The Galaxy, May, 1877 Part 3

"Yours is a delightful calling, sir," he said. "Excuse me if I speak of it. I remember reading somewhere that one should never talk to an author about his works. But I couldn't help it; we don't meet poets in some of our colonies; and your sister was kind enough to enlighten my ignorance, and tell me that you were a poet. I always thought that a charming anecdote of Wolfe reciting Gray's 'Elegy,' and telling his officers he would rather have written that than take Quebec. Ay, by Jove, and so would I!"

Mr. Blanchet had never heard of the anecdote, and had by no means any clear idea as to the ident.i.ty or exploits of Wolfe. But he was anxious to know something about Heron, and therefore he was determined to be as companionable as possible.

"You must not believe all my sister says about me. She has an extravagant notion of my merits in every way."

"It must be delightful to have a sister!" Victor Heron said enthusiastically. "Do you know that I can't imagine any greater happiness for a man than to have a sister? I envy you, Mr. Blanchet."

Heron was in the peculiar position of one to whom all the family relations.h.i.+ps present themselves in idealized form. He had never had sister or brother; and a sister now rose up in his imagination as a sort of creature compounded of a simplified Flora MacIvor and a glorified Ruth Pinch. His novel-reading in the colonies was a little old-fas.h.i.+oned, like many of his ideas, and his habit of frequently using the word "sir" in talking with men whom he did not know very familiarly.

Mr. Blanchet was not disposed, from his knowledge of Mary Blanchet, to hold the possession of a sister as a gift of romantic or inestimable value. To say the truth, when Victor spoke so warmly of the delight of having a sister, he too was not setting up the poetess as an ideal. He was thinking rather of Miss Grey, and what a sister she would be for a man to confide in and have always with him.

Meanwhile Herbert, with all his self-conceit, had common sense enough to know that it would not do to leave Heron to find out from others that the great poet Blanchet had yet to make his fame.

"My sister and I have been a long time separated," he said. "She lived in the country for the most part, and I had to come to London."

"Of course--the only place for a man of genius. A grand stage, Mr.

Blanchet--a grand stage."

"So of course Mary is all the more inclined to make a sort of hero of me. You must not take her estimate of me, Mr. Heron. She fancies the outer world must think just as she does of everything I do. I am not a famous poet, Mr. Heron, and probably never shall be. I belong to a school which does not cultivate fame, or even popularity."

"I admire you all the more for that. It always seems to me that the poet degrades his art who hunts for popularity--the poet or anybody else for that matter," added Victor, thinking of his own unpopular performances in St. Xavier's Settlements. "I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Blanchet.

I have seen so much hunting after popularity in England that I honor any man of genius who has the courage to set his face against it."

"My latest volume of poems," Blanchet said firmly, "I do not even mean to publish. They shall be printed, I hope, and got out in a manner becoming of them--becoming, at least, of what I think of them; but they shall not be hawked about book shops and reviewed by self-conceited, ignorant prigs."

"Quite right, Mr. Blanchet; just what I should like to do myself if I could possibly imagine myself gifted like you. But still you must admit that it is little to the credit of the age that a poet should be forced thus to keep his treasures from the public eye. Besides, it may be all very well, you know, in your case or mine; but think of a man of genius who has to live by his poems! It's easy talking for men who have enough--my enough, I confess, is a pretty modest sort of thing--but you must know better than I that there are young men of genius--ay, of real genius--trying to make a living in London by writings that perhaps their own generation will never understand. There is what seems to me the hard thing." Mr. Heron grew quite animated.

The words sent a keen pang through Blanchet's heart. His new acquaintance, whom Blanchet a.s.sumed to be confoundedly wealthy, evidently regarded him as a person equally favored by fortune, and therefore only writing poetry to indulge the whim of his genius. Herbert Blanchet had heard from the Money women, in a vague sort of way, that Mr. Heron had been a governor of some place; it might have been Canada or India for aught he knew to the contrary; and he a.s.sumed that he must be a very aristocratic and self-conceited person. Blanchet would not for the world have admitted at that moment that he was poor; and he shuddered at the idea that Heron might somehow learn all about Mary Blanchet's official position in the court-house of Duke's Keeton. For all the dignity of poetry and high art, Mr. Blanchet was impressed with a painful consciousness of being small somehow in the company of Mr.

Heron. It was not merely because he supposed Heron to be wealthy, for he knew Mrs. Money was rich, and that Lucy would be an heiress; and yet he was always quite at his ease with them, and accustomed to give himself airs and to be made much of; but it occurred to him that Mr. Heron's family, friends, and familiar surroundings would probably be very different from his; and he always found himself at home in the society of women, whom he knew that he could impress and impose on by his handsome presence. Yes, he felt himself rather small in the society of this pleasant, simple, unpretending young man, who was all the time looking up to him as a poet and a child of genius.

