“You should just see his pictures,” he said, “and what that man can do. Why, his horses and riders come galloping to you out of the canvas! Even that scoundrel Philip II., perhaps the worst and basest coward that ever lived in history, gains something of distinction and nobility by the touch of his pencil. And he can paint you an atmosphere and distance in which a man can breathe and walk. And what does he do it all with? No flaming, gorgeous colours like Titian’s and Tintoret’s, but all in quiet greens and greys and browns that would be dull as ditchwater in any other hand. Opinions, I know, differ, but to me at any rate he has always seemed the greatest of Art’s great Trinity—Titian, Rembrandt, and himself. And to him I owe everything. He it was who read me the lesson that I have tried to learn—to decide what I wanted to paint, and then go straight for it, letting all the accessories and inessentials come in at the end where they can.”
Yes; it was another and a different Eric who was talking to us now from the one with whom I had parted nearly two years ago. The indolent dreamer of those days had been transfigured into the man with a purpose. And I hoped, as I heard him, that he had made a mistress of his art, and might find in his devotion to her the happiness which we are told she always gives to those who worship her with a whole and undivided purpose.
Three days later he left us, to finish, he told us, the first great picture he had attempted. It was already too late for the Academy, but competent judges thought so highly of its merits that he intended to risk its first appearance in the almost fiercer light of a London show-room. “Of course,” he added, “you two must be the first to see it.”
CHAPTER XII
In the general chorus of congratulation that welcomed our engagement I must include a letter I received from my erstwhile rival, Reggie. We had found time during his vacations to become fast friends, and he wrote to me from my old rooms in Trinity, where, by some strange freak of fortune, he was now installed.
“Dear Stirling,
“I congratulate you heartily on your engagement to Marion, and think you lucky beyond the majority of mankind. If I hadn’t been her cousin, and much too infantine in years, I would have done my level best to supplant you. Peggy, I fancy, would have co-operated with me, as I am sure she believes even now that, if you had only gone the way of the other curates and left me a fair field, I should have won easily in a canter.
“Not only do I congratulate you, but I also send you a wedding-present, which is unlike ordinary presents of the kind in that it will be valuable to you while it will cost me nothing. In fact, I am only presenting to you what is already your own property. The picture which I forward herewith was found in the cupboard of your gyp-room. If age is valuable as well as venerable, there is little doubt that I have been happy in the choice of my wedding-present.
“You will forgive me, I hope, for my unseasonable jocularity. It is intended to comfort your heart by proving to you that my youthful affections have not been so seriously blighted as at one time you had cause to imagine.
“Yours, without envy or uncharitableness,
“Reggie.”
“The young rascal,” I muttered. “He must have known all the time—perhaps his sisters told him—that I had been a witness of his youthful escapade. Well, the lad’s got a sense of humour in him at any rate. But I wonder what picture he means? Oh, no doubt it’s the one that’s been in our family for a hundred years at least. My grandfather, I think it was, brought it from Spain, and thought a lot of it too; though why and wherefore, passes my comprehension. But it’s certainly old and dirty enough, as Reggie says, to be valuable. I was always intending to have it re-framed and always forgot it.”
When the picture arrived a day later, the first thing I did was to carry out my intention of having it cleaned and re-framed. We had always supposed it to be the portrait of some cardinal, a faint glow of red being the only colour that had power in it to pierce the dirt of ages.
But now at last was revealed a face of marvellous beauty, and (strange to say) of a pronounced English type. The pale refined features and sunny hair resembled nothing that one encounters among the native types of Italy and Spain.
I should have put him down from his dress as an acolyte or choir boy, or, it might be, some cardinal’s page. But who he was, or how he found himself in Spain, or why he should have clothed himself from head to foot in scarlet, even to his very cap, it was beyond my power to fathom. It was a remarkable coincidence, too, that he much reminded me of a famous portrait by Bronzino that had taken my fancy at Madrid, in connection with which I had been met years before by the self-same difficulty, when the official catalogue, so far as I remembered, had been equally incompetent to solve it.