Part 29

Suddenly he said, “I don’t know why I have told you all this. And yet it has been such a pleasure to me. You are the only person to whom I could have spoken about myself, for no one else but you would have cared.”

“Don’t you think,” she said gently, “that you made a mistake in letting your experiences embitter you? Because you had been unlucky in one or two instances it did not follow that all the world was against you. Perhaps you unconsciously put yourself against all the world, and therefore saw every one in an unfavourable light. It seems so easy to do that. Trouble comes to most people, doesn’t it? And your philosophy should have taught you to make the best of it. At least, that is my notion of the value of philosophy.”

She spoke hesitatingly, as though she gave utterance to these words against her will.

“I am sure you are right, child,” he said, eagerly.

He put his hands to his eyes, but he could not keep back the tears.

“I have been such a lonely old man,” he sobbed; “no one can tell what a lonely, loveless life mine has been. If I were not so old and so tired I should like to begin all over again.”

He sobbed for many minutes, and she did not know what to say to him of comfort; but she took his hand within her own, and gently caressed it, as one might do to a little child in pain. He looked up and smiled through his tears.

“You have been very good to me,” he said, “and I dare say you have thought me ungrateful. You mended my coat for me one morning, and not a day has passed but that I have looked at that darn and thought of you. I liked to remember that you had done it for me. But you have done far more than this for me: you have put some sweetness into my life. Whatever becomes of me hereafter, I shall never be able to think of my life on earth as anything but beautiful, because you thought kindly of me and acted kindly for me. The other night, when this terrible pain came over me, I wished you were near me; I wished to hear your voice. There is very beautiful music in your voice.”

“I would have come to you gladly,” she said, smiling quietly at him. “You must make a promise that when you feel ill again you will send for me. Then you will see what a splendid nurse I am, and how soon you will become strong and well under my care, strong enough to paint many more pictures, each one better than the last. Now will you promise?”

“Yes,” he said, and he raised her hand reverently to his lips.

“You are not angry with me for doing that?” he asked, suddenly. “I should not like to vex you.”

“I am not vexed,” she answered, kindly.

“Then perhaps I may kiss it once more?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered; and again he raised her hand to his lips.

“Thank you,” he said quietly; “that was kind of you. Do you see that broken sun-ray yonder? Is it not golden? I find it very pleasant to sit here; and I am quite happy, and almost free from pain. Lately I have been troubled with a dull thudding pain near my heart; but now I feel so strong that I believe I shall finish that Andrea del Sarto after all.”

“Of course you will,” she answered, cheerily, “and I shall have to confess that yours is better than mine! I am quite willing to yield the palm to you.”

“I must alter the expression of the mouth,” he replied. “That is the part which has worried me. I don’t think I told you that I have had a commission to copy Rembrandt’s ‘Old Jew.’ I must set to work on that next week.”

“But you have given me your palette and brushes!” she laughed.

“You must be generous enough to lend them to me,” he said, smiling. “By the way, I intend to give you my books, all of them. Some day I must show them to you. I especially value my philosophical books; they have been my faithful companions through many years. I believe you do not read Greek. That is a pity, because you would surely enjoy Aristotle. I think I must teach you Greek; it would be an agreeable legacy to leave you when I pass away into the Great Silence.”

“I should like to learn,” she said, wondering to hear him speak so unreservedly. It seemed as if some vast barrier had been rolled aside, and as if she were getting to know him better, having been allowed to glance into his past life, to sympathise with his past mistakes, and with the failure of his ambitions, and with the deadening of his heart.

“You must read AEschylus,” he continued, enthusiastically; “and, if I mistake not, the Agamemnon will be an epoch in your life. You will find that all these studies will serve to ennoble your art, and you will be able to put mind into your work, and not merely form and colour. Do you know, I feel so well that I believe I shall not only live to finish Andrea del Sarto, but also to smoke another pipe?”

“You have been too rash to-day,” she laughed, “giving away your pipe and pouch, your palette and brushes, in this reckless manner! I must get you a new pipe to-morrow. I wonder you did not part with your venerable Lucretius.”

“That reminds me,” he said, fumbling in his pocket; “I think I have dropped my Lucretius. I fancy I left it somewhere in the Poets’ Corner. It would grieve me to lose that book.”

“Let me go and look for it,” she said, and she advanced a few steps, and then came back to him.

“You have been saying many kind words to me,” she said, as she put her hand on his arm, “and I have not told you that I value your friendship, and am grateful to you for letting me be more than a mere stranger to you. I have been very lonely in my life, for I am not one to make friends easily, and it has been a great privilege to me to talk with you. I want you to know this: for if I have been anything to you, you have been a great deal to me. I have never met with much sympathy from those of my own age: I have found them narrow and unyielding, and they found me dull and uninteresting. They had passed through few experiences and knew nothing about failure or success, and some of them did not even understand the earnestness of endeavour, and laughed at me when I spoke of a high ideal. So I withdrew into myself, and should probably have grown still more isolated than I was before, but that I met you, and, as time went on, we became friends. I shall always remember your teaching, and I will try to keep to a high ideal of life and art and endeavour, and I will not let despair creep into my heart, and I will not lose my faith in humanity.”

As she spoke a lingering ray of sunshine lit up her face and gently caressed her soft brown hair; slight though her form, sombre her clothes, and unlovely her features, she seemed a gracious presence because of her earnestness.

“Now,” she said, cheerily, “you rest here until I come back with your Lucretius, and then I think I must be getting on my way home. But you must fix a time for our first Greek lesson, for we must begin to-morrow.”

When she had gone he walked in the cloisters, holding his hat in his hand and his stick under his arm. There was a quiet smile on his face, which was called forth by pleasant thoughts in his mind, and he did not look quite so shrunken and shrivelled as usual. His eyes were fixed on the ground, but he raised them, and observed a white cat creeping toward him. It came and rubbed itself against his foot, and, purring with all its might, seemed determined to win some kind of notice from him. The old man stooped down to stroke it, and was just touching its sleek coat when he suddenly withdrew his hand and groaned deeply. He struggled to the recess, and sank back. The stick fell on the stone with a clatter, and the battered hat rolled down beside it, and the white cat fled away in terror; but realising that there was no cause for alarm, it came back and crouched near the silent figure of the old man, watching him intently. Then it stretched out its paw and played with his hand, doing its utmost to coax him into a little fun; but he would not be coaxed, and the cat lost all patience with him, and left him to himself.