an unknown
and very humble composer, yet not, indeed, quite original,--they have not
even that merit; at least they were suggested by a popular song in the
Neapolitan dialect which is said to be very old."
"I don't know if I caught the true meaning of the words, for they seemed
to me to convey a more subtle and refined sentiment than is common in the
popular songs of southern Italy."
"The sentiment in the original is changed in the paraphrase, and not, I
fear, improved by the change."
"Will you explain to me the sentiment in both, and let me judge which I
prefer?"
"In the Neapolitan song a young fisherman, who has moored his boat under
a rock on the shore, sees a beautiful face below the surface of the
waters; he imagines it to be that of a Nereid, and casts in his net to
catch this supposed nymph of the ocean. He only disturbs the water,
loses the image, and brings up a few common fishes. He returns home
disappointed, and very much enamoured of the supposed Nereid. The next
day he goes again to the same place, and discovers that the face which
had so charmed him was that of a mortal girl reflected on the waters from
the rock behind him, on which she had been seated, and on which she had
her home. The original air is arch and lively; just listen to it." And
Isaura warbled one of those artless and somewhat meagre tunes to which
light-stringed instruments are the fitting accompaniment.
"That," said Graham, "is a different music indeed from the other, which
is deep and plaintive, and goes to the heart."
"But do you not see how the words have been altered? In the song you
first heard me singing, the fisherman goes again to the spot, again and
again sees the face in the water, again and again seeks to capture the
Nereid, and never knows to the last that the face was that of the mortal
on the rock close behind him, and which he passed by without notice every
day. Deluded by an ideal image, the real one escapes from his eye."
"Is the verse that is recast meant to symbolize a moral in love?"
"In love? nay, I know not; but in life, yes,--at least the life of the
artist."
"The paraphrase of the original is yours, Signorina, words and music
both. Am I not right? Your silence answers 'Yes.' Will you pardon me
if I say that, though there can be no doubt of the new beauty you have
given to the old song, I think that the moral of the old was the sounder
one, the truer to human life. We do not go on to the last duped by an
allusion. If enamoured by the shadow on the waters, still we do look
around us and discover the image it reflects."
Isaura shook her head gently, but made no answer. On the table before
her there were a few myrtle-sprigs and one or two buds from the last
winter rose, which she had been arranging into a simple nosegay; she took
up these, and abstractedly began to pluck and scatter the rose-leaves.
"Despise the coming May flowers if you will, they will soon be so
plentiful," said Graham; "but do not cast away the few blossoms which
winter has so kindly spared, and which even summer will not give again;"
and placing his hand on the winter buds, it touched hers,--lightly,
indeed, but she felt the touch, shrank from it, coloured, and rose from
her seat.
"The sun has left this side of the garden, the east wind is rising, and
you must find it chilly here," she said, in an altered tone; "will you
not come into the house?"
"It is not the air that I feel chilly," said Graham, with a half-smile;
"I almost fear that my prosaic admonitions have displeased you."
"They were not prosaic; and they were kind and very wise," she added,
with her exquisite laugh,--laugh so wonderfully sweet and musical. She
now had gained the entrance of the arbour; Graham joined her, and they
walked towards the house. He asked her if she had seen much of the
Savarins since they had met.
"Once or twice we have been there of an evening."
"And encountered, no doubt, the illustrious young minstrel who despises
Tasso and Corneille?"
"M. Rameau? Oh, yes; he is constantly at the Savarins. Do not be severe
on him. He is unhappy, he is struggling, he is soured. An artist has
thorns in his path which lookers-on do not heed."
"All people have thorns in their path, and I have no great respect for
those who want lookers-on to heed them whenever they are scratched. But
M. Rameau seems to me one of those writers very common nowadays, in
France and even in England; writers who have never read anything worth
studying, and are, of course, presumptuous in proportion to their
ignorance. I should not have thought an artist like yourself could have
recognized an artist in a M. Rameau who despises Tasso without knowing
Italian."
Graham spoke bitterly; he was once more jealous.
"Are you not an artist yourself? Are you not a writer? M. Savarin told
me you were a distinguished man of letters."
"M. Savarin flatters me too much. I am not an artist, and I have a great
dislike to that word as it is now hackneyed and vulgarized in England and
in France. A cook calls himself an artist; a tailor does the same; a man
writes a gaudy melodrame, a spasmodic song, a sensational novel, and
straightway he calls Himself an artist, and indulges in a pedantic jargon
about 'essence' and 'form,' assuring us that a poet we can understand
wants essence, and a poet we can scan wants form. Thank heaven, I am not
vain enough to call myself artist. I have written some very dry
lucubrations in periodicals, chiefly political, or critical upon other
subjects than art. But why, a propos of M. Rameau, did you ask me that
question respecting myself?"
