A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

Generally speaking, we thought it might be rash to allow ourselves to be influenced by a description; it was always safest to suspend judgment until after something else, or something still later than something else. We had very little to go upon, independently of the fact that the name Raimondi connected itself with both the portrait and the manuscript.

"Then go independently! However, let's come back and get on with the story." The speaker went back to her place at her mother's feet, and Mr. Pelly resumed.

"Where were we? Oh—'colour of those days'—oh yes!—'and the curvature of the line of his nostril that is all his mother's....'"

Madeline inserted a sotto voce: "Of course, it's the picture-girl!" The reader took no notice.

"... That he will prove himself of service to his Excellency the Duke I cannot doubt, for the boy is ready with his pen as with his sword, though, indeed, as I myself was in old days, a thought too quick with the latter, and hot-headed on occasion shown. But him you will come to know. I, for my part, will now comply as best I may with your wish, and tell you the story of my imprisonment and escape.

"I was then in my twenty-first year; but, young as I was, I already had some renown as a painter. And I think, had God willed that I should continue in the practice of the art that I loved, my name might still be spoken with praise among the best. Yet I will not repine at the fate that has made of me little better than a poderista, a farmer, for see now how great has been the happiness of my lot! Figure it to yourself in contrast with that of a man—such a one have I seen, of whom I shall tell you—full of life and health, all energy and purpose, cast into a prison for the crime of another, and unable to die for the little poisonous hopes that would come, day by day, of a release that never was to come itself. His lot might have been mine too, but for the courage and decision of the woman who has been my good throughout—who has been the one great treasure and happiness of my life. Yet one thing I do take ill in my heart—that the picture I painted of her, the last I ever touched, should have been so cruelly destroyed.'" Mr. Pelly paused in his reading.

"The Herr Professor and myself," said he, "are divided in opinion about some points in connexion with this—but perhaps I had better read on, and we can talk about it after."

"'For it was surely the best work I had ever painted. And none other can paint her now as I did then. But I must not indulge this useless regret. Let me get to my story.

"'Know, then, that, being in my twenty-first year, and in love with no woman, in part, as I think, owing to a memory of my boyhood I treasured in my heart—a memory I did not know as Love, but one that had a strange power of swaying my life—that I, being thus famous enough to be sought out by those who loved the art, whether for its own sake, or to add to their fame, was sent for to paint the young bride of a great noble, the Duke Raimondi, at his villa that stands out in the plain of the Arno, nearer to Pistoia than to Firenze. Thither, then, I go with all speed, for the Raimondi was a noble of great weight, and not to be lightly gainsaid. But of this young bride of his I knew nothing, neither of her parentage, nor even of her nationality; indeed, I had been told, by some mistake of my informant, that she was by birth a Francese. You may well believe, then, that I was utterly astounded when I found she was...'"

Here Mr. Pelly paused in his reading, and wiped his spectacles. "I am sorry to say," said he, "that we come to a gap in the manuscript here—a hiatus valde deflendus—and we cannot tell how much is missing. There is, of course, no numbering of the pages to guide us. Italians, it seems, are in the habit of remaining stupefied—a phrase I have just translated was 'Son rimasto stupefatto'—on the smallest provocation, and the expression might only mean that this bride of the Raimondi was an Inglese, and plain."