Greatly pleased was the poet and child of genius when Victor Heron asked him to come into his rooms and smoke a cigar before going to bed.

"You don't sleep much or keep early hours, I dare say, Mr. Blanchet; literary men don't, I suppose; and I only sleep when I can't help it.

Let us smoke and have a talk for an hour or two."

"Night is my day," said Blanchet. "I don't think people who have minds can talk well in the hours before midnight. When I have to work in the day I sometimes close my shutters, light my gas, and fancy I am under the influences of night."

"I got the way of sitting up half the night," said Victor simply, "from living in places where one had best sleep in the day; but I am sure if I were a poet, I should delight in the night for its own sake."

There was something curious in the feeling of deference with which Heron regarded the young poet. He considered Blanchet as something not quite mortal, or at all events, masculine; something ent.i.tled to the homage one gives to a woman and the enthusiasm we feel to a spiritual teacher.

Blanchet did not seem to him exactly like a man; rather like one of those creatures compounded of fire and dew whom we read of in legend and mythology. The feeling was not that of awe, because Blanchet was young and good-looking, and wore a dress coat and white tie, and it is impossible to have a feeling of awe for a man with a white tie. It was a feeling of delicate consideration and devotion. Had some rude person jostled against or otherwise insulted the poet as they pa.s.sed along, Victor would have felt it his duty to interpose and resent the affront as promptly as if Minola Grey or Lucy Money were the object of the insult. To his unsophisticated colonial mind the poet was the sweet feminine voice of the literary grammar.

Heron occupied two or three rooms on the drawing-room floor of one of the streets running out of Piccadilly. He paid, perhaps, more for his accommodation than a prudent young man beginning the world all over again would have thought necessary; but Heron could not come down all at one step from his dignity as a sort of colonial governor, and he considered it, in a manner, due to the honor of England's administrative system, that he should maintain a gentlemanlike appearance in London while still engaged in fighting his battle--the battle which had not begun yet. Besides, as he had himself told Minola Grey, his troubles thus far were not money troubles. He had means enough to live like a modest gentleman even in London, provided he did not run into extravagant tastes of any kind, and he had saved, because he had had no means of spending it, a good deal of his salary while in the St.

Xavier's his lodgings; and his condition seemed to Blanchet, when they entered the drawing-room together, and the servant was seen to be quietly busy in antic.i.p.ating his master's wants, to be that of an easy opulence whereof, in the case of young bachelors, he had little personal knowledge. It was very impressive for the moment. Genius, and originality, and the school quailed at first before respectability, West End rooms, and a man servant.

The adornments of the rooms were, to Mr. Blanchet's thinking, atrocious.

They were, indeed, only of the better cla.s.s London lodgings style: mirrors, and gilt, and white, and damask. There were doors where there ought to have been curtains, carpets where artistic feeling would have prescribed mats or rugs; there were no fans, not to say on the ceiling, but even on the walls. The only suggestion of art in the place was a plaster cast of the Venus of the Louvre which Heron himself had bought, and which in all simplicity he adored. Mr. Blanchet held, first, that all casts were nefarious, and next, that the Venus of Milo as a work of art was beneath contempt. One of the divinities of his school had done the only Venus which art could acknowledge as her own. This was, to be sure, a picture, not a statue; but in Mr. Blanchet's mind it had settled the Venus question for ever. The Lady Venus was draped from chin to toes in a snuff-colored gown, and was represented as seated on a rock biting the nails of a lank, greenish hand; and she had sunken cheeks, livid eyes, and a complexion like that of the prairie sage gra.s.s. Any other Venus made Herbert Blanchet shudder.

The books scattered about were dispiriting. There were Shakespeare, Byron, and Browning. Mr. Blanchet had never read Shakespeare, considered Byron below criticism, and could hardly restrain himself on the subject of Browning. There were histories, and Mr. Blanchet scorned history; there were blue books, and the very shade of blue which their covers displayed would have made his soul sicken. It will be seen, therefore, how awful is the impressiveness of respectability when, with all these evidences of the lack of artistic taste around him, Mr. Blanchet still felt himself dwarfed somehow in the presence of the occupier of the rooms. It ought to be said in vindication of Mr. Heron, that that poor youth was in nowise responsible for the adornments of the rooms, except in so far as his plaster cast and his books were concerned. He had never, up to this moment, noticed anything about the lodgings, except that the rooms were pretty large, and that the locality was convenient for his purposes and pursuits.

The two young men had some soda and brandy, and smoked and talked.

