A Hero of a Hundred Fights

Front matter

A HERO OF A HUNDRED FIGHTS BY THE SAME AUTHOR, And Uniform with this I'olume. — *— DAYS OF YORE. PAPERS FOR THOUGHTFUL GIRLS. THE DIAMOND ROSE. HEROINES IN OBSCURITY. GIRLHOOD AND WOMANHOOD. WARD, LOCK AND CO., London, New York, and Melbourne. " Ellen finished with suspicious hauteur and frigidity."! A Hero of a Hundtid fig/Uz.] [Page 272. A HERO OF A HUNDRED FIGHTS. BY SARAH TYTLER, AUTHOR OF «' Citoyenne Jacqueline," " Papers for Thoughtful Girls," etc. " ' It is hard, Uncle Chris.' " {Page qS.) WARD, LOCK AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE. CONTENTS. CHAP. FADE I. COUNTRY VISITORS ON THE PAINTERS' SHOW-DAT . 1 II. newbould's studio ...... 13 in. newbould's SAINTS 25 IV. COURTFIELD — THE COTTAGE AND ITS OCCUPANTS . 45 V. THE INDIAN LETTER ...... 66 VI. THE YOUNG SCjUIRe's RETURN .... 80 VII.

ELLEN TRANSPLANTED ... . . 91 VIII. OLD FRIENDS AT THE PARK . . . . .111 IX. THE SUSPICION OF A PLOT IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE 130 X. THE BELLAMYS' LITTLE DINNER-PARTY . . . 149 XI. "IS THAT ALL?" 167 XII. A WISE MAN BEFOOLED .'.... 182 XIII. THE FATE OF WEAK COMPROMISES .... 205 XIV. A FAMILY TIP IN ARMS 222 XV. THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE IS AS THE LETTING OUT OF WATER ....... CONTENTS. VI CULT. "OS XVI. AN INCENSED PEACE-MAKER 252 XVII. FRATERNISATION OVER DEFEAT .... 267 XVIII. "A DUFFER BY PREFERENCE" .... 281 XIX. AN IMPORTANT STRANGER 294 XX. THE LAST 6TRUGGLB . . . . . . 301 XXI. VICTORY . 322 xxii. Christopher's laurels . . . •

Chapter I. Country Visitors On The

PAINTERS* SHOW-DAY. CHRISTOPHER HATHERLEY had come up to town with his niece for the Easter holidays, and to make two among the visitors to the studios on the painters' show-days. The pictures were a treat for both uncle and niece, but in different ways. In the old days, when the world was all before Christopher, and the study of art was a labour of love, he had been a student in the Academy's schools along with some of the middle-aged men now famous. As for Ellen Hatherley, she was fond of beauty wherever she could find it, and she had a reflected interest in art, having come of a family that were considered culture-loving. Besides, she was firmly persuaded that her uncle Chris was, in his own person, a great painter, though still unknown to fame, but only tarrying to burst late on the world with an immortal achievement.

It was with unsophisticated zeal that the country visitors, with their open sesame in the B shape of old acquaintanceship and friendly intro ductions, pursued their way, employing hansoms regardless of expense in the service, from Fitzroy Square to Kensington, on to Chelsea, away to Hampstead, where some stragglers from the camp had thought fit to pitch their tents. Marvels awaited the sympathetic critics ; marvels in more than pictures. Such houses, with deliciously subdued tones in painted walls, severely harmonious hangings, mediæval armour and cabi nets, Queen Anne tables and Chippendale chairs, old china and art needlework ! And it was the fete-day of the studios — the special arrangement of which, though well known to Christopher, had all the charm of novelty to his niece. Everything was to-day not only in apple-pie order, but in gala dress.

