The Wisdom of the Simple

Front matter

BY NELLIE K. BLISSETT. LONDON : A. D. INNES & CO., BEDFORD STREET. 1896. contents. CHAPTER PAGE I, A Celebrity Abroad A Celebrity at Home ... The Cult of Butterflies .. "Chrysanthemes" I II. II III. IV. 27 56 V. Constellations of the New Comedy A Domestic Interior ... 6S VI. VII. VIII. «3 An Unrehearsed Effect A Study in Indignation Editorial ... 103 121 IX. 146 X. "The Velvet Mask" 1 62 XI, Sharpe makes an Arrangement Saphir makes a Mistake i»3 XII. 197 XIII. XIV. A Flight from Philistia Severin philosophizes ... A Dinner at Fairbarns 209 230 XV. 244 XVI. Sharpe distinguishes the Finger of Fate The Awakening of a Butterfly ... 257 XVII. XVIII. 270 A Return to Old Pastures One Player quits the Stage 278 XIX. XX. 285 Severin learns the Folly of Wisdom ..

Chapter I

A CELEBRITY ABROAD. The train was whirling towards West Kensington through drifts of trailing smoke. In one carriage were but two men — an unusual sight, for it was early afternoon, and the rest of the train was crowded. These two solitary individuals sat opposite to each other smoking comfortably, and even occasionally talking, but in a desultory manner. They seemed to be on good terms, and the younger man laughed a great deal at a description he was giving his friend. The friend did not laugh, but a dry smile, which suggested an alarming capacity for sarcasm, curled the corners of his lips as he listened. He sat far back on the seat, propped against the blue cloth B back, a small man, shrivelled, hard-featured, and deformed. His companion, on the other hand, had spread himself over the greater part of his side of the carriage, and, from that luxurious position, viewed existence with pleasant contempt.

Gerard Sharpe, the critic, was, in fact, enjoying himself; he felt that he had just turned a phrase well, and hit off a personal peculiarity with effect. There were not very many things he would not have dared for the sake of being amusing, but, if flippant, he was rarely unkind in his strictures. His friends laughed at him, though they seldom quite understood what they laughed at, and his enemies called him a very dangerous man. Perhaps both parties were nearly right. But to-day he did not look dangerous ; his delicate features were lit up with fun, and the eyes, half dreamy, half-sarcastic, which he fixed on the hunchback, sparkled with malicious delight. "And the wife of this brilliant person," said the hunchback, " pray what is she like ? " Sharpe lifted one foot carefully on to the opposite seat.

" Oh, a little thing," he said, slightingly — ■" fair, with pale eyebrows. You won't care for her." Victor Severin, poet, novelist, essayist, and realist — newest of the new, and a comet amongst the most brilliant — gazed out of the window for some moments before he spoke again, and the gravity of his expression emphasized the unusual ugliness of his features. " I may not like her," he said presently, " but I may pity her — to be frank, my dear Sharpe, I think I shall, very much." The critic looked at him with surprise. " Why ? Because she is Saphir Mayer's wife ? Do be reasonable, Severin. It is a great honour to be the wife of a Modern Genius." " Honour," said Severin, more gravely than ever, " is not always pleasant. Neither are geniuses ; and Saphir Mayer is " He broke off without saying what Saphir Mayer was, but it may be concluded that his opinion was not complimentary.

Sharpe looked at him with curious eyes, and some amusement. "What is he, then?" he said. "Your opinion is worth having. I remember an article of yours on the New Drama and its exponents which struck me as a very fine bit of criticism. Tell me what you think, Severin. I promise I won't make copy of it. What does the great French writer think of the great English actor — the manager of the New Comedy — the prophet of the revolted drama — who has forced Scandinavian tragedy down our throats at the point of the translator's pen, and rendered the coruscations of the new Gallic Melpomene visible to the flabbergasted density of a British public — in short, who has introduced us to you. Really, I think that that introduction is his best claim to our gratitude. He is always entertaining, though, whatever he does, and he takes himself and his undertakings very seriously."

