By dint of feigning a few days’ sickness, a stratagem which under the circumstances he had no hesitation in employing, Arthur managed to obtain daylight for working at his two pictures, and on the Saturday preceding his birthday they were finished. In them he had given free rein to his luxuriant imagination, and had succeeded in producing an intensely weird effect, an admirable embodiment of the ideas which had inspired him. They were small water-colours, and doubtless gave evidence of a hand still lacking technical dexterity, but the soul which breathed in them could only have been imparted by true genius. Like all excellent pictures they suggested much more than they actually expressed, and in the heart-rending melancholy of the one, the stern, maddening grandeur of the other, there lurked a spell which, powerless over vulgar natures, at once seized captive sympathetic souls and bound them in a day-dream of glimmering fancies. Never had Arthur felt within his veins that throb of so intense a life as when, with pencil in hand, he added touch after touch, and saw the colours speak in answer to his thoughts, or, as was often the case, learnt from them some new mystery of beauty far excelling what he had designed to embody.
He continued to gaze at them, and to add slight touches first to one then to the other, until the early night closed in, and he could no longer see his work. The fit of enthusiasm, which ever comes as the reward on the completion of a work of art, was now upon him. He enjoyed with rapture that clear, calm consciousness of superiority to the every-day world, a feeling so distinct from vulgar vanity which it is granted to genius alone to experience. So excessive was his joy that he felt light-headed; he would have been glad to commit some folly, to plunge into a stream of thoughtless gaiety, to sing, to shout his enthusiasm. His room was soon quite dark, but at present he could not have borne to have it otherwise. In the faint flittings hither and thither of rays from the fire, and in the motion of the shadows they caused, his excited fancy could picture legions of spirits filling the air about him. Even the physical senses were affected. He seemed to breathe delicious perfumes, his forehead and cheeks were fanned with cool, scented airs, he felt the touch of fairy hands caressing his hair. His heart throbbed ecstatically painfully; his hands were hot as fire. Seizing the volume of poems which Miss Norman had lent him, he pressed it again and again to his lips, murmuring passionately, “Helen! Helen!”
The moment passed and he was calmer, but still unable to be at rest. The solitude of his room now oppressed him, and he dreaded lest Mr. Venning should come, as he often did on Saturday night, and request his company. He resolved to go out. The night was fine, though cold, with a cutting wind, and the firmament was thickly sown with stars. The first breath of the keen air, meeting him full in the face as he issued forth, quickened his pulse, and increased the yearning for excitement. It was long since he had visited a theatre, and the thought of an evening there came to him as an irresistible temptation. He purchased a newspaper and ran over the list of advertisements. At one of the large houses he found that “Romeo and Juliet” was being played, the heroine’s part by an actress equally celebrated for loveliness and talent. The play was congenial to his mood, and he went.
Shaken and bruised with emotion in his inmost heart, he hastened home as soon as the play was over, eager now to be alone with his thoughts. A resolve, which had first made its presence known by a timid whisper whilst he was completing the pictures, had been fostered into life and strength by the warm passion of his soul as he listened to the hapless lovers of Verona, and now panted to find utterance in louder and more decisive tones than those of reverie. On entering Arthur found his room cold, for the fire had long since gone out. Already the house was wrapt in the silence of sleep, but the morrow was a day of rest, and there was something to be done before he could close his eyes. Whilst the fire was burning quickly up, he again left the house, but only for a few minutes, bringing back a most unwonted luxury, a bottle of wine. But it was the eve of his twenty-first birthday, and he had work to do which called for a stout heart.
In a quarter of an hour the fire had reached a clear, strong glow, and the room was again warm and cheerful. Arthur established himself in his arm-chair, and opened a small port folio upon his knees. It was writing-paper that he took from it, for now he was about to use the pen, not the pencil. He drank one or two glasses of wine, and felt his faculties freshened and made more acute. At length when a neighbouring church-clock chimed half-past twelve, he dipped his pen in the ink, and began to write, at first slowly and timidly, afterwards with a firmness of purpose and clearness of thought which allowed him no pause till he had finished. It was a letter he had written, and it ran thus:
“Dear Miss Norman — “When you suggested to me the two verses from Tennyson’s ‘Palace of Art’ as good subjects for pictures, though I said nothing of my purpose, I at once resolved to follow the suggestion and to do my utmost to render them worthily. Working in such intervals as my daily employment allows, I have today succeeded in finishing two small drawings. I need scarcely say that the execution of them is far inferior to what I could have wished; perhaps that is the fault which practice will remedy. If there be any merit in the conception, it is wholly due to you, who in reading the verses gave such expression to the idea that no mind endowed with the slightest powers of fancy could have failed to picture to itself the scenes described.
