Two, by Tricks: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

'And during all that time,' she whispered, stretching out her thin wan hand, 'you, dear Eleanor, have been my nurse.'

'I have been here off and on for the last ten days,' said the girl. 'I did not hear of your illness until some little time after you had been attacked, or, of course, I should have been with you before.'

'And how did you hear of it?' asked May.

'In a very curious way,' said the girl. 'It appears that in your delirium--you must not mind my mentioning it, dear Lady Forestfield--you talked about all kinds of curious things, declared that you were destitute, and that your only means of supporting yourself would be by painting pictures for your livelihood. In connection with this you mentioned the name of your old drawing-master, Mr. Irvine, who, you said, could speak as to your capability in art. Your frequent repetition of this name attracted the attention of Dr. Chenoweth, who was an old friend of my poor father, and who still keeps up his acquaintance with my sister, Mrs. Chadwick. He knew I was staying at their house, and one day, when he was calling there, he took me aside before my sister came down, and told me how very ill you were; told me, moreover, that while you were carefully and assiduously attended by the good people in this house, he thought that when you came to yourself--a period which he anticipated, but for which he could fix no date--it would be a comfort to you if your eyes could fall upon a face which you had known in--in happier times, and of which you had nothing but pleasant reminiscences. I understood him at once. I told him I thought I could say there had been no cloud upon the friendship with which you had once honoured me; and I came here that day with a letter from the doctor, which secured me a pleasant reception from Mrs. Wilson.'

May's heart was too full to speak. She pressed the young girl's hand and fell back dreamily on the pillow, grateful to the Providence which, in the midst of her complete abandonment, by those who in her prosperity she had imagined were devoted to her, had sent her one friend to prove that the old-fashioned sentiment called gratitude, mocked at and ignored nowadays, yet existed.

It was a strange history, that of the friendship between these two young women, so different in birth and surroundings. Eleanor's father, Angus Irvine, the son of a small Scotch farmer, had at an early age evinced such artistic talent as to attract the attention of the old Lord Stortford, the great landowner of the district, who purchased two or three of the young lad's early sketches, and better still, furnished him with the means of establishing himself for two or three years as an art student in Rome. The good which the young man here did for himself (on his first arrival his tastes and sympathies, quickened by the ever-present daily surroundings, so fired his eye and nerved his hand that old Roman colonists, whose judgment had been tempered by time and experience, predicted the greatest things of him) was not without a certain counterbalance of evil. The loose life led by many of his Bohemian companions, the gatherings at the Caffè Greco, the soirées intimes of men and women at which he was a constant guest, had a baleful effect on the hitherto strictly-kept Scottish youth, and his name was scarcely known in the art circles of Rome before a rumour ran round that Angus Irvine was following in the footsteps of so many other young men of promise, and was becoming dissipated, not to say drunken. The rumour was harsh and exaggerated, and it had an exaggerated and harsh effect. He was a mere boy after all, this gaunt beardless youth of two or three and twenty, and a few glasses of wine had unwonted power on one who, in the seclusion of his mountain home, had been brought up a strict abstainer; and had the censorious left him in peace, it is probable that, so far as the drink was concerned, he would soon have got the better of his newly-acquired freedom, and settled down to a steady plodding life. As it was, when he learned--as he did speedily--that his conduct had become the subject of conversation amongst a certain set, he received the news with an outbreak of wrath, which, cooling down, was supplanted by a sturdy Scotch obstinacy, under which he determined to 'gang his ain gait,' and to treat the animadversion of his detractors with contempt. He laboured fitfully thenceforward, turning out now brilliant work, now pictures which, though undeniaSSTAVEbly possessing genius, were hurried and scamped; his doing of that which he ought not to have done was more regular, while his drinking was harder than ever.

Suddenly there came a change. Angus Irvine received a letter from Lord Stortford intimating a desire that he should come to London, it being the old lord's wish to see his protégé settled and striving for the honours of the Academy before he died. Irvine was sensible enough to know that this was the turning-point of his fate, and that if he neglected such an opportunity he would have no other chance. He was aware of his lamentable failing, and was determined to seize on and overcome it there and then; and being a man of great power of will and determination, he was able to carry out his intention. He started for England within a few weeks, and immediately on his arrival paid a visit to his patron. The old nobleman was delighted with the modest demeanour and brilliant conversational powers of the young artist; he introduced him to his son, Mr. Dunmow, a young man of about Angus's own age, who had already made a brilliant figure in Parliament, and who was about to be married to a charming girl, to whom Angus was also made known. He presented him to the leading art critics and connoisseurs of the day, from some of whom the young Scotchman received valuable commissions; and when, in the course of a couple of years, Lord Stortford heard from Angus of his approaching marriage with a young lady, the daughter of a brother artist, the old nobleman was scarcely less happy than he had been at his own son's wedding, which had taken place a year previously, and he bestowed a substantial mark of his regard upon the bride and bridegroom.

Years went on, and after a lapse of some sixteen or seventeen of them, the two pretty girls who had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Irvine were growing into young women, and Angus Irvine himself, his constitution undermined by excesses of all kinds, was rapidly lapsing into a broken elderly man; for within a very few years of his marriage, so soon as the joys of domesticity were beginning to pall upon him, he found delight in the loose and brilliant society only too ready to welcome him; the old desire for drink came upon him, and he yielded to it with scarcely a struggle. All the young fellows about town were delighted to have the company of Angus Irvine, who talked so brilliantly, and sung the homely Scotch ditties with such exquisite pathos; who could brew a bowl of punch as quickly and as deftly as he could sketch a delicious caricature, and who never minded to what hour of the morning he sat up. Nor did this cheery convivialist confine himself to men's society, or blush to be seen driving in the carriages or seated in the opera-boxes of some of the most noted improprieties of the time. Old Lord Stortford was dead; but his son and his son's wife, and the friends to whom they had introduced their northern protégé, shook their heads dismally, prophesied Angus's ruin, and wondered what Mrs. Irvine would do.

Mrs. Irvine settled that question within a very few months. She was a meek little woman, devoted to her Angus, with a sweet temper and a bad constitution; and when she found that she was deserted by her husband, and that the establishment generally was going to ruin, she thought the best thing she could do was to die--and she did it off-hand. The shock of her death sobered the poor wretch for a time. He had long since given up all hope of selling, or indeed of painting, any more pictures; his muddled brain and unsteady hand forbade that; but Lord Stortford and a few other gentlemen who had known him in better times had engaged him as drawing-master to their children, more for the sake of bestowing a small annuity on him than from the idea of any good to be obtained from his instruction, and he now saw his way to a new method of money-making.

His elder daughter, Fanny, who was eighteen years of age, inherited from him a remarkably sweet voice, and sung Scotch ballads with all the taste and pathos which had been so much applauded in her father. This was a talent which it struck Angus should be cultivated, and accordingly, by Lord Stortford's aid, he procured her entrée as a pupil at the Academy of Music, and, after a few years' instruction, she made her début as a concert-singer with considerable success. The talent of one daughter having been thus utilised, Angus Irvine thought it time that the younger, Eleanor, should take her turn at bread-winning. What to do with her was the crux. Eleanor had a good speaking voice, but no ear and no musical talent; neither of the children had inherited her father's artistic ability, and the education which they had received, though fair enough, was not sufficient to qualify them to act as governesses in the present day, when ladies, possessed of every possible accomplishment and willing to accept next to nothing, are advertising for situations.