“Oh, to sell! I suppose people like to have them to hang in their rooms? how curious! I would much rather have a picture of you.”
Now Arthur had been falling into lower and lower depths of despondency up to this moment. He had said to himself that all his efforts were mere failures—that he could do nothing, and must give up the attempt; but now he cheered up quite unaccountably, quite unreasonably. There was nothing in what she had said to throw a new light upon Nancy’s capacity and rehabilitate her in his eyes, yet somehow it did so. A sudden tender compunction for the harsh judgment he had been forming came into his mind, softening and melting him. He felt disposed to beg her pardon on his knees.
“You silly girl,” he said, “what do you want with my picture? If it was of you, it might be worth something; but tell me, Nancy, if I were to buy you some of those copies, which would you choose?”
“I don’t want one; you are buying too many things already. Well, perhaps that,” said Nancy at random, pointing at the picture which French taste entitles La Belle Jardinière. It was a lucky guess enough.
“You shall have it, my darling,” cried Arthur delighted, “I knew you had real taste at the bottom of your heart.”
“Oh no, not I,” cried Nancy, shrugging her shoulders and dragging him on, “I don’t care about it. It was only the first that caught my eye. Let us go on quickly through the other rooms; we have been such a long time here. You must not buy that thing, what should I do with it? I don’t really care for pictures. To be sure they make a room rather nice when they have nice frames; but we have not even a room to hang them in. But I will tell you what I should like to do,” she continued, leading him out and in of the smaller rooms. “Let us go and get photographed, Arthur, together, in a nice large size. It will be a much nicer memorial of Paris. And then mamma would like it so much to hang up in the parlour and show to everybody. We must take her a present of some sort, and that would please ourselves too. She would like it a great deal better than that pink lady with the little boy.”
“For heaven’s sake don’t describe the picture like that! Do you know it is a famous Raffaelle,” said Arthur, all the more horrified that some one had heard her young confident voice and had turned round to admire.
“What is a famous Raffaelle? I don’t pretend to know anything about it; and I’d much rather have a picture of you; but what would be really delightful would be to be photographed together. I wonder I never thought of it before. Let us go and find some one as soon as we get out of this stupid place. Oh yes, I have seen everything I want to see.”
Poor Arthur! he was pleased that she should want a portrait of himself. This flattering touch mended his wounds a little, and as she hurried him out again into the bright wintry streets (breathing, herself, a sigh of relief when they got fairly clear of the galleries), he said to himself with the new philosophy which had come to his aid: Well! how was it to be expected she should care for pictures, she who had never seen any? Of course the anticipation was quite absurd on his part. Art demands a special education. To plunge an unsophisticated mind without any training, without any preface, straight into the profundities of Leonardo, of Raffaelle, of Perugino, was ever anything so unreasonable? and then to expect her to understand at once! The poor young fellow felt that he had been hard upon his Nancy, though heaven knows, without meaning it. And then what a pretty idea that was of hers about the photograph! He had winced a little at the idea of having it hung up in Mrs. Bates’s parlour, and exhibited to all her friends; but that was a paltry feeling—and what could be more natural and delightful than that she should wish for such a memento of their honeymoon? That she should be so eager about it, was not that a proof that she was happy, notwithstanding all the little frets of her new position, and those ill-advised efforts of his to force her into his own conventional code of the right things to be admired? That was all a matter of education, he felt sure. He had not thought it to be so before. He had supposed in his ignorance that a fine picture was like a fine landscape, comprehensible to everybody; but then Arthur recollected what he had read somewhere that it was very long even before people began to admire nature, that a generation or two back the Alps were only horrible snowy deserts, and mountains generally were looked upon as obstructions and eyesores by the common mind. This showed clearly (he said to himself) that education was everything. It not only trained the eye but might be said to create it, giving perceptions of beauty that actually had not existed before. This thread of thought kept him occupied as he went on through the bright streets, drawn by Nancy’s eagerness to one of the shops where they had made their previous purchases, to ask about a photographer. She was in such spirits over the idea that she kept up the conversation and covered his silence; and he had conducted his cogitation to a most satisfactory end, the conclusion that Nancy had really shown originality in her remarks and that it was a mere absurdity on his part to look for art knowledge from her—by the time they reached the shop, where they were received with the most cordial satisfaction, and where there were a great many new things to see which Nancy admired greatly. The shopkeeper had no difficulty in indicating an artist of his own acquaintance who, he had no doubt, would do justice to Madame, and would be too proud and happy to have such a subject. Arthur, however, came to himself when they had got this length, whether by the touch of the practical involved in buying some more pretty things for Nancy, or by the fact that he had proved her to his entire satisfaction to be quite justified in her indifference to the pictures in the Louvre; and he had sufficient good sense left to avoid the recommendation of the modiste, and take Nancy to a really good photographer who gave them an appointment for the next day. They were both quite exhilarated by this engagement. It was something to do! They went back to their hotel in the afternoon, consoled and happy, talking about it. And while Nancy reposed herself and took out her dress for the evening, Arthur went to look at the newspapers as in duty bound. He took up the latest “Times,” and hid himself behind its ample sheet; but he did not get much good of his reading. However distinctly you may make out that it is unreasonable to expect your bride to be interested in the interesting things of the place in which you are living, it is impossible to deny that it is very embarrassing when she is not. A girl who was frightened and chilled by Notre Dame, wearied at the Français, uninterested in the Louvre, what was her poor young husband to do with her? The weather was not favourable for those excursions which are so easy in summer. And besides what interest could there be in Versailles, for example, to one who knew nothing about the Grand Monarque, and probably had never heard of Marie Antoinette? People do not marry their wives or their husbands because they understand Molière, and love the Great Masters, and know Continental history; but it is bewildering to be in Paris, or anywhere else for that matter, with a new companion who has no associations with anything, and is at once indifferent and ignorant of all that is in the past. What was he to do with her? Where was he to take her? Poor Arthur puzzled behind his “Times,” and did not know.
That evening he took her to the Gymnase, and at first the spell seemed to tell. Nancy for the first act gave her attention to the stage, and certainly it was not such a failure as the Français. There was a good deal of love-making, and that interested her. But it ended as before, in disgust and weariness.