" I detest people who take themselves seriously." "They serve as an amusement for the people who don't. Nothing amuses me more than to meet any one who takes himself seriously. And really Saphir Mayer is an artist, Severin ; he's conceited, I know, but he is devoted to his Art." " It depends very much on one's idea of Art." " Or on Mayer's," said Sharpe, laughing. " Well, to be candid with you, Severin, I don't think him a genius either. His wife may ; women are " " Fools ! " finished Severin, quietly. " Not all. Lady Bannister " The little hunchback sprang to his feet, and threw out his arm with a violent declamatory jerk. " Don't," he cried — " don't mention that woman ! I was at her reception yesterday — her meeting of Butterflies, or whatever her precious Society calls itself — her Choice Souls, her Exquisite Imagina tions Oh, what rot !

I think," he pursued, sitting down again, " that that word expresses exactly what I mean. If there is another term, tell me." " Bosh," suggested Sharpe. " Bosh — thank you. They sat in attitudes, and talked your excellent English bosh. I believe that kind of affectation has a certain circle of admirers. They think it necessary to look miserable as a proof of genius, and clothe them selves in green counterpanes embroidered with boa-constrictors. They are Literary and Original. Is Saphir Mayer 'Original,' Sharpe? " " I believe he only translates the brilliancies of other men — possibly from a charitable regard for our mental vision. An 'original' Saphir Mayer would be too dazzling. I fancy that I have heard that he dabbles in poetry with the inaccurate enthusiasm of the amateur, but he doesn't publish it.

As for Lady Bannister, I don't know why he affects her Society. He is not a Butterfly, most certainly. He raves about you. I suppose he gave you a most enthusiastic reception ? " " I wish I could see what there is in me to be enthusiastic about," said Severin, half angrily, half sadly. Sharpe glanced across at him and laughed. " I'm not enthusiastic about you, at any rate," he said. " I detest Realism, and all these new ideas. I abhor the Cult of Butterflies, because, at a certain point, it meets your Realism and agrees with it. Don't decry the Butterflies, Severin, because you are one of them whilst you are in London. Don't brain me on the spot ! You and Lady Bannister are parallel cases. You preach the beauty of Ugliness — she, though she may not intend it, demonstrates the ugliness of Beauty.

I mean, of course, Beauty that is only beautiful, just as you mean Ugliness that is only hideous. You, both of you, talk equal nonsense, though, of course, your style is the best. The impossibility of your ideas remains the same, nevertheless. Per sonally I always regard impossibilities as harmless. It is only the attainable that is dangerous. I — a Philistine, who sneer at Ibsen and distrust the genius of Maeterlinck — I even think you both a little mad. The Cult retaliates by considering me so hopelessly sane that I shall never do any good work in literature. That sounds paradoxical, but the Cult is given to paradox — which is also harmless. No, my dear Severin, the world is still quite safe. The Cult of Bannister Butterflies will not set the Thames on fire ; the Realists of Paris, the Apostles of Truth and Ugliness, will not, with all due deference to their brilliant master, blow up the Seine."

" At least, we have clever men in Paris," retorted Seve>in, a trifle nettled. " I am sincerely sorry to hear it. When a fool takes up these fads, and sets himself to prove that nothing is wrong except the Right, and that if we were all allowed to be as bad as we pleased the world would be very much better in consequence, I regard that simply as the fool's folly. But when a sane and able man delivers him self of these sentiments — I beg your pardon, Sdverin. Of course, you believe in your own opinions." "Am I the able man or the fool ? " The critic smiled. " You are the greatest genius and the pro soundest fool of my acquaintance, Severin. And that is no paradox if you consider it properly." " And Lady Bannister?" " She is a — Butterfly. It pleases her to flutter, and we can't help it. It is a pity, too.