“I have worked hard to finish these today, and for a special reason. To-morrow is my birthday, on which day I wished to offer them to you. Yet not only for their own sake would I offer them, but as a symbol. As it is you whom I have to thank for awakening in me the artist’s impulse and enthusiasm, so do I likewise owe to you the consciousness of a yet more powerful instinct. In laying before you these poor pictures, I offer at the same time a devoted heart.
“I said that tomorrow was my birthday, but I should have said today, for I am writing in the silence of midnight. What I now write I feel that I could not have spoken, courage would have failed me. I have long wished to give utterance to this strongest feeling of my nature, but today I do so with, I will not say more confidence, but less of misgiving than I could have felt in expressing it earlier. To-day I am a man, and, in the eyes of the world, responsible for my actions. To myself, also, I owe duties, and the first of these is to terminate this constant agitation in which I live. I will do so, trusting to your infinite goodness if I appear guilty of presumption.
“Miss Norman, I love you. I cannot know whether that word carries to your ears the same sense which it has for mine, but, as I write it, I wish to express a passion omnipotent, unending, holy, the voice of which is, in its briefest utterance, a revelation of unknown worlds, an unveiling of the mystery of life. When first I saw you in the studio I was taken captive by your loveliness; since I have been permitted some insight into your mind what I have discovered there has filled me with unspeakable admiration, has led me to feel that happiness cannot exist except in your presence and in the sight of your smile. I should try vainly to express in words the emotions excited in me by the sound of your voice, by the touch of your hand, by the mere thought of your exquisite beauty. But, believe me, there is not one among these feelings which is not sanctified by the purity of its object. I can say with truth that my love for you has made me a better man, with higher aims, purer motives, richer thoughts. For this alone it would be my duty to thank you, as I do momently with the utmost fervour of my being.
“But it is the nature of love to seek for love in return, without that it must fall short of its highest power and lack some portion of its utmost beauty. And it is on this account that I have chosen to write rather than to speak. I could not — no, I could not bear to hear you repel me with a cold answer; the agony would be insupportable. To be told by you that I was guilty of unwarrantable boldness, that I had presumed upon your good-natured friendship to insult you by an offer of my love — that I do not think I could hear and live. But yet you would not reply to me in such words, your goodness would forbid it. You would feel for me, and would show me the madness of my conduct in kind, gentle words. And am I not right in supposing that it would give you pain to have to speak even so; you, who think of nothing but how to spare your fellow-creatures suffering? So it is better that I should write. Then if you scorn me you can tell me so in a few brief plainly-written words — and then an end.
“If you scorn me! It is well to be prepared for the worst, and so I have for a moment supposed that you will read my letter with pained surprise and, perhaps pity my folly. But it would be an imputation on the sincerity of my love if I had in reality no better hope than this. Hope cannot be separated from love, as neither can it from any one of the best impulses of our nature. Yes, I have the boldness to hope! Sincere love is so precious a thing that he who possesses it cannot reckon himself altogether poor, altogether beneath respect. I know but too well that in the eyes of the world I am infinitely beneath you, for, though my birth was not mean, my life has been one of toil and poverty. But am I not right in thinking that, in the clear mirror of your mind, all these social conventionalities assume their true proportions? I should do you much wrong, I feel sure, if I did not believe you capable of distinguishing the nature from the outward form, if I thought you allowed yourself to be bound in the slightest degree by those bonds of foolish prejudice to which weak and vulgar minds so readily, even joyfully, submit themselves. I might urge that my father was a most intimate friend of your father, and that thus we are in some degree related; but I had rather you thought of me as I am in myself, of my nature pure and simple in so far as you know it or can read it in these confessions. As such, then, I once more declare that I love you, truly, passionately, and I ask you whether it is possible for you ever to respond to my affection? Perhaps you may not think so now, but do not, I entreat you, do not reply to me with a hasty negative! Could I think that you felt but the least affection for me, my joy would be almost too great to bear; but that I dare not ask for. At some distance of time, in a year, in two years, might I hope by unceasing devotion to win you? I shall labour unwearyingly at art, and such efforts as I shall make, added to a natural disposition which I feel that I have, cannot but result in some success. If I made a name, if my pictures came to be acknowledged as worthy of attention — should I then be hopelessly below you? Yes, yes, I know too well that I shall always be unspeakably your inferior in the highest qualities of the heart and mind; but shall I be unworthy of your love? Oh, how I will labour to deserve you! As others strive after what they call their salvation, with just such a passionate striving, nay, with one unspeakably mightier and more unfaltering, shall I work upwards to the heights where you stand. For will you not indeed be my salvation, in a truer sense than that heaven in which I know neither of us put our trust? If I win you, I shall have won a joy which will alone render life worth living. Your love would give significance to an existence of which I am too often tempted to despair. With your hand in mine I could say that I had conquered the world in the attainment of perfect happiness.