"Because much in your conversation," answered Isaura, in rather a
mournful tone, "made me suppose you had more sympathies with art and its
cultivators than you cared to avow; and if you had such sympathies, you
would comprehend what a relief it is to a poor aspirant to art like
myself to come into communication with those who devote themselves to any
art distinct from the common pursuits of the world, what a relief it is
to escape from the ordinary talk of society. There is a sort of
instinctive freemasonry among us, including masters and disciples; and
one art has a fellowship with other arts. Mine is but song and music,
yet I feel attracted towards a sculptor, a painter, a romance-writer, a
poet, as much as towards a singer, a musician. Do you understand why I
cannot contemn M. Rameau as you do? I differ from his tastes in
literature; I do not much admire such of his writings as I have read; I
grant that he overestimates his own genius, whatever that be,--yet I like
to converse with him. He is a struggler upwards, though with weak wings,
or with erring footsteps, like myself."
"Mademoiselle," said Graham, earnestly, "I cannot say how I thank you for
this candour. Do not condemn me for abusing it, if--" he paused.
"If what?"
"If I, so much older than yourself,--I do not say only in years, but in
the experience of life, I whose lot is cast among those busy and
'positive' pursuits, which necessarily quicken that unromantic faculty
called common-sense,--if, I say, the deep interest with which you must
inspire all whom you admit into an acquaintance even as unfamiliar as
that now between us makes me utter one caution, such as might be uttered
by a friend or brother. Beware of those artistic sympathies which you so
touchingly confess; beware how, in the great events of life, you allow
fancy to misguide your reason. In choosing friends on whom to rely,
separate the artist from the human being. Judge of the human being for
what it is in itself. Do not worship the face on the waters, blind to
the image on the rock. In one word, never see in an artist like a M.
Rameau the human being to whom you could intrust the destinies of your
life. Pardon me, pardon me; we may meet little hereafter, but you are a
creature so utterly new to me, so wholly unlike any woman I have ever
before encountered and admired, and to me seem endowed with such wealth
of mind and soul, exposed to such hazard, that--that--" again he paused,
and his voice trembled as he concluded--"that it would be a deep sorrow
to me if, perhaps years hence, I should have to say, 'Alas'! by what
mistake has that wealth been wasted!'"
While they had thus conversed, mechanically they had turned away from the
house, and were again standing before the arbour.
Graham, absorbed in the passion of his adjuration, had not till now
looked into the face of the companion by his side. Now, when he had
concluded, and heard no reply, he bent down and saw that Isaura was
weeping silently.
His heart smote him.
"Forgive me," he exclaimed, drawing her hand into his; "I have had no
right to talk thus; but it was not from want of respect; it was--
it was--"
The hand which was yielded to his pressed it gently, timidly, chastely.
"Forgive!" murmured Isaura; "do you think that I, an orphan, have never
longed for a friend who would speak to me thus?" And so saying, she
lifted her eyes, streaming still, to his bended countenance,--eyes,
despite their tears, so clear in their innocent limpid beauty, so
ingenuous, so frank, so virgin-like, so unlike the eyes of 'any other
woman he had encountered and admired.'
"Alas!" he said, in quick and hurried accents, "you may remember, when we
have before conversed, how I, though so uncultured in your art, still
recognized its beautiful influence upon human breasts; how I sought to
combat your own depreciation of its rank among the elevating agencies of
humanity; how, too, I said that no man could venture to ask you to
renounce the boards, the lamps,--resign the fame of actress, of singer.
Well, now that you accord to me the title of friend, now that you so
touchingly remind me that you are an orphan, thinking of all the perils
the young and the beautiful of your sex must encounter when they abandon
private life for public, I think that a true friend might put the
question, 'Can you resign the fame of actress, of singer?'"
"I will answer you frankly. The profession which once seemed to me so
alluring began to lose its charms in my eyes some months ago. It was
your words, very eloquently expressed, on the ennobling effects of music
and song upon a popular audience, that counteracted the growing distaste
to rendering up my whole life to the vocation of the stage; but now I
think I should feel grateful to the friend whose advice interpreted the
voice of my own heart, and bade me relinquish the career of actress."
Graham's face grew radiant. But whatever might have been his reply was
arrested; voices and footsteps were heard behind. He turned round and
saw the Venosta, the Savarins, and Gustave Rameau.
Isaura heard and saw also, started in a sort of alarmed confusion, and
then instinctively retreated towards the arbour. Graham hurried on to
meet the Signora and the visitors, giving time to Isaura to compose
herself by arresting them in the pathway with conventional salutations.
A few minutes later Isaura joined them, and there was talk to which
Graham scarcely listened, though he shared in it by abstracted
monosyllables. He declined going into the house, and took leave at the
gate. In parting, his eyes fixed themselves on Isaura. Gustave Rameau
was by her side. That nosegay which had been left in the arbour was in
her hand; and though she was bending over it, she did not now pluck and
scatter the rose-leaves. Graham at that moment felt no jealousy of the
fair-faced young poet beside her.
As he walked slowly back, he muttered to himself, "But am I yet in the
position to hold myself wholly free? Am I, am I? Were the sole choice
before me that between her and ambition and wealth, how soon it would be
made! Ambition has no prize equal to the heart of such a woman; wealth
no sources of joy equal to the treasures of her love."