I remember her years ago, and she was very nice. That was before she was married. And she is rather a beauty still. " She is a widow now, I suppose ? " said Severin. Sharpe's eyes widened. "A widow! Dear me, no ; she is merely semi detached. She found her husband so very inartistic and lumbering that she sent him off to hunt lions in Africa, or somewhere. Do lions grow only in Africa, Severin ? You are one, so you ought to know. He was a good little boy and went. I think," added the critic, "that if I had a wife I should not let her order me out of the country. But that is a detail. He may have found it more amusing to go." "Very likely," said Severin. He looked as if he meant more by the words than he chose to say. "You have not told me what you think of Mayer, after all," remarked Sharpe.

" I have not had time to think about him yet. He may be complex." Sharpe shrugged his shoulders, " He imagines he is. After all, you do not judge Parisian diamonds by their genuine value, but by the art of imitation displayed through them. If Mayer is not of the first water he is remarkably effective paste." " I had better not tell him what you say." " I say worse things of him to his face than I ever do behind his back. Are you going to see him?" " No." Severin hesitated. " My friend, shall I tell you what I am going to see ? But you will laugh at me." " Not likely. Tell me." The hunchback rose just as the train stopped, and put his hand to the door. " I am going to see the wife of a Modern Genius." ( » )

Chapter II

A CELEBRITY AT HOME, The rain was running silently down the window panes, and every now and then the wind lashed a spray of trailing creeper across the glass. A sound of wheels arose in the distance, and then died away, or the harsh cry of a news-boy came up out of the drifting wet. Presently an organ at the corner of the street began to grind out "'Way down upon the Swanee River," with in describably dismal effect. The sound came into the room with the swish of the soaked creeper, and the woman who sat by the side of the fire heard it, and bent lower over her work. There were tears under the pale eyelashes of the Actor manager's wife ; but then that was a very ordi nary circumstance — there were often tears there. And nobody cared to see them. She moved a little, and the firelight fell on her face — not a pretty face, nor intelligent, nor even particularly pleasant.

It was young, but its youth was pinched and grey ; the hair that crowned it was fair, and glinted prettily in the red light, but it was ordinary hair, and worn in a very stiff, inartistic fashion. Its owner was dressed very stiffly too, in rigid black, with a touch of white cuffs and collar such as suggests the masculine female or the district visitor. But Valeria Mayer was not a district visitor, and no one would have accused her of being masculine. She was only a very shy and retiring person, whose acquaintances unanimously voted her dull and unsympathetic. Perhaps, wise as one's friends always are, they did not in this case understand her ; perhaps she did not altogether understand herself. Saphir Mayer had long ago given up any passing interest he might once have felt in her ; he had his theatre, his admirers, his success, and half a hundred minor enthusiasms to attend to, and a wife was a very unimportant item with these engrossing subjects in view.

He was not unkind to her — he simply ignored her. The ideas which she held were not his ; they were old-fashioned, prejudiced, unintellectual. He had flung himself into all the new movements in Art and Literature ; he was an Impressionist with the Impressionists, a Realist who held up Victor Severin as the one great literary genius of the Age. He had once tried to improve Valeria's mind, but he soon gave up the attempt in despair. It was impossible to improve a person who was shocked at Zola, and went so far as to quote Scripture on several occasions against her master. Saphir told himself afterwards, with a mixture of amusement and wrath, that Valeria should have lived in the days of the Puritans ; she was hopelessly out of date in the nineteenth century. Saphir was proud of the nineteenth century ; he regarded it as a kind of appreciative agent who had brought him out, and set him, with a burst of trumpets, on the highest pinnacle of success.

Unlike Victor Severin, he believed that the popular enthusiasm which had been lavished upon his undertakings was nothing but the natural acknowledgment of very unusual talent. He firmly believed in himself; he admitted the fact with graceful candour. He had a circle of particular friends who believed in him too, and frequently proclaimed their sentiments to the vulgar herd ; and the vulgar herd, being, as a body, remarkably imitative of its neighbours' opinions, accepted him with loud acclamations. Had you inquired whether it under stood the plays over which it gushed such ardent admiration, it would have considered you very rude indeed. Therefore Saphir found it necessary to ignore Valeria. He regarded his marriage in the light of a tragic mistake. Even genius makes mistakes at times, he admitted sadly to himself.