The homely tools of the trade palettes and mahl-sticks, brushes and colours, and working blouses, were put de corously out of sight behind Indian screens and old Mortlake, French, or Flemish tapestry. Nothing was to be seen save finished pictures in chaste or gorgeous frames, holding the place of honour in carefully selected lights, and fitly sur rounded by picturesque objects, extending from one art pole to another, from old marbles to pea cock fans. There was even an attempt to overpower the lingering smell of paint by the fragrance of the sweet common spring flowers and the splendid exotics with which the vestibules and the con servatories adjoining some of the studios were lavishly supplied. Many of the establishments had men-servants in their Sunday best to wait on the guests. Some artists, who were too diligent or too modest to act as their own showmen, employed a mild species of touter to point out the beauties of their works, and explain the designs, which were not always such as those who ran could read.

The masters of these paradises acted the part of bland and courteous hosts in welcoming the privi leged public to the private exhibitions. There might be aches of anxiety, twinges of doubt, and pangs of suspicion in the hearts of those gentle men smiling so gallantly. They had been at their posts from an early hour. They might have been compelled to see that the great dealers were not propitious. They might have missed some liberal buyers, and been darkly convinced that these had gone over the way to rivals in art. Mischief-makers might have enlivened them selves by reporting invidious whispers and cynical comments on the performances from some of those very brethren of the brush who were apparently so full of jolly camaraderie and almost boisterous approval. This was the most trying day of the three hundred and sixty-five to these masters of the ceremonies.

As daylight waned, the principal persons concerned might have the impression that they could not endure the ordeal much longer ; but so long as it lasted they masked their feelings with the greatest success, until a novice like Ellen was tempted to believe this the serenest and happiest of regions. The very bodily wants of the obliged company were not forgotten. In occasional ante-rooms and corridors stood convenient sofas near tables laden with nectar and ambrosia, in the form of claret and biscuits, sherry and cake, even where the bottles did not contain Burgundy and cham pagne, and the plates chicken salad, lobster pates, and early strawberries at fabulous prices. Hos pitable satellites hovered around, considerately begging the public to rest and refresh themselves in the intervals of rushing to and fro in this giddy search after some new thing.

In the estimation of the wearied, excited Ellen, with her healthy country appetite, and her toil and fatigue in working steadily through the opportunities and pleasures of a short visit to town, this last stroke of chivalrous courtesy added considerably to the heavy debt of gratitude which she owed already to these princes of painters. Were they not princes like Rubens and Sir Joshua? she asked herself in her girlish enthusiasm. What could be grander and more charming than their domains ? What would Aunt Sophy think of the Turkey carpets and velvet portieres ? What would Aunt Anne make of the claret, which was very likely twice as much as eighteen pence a bottle, and the macaroons, which must at the lowest computation have cost sixpence a bag ful, dispensed like cakes and ale? And Aunt Phyllis — oh ! what would not Aunt Phyllis give for some of these oak carvings to copy in leather-work, and for the least bit of that crown Derby to put on her last bracket !

Then Ellen thought, with a sudden swift com punction, of Christopher's studio at home — the garret with bare, ghastly whitewashed walls, no furniture save old travelling traps and ugly lum ber, lit by skylights which might be good for art purposes- — the master said so — but which consti tuted rude and uncouth objects in themselves, almost as bad as the old laundry grate, and the dingy green-baize screen set up to shelter the worker from the draughts let in by the ill-fitting door. Uncle Chris must be quick, do his great work, and have rooms like these, which all the Court field world would flock to gape at and admire. Then they would begin to suspect what a great man and painter had been among them in the person of the quiet, pleasantspoken gentleman who had drudged so honestly and patiently for many a year, wasting his precious time in going three times a week to teach drawing in Birmingham — of all places in the world — bravely forgetful of the fact that he had been one of the Hatherleys of the Park.

Ellen had a dim, half-consenting, half-protest ing conception of the fact that it needs the stamp of material prosperity to impress all, except the very few, with the presence of genius. The girl was so dazzled with the setting that, in spite of her connection with art and her general enthusiasm for beauty, she half forgot the pictures, from which Christopher rarely took his eyes. It was such a treat for him to come up from the depths of the country and see in two days the best fruits of the year's work, to divine what schools were coming to the front, to decide on the progress of art in England. He had ma naged to make an annual run up to the Academy ; but his time had been limited, and he had been apt to get a good deal overwhelmed by the bad — though he was wonderfully slow to call work bad — and the mediocre, which jostled and almost swamped the first-rate pictures.

