Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day

Then they walked all round St. Mary's. It is nine miles round; but if, as these young people did, you climb every headland and walk round every bay, and descend every possible place where the boulders make a ladder down to the boiling water below, it is nine hundred miles round, and, for its length, the most wonderful walk in all the world. They crossed the broad Sound to St. Agnes, and saw St. Warna's wondrous cove: they stood on the desolate Gugh and the lonely Annet, beloved of puffins: they climbed on every one of the Eastern Islands, and even sailed, when they found a day calm enough to permit the voyage, among the Dogs of Scilly, and clambered up the black boulders of Rosevear and scared the astonished cormorants from wild Goreggan.

One day it rained in the morning. Then they had to stay at home, and Armorel showed the house. She took her guest into the dairy, where Chessun made the butter and scalded the cream – that rich cream which the West-country folk eat with everything. She made him stand by and help make a junket, which Devonshire people believe cannot be made outside the shadow of Dartmoor: she took him into the kitchen – the old room with its old furniture, the candlesticks and snuffers of brass, the bacon hanging to the joists, the blue china, the ancient pewter platters, the long bright spit – a kitchen of the eighteenth century. And then she took him into a room which no longer exists anywhere else save in name. It was the still-room, and on the shelves there stood the elixirs and cordials of ancient time: the currant gin to fortify the stomach on a raw morning before crossing the Road; the cherry brandy for a cold and stormy night; the elderberry wine, good mulled and spiced at Christmas-time; the blackberry wine; the home-made distilled waters – lavender water, Hungary water, Cyprus water, and the Divine Cordial itself, which takes three seasons to complete, and requires all the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn. Then they went into the best parlour, and Armorel, opening a cupboard, took out an old sword of strange shape and with faded scabbard. On the blade there was a graven Latin legend. 'This is my ancestor's sword,' she said. 'He was an officer of the Spanish Armada – Hernando Mureno was his name.'

'You are indeed a Spanish lady, Armorel. Your ancestor is well known to have been the bravest and most honourable gentleman in King Philip's service.'

'He remained here – he would not go home: he married and became a Protestant.'

She put back the sword in its place, and brought forth other things to show him – old-fashioned watches, old compasses, sextants, telescopes, flint-and-steel pistols – all kinds of things belonging to the old days of smuggling and of piloting.

Then she opened the bookcase. It should have been filled with histories of pirates and buccaneers; but it was not: it contained a whole body of theology of the Methodist kind. Roland tossed them over impatiently. 'I don't wonder,' he said, 'at your reading nothing if this is all you have.' But he found one or two books which he set aside.

As they wandered about the islands, of course they talked. It wants but little to make a young man open his heart to a girl; only a pair of soft and sympathetic eyes, a face full of interest and questions of admiration. Whether she tells him anything in return is quite another matter. Most young men, when they review the situation afterwards, discover that they have told everything and learned nothing. Perhaps there is nothing to learn. In a few days Armorel knew everything about her guest. He had come from Australia – from that far-distant land – in search of fortune. He had as yet made but few friends. He was unknown and without patrons. He had no family connections which would help him. The patrimony on which he was to live until he should begin to succeed was but small, and although he held money-making in the customary contempt, it was necessary that he should make a good deal, because – which is often the case – his standard of comfort was pitched rather high: it included, for instance, a good club, good cigars, and good claret. Also, as he said, an artist should be free from sordid anxieties: Art demands an atmosphere of calm: therefore, he must have an income. This, like everything that does not exist, must be created. Man is godlike because he alone of creatures can create: he, and he alone, constantly creates things which previously did not exist – an income, honour, rank, tastes, wants, desires, necessities, habits, rules, and laws.

'How can you bear to sell your pictures?' asked the girl. 'We sell our flowers, but then we grow them by the thousand. You make every picture by itself – how can you sell the beautiful things? You must want to keep them every one to look at all your life. Those that you have given to me I could never part with.'