“I can write no more. The passion with which I thus offer you my soul has made my hands tremble and my mind fail. I shall send this letter to you early in the morning by some messenger, together with the drawings. I shall soon know whether in thus addressing you I have for ever forfeited your friendship. If so, I bid you farewell with a thousand blessings! I have fulfilled my fate.
“Arthur Golding.”
This letter carefully folded in an envelope and directed to Miss Norman, Arthur lay down to rest. Though physically weary, his mind was still unusually active, which rendered it impossible for him to sleep. For some hours more he read in Helen’s book, till at length, just as the last ember in the grate was extinguished, he felt drowsiness creep over him. His dreams were of Helen, whom he had transformed into Juliet, and whom, as Romeo, he addressed in impassioned verse. He felt the soft warm pressure of her hands clasping his, and thrilled as the delicious fragrance of her breath wandered over his hair and his cheeks. Then it seemed to him, still following the play, that he heard the Nurse’s voice calling to Juliet, and it aroused in him a sense of the utmost impatience. Still the Nurse called, and, just as he was embracing Juliet ere she ran from him, he awoke.
The calling had not been entirely imaginary, for as he came to his senses he perceived that some one was knocking loudly at the door, and calling his name. He at once recognised Mr. Venning’s voice, and replied.
“A large parcel has just been left here for you, Mr. Golding,” said Mr. Venning. “I will put it down outside the door. Bye-the-by, do you know what the time is?”
Arthur saw that there was bright sunshine outside; evidently it was broad day.
“I have no idea,” he replied.
“After ten o’clock. Haven’t you had an unusually good night?”
“I went to bed very late,” replied Arthur.
Mr. Venning withdrew, and at once Arthur opened the door, burning with impatience to see what the packet could contain, and wondering extremely whence it had come. It was a large brown-paper parcel, and rather heavy. In a moment he tore it open, and at once his eyes were greeted with a wonderful sight. There was an extremely large box of oil-colours, together with all the appurtenances necessary for painting, including half-a-dozen small canvases. It was a spectacle to make a young artist’s mouth water. Inside the lid of the case was a folded sheet of notepaper, which bore these words:
“A faint acknowledgment of the many beautiful drawings I have received from Mr. Golding.
“Helen Norman.”
Arthur’s heart leaped almost to bursting as he read this at a glance; then he pressed the paper madly to his lips, whilst the room swam before him. For a moment he was obliged to seat himself upon the bed, fearing lest his emotions should deprive him of consciousness. It was many minutes before he recovered calmness enough to thoroughly examine his present, and then, as he did so, he kept exclaiming to himself, “She did not forget — she did not forget.”
Should he add any intimation of having received this to the letter he was now about to despatch? On deliberation he decided not to do so. Who could tell what kind of answer he should receive? This delightful present had excited hopes in his mind which he had hitherto scarcely dared to harbour. Possibly he might have to thank her with his own mouth; if not, it would not be too late to write.
He was in a slight difficulty as to the means of sending his little parcel, it being Sunday, and no available messenger at hand. But, as it was getting late, he soon determined upon the method to be pursued. Hastily completing his toilet, and making a cup of coffee suffice for his breakfast, he left the house, with the drawings and letter in his hand, and walked quickly in the direction of Highbury. When within sight of Helen’s house he had no difficulty in securing the services of a decent-looking child who happened to be passing, and whom he watched as she entered the holly-hid garden. In a few minutes the messenger returned, gave a satisfactory report, and received the promised fee.
And now Arthur looked forward in a state of mind bordering on distraction to the hours, perhaps the days, which were to elapse before he could expect to receive an answer. Instead of returning home, where the quietness of the room would have been intolerable to him, he took advantage of the fine sharp morning to have a long walk. Where he went mattered little, but it was necessary for him to be active, to keep pace in bodily exertion with the hurrying current of his thoughts. These thoughts were infinitely varied in hue, at times black with the shadow of despair, at times glowing in the full radiance of passionate hope. Once or twice he was checked in the midst of a rapturous portrayal of the future by a cold breath of doubt and fear chilling his soul as he remembered that in sending that letter to Helen he had been guilty of a crime. There would arise within him comforters in the shape of hopes and calculations for harbouring which he detested himself. From self-loathing was born irritation, then passionate anger against the decrees of fate. Why should a moment’s folly, long since seen and regretted, compel him to a life of wretchedness, to the renunciation of delights such as it is given to few of earth’s inhabitants to enjoy? He was angry with himself for being so foolish as to find anything wrong in the step he had taken. Long since he had committed the one great error of his life, and was it not right that he should do his utmost to obliterate it from his memory, to strike himself free from its miserable consequences? Even if he should be so happy as to win some return for his love, he could not hope to attain its object for some indefinite time, say, till he had won a name as an artist; and before then what might not happen? And the hopes for which he cursed himself came bac............