Margaret Capel Volume I Part 8

This was not a very formidable threat; but the boy pleaded that she did play so beautiful he could not help it; and she forgot her anger.

Now, at the moment she stamped, one of the gallery doors opened, and Mr. Haveloc came out, intending to go down to the drawing-room; but attracted by the singular sound that met his ear, he remained in the doorway listening. He was very much amused by the short dialogue which he overheard, and delighted when Margaret resumed her more regular performance; for she had that fine sensibility for music which imparts to the finger a charm that cannot be acquired, but which is an absolute requisite to persons of the same temperament.

"There goes seven, Miss," said the boy, as Margaret was bringing to a conclusion one of Handel's choruses.

"How tiresome!" cried Margaret, "Oh, dear! and I promised Mr. Grey that I would always shut up the organ. I shall be late, that I shall! Oh! do hold the candle for me!"

"Allow me to save you the trouble," said Mr. Haveloc, coming forward, "it is the least I can do in return for your music."

"For my music!" gasped Margaret; while all the blunders she had been committing rushed into her mind, turning her quite sick with shame.

"You may trust me to leave all right," said Mr. Haveloc, beginning to put in the stops, "I am used to an organ."

"Oh! thank you, I will then," said Margaret, and taking up her gloves, she lost no time in making her way down stairs.

The Gages' carriage was drawing up as she took her seat beside her uncle. She could not command her complexion, and it rose amazingly as Miss Gage entered with her brother.

Elizabeth was more dressed than at her own house, and poor Margaret ascribed her calm, graceful appearance to the stiff violet watered silk, and the delicate pearl brooch and bracelets which she wore. Her bouquet was composed of geraniums this time, and Margaret began to undervalue her azalias now.

While Mr. Grey was talking to Miss Gage, Hubert Gage, leaning on the back of Margaret's chair, entered into conversation with an air of so much intimacy, that she could hardly feel shy of him. He enquired about her pets, and she confided to him that she had a beautiful bullfinch which could whistle two tunes, and draw up a bucket of water; and that Mr. Grey had an eagle in the court-yard which had a great many odd ways; and that she had not a lap-dog yet, but that Mr. Grey meant to see about it.

Hubert Gage, with an air of great interest, recommended her to have an Italian greyhound, and then told her that her hands were like snow; but Margaret never could recollect how he managed to introduce that piece of information.

Then Mr. Haveloc came down and planted himself beside Miss Gage's chair until dinner was announced.

Mr. Grey gave his arm to Miss Gage, and Hubert took possession of Margaret, begging her to observe how much more fortunate he was now, than the last time he had the pleasure of seeing her.

As they entered the dining-room everybody was surprised to see Mr.

Cas.e.m.e.nt calmly standing before the fire.

Mr. Haveloc, who followed Hubert Gage, caught up his eye-gla.s.s, dropped it with an air of great vexation, and exclaimed, in a suppressed tone, "Good Heaven, Hubert! is that fellow not dead yet?"

"I wish anybody could tell me when he _would_ die," said Hubert, laughing; "but I am firmly persuaded, for my part, that he is the Wandering Jew."

"Ay! here I am," said Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, in reply to Mr. Grey's exclamation of surprise; "Miss Gage, your servant. So you two young fellows are returned at the same time. No fear of your not coming back--eh! a bad s.h.i.+lling! you know the saying."

Hubert Gage burst into a hearty laugh at this address; but Mr. Haveloc knit his brows with an air of extreme disgust.

By this time, as everybody was seated, and Hubert helping the soup for Margaret, Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt bethought himself of something disagreeable to say to her.

"Ain't you very much obliged to me, little woman," he said, "for coming straight in here, and so leaving you to the young sparks? Suppose I had taken you into dinner?"

"Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt," said Miss Gage, in her very calm manner, "you know I always keep you in order. You must not forget I am here."

Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt made a contortion he meant for a smile, and vowed he was her slave.

Mr. Haveloc told Miss Gage that everybody present owed her a vote of thanks. A remark which Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt did not forget.

When a convenient pause occurred, he leaned forward, and said, in a sufficiently marked tone, "Oh, by the bye, Claude! and how are all our friends at Florence?" Margaret absolutely turned pale, and could not avoid glancing anxiously at Mr. Haveloc.

He merely replied, taking up his gla.s.s to examine the dish he was about to carve. "I did not know, Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt, that you had any friends in any part of the world."

Margaret was the only person who observed that his hand trembled.

Miss Gage was pleased with his reply, for she knew the ill-natured point of the remark. Hubert laughed so heartily, that he was forced at intervals to beg Margaret's pardon for being so rude. Mr. Grey tried to turn the conversation. Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt looked sullen; and Mr. Haveloc, still appearing occupied with the dish before him, said, "There are two ways of carving these birds; which do you like best?"