'One must live, fair friend of mine,' he replied, lightly. 'It is my only way of making money, and without money we can do nothing. It is not the selling of his pictures that the artist dreads – that is the necessity of Art as a profession: it is the danger that no one will care about seeing them or buying them. That is much more terrible, because it means failure. Sometimes I dream that I have become old and grey, and have been working all my life, and have had no success at all, and am still unknown and despised. In Art there are thousands of such failures. I think the artist who fails is despised more than any other man. It is truly miserable to aspire so high and to fall so low. Yet who am I that I should reach the port?'

'All good painters succeed,' said the girl, who had never seen a painter before or any painting save her own coloured engravings. 'You are a good painter, Roland. You must succeed. You will become a great painter in everybody's estimation.'

'I will take your words for an oracle,' he said. 'When I am melancholy, and the future looks dark, I will say, "Thus and thus spoke Armorel."'

The young man who is about to attempt fortune by the pursuit of Art must not consider too long the wrecks that strew the shores and float about the waters, lest he lose self-confidence. Continually these wrecks occur, and there is no insurance against them: yet continually other barques hoist sail and set forth upon their perilous voyage. It may be reckoned as a good point in this aspirant that he was not over-confident.

'Some are wrecked at the outset,' he said. 'Others gain a kind of success. Heavens! what a kind! To struggle all their lives for admission to the galleries, and to rejoice if once in a while a picture is sold.'

'They are not the good painters,' the girl of large experience again reminded him.

'Am I a good painter?' he replied, humbly. 'Well, one can but try to do good work, and leave to the gods the rest. There is luck in things. It is not every good man who succeeds, Armorel. To every man, however, there is allotted the highest stature possible for him to reach. Let me be contented if I grow to my full height.'

'You must, Roland. You could not be contented with anything less.'

'To reach one's full height, one must live for work alone. It is a hard saying, Armorel. It is a great deal harder than you can understand.'

'If you love your work, and if you are happy in it – ' said the girl.

'You do not understand, child, Most men never reach their full height. You can see their pictures in the galleries – poor, stunted things. It is because they live for anything rather than their work. They are pictures without a soul in them.'

Now, when a young man holds forth in this strain, one or two things suggest themselves. First, one thinks that he is playing a part, putting on 'side,' affecting depths – in fact, enacting the part of the common Prig, who is now, methinks, less common than he was. If he is not a prig uttering insincere sentimentalities, he may be a young man who has preserved his ideals beyond the usual age by some accident. The ideals and beliefs and aspirations of young men, when they first begin the study of Art in any of its branches, are very beautiful things, and full of truths which can only, somehow, be expressed by very young men. The third explanation is that in certain circumstances, as in the companionship of a girl not belonging to society and the world – a young, innocent, and receptive girl – whose mind is ready for pure ideas, uncontaminated by earthly touch, the old enthusiasms are apt to return and the old beliefs to come back. Then such things may spring in the heart and rise to the lips as one could not think or utter in a London studio.

Sincere or not, this young man pursued his theme, making a kind of confession which Armorel could not, as yet, understand. But she remembered. Women at all ages remember tenaciously, and treasure up in their hearts things which they may at some other time learn to understand.

'There was an old allegory, Armorel,' this young man went on, 'of a young man choosing his way, once for all. It is an absurd story, because every day and all day long we are pulled the other way. Sometimes it makes me tremble all over only to think of the flowery way. I know what the end would be. But yet, Armorel, what can you know or understand about the Way of Pleasure, and how men are drawn into it with ropes? My soul is sometimes sick with yearning when I think of those who run along that Way and sing and feast.'

'What kind of Way is it, Roland?'

'You cannot understand, and I cannot tell you. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. These are the two roads by which the artistic life is ruined. Yet we are dragged into them by ropes.'

'You shall keep to the true path, Roland,' the girl said, with glistening eyes. 'Oh! how happy you will be when you have reached your full height – you will be a giant then.'

He laughed and shook his head. 'Again, Armorel, I will take it from your lips – a prophecy. But you do not understand.'