Blanchet was the poorest hand possible at smoking and drinking; but he swallowed soda and brandy in repeated doses, while his host's gla.s.s lay still hardly touched before him. One consequence was that his humbled feeling soon wore off, and he became eloquent on his own account, and patronizing to Heron. He set our hero right upon every point connected with modern literature and art, whereon it appeared that Heron had hitherto possessed the crudest and most old-fas.h.i.+oned notions. Then he declaimed some of his own shorter poems, and explained to Heron that there was a conspiracy among all the popular and successful poets of the day to shut him out from public notice, until Heron felt compelled, by a sheer sense of fellow-feeling in grievance, to start up and grasp his hand, and vow that his position was enviable in comparison with that of those who had leagued themselves against him.

"But you must hear my last poem--you _shall_ hear it," Herbert said magnanimously.

"I shall be delighted; I shall feel truly honored," murmured Victor in perfect sincerity. "Only tell me when."

"The first reading--let me see; yes, the _first_ reading is pledged to Miss Grey. No one," the poet grandly went on, "can hear it before she hears it."

"Of course not--certainly not; I shouldn't think of it," the dethroned ruler of St. Xavier's Settlements hastened to interpose. "What a n.o.ble girl Miss Grey is! You know her very well, I suppose?"

"I look upon her," said the poet gravely, "as my patron saint." He threw himself back in his chair, raised his eyes to the ceiling, murmured to himself some words which sounded like a poetic prayer, and swallowed his brandy and soda.

Victor thought he understood, and remained silent. His heart swelled with admiration, sympathy, and an entirely innocent, unselfish envy.

"Still," the poet said, rising in his chair again, "there is no reason why you should not hear the poem at the same time. I am going to-morrow to read the poem to Minola--to Miss Grey and Mary. I am sure they will both be delighted if you will come with me and hear it."

"I should like it of all things, of course; but I don't know whether I ought to intrude on Miss Grey. I understood from her that she rather prefers to live to herself--with her friends of course--and that she does not desire to have visitors."

"You may safely come with me," the poet proudly said. "I'll call for you to-morrow, if you like."

Victor a.s.sumed that he safely might accept the introduction of his new acquaintance, and the appointment was made.

If Mr. Heron could, under any possible circ.u.mstances, be brought to admit to himself that the society of a poet was a little tiresome, he might perhaps have acknowledged it in the present instance. The good-natured young man was quite content for the present to sink and even to forget his own grievance in presence of the grievances of his new acquaintance. His own trouble seemed to him but small in comparison.

What, after all, was the misprizing of the political services of an individual in the face of a malign or stupid lack of appreciation, which might deprive the world and all time of the outcome of a poet's genius?

Heron began now to infer that his new friend was poor, and the conviction made him more and more devotedly sympathetic. He was already dimly revolving in his mind a project for the publication of Blanchet's poems at the risk or expense of a few private friends, of whom he was to be the foremost. Some persons have a genius, a heaven-bestowed faculty, for the transfer of their own responsibilities and cares to other minds and shoulders. Already two sympathetic friends of a few hours' standing are separately taking thought about the publication of Mr. Blanchet's poems without risk or loss to Mr. Blanchet. Still, it must be owned that Mr. Blanchet's company was growing a little of a strain on the attention of his present host. Blanchet knew absolutely nothing of politics or pa.s.sing events of any kind in the outer world, and did not affect or pretend to care anything about them. Indeed, had he been a man of large and liberal information in contemporary history, he would in all probability have concealed his treasures of knowledge, and affected an absolute and complacent ignorance. Outside the realms of what he called art, Mr. Blanchet thought it utterly beneath him to know anything; and within his own realm he knew so much, and bore down with such a terrible dogmatism, that the ordinary listener sank oppressed beneath it. Warmed and animated by his own discourse, the poet poured out the streams of his dogmatic eloquence over the patient Heron, who strained every nerve in the effort to appreciate, and in the honest desire to acquire, exalted information.

At last the talk came to an end, and even Blanchet got somehow the idea that it was time to be going away. Victor accompanied him as far as the doorway, and they stood for a moment looking into the silent street.

"You haven't far to go, I hope?"

"No, not far; not exactly far," the poet answered. "I'll find a cab, I dare say. To-morrow, then, you'll come with me to Miss Grey's. You needn't have any hesitation; you will be quite welcome, I a.s.sure you.

I'll call for you."

"Come to breakfast then at twelve."

"All right," the complacent Blanchet answered, his earlier awe having given place to an easy familiarity; "I'll come."

He nodded and went his way. Victor Heron looked for a while after his tall, slender, and graceful figure.

"He's a handsome fellow," Heron said to himself, "and a poet, and I can easily imagine a girl being in love with him, or any number of girls.

She is a very fine girl, quite out of the common track. She must be very happy. I almost envy him. No, I don't. What on earth have I to do with such nonsense?"

He returned to his room and sat thinking for a while. All his political worrying and grievance-mongering seemed to have lost character somehow, and become prosaic, and unsatisfying, and vapid. It did not seem much to look forward to, that sort of thing going on for ever.