As it happened he had not been in town on the show-days, when he could take his choice and go from studio to studio, since he had been a student in the schools, and had himself rented a London studio. Humble enough wasthat studiocompared with the humblest of these, and rented in company with another young painter who had lived to let the world hear of him. They, too, had, in that far-back time, boasted the modest beginning of a show-day. Christopher Hatherley had seen many changes, with fashion succeeding fashion. The pre- Raphaelites, where were they — unless they sur vived oddly enough in the lordly isolation of a few confessed followers of the Venetians, who did not think the world worthy of their works ? And what was the explanation of these studios giving forth Greek and Roman scenes, with profound and subtle scholarly tones of their own, which excluded especially modern life, and for the most part human passion, from their entire scope ?

They were becoming still more prominent in art than in literature. Did they point to the in ference that all later channels having run dry, the poet and the painter felt the obligation upon them to return to the fountain-head of beauty, to try to reproduce what had been the inspiration of a Sophocles and an Apelles ? Here was another phase of thought and feeling, in which every meadow and wood, garden and old mansion, was seen refined and idealized as under the pale rays of the moon, while it was sought to render the whole landscape and each figure in it pregnant with mystery and passion — until all the matrons seated at bay windows or walking along far-stretching roads represented tragic queens or prophetesses, and all the country girls making hay or hanging out clothes to dry were Egidias or Undines, half nymphs, half oracles, or creatures of dreams, free from responsibility — at the best capable of dissolving in the spray of a fountain.

The founders of the school had painted so exqui sitely in their somewhat feverish solemnity and hectic delicacy, that an absence of robustness and realism might readily be forgiven them, but growing affectation and mannerism formed the portion of their followers. There was still another longing essay at the spirit of the scene in rendering valleys and moun tains by the deepest of shadows and the bluest of greens, and in transfusing, by the silveriest of lights and the palest of gold-tinted greys, corn fields and uplands. The last endeavour was far enough removed from the deadly literalism of topography, and yet Christopher suspected it was but a callow, crude interpretation of the secret of nature after all. But his sympathies were with these workers, while h6 had nothing better than a cold acknowledgment for the skill in moulding and charm in colouring of much which the world adored.

The game there was, in his estimation, either not worth the candle, or worse — disgrace fully false and irrelevant, undeserving a rushlight, an altogether mean and mocking travesty of what it was for tortured genius to illuminate. Thus Christopher, though he paused long with pleasure before what gave simply and sweetly a nest in a hedgerow or a baby's nosegay, a toil worn man, or a fresh, innocent girl ; looked little at mere shows of mountain and wilderness; or turned his shoulder largely on gorgeous Oriental bazaars and picturesque porches of Italian churches, pleasure-parties and family groups, gentlemen in robes of office, ladies in morning or evening costume, comic or tragic studies from galvanised history or classic stories — around which good judges gathered, entranced with the handling of the foreground or the distance, the grouping of the figures, or the seizing the point of the tale.

Ellen's judgment was not nearly so clear ; she was not always certain what she liked and what she disliked. She would have been glad to con sult Christopher, but she did not care to disturb him — engrossed as he was by the contemplation of the pictures, or occupied with receiving the greetings of old acquaintances. One thing startled her. It was the difference which she could not help remarking between those perfectly finished, worked-out pictures and those dim, rather chaotic productions of Uncle Chris's at home — out of which he was to evolve the picture that was to take London by storm and set the Thames on fire at last. Ellen crushed down a fluttering misgiving which arose on the heels of the observation she had made. Of course it was Christopher's superior power which caused the difference.