'No,' she said. 'I am very ignorant. Yet if I cannot understand, I can remember. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. I shall remember. We are told that we must not set our hearts upon the things of this world. I used to think that it meant being too fond of pretty frocks and ribbons. Dorcas said so once. Since you have come I see that there are many, many things that I know nothing of. If I am to be dragged to them by ropes, I do not want to know them. The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. They destroy the artistic life,' she repeated, as if learning a lesson. 'These ways must be ways of Sin, don't you think?' she asked, looking up with curious eyes.

Doubtless. Yet this is not quite the modern manner of regarding and speaking of the subject. And considering what an eighteenth-century and bourgeois-like manner it is, and how fond we now are of that remarkable century, one is surprised that the manner has not before now been revived. When we again tie our hair behind and assume silver-buckled shoes and white silk stockings, we shall once more adopt that manner. It was not, however, artificial with Armorel. The words fell naturally from her lips. A thing that was prejudicial to the better nature of a man must, she thought, belong to ways of Sin. Again – doubtless. But Roland did not think of it in that way, and the words startled him.

'Puritan!' he said. 'But you are always right. It is the instinct of your heart always to be right. But we no longer talk that language. It is a hundred years old. In these days there is no more talk about Sin – at least, outside certain circles. There are habits, it is true, which harm an artist's eye and destroy his hand. We say that it is a pity when an artist falls into these habits. We call it a pity, Armorel, not the way of Sin. A pity – that is all. It means the same thing, I dare say, so far as the artist is concerned.'

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST DAY BUT ONE

The last day but one! It always comes at length – it is bound to come – the saddest, the most sentimental of all days. The boy who leaves school – I speak of the old-fashioned boy and the ancient school – where he has been fagged and bullied and flogged, on this last day but one looks round with a choking throat upon the dingy walls and the battered desks. Even the convict who is about to be released after years of prison feels a sentimental melancholy in gazing for the last time upon the whitewashed walls. The world, which misunderstands the power of temptation and is distrustful as to the reality of repentance, will probably prove cold to him. How much more, then, when one looks around on the last day but one of a holiday! To-morrow we part. This is the last day of companionship.

Roland's holiday was to consist of a day or two, or three at the most – yet lo! the evening and the morning were the twenty-first day. There was always something new to be seen, something more to be sketched, some fresh excuse for staying in a house where this young man lived from the first as if he had been there all his life and belonged to the family. Scilly has to be seen in cloud as well as in sunshine: in wind and rain as well as in fair weather: one island had been accidentally overlooked; another must be re-visited.

So the days went on, each one like the days before it, but with a difference. The weather was for the most part fine, so that they could at least sail about the islands of the Road. Every morning the young man got up at six and, after a bathe from Shark Point, walked all round Samson and refreshed his soul by gazing upon the Outer Islands. Breakfast over, he took a pipe in the farmyard with Justinian and Peter, who continually talked of shipwrecks and of things washed ashore. During this interval Armorel made the puddings and the cakes. When she had accomplished this delicate and responsible duty, she came out, prepared for the day. They took their dinner-basket with them, and sallied forth: in the afternoon they returned: in the evening, at seven o'clock, the table was pushed back: the old serving people came in; the fire was stirred into animation; Armorel played the old-fashioned tunes; and the ancient lady rallied, and sat up, and talked, her mind in the past. All the days alike, yet each one differing from its neighbours. There is no monotony, though place and people remain exactly the same, when there is the semblance of variety. For, besides the discovery of so many curious and interesting islands, this fortunate young man, as we have seen, discovered that his daily companion, though so young – 'only a child' – was a girl of wonderful quickness and ready sympathy. A young artist wants sympathy – it is necessary for his growth: sympathy, interest, and flattery are necessary for the artistic temperament. All these Armorel offered him in large measure, running over. She kept alive in him that faith in his own star which every artist, as well as every general, must possess. Great is the encouragement of such sympathy to the young man of ambitions. This consideration is, indeed, the principal excuse for early marriages. Three weeks of talk with such a girl – no one else to consider or to interrupt – no permission to be sought – surely these things made up a holiday which quite beat the record! Three whole weeks! Such a holiday should form the foundation of a life-long friendship! Could either of them ever forget such a holiday?