"Oh! the old fas.h.i.+oned way, don't you Sir?" asked Miss Gage of Mr. Grey, "it is much the best."

"Yes; all old fas.h.i.+oned ways are in my opinion;" said Mr. Grey smiling, "but then I am an old man."

Margaret could not easily regain her composure of feeling after this incident; she pitied Mr. Haveloc, she admired Miss Gage, and she envied the readiness with which she directed the conversation into other channels until all constraint seemed banished from the party.

In the evening Hubert Gage beset Margaret with entreaties that she would play; and with a feeling of intense misery, she sat down to the piano and played a Fantasia by Moscheles with great delicacy and effect. Miss Gage turned round in the midst of her conversation with Mr. Grey, and told Margaret that she could take no excuses from her in future, now that she had shown how she could perform.

Then Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt begged Miss Gage to play some old airs, which she did with the utmost good humour; and afterwards sang whatever she was asked with an ease and sweetness that delighted Margaret; who for her own part would have much preferred dying at once to singing before half-a-dozen people.

In the midst of the singing, Mr. Gage begged Margaret to tell him the names of some fine prints he was looking at, which she did as far as she knew them; while in return, when he came to any very beautiful face in the collection, he informed her that it was strikingly like her's, with any little additional compliment that his fancy suggested. Margaret was not quite so over-powered by this as might have been expected, for she was listening all the time to a conversation between Miss Gage and Mr.

Haveloc.

Elizabeth had risen from the piano, and was standing with a sheet of music in her hand talking to Mr. Haveloc about Metastasio: this led to some remarks upon the early poetry, and the early paintings of Italy, and the infancy of art in general.

Miss Gage remarked that the infancy of poetry was unmarked by those signs of feebleness and inaccuracy that denoted the first stages of painting.

"It was true," he replied, "the imagination was at once transferred into words, unfettered by those mechanical means which were needed to express thought upon the canva.s.s; because the soul was the elder and the n.o.bler born, and its work was performed without the tedious interval of experience which was necessary to bring to perfection the physical powers. He thought the best that could be said of painting was, that it was a high order of imitation."

Miss Gage mentioned the delight bequeathed to a succession of ages by a beautiful picture or statue.

"It is true," he said, "but it is a delight for which the eye must be trained, and the mind prepared. It is in a great measure an artificial enjoyment; for I need not remind Miss Gage that the raptures of most persons with regard to art are purely affected. But every poet who deserves the name, appeals at once to the common and spontaneous feelings of mankind; and can be discerned, not by the ignorant indeed, but without any especial cultivation."

Miss Gage said something of the difficulties of art, and the respect due to those who surmounted them.

"I confess," said Mr. Haveloc, "I cannot see much to respect in a successful painter. I allow him great acquirement; a highly trained eye; the mastery of a very difficult and laborious process, and certainly a perception of the most ingenious arrangement of his subject. But, good Heaven! at what an immeasurable distance are these from the gifts that const.i.tute a poet. Where is the exquisite atmosphere of music that suggests to him his delicious rhyme? Where the invisible and mystic shadows that invite him to weave his tissue of unreal scenes? Where the deep and solemn philosophy which reveals to him the strange sources of those emotions which are known to common men by their outward workings alone? No, Miss Gage, I cannot admit toil is a sign of worth, for I know many baubles that are difficult of attainment."

"Ah! you think all that very fine!" said Mr. Cas.e.m.e.nt looking up from his game of piquet, "but it is sheer nonsense every word of it."

Mr. Haveloc did not deign to utter a word in reply to this flattering tribute. Elizabeth smiled, and moved to the table where Hubert and Margaret were looking at the engravings.

"Do not these," she asked, "go far to shake your opinion? And is not the ideal in art worthy of as much veneration as the highest efforts of the poet?"

"I must be uncourteous enough," said Mr. Haveloc, "to differ from you in your estimate of the Ideal over the Real in art. I do not think that the purely Ideal either elevates or instructs; in fact unless the Real is the basis of the design, it is an illusion that only makes one discontented with nature."

"But in that case, the antique----" said Miss Gage.

"It is the exquisite reality of the greatest works of ancient art which makes them so invaluable;" said Mr. Haveloc, "the form may be ideal, but the expression is real. It is the concentration of all nature in its fitness for the quality or emotion intended to be displayed, that const.i.tutes their inapproachable beauty and grace. Beauty being the proportion of form; and grace, the proportion of action to the feeling meant to be expressed."

"I am not quite willing to cede the Ideality of the ancient statues,"

said Miss Gage; "but I can conceive that a different order of excellence is demanded of sculpture from that of painting."