He frequently lamented Valeria's ignorance to Lady Bannister, and that Light of Culture sympathized sincerely. She explained to him that the Rose of Genius is ever beset with thorns, and read him her last poem, which embodied that idea in a wilderness of elongated obscurity. Saphir listened to the effusion with politeness, if without perceptible enthusiasm. He thought Lady Ban nister charmingly sympathetic, but he secretly dreaded the appearance of the little black manuscript book in which her random musings crystallized into the extremely singular results which she entitled Poetry. So he abandoned Valeria to her own super annuated opinions, and went his way alone, leaving her to go hers. It did not affect him — he had far too many pursuits to feel lonely ; but Valeria, left behind in this march of progress, shrank into herself, and never came out again.

She had no friends, for she was shy, and stood in much awe of her fellow-kind. Men passed her by without seeing her, and women only remarked how badly she dressed. She knew this instinctively, and mistrusted her own slighted personality more and more. She was conscious of being plain ; she considered herself stupid ; Saphir despised her. What was there left for her to do? Very few things — things hardly worth doing, and omitted by those brilliant people who were so artistic. So she sat in the gorgeous rooms amid strange silks, and embroideries thick with gold ; and the rich light of stained windows fell on a puritanical little figure knitting comforters, which, as Lady Bannister said after an unexpected call on Saphir — she did not call on his wife — "gave her a feeling of nothingness inside."

Or she trudged through dark streets, and visited starving creatures who never thought of the way she did her hair, nor considered whether her dresses were or were not fashionable, since her presence left material comforts in its wake. And her charity, like herself, was a timid thing, disliking discovery, and ever on the wing to flee appreciation. She could not even profit by her virtues. On this wet afternoon she was roused from her reflections by a tap at the door, and the entry of a housemaid starched and frilled to a quite painful pitch of perfection. This flower of domestics presented a card which Valeria read with severe distaste. " Victor Severin," she said to herself, "the French poet, novelist, and Realist — at least, I suppose he is a Realist ; they all are now. I have heard Saphir praise him " — which fact did not appear to raise Severin in her eyes.

But aloud she only said, " Ask him up here.' Severin entered the room with some uncertainty as to what he should find, which gave place to a curious sense of disappointment with the commonplace figure before him. Valeria, on the other hand, was amazed. Most of Saphir's friends were to be distinguished by their large manners and eccentric clothes, and a habit of expressing them selves vaguely concerning " colour-harmonies " in painting, and " word-symphonies " in literature. They all regarded her with a certain dejected wonder, as though she were a blot in the land scape — the landscape in this particular case being Saphir Mayer's life. But this little man in undignified black, with sharp eyes, and a brusque manner — well, he was a new variety of Genius. " I am sorry my husband is out," said Valeria, when the ice of introduction had been feebly cracked.

"I was rather afraid," answered the poet, c mendaciously, " that he might be. A man of so many gifts has, naturally, many engagements." " Yes," admitted Valeria, with indifference. " He is so brilliant — so sincere," continued Severin, with a little foreign movement of en thusiasm which was not altogether genuine. " His work is so much admired in France." Yes," said Valeria, again. Severin considered for a moment. Matters were becoming awkward ; and it was clear to him that there was one person in the world who did not admire Saphir Mayer. He turned his friendliest smile on Valeria. " His theatre is quite a pillar of the foreign drama in England," he said with fervour. The pale face flushed a little, and the eyelashes drooped suddenly. " Yes," said the actor's wife once more ; and then she lifted her pathetic eyes and looked at her visitor frankly for the first time.