Now it was all over. For very shame Roland could make no longer any excuses for staying. His sketch-book was crammed. There were materials in it for a hundred pictures – most of them might be called Studies of Armorel. She was in the boat holding the tiller, bare-headed, her hair flying in the breeze, the spray dashing into her face, and the clear blue water rushing past the boat: or she was sitting idly in the same boat lying in Grinsey Sound, with Shipman's Head behind her: or she was standing on the sea-weed at low water under the mighty rock of Castle Bryher: or she was standing upright in the low room, violin in hand, her face and figure crimsoned in the red firelight: or she was standing in the porch between the verbena-trees, the golden figure-head smiling benevolently upon her, and the old ships lanthorn swinging overhead with an innocent air, as if it had never heard of a wreck and knew not how valuable a property may be a cow, judiciously treated – with a lighted lanthorn between its horns – on a stormy night. There were other things: sketches of bays and coves, and headlands and carns, gathered from all the islands – from Porthellick and Peninnis on St. Mary's, which everybody goes to see, to St. Warna's Cove on St. Agnes, whither no traveller ever wendeth.

A very noble time. No letters, no newspapers, no trouble of any kind: yet one cannot remain for ever even in a house where such a permanent guest would be welcomed. Now and then, it is true, one hears how such a one went to a friend's house and stayed there. La Fontaine, Gay, and Coleridge are examples. But I have never heard, before this case, of a young man going to a house where a quite young girl, almost a child, was the mistress, and staying there. Now the end had come: he must go back to London, where all the men and most of the women have their own shows to run, and there is not enough sympathy to go round: back to what the young artist, he who has as yet exhibited little and sold nothing, calls his Work – putting a capital letter to it, like the young clergyman. Perhaps he did not understand that under the eyes of a girl who knew nothing about Art he had done really better and finer work, and had learned more, in those three weeks than in all the time that he had spent in a studio. Well; it was all over. The sketching was ended: there would be no more sailing over the blue waves of the rolling Atlantic outside the islands: no more quiet cruising in the Road: no more fishing: no more clambering among the granite rocks: no more sitting in sunny places looking out to sea, with this bright child at his side.

Alas! And no more talks with Armorel. From the first day the child sat at his feet and became his disciple, Heloïse herself was not an apter pupil. She ardently desired to learn: like a curious child she asked him questions all day long, and received the answers as if they were gospel: but no child that he had ever known betrayed blacker gaps of ignorance than this girl of fifteen. Consider. What could she know? Other girls learn at school: Armorel's schooling was over at fourteen, when she came home from St. Mary's to her desert island. Other girls continue their education by reading books: but Armorel never read anything except voyages of the last century, which treat but little of the modern life. Other girls also learn from hearing their elders talk: but Armorel's elders never talked. Other girls, again, learn from conversation with companions: but Armorel had no companions. And they learn from the shops in the street, the people who walk about, from the church, the theatre, the shows: but Armorel had no better street than the main street of Hugh Town. And they learn from society: but this girl had none. And they learn from newspapers, magazines, and novels: but Armorel had none of these. No voice, no sound of the outer world reached Alexandra Selkirk of Samson. Juan Fernandez itself was not more cut off from men and women. Therefore, in her seclusion and her ignorance, this young man came to her like another Apollo or a Vishnu at least – a revelation of the world of which she knew nothing, and to which she never gave a thought. He opened a door and bade her look within. All she saw was a great company painting pictures and talking Art; but that was something. As for what he said, this young man ardent, she remembered and treasured all, even the lightest things, the most trivial opinions. He did not abuse her confidence. Had he been older he might have been cynical: had he not been an artist he might have been flippant: had he been a City man and a money-grub he might have shown her the sordid side of the world. Being such as he was he showed her the best and most beautiful part – the world of Art. But as for these black gaps of ignorance, most of them remained even after Roland's visit.