Besides, he was yet to paint his great picture. He had not exhibited for years. The fact was, though Ellen was only partially acquainted with the truth, that his work had been so unfail ingly and remorselessly rejected year after year now, until the term reached a decade of a man's life, that Christopher, being a poor man, conceived himself called upon, for the sake of others, to abstain from further indulgence in what was to him the expensive luxury of thus procuring for himself fresh disappointment. A good many of the older artists whom the Hatherleys encountered knew Christopher again, and pointed him out to their neighbours as an old art student, one of the many who begin by giving some promise which comes to nothing, who had subsided, poor soul, into a drawing teacher in some provincial town.

The sentence was doubly hard on him, for he had been a swell student in his younger days, a squire or great banker's son. But some mis fortune befell the family, there was a smash of the bank, or an agent bolted. Whatever it was, Hatherley was not to blame. All the same, he had to work for his living afterwards in the best way he could, like less daintily reared men. He was not a bad lot by any means ; on the contrary, he had always been one of your good, simple minded kind of beggars, and somebody who had stumbled upon him in his country place found him, as was to be expected, the stay of a parcel of women, his relations. He had turned out a duffer, of course, otherwise he would have done better for himself ; but he had never got past his raw, green stage. He was understood to have hankerings after high art and all that sort of humbug to this day.

However, old Hatherley was welcome whenever he chose to appear in his former haunts, where his earlier associates, though they did not say it in so many words, held un mistakably they had shot far ahead of him. These former comrades were a little condescend ing in their cordiality, but they were not so tempted to patronise as were the young men who languidly and glibly expounded their views to Christopher, or sought to mystify him as super annuated and fair game. It was well that Ellen did not hear their mingled instruction and chaff, or, if she heard any part of it, failed entirely to comprehend the performance in its presumption and impertinence. Indeed, when Ellen was of the group, the young fellows forgot a good many of their wise airs and mischievous propensities, and became better occu pied with the consideration that old Hatherley's niece, though she was from the country like him self, was fair to see and pleasant to hear when she spoke to those she knew in the circle ; in fact, she bore about her the undeniable air of a young woman who, though her uncle was an old fogey of a drawing-master, had been well brought up aud mixed in good society.

But for that matter these severe censors and experienced judges felt forced to own that though old Hatherley had " subsided " into a drawing-master, and his over coat was out of date and a little worn, even as his beard was of an ancient cut and his head grey and slightly bald, he still retained the quiet un conscious bearing of a gentleman.

Chapter II

, NEWBOULD'S STUDIO " T THINK we shall just be in time for New- -*- bould's, Ellen," said Christopher, looking at his watch, Ellen had been flagging the least in the world, calling to mind that there were other entertain ments in London besides painters' " shows," sus pecting that, in spite of the indefatigable qualities of her years, she would be just too tired to enjoy thoroughly the play her uncle had promised to take her to see in the evening, and reflecting with dawning dismay on all the commissions she held from Aunt Sophy, Aunt Anne, and Aunt Phyllis, to not one of which she had yet attended. But she rallied her forces loyally at the word. Unquestionably they must not miss Mr. New bould's. His was one of the first studios in London. He was the painter with whom Chris topher had " set up shop," as he called it, twenty years before.

Uncle Chris was always inter ested in Newbould's work, even fascinated by it, whether the fascination was that of approbation or censure. Ellen prepared to plunge anew into the art vortex, and was so intent on preserving her own enthusiasm that she failed to notice the mixture of desire and reluctance in Christopher's tone. The hansom conveyed the couple to the re motest suburb they had yet visited, and set them down before a fine old-fashioned house in its own tolerably extensive grounds. Seventy or eighty years before the place had been a country-house, and it still retained an indescribable precedence and distinction among its parvenu neighbours. Every modern convenience had doubtless been added to its comfort, and the whole establishment displayed at a glance the pervading good taste of a man in whose calling taste was essential.