" I — I — don't care for his theatre," she said with a sad little smile. " I — I am not clever, you know." Severin was charmed ; that look had won him completely. Here was a woman who openly admitted that she was not clever. After the artistic Lady Bannister, with her elevated purrings over the Inane, the Conceited, the Brazenly Ridiculous, he felt as if a fresh breeze had suddenly struck his face. " I am so glad ! " he said, speaking on the impulse of the moment. " I don't like clever women a bit ; " and then he laughed, and she laughed too — partly at the simplicity of the admission — and in an instant they were on friendly terms. It was odd, but, for the first time for many years, Valeria was natural and unconstrained ; she forgot her own insignificance in talking to the ugly little poet.

Possibly — for human nature is a strange thing — his ugliness was the talisman that drove away her stiffness. She pitied him. It was a delicious sensation which she could only indulge in the slums ; and to give the feeling rein here, in her own house, was a strange and entrancing luxury. To pity one of Saphir's friends — the greatest writer in France, the most daring of Realists, the most scathing so THE WISDOM OF THE SIMPLE. of Satirists — it was an unusual emotion. But of his genius and his books she knew nothing. He was a great man according to Saphir, and though she did not accept Saphir's ideas as Gospel, she yet had some respect for them. She began even to like the man, and forget that he was a genius — which was, after all, the greatest compliment she could pay him. It was quite three-quarters of an hour later when a tall and imposing figure swept into the lighted room and stopped suddenly at the sight of Severin.

" You ! " cried a clear voice. " You, my dear M. Severin ! I am charmed to find you here." He came forward with a smile of almost boyish enthusiasm on a face of undeniable beauty and no little power, and shook hands with impressive fervour. His whole appearance was impressive. He towered above Severin and Valeria as he stood before the fire unfastening his heavy furred over coat. He breathed an atmosphere of imposing success — his very footsteps had a sound of con scious conquest. Popularity, if it had spoilt him in many respects, had not spoilt his capacity for enjoying it ; and it was easy to understand that he was fitted by nature to be very popular indeed. The graceful abandon of his salutation had an unusual effect on Severin, a man steeled against both compliments and abuse. He smiled as he looked up at the handsome face so far above him.

" I hope you have enjoyed this typical English day ? " he said. The actor laughed. " I have been lunching with Lady Bannister, and, finally, I stopped to tea. She had a meeting of the Cult. It was very interesting. Have you made acquaintance with the Cult yet ? " " The Cult of Butterflies ? " " There is only one Cult in London," said Saphir, lightly, " and that is the ' Cult of Butterflies.' Yes, now I remember, Lady Bannister spoke of your attendance yesterday. She added that you were very ' charming.' " He laughed again — a little ripple of pleasant amusement tinged with the slight assumption of superiority which flavoured all he did. " She finds everything ' charming.' She is so sympathetic ! " " Very," returned Severin, dryly. " I believe I am not generally considered charming. Lady Bannister must be very sympathetic indeed."

Saphir glanced at him rather doubtfully. He did not care for veiled sarcasm ; nor, perhaps, for sarcasm of any kind. People were always pleasant to him, and he troubled his head very little about them. Of course, some captious individual — Sharpe, for instance — might consider Lady Ban nister ridiculous ; but, for himself, he did not consider her at all. She admired him and his acting — he hardly discriminated between the two, for in him the artist and his art amounted almost to the same thing — and he chose to accept her admiration just as he would that of any other human being. The Cult of Butterflies, too, floundered in pale green garments at his feet, and hailed him as an Immortal Genius. The voice that hails you as an Immortal Genius is always sweet, and always welcome, though it be utterly mistaken and abominably out of tune.

Admiration was very dear to Saphir Mayer, no matter who offered it. He never rejected the incense of adulation from any artistic qualms regarding the pattern of the censer. " I had a holiday yesterday afternoon," he said, settling himself comfortably in the cosiest chair, and banishing Lady Bannister from his mind and the conversation at the same time. "We had a matinee at the New Comedy, and I got Vandenrust to take my part, and went to see Hansel and Gretel. How very sweet it is ! I thought the angel-scene quite enchanting. Of course, I mean in a fairy tale. One cannot take that sort of thing seriously." Severin turned to Valeria, who seemed to have extinguished herself completely at the entrance of her brilliant husband. " How did you like it, Madame Mayer?" Valeria glanced nervously at Saphir, who answered in her place.

