Land at Last: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

"Good boy, Charley! very good boy!" said Stompff, calmly pulling his whisker through his teeth--"shouldn't lose his temper, though. Come and dine a-Sunday, Charley." Mr. Potts said something, which the historian is not bound to repeat, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Mr. Stompff was not a bit disconcerted at this treatment. He merely stuck his tongue in his cheek, and looking at the men standing round, said, "He's on the high ropes, is Master Charley! Some of you fellows have been lending him half-a-crown, or that fool Caniche has bought one of his pictures for seven-and-six! Now, has anybody anything new to show, eh?" Of course everybody had something new to show to the great Stompff, the enterprising Stompff, the liberal Stompff, whose cheques were as good as notes of the Bank of England. How they watched his progress, and how their hearts beat as he loitered before their works! Jupp, who had a bed-ridden wife, a dear pretty little woman recovering from rheumatic fever at, Adalbert Villa, Elgiva Road, St. John's Wood; Smethurst, who had a 25l. bill coming due in a fortnight, and had three-and-sevenpence wherewith to: Vogelstadt, who had been beguiled into leaving Dusseldorf for London on the rumours of English riches and English patronage, and whose capital studies of birds in the snow, and treibe-jagd's, and boar-hunts, had called forth universal laudation, but had not as yet entrapped a single purchaser, so that Vogelstadt, who had come down not discontentedly to living on bread-and-milk, had notions of mortgaging his ancestral thumb-ring to procure even those trifling necessaries,--how they al glared with expectation as the ex-singing-bird-importer passed their pictures in review! That worthy took matters very easily, strolling along with his hands in his pockets, glancing at the easels and along the walls, occasionally nodding his head in approval, or shrugging his shoulders in depreciation, but never saying a word until he stopped opposite a well-placed figure-subject to which he devoted a two-minutes' close scrutiny, and then uttered this frank though argot-tinged criticism "That'll hit 'em up! that'll open their eyelids, by Jove! Whose is it?"

The picture represented a modern ballroom, in a corner of which a man of middle age, his arms tightly folded across his breast, was intently watching the movements of a young girl, just starting off in a valse with a handsome dashing young partner. The expressions in the two faces were admirably defined: in the man's was a deep earnest devotion not unmingled with passion and with jealousy, his tightly-clenched mouth, his deep-set earnest eyes, settled in rapt adoration on the girl, showed the earnestness of his feeling, SO did the rigidly-fixed arms, and the pose of the figure, which, originally careless, had become hardened and angular through intensity of feeling. The contrast was well marked; in the girl's face which was turned toward the man while her eyes were fixed on him, was a bright saucy triumph, brightening her eyes, inflating her little nostrils, curving the corners of her mouth, while her figure was light and airy, just obedient to the first notes of the valse, balancing itself as it were on the arm of her partner before starting off down the dance. All the accessories were admirable: the dreary wallflowers ranged round the room, the chaperons nidnodding together on the rout-seats, paterfamilias despondingly consulting his watch, the wearied hostess, and the somnolently-inclined musicians,--all were there, portrayed not merely by a facile hand but by a man conversant with society. The title of the picture, "Sic vos non vobis," was written on a bit of paper stuck into the frame, on the other corner of which was a card bearing the words "Mr. Geoffrey Ludlow."

"Ah!" said Stompff, who, after carefully scanning the picture close and then from a distance, had read the card--"at last! Geoffrey Ludlow's going to fulfil the promise which he's been showing this ten years! A late birth, but a fine babby now it's born! That's the real thing and no flies! That's about as near a good thing as I've seen this long time--that; come, you'll say the same! That's a good picture, Mr. Wrigley!"

"Ah!" said old Tom, coming up at the moment, "you've made another lucky hit if you've bought that, Mr. Stompff! Geoff is so confoundedly undecided, so horribly weak in all things, that he's been all this time making up his mind whether he really would paint a good picture or not. But he's decided at last, and he has painted a clipper."

"Ye-es!" said Stompff, whose first enthusiasm had by no means died away--on the contrary, he thought so well of the picture that he had within himself determined to purchase it; but his business caution was coming over him strongly. "Yes! it's a clipper, as you say, Wrigley; but it's a picture which would take all a fellow knew to work it. Throw that into the market--where are you! Pouf! gone I no one thinking of it. Judicious advertisement, judicious squaring of those confounded fellows of the press; a little dinner at the Albion or the Star and Garter to two or three whom we know; and then the wonderful grasp of modern life, the singular manner in which the great natural feelings are rendered, the microscopic observation, and the power of detail--"

"Yes, yes," said Tom Wrigley; "for which, see Catalogue of Stompff's Gallery of Modern Painters, price 6d. Spare yourself, you unselfish encourager of talent, and spare Geoff's blushes; for here he is.--Did you hear what Stompff was saying on, Geoff?"

As he spoke, there came slouching up, shouldering his way through the crowd, a big, heavily-built man of about forty years of age, standing over six feet, and striking in appearance if not prepossessing. Striking in appearance from his height, which was even increased by his great shock head of dark-brown hair standing upright on his forehead, but curling in tight crisp waves round the back and poll of his head; from his great prominent brown eyes, which, firmly set in their large thickly-carved lids, flashed from under an overhanging pair of brows; from his large heavy nose, thick and fleshy, yet with lithe sensitive nostrils; from his short upper and protruding thick under lip; from the length of his chin and the massive heaviness of his jaw, though the heavy beard greatly concealed the formation of the lower portion of his face. A face which at once evoked attention, which no one passed by without noticing, which people at first called "odd," and "singular," and "queer," according to their vocabulary; then, following the same rule, pronounced "ugly," or "hideous," or "grotesque,"--allowing all the time that there "was something very curious in it." But a face which, when seen in animation or excitement, in reflex of the soul within, whose every thought was legibly portrayed in its every expression, in light or shade, with earnest watchful eyes, and knit brows and quivering nostrils and working lips; or, on the other hand, with its mouth full of sound big white teeth gleaming between its ruddy lips, and its eyes sparkling with pure merriment or mischief;--then a face to be preferred to all the dolly inanities of the Household Brigade, or even the matchless toga-draped dummies in Mr. Truefitt's window. This was Geoffrey Ludlow, whom everybody liked, but who was esteemed to be so weak and vacillating, so infirm of purpose, so incapable of succeeding in his art or in his life, as to have been always regarded as an object of pity rather than envy; as a man who was his own worst enemy, and of whom nothing could be said. He had apparently caught some words of the conversation, for when he arrived at the group a smile lit up his homely features, and his teeth glistened again in the gaslight.

"What are you fellows joking about?" he asked, while he roared with laughter, as if with an anticipatory relish of the fun. "Some chaff at my expense, eh? Something about my not having made up my mind to do something or not; the usual nonsense, I suppose?"

"Not at all Geoff," said Tom Wrigley. "The question asked by Mr. Stompff here was--whether you wished to sell this picture, and what you asked for it."