But, possibly from some element in the character of the resident, the house and grounds had under gone little change since they were the dwelling of a Secretary of State under William Pitt. Not only the terrace with the aloes in summer and the yews at all seasons, and the shrubbery with its thickets of lilacs and hawthorns, remained the same ; but indoors the plain hall, the heavy if stately staircase, the morning-room lined with cold and decidedly faded blue taffetas, into which the visitors were first ushered, had been left un altered. Coming from the prevailing brick and mortar, the crowded compressed spaces, the rage for progress combined with the equal rage for retrogression into elaborate picturesqueness, that they had recently seen, Ellen was impressed, though she could scarcely have defined the im pression, with this atmosphere of seclusion and simplicity, as if the owner disdained either for art's or for his own sake to bring down art to domestic uses.

" Mr. Newbould does not care to live among signs of his art," said Ellen. " Oh, no," Christopher answered with a laugh. " John Newbould is not the man to turn his house into a shop, and eat and drink beauty." "But why?" persisted the puzzled Ellen. " Is it on the principle of the Newfoundland merchants, who have everything eatable on their dinner-table except cod-fish ? Can he be ashamed of his profession ? " " Not exactly," answered Christopher more slowly. " No ; shame is not the word. I don't suppose he would repudiate the guild as Con greve declined to be a literary character to Vol taire. Still I can fancy, if John Newbould had been born a man of high social position, he would have preferred to exercise his gifts in private. He would have felt offended and affronted by public homage coming to him through them."

" Then he must be ashamed of his highest honour," said Ellen indignantly. "I thought he was devoted to his art ; I thought he let nothing come between him and his work, and for that very reason did more than any other modern painter of repute. And you have always said that he had, from the first, even a higher convic tion than was just of his own merit." " Yes, yes, all that is perfectly true," acquiesced her uncle hastily ; " but don't let us pick holes in the man's coat in his own house. Here comes the servant who took our cards. Now remember, Ellen, you are going to see the more than clever work of a very clever man, of whose grand capacity for good work we may all bo proud." The Hatherleys were shown to the studio, but there was evidently no "of course " in the pro ceeding, as there had been in the other houses, where the solemn men-servants and the trim maidservants were keenly alive to the fact that master's pictures were on private view, and that all visitors then came expressly to stare at the work.

When the uncle and niece entered the spacious well-lit painting-room, the one addition to the house made by the painter, it contained some very valuable " properties," but had no elegant trifles skilfully displayed, and it was evidently in its work-a-day condition. The couple found themselves in a small select coterie of gentlemen ; and Ellen, for the first time in their round, felt abashed, as if her presence there were forward and unbecoming. But the master of the studio, easily recognisable, came out of the cluster of satellites and received the visitors graciously enough, which was some comfort, the girl said to herself in her trepidation and dawning vexation, though she added quickly she could not say there was any cordiality to spare. In truth, when Christopher Hatherley's card had been taken up to John Newbould as he was in the act of bestowing a little of his brief, well earned leisure on one or two literary men, more or less distinguished, and art lovers in high places, privileged aspirants to John Newbould's society, which was coveted in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining it, the painter had been guilty of an involuntary curl of his lip, while he tossed aside the card a little impatiently.

But he was too well bred a man, too much a man of the world, to refuse to fulfil an unmistakable obligation, and ho was too proud and well assured of himself and his position to mind the rusticity which might have gathered like lichen about Christopher's looks and manners, or to be apprehensive about an injudicious reference to the two men's former relations — which, to be sure, had only been casual and temporary — before the present associates, whom John Newbould prized and liked as much as he could like any human beings beyond hi? own family. There was a considerable though not a glaring contrast between the two men, who greeted each other rather formally. Both were middle-aged, and both looked older than their years. But in Christopher Hatherley's case maturity had not brought the impassiveness — all-observant, yet refusing to answer to observation in turn — which it had set on John Newbould's well-chiselled features.

Christopher's rather full lips and grey eyes were still as instinct with susceptibility, and in nearly as great danger of betraying his feelings, as when he was a young fellow. Both were tall, big men, but Newbould stood perfectly erect, while Hatherley's shoulders were a trifle bent, as if they had been accustomed to bear burdens. Christopher remained the gentleman he had always been, but he was careless of the outward marks of his condition, and too indifferent on the point to struggle against evidences in boots, and gloves, and country-made coat, of the shabbiness induced by narrow means. John Newbould, in spite of the safeguard of his genius and pride, exhibited a shade of the punctilious refinement and elaborate propriety — in the very coarseness of his well-fitting morning coat, as well as in the cat's-eye stones at his wrists — of the man who has risen, however gradually and gracefully, in the social scale.