" Oh, my wife didn't go," he said easily. " She doesn't care for theatres and the frivolities of light opera. She considers the New Comedy a den of iniquity. I should have to advertise a meeting of Charity Commissioners, or a star cast of bishops, with his Grace of Canterbury in the title role, before she would venture inside it." He smiled with an air of benevolent leniency. " I assure you I would not insult her by offering her a box under any other circumstances. And so, as bishops are not available for dramatic purposes, she stays a away. Severin moved uneasily in his chair. Somehow the bland indifference of this speech annoyed him ; it was a little too superior, he thought, to be in good taste. He had taken a liking to Valeria — an honour which he very seldom conferred even in much more probable quarters, for he, like the actor's wife, regarded his fellow-kind distrustfully.

Her simple reception had given him a curious pleasure ; he had been, for once in his life, treated not as a species of performing monkey, a tame genius in a chain and collar, but as a man. He had been received as an ordinary individual by a woman who told him she was not clever, had probably never read his works, and would not have admired them if she had. She had not even pretended to know anything about them, but she had been pleasant to him, with a certain shy kindness which had touched him because he guessed it was something of an effort. He began to under stand why it was an effort. He read her nervous glance at Saphir, her silence, the look with which she had told him that she was not clever, much as he would have read a page of his own manuscripts. For some reason, he had always doubted Saphir, even whilst most admiring him ; the man's serene indifference to the rest of the world had displeased him, though he admitted the charm, the finish, of the actor.

He began to comprehend the slight hardness, the want of genuine fire which, to an impartial observer, deprived the brilliant artist's work of the hall-mark of genius. " I hope you have not been waiting long for me ? " said Saphir, presently. " I am such an erratic person that it is not often you would find me in. How long have you been here ? " His eyebrows lifted expressively when he was told, and he looked unaccountably surprised. " Dear me — so long as that ! Valeria, I hope you have not been boring M. Severin with good works," he remarked pleasantly. Severin rose abruptly to his feet. " I have spent a very charming afternoon," he said stiffly — so stiffly that Saphir wondered vaguely what had happened. " I regret that I have now an engagement." But when he had gone, both Valeria and Saphir suspected that the engagement had been a myth, though, for different reasons, neither said so. C 27 )

Chapter III. The

cult of butterflies. After that day Severin spent many afternoons in Saphir Mayer's ornate drawing-room. He did not always see Saphir himself, for that popular individual was a man of many engagements, and did not often shed the light of his countenance on his own home. He was more frequently to be found at Lady Bannister's, assisting, with a pretty air of condescension, at a meeting of the Cult of Butterflies. Severin, strange to say, did not often patronize these functions, though, as Sharpe had said, their tenets agreed with those of his own cult — the advanced French Realists — and they were ready to lionize him to any extent. Lionizing, however, had no place in Severin's esti mate of life. He had a morbidly sensitive dislike to any parade of himself— a bitter consciousness that the gifts Nature had set in so inadequate a frame, were best exemplified on paper, and out of the reach of personal contact with a curious audience.

It was not a very sensible opinion, but the greatest minds often entertain the greatest follies. At least, he said to himself, he would never become a mere amusement — be made a toy of by the men and women who pretended to do him honour. In the first years of his success, when his great novel " Chrysanthemes " had made him an object of European interest, he had gone out into society with the feelings of a conqueror. All his life he had been set aside and slighted — by his family, who detested his new ideas and his determination to make literature his profession, and by his old friends, who by turns pitied and patronized him, and finally shrank away from him when he published a book which they regarded as too awful for any respectable being to mention. They might have made allowances for him had they been so minded.