"I'll tell you what it is," said the painter. "I am an artist, and as this gentleman says, Art is this and the other; but of course, if my wife is going to make my life a piece of perdition all day long, I prefer to go and drown myself out of hand.""Go!" said his wife. "I should like to see you!""I was going to say," resumed Stubbs, "that a fellow may be a clerk and paint almost as much as he likes. I know a fellow in a bank who makes capital water-colour sketches; he even sold one for seven-and-six."To both the women this seemed a plank of safety; each hopefully interrogated the countenance of her lord; even Elvira, an artist herself! - but indeed there must be something permanently mercantile in the female nature. The two men exchanged a glance;it was tragic; not otherwise might two philosophers salute, as at the end of a laborious life each recognised that he was still a mystery to his disciples.
Leon arose.
"Art is Art," he repeated sadly. "It is not water-colour sketches, nor practising on a piano. It is a life to be lived.""And in the meantime people starve!" observed the woman of the house. "If that's a life, it is not one for me.""I'll tell you what," burst forth Leon; "you, Madame, go into another room and talk it over with my wife; and I'll stay here and talk it over with your husband. It may come to nothing, but let's try.""I am very willing," replied the young woman; and she proceeded to light a candle. "This way if you please." And she led Elvira upstairs into a bedroom. "The fact is," said she, sitting down, "that my husband cannot paint.""No more can mine act," replied Elvira.
"I should have thought he could," returned the other; "he seems clever.""He is so, and the best of men besides," said Elvira; "but he cannot act.""At least he is not a sheer humbug like mine; he can at least sing.""You mistake Leon," returned his wife warmly. "He does not even pretend to sing; he has too fine a taste; he does so for a living.
And, believe me, neither of the men are humbugs. They are people with a mission - which they cannot carry out.""Humbug or not," replied the other, "you came very near passing the night in the fields; and, for my part, I live in terror of starvation. I should think it was a man's mission to think twice about his wife. But it appears not. Nothing is their mission but to play the fool. Oh!" she broke out, "is it not something dreary to think of that man of mine? If he could only do it, who would care? But no - not he - no more than I can!""Have you any children?" asked Elvira.
"No; but then I may."
"Children change so much," said Elvira, with a sigh.
And just then from the room below there flew up a sudden snapping chord on the guitar; one followed after another; then the voice of Leon joined in; and there was an air being played and sung that stopped the speech of the two women. The wife of the painter stood like a person transfixed; Elvira, looking into her eyes, could see all manner of beautiful memories and kind thoughts that were passing in and out of her soul with every note; it was a piece of her youth that went before her; a green French plain, the smell of apple-flowers, the far and shining ringlets of a river, and the words and presence of love.
"Leon has hit the nail," thought Elvira to herself. "I wonder how."The how was plain enough. Leon had asked the painter if there were no air connected with courtship and pleasant times; and having learnt what he wished, and allowed an interval to pass, he had soared forth into "O mon amante, O mon desir, Sachons cueillir L'heure charmante!""Pardon me, Madame," said the painter's wife, "your husband sings admirably well.""He sings that with some feeling," replied Elvira, critically, although she was a little moved herself, for the song cut both ways in the upper chamber; "but it is as an actor and not as a musician.""Life is very sad," said the other; "it so wastes away under one's fingers.""I have not found it so," replied Elvira. "I think the good parts of it last and grow greater every day.""Frankly, how would you advise me?"
"Frankly, I would let my husband do what he wished. He is obviously a very loving painter; you have not yet tried him as a clerk. And you know - if it were only as the possible father of your children - it is as well to keep him at his best.""He is an excellent fellow," said the wife.
They kept it up till sunrise with music and all manner of good fellowship; and at sunrise, while the sky was still temperate and clear, they separated on the threshold with a thousand excellent wishes for each other's welfare. Castel-le-Gachis was beginning to send up its smoke against the golden East; and the church bell was ringing six.
"My guitar is a familiar spirit," said Leon, as he and Elvira took the nearest way towards the inn, "it resuscitated a Commissary, created an English tourist, and reconciled a man and wife."Stubbs, on his part, went off into the morning with reflections of his own.
"They are all mad," thought he, "all mad - but wonderfully decent."End