'Your best friend, Armorel,' said her guest, 'would not deny that you are ignorant of many things. You have never gone to a dinner-party or sat in a drawing-room: you cannot play lawn-tennis; you know none of the arts feminine: you cannot talk the language of Society: oh! you are a very ignorant person indeed! But then there are compensations.'

'What are compensations? Things that make up? Do you mean the boat and the islands?'

'The boat is certainly something, and the islands give a flavour of their own to life on Samson, don't they? If I were talking the usual cant I should say that the chief compensation is the absence of the hollow world and its insincere society. That is cant and humbug, because society is very pleasant, only, I suppose, one must not expect too much from it. Your real compensations, Armorel, are of another kind. You can fiddle like a jolly sailor, all of the olden time. If you were to carry that fiddle of yours on to the Common Hard at Portsea not a man among them all, even the decayed veteran – if he still lives – who caught Nelson, the Dying Hero, in his arms, but would jump to his feet and shuffle – heel and toe, double-step, back-step, flourish and fling. I believe those terms are correct.'

'I am so glad you think I can fiddle.'

'You want only instruction in style to make you a very fine violinist. Besides, there is nothing more pleasing to look at, just now, than a girl playing a violin. It is partly fashion. Formerly it was thought graceful for a girl to play the guitar, then the harp; now it is the fiddle, when it is not the zither or the banjo. That is one compensation. There is another. I declare that I do not believe there is in all London a girl with such a genius as yours for puddings and pies, cakes and biscuits. I now understand that there is more wanted, in this confection, than industry and application. It is an art. Every art affords scope for genius born not made. The true – the really artistic – administration of spice and sugar, milk, eggs, butter, and flour requires real genius – such as yours, my child. And as to the still-room, there isn't such a thing left, I believe, in the whole world except on Samson, any more than there is a spinning-wheel. Who but yourself, Armorel, possesses the secret, long since supposed to be hopelessly lost, of composing Cyprus water, and the Divine Cordial? In this respect, you belong to a hundred years ago, when the modern ignorance was unknown. And where can I find – I should like to know – a London girl who understands cherry brandy, and can make her own blackberry wine?'

'You want to please me, Roland, because you are going away and I am unhappy.' She hung her head in sadness too deep for tears. 'That is why you say all these fine things. But I know that they mean very little. I am only an ignorant girl.'

'I must always, out of common gratitude, want to please you. But I am only speaking the bare truth. Then there is the delicate question of dress. An ordinary man is not supposed to know anything about dress, but an artist has always to consider it. There are certainly other girls – thousands of other girls – more expensively dressed than you, Armorel; but you have the taste for costume, which is far better than any amount of costly stuff.'

'Chessun taught me how to sew and how to cut out.' But the assurance of this excellence brought her no comfort.

'When I am gone, Armorel, you will go on with your drawing, will you not?' It will be seen that he endeavoured, as an Apostle of Art, to introduce its cult even on remote Samson. That was so, and not without success. The girl, he discovered, had been always making untaught attempts at drawing, and wanted nothing but a little instruction. This was a fresh discovery. 'That you should have the gift of the pencil is delightful to think of. The pencil, you see, is like the Jinn – I fear you have no Jinn on Samson – who could do almost anything for those who knew how to command his obedience, but only made those people ridiculous who ignorantly tried to order him around. If you go on drawing every day I am sure you will learn how to make that Jinn obedient. I will send you, when I get home, some simple books for your guidance. Promise, child, that you will not throw away this gift.'

'I will draw every day,' she replied, obediently, but with profound dejection.

'Then there is your reading. You must read something. I have looked through your shelves, and have picked out some books for you. There is a volume of Cowper and of Pope, and an old copy of the Spectator, and there is Goldsmith's "Deserted Village."'