Humphrey, artist, and therefore a man of intuitive sympathies, followed him. Then he patted Cornelius on the shoulder, and shook his head.
"Brother, I know your thought. You want to drag me from my work; you think it has been too much for me lately. You are too anxious about me."
Cornelius smiled.
"Not on my own account too, Humphrey?"
"True—on your account. Let us go out at once, brother. Ah, why did you choose so vast a subject?"
Cornelius was engaged—had been engaged for twenty years—upon an epic poem, entitled the Upheaving of Ælfred. The school he belonged to would not, of course, demean themselves by speaking of Alfred. To them Edward was Eadward, Edgar was Eadgar, and old Canute was Knut. In the same way Cicero became Kikero, Virgil was Vergil, and Socrates was spelt, as by the illiterate bargee, with a k. So the French prigs of the ante-Boileau period sought to make their trumpery pedantries pass for current coin. So, too, Chapelain was in labour with the Pucelle for thirty years; and when it came—But Cornelius Jagenal could not be compared with Chapelain, because he had as yet brought forth nothing. He sat with what he and his called "English" books all round him; in other words, he had all the Anglo-Saxon literature on his shelves, and was amassing, as he said, material.
Humphrey, on the other hand, was engaged on a painting, the composition of which offered difficulties which, for nearly twenty years, had proved insuperable. He was painting, he said, the "Birth of the Renaissance." It was a subject which required a great outlay in properties, Venetian glass, Italian jewelry, mediæval furniture, copies of paintings—everything necessary to make this work a masterpiece—he bought at Joseph's expense. Up to the present no one had been allowed to see the first rough drawings.
"Where's Cæsar?" Humphrey would say, leading the way to the hall. "Cæsar! Why, here he is. Cæsar must actually have heard us proposing to go out."
Cornelius called the dog Kaysar, and he refused to answer to it; so that conversation between him and Cornelius was impossible.
There never was a pair more attached to each other than these twin brethren. They sallied forth each morning at twelve, arm-in-arm, with an open and undisguised admiration for each other which was touching. Before them marched Cæsar, who was of mastiff breed, leading the way. Cornelius, the poet, was dressed with as much care as if he were still a young man of five-and-twenty, in a semi-youthful and wholly-æsthetic costume, in which only the general air, and not the colour, revealed the man of delicate perceptions. Humphrey, the artist, greatly daring, affected a warm brown velvet with a crimson-purple ribbon. Both carried flowers. Cornelius had gloves; Humphrey a cigar. Cornelius was smooth-faced, save for a light fringe on the upper lip. Humphrey wore a heavy moustache and a full long silky beard of a delicately-shaded brown, inclining when the sun shone upon it to a suspicion of auburn. Both were of the same height, rather below the middle; they had features so much alike that, but for the hair on the face of one, it would have been difficult to distinguish between them. Both were thin, pale of face, and both had, by some fatality, the end of their delicately-carved noses slightly tipped with red. Perhaps this was due to the daily and nightly brandy-and-water. And in the airy careless carriage of the two men, their sunny faces and elastic tread, it was impossible to suppose that they were fifty and Joseph only forty.