" Is this your daughter, Hatherley ? " asked the great painter with polite though blundering attention. " I am sorry my wife and daughters have gone to spend their Easter in Rome." ■ 19 " He ought to have known that Uncle Chris is not married, could not have married," Ellen protested, with not the less liveliness that it was done silently. " I suppose his wife and daughters are much too grand to stay at home and help to receive his friends, like the eager interested women in the families of the other painters we have visited. I don't like Uncle Christopher's old fellow-student, although he does benefit the world with the unremitting excellence of his work." Ellen had speedy opportunity of judging Mr. Newbould's work, though . it remained at the further end of the large studio, and had not been brought forward into a prominent place, to claim absorbing attention like the other artist's pictures.

"Do you care to see my pictures for the Academy? " inquired the painter with still more indifference than he had betrayed in investigating the relationship between Christopher and Ellen. " Without question. What have we come here for except to see the pictures ? " the irrepressible Ellen was privately exclaiming, even as Voltaire made his retort to Congreve. Yet Mr. Newbould had not issued invitations to a show, any more than Congreve had withdrawn from the delicate attentions of the Duchess of Marlborough, and made overtures towards good fellowship with his brother litterateur. Ellen was subdued in spite of herself by the recollection, and by the courtesy — though it was an effort of courtesy — with which the painter attended the visitors to his pictures. Taking the pictures altogether — how fine they were ! what a wonderfully high average of good, sometimes splendid work, they presented ; even Ellen saw this reluctantly, little as she understood of the subject.

Christopher, who had a wistful, intense appreciation of good work, and who was himself an honest, earnest worker so far as his powers went, confessed it from the bottom of his soul. He had been accustomed to say that New bould, with all his capacity, was a superficial, one sided worker ; that he did not care to select worthy subjects, and did not go to the heart of those he selected ; that he either could not or would not see the truth which might have been found beneath the falsehood, the nobility beneath the spiritual meanness of many of his delineations. He pleased himself and a world which affected cynicism, with his light scorn launched on every side, but not without a veil of taste and tact, and decorous regard for authorities. There was nothing defiant in Newbould's attitudes, far less anything reckless.

What should he defy ? He was a most prosperous man, valued and reckoned safe even by many most orthodox people, because his heresy was so refined, and, compared with that of others, so respectable. Besides, did he not afford occasional contradictory evidence of his deep sympathy with what was pure and noble, and his high admiration for it ? It was the fantastic, romantic, and sentimental, next to the vulgar, that Newbould abjured. Still his work had often exasperated Christopher Hatherley almost beyond bearing. The very amount of truth in his unscrupulous, unsparing representations, which were only restricted by taste and expediency, and which had compelled Christopher to laugh at the same moment that he had coloured with shame and indignation, had set his teeth still more on edge, and he had been tortured by the problem how much Newbould was conscious or unconscious of his cultured allegiance to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Some of his earlier work, when he and Christopher had been nearer agreeing, from the spirit of which the successful painter had widely departed, and certain broadly exceptional pictures in which he still indulged at times, seemed to be proofs against his moral blindness, or were they only evidence of his moral double dealing ? Had the last and heaviest punishment come upon him ? Were the wider vision, the grander and actually the truer conception, gone from him for ever ? They might not have paid so well in his generation, because such art is a lesson and has to train its followers. Few comparatively, even of the well-disposed and intellectual, might have been prepared to accom pany the painter in his reverent looking up and looking down. Again, the strain might have impaired the gifts which, though great, most certainly had their limits ; and because Newbould had slighted and forsaken the best gift, had it been absolutely withdrawn from him, until he could not rise beyond what was of the earth, earthy?