TALES & SKETCHES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 934, 24 January 1890, Page 7

TALES & SKETCHES.

[NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.] BY ORDER 0? THE CZAR THE TRAGIC STORY OF ANNA KLOSSTOCK, THE QUEEN OF THE GHETTO. BY JOSEPH HATTON, Author of ‘CruM London,’ ‘The Three Recruits,’ ‘ J hn Needham’s Double,’ &c. [All Rights Reserved.] Part 11. CHAPTER IX. Face to Face. A month of strange atmospheric vagaries —the month of April in the English Metropolis —a month of suu and shade, of calm and storm, of east wind and southern breezes, of raiu and sleet, ot cruel chills and softened tenderness ; and all the while a month of budding blossoms, of waving leaves and scented sweetbriar ; a month, so to speak, of ups and downs, like a man’s life. It lacked, perhaps, the violent contrasts, nevertheless, of the career of the Countess Stravensky, who, despite the blasting cyclone of ill-fortune, stood whin all was over like a poplar that had been able to defy the storm, but stood alone, with the forest torn and ragged and uprooted around it. When Philip Forsyth, tbe morning after Mrs Chetwynd s reception, walked from Gower street to his studio beyond Primrose Hill to receive his new and strangely fascinating sitter, London was a summer eity, though it was still only April, and there had been a fall of snow and a hailstorm in the preceding week. Regeut’s Park was radiant with a sunshine that had in it the warmth of June with the freshness of tho most genial of spring days, and there were pleasant shadows in it from the trail of morning clouds, and the air was full of the perfume of flowers. The brown tanned beds in the Broad Walk were gay with budding hyacinths, and the fountain was making musio in its granite basin. The chestnuts were full of white pro eiso of early bloom, aud the leaves were as fresh and green as if they were the new-born leaves of some remote wood far away from city smoke and fog. The first swallows of the year twittered as they floated overhead, and blackbirds were making late breakfasts upon the green sward which they investigated with hurried and flashing beaks. Philip io a dull kind of way was conscious of all this : it came as an accompaniment to his thoughts of other things, more particularly to liia meeting with tho Countess Stravensky and to the object of his early and delightful walk to his studio. He went swinging along through the Park and out into Albert-road, quite in the spirit of the time. He recalled in a dreamy fashion, that was, however, somewhat out of harmony with it, every word and every look of the mysterious beautiful woman of Mrs Chetwynd’a reception. He saw her eyes looking into his with tender interest, he heard her say she might be liia friend.. The soft tone of her voice when she said she was interested in him came back to him. He comprehended in one long reflection the memory of her lovely form, her red-gold hair, her becoming dress, her distinguished manner, the fascinating melancholy of her face when it was in repose, the depth of her eloquent eyes when she turned their violet light upon his. Ho might have been walking on air every now and. then, so unconscious was he of his surroundings, and yet he felt the influence of the buds and blossoms, the wooing breeze, the perfume of flowers, and the drowsy plash of the first water-cart of the season, that laid thedust after the first swallow had skimmed along the road, not in very wantonne3a of the gaiety and pleasure of life, as the poets think, but as earnestly bent upon the practical sustenance thereof a 3 the blackbirds in tbe park. The aspiring artist did not paase to ask himself what sort of absorbed interest this was that he was taking in the Count«3B Stravensky; whether it was the absorption of the painter in a great subject, or the pulsations of the romantic passion of an impulsive young man. It was quite certain that for the time being the beautiful foreign lady had occupied a plaoe in his thoughts which should have been alone occupied by Dolly Norcott, tlf whom only two days before he had become engaged. This fact was recalled to him by tbe Countess Stravensky herself within au hour of the time when he was walking more or less on air, as we have seen, to his studio beyond Primrose Hill, for the condescending model arrived punctually to the time which she had fixed with Philip’s mother on the preceding night. He had had the place specially prepared to receive her, and sbe had come quietly attired, as if in sympathy with his subject. It was eleven o’clock when she passed through the porter’s gate. Her single brougham stood outsido with one servant on the box. On tbe pavement was a gentleman in waiting—a foreigner, who strolled about the neighbourhood, enjoying the fresh spring morning and a cigar strong enough to have thrown an ordinary smoker into a narcotic fever.

Philip received his visitor with a calm sense of triumph. She xvore a grey soft cape, which she laid aside almost as soon as she entered the studio. ‘lt is very kind of you to come,’ said Philip, not attemoting to disguise his pleasure. ‘Kind of you to a3k me to do so—and Mr Cketwy’nd made such a point of it !’ she s&id, with her fascinating foreign accent. ‘ VVhat a charming hostess—Mrs Chetwynd? Sorry I could not remain as long as I could have wished ; but there was a prior engagement which duty required I should observe, at tho Russian Embassy; it was a ball, and I had the satisfaction of arriving for the little supper, as they so call it, and I was escorted by one of your great miniaters ; a friend, eo

he said, of Russia. Ah, thank you, they aro lovely !’ This in response to a bouquet of lilies of the valley which Philip offered to his visitor, as he invited her to take a seat upon the sitter’s platform. * You are business-like, you do not forget that my time is much occupied ; but I am to Bit in character, i 3 it not bo ?' He thought her voice wonderfully sweet, her foreign accent giving to the tone of it an added charm. ‘ I wish I had designed for you a subject in which the study should have been one of beauty and happiness instead of beauty in misery and despair. Bub may I not first sketch you as you are ?’ Whether it was that the Countess desired to cheek the exuberance of Philip’s frank admiration of her, or that the question arose out of a real interest in his welfare, she suddenly forced him back upon the duty he owed to Dolly Norcott. * Your mother tells me you arc engaged to be married.’ * Indeed !’ he S3id. ‘ And when are you to he married ?' * I do not know,' lie said. ‘The happy day—have you not already marked it with white in your calendar of bliss ?’ ‘ No,’ he said, busy with his brushes and his easel. ‘You do not care to talk about tho betrothal. Is it so ?'

‘ I care most to hear you fcslk,’ he replied, his dirk eyes turning towards her. ‘ That ia a trick of the painter, eh ? He thus will get the expression of his sitter's face. Well, it dapends what lire expression is to be. But am 1 not t > see what you have already desired it should be ? Mr Chetwynd was concerned with the thought that I might be displeased at your painted opinion of the miseries inflicted by my country on the exile and the prisoner ! Not at all. That I sympitbise with you in this brings me here.’ * Mr Chetwynd,’ Philip replied, overrates my sketch, but siuceyour ladyship wishes to see it, it is here.’ He wheeled towards her chair an easel 1 upon which he lifted the sketch we have already seen. He did so in a somewhat perfunctory mam er, for he had felt some of his enthusiasm for tho Countess evaporate at her mention of his engagement. Nut that it had set him thinking more of Dolly, as a lover should, but it had appeared in Ins mental groping to have projected a shadow between him and the delirious pleasure of having tho Countess all alone to paint, and at the same time to study—to worship perhaps—foi he had encouraged an indefinite kind of anticipation in regard to this visit in which art was not the only factor, aud almost tbe first words of bis sitter appeared to him to have sot up a barrier against the romance of it. The Countess rose from her seat, stepped down from the platform, and gazed at the medal sketch. The light fell effectively upon picture and reality. Philip noted the fair, round figure of the woman, simnly clad in a pale silk gown draped to her figure, her red-gold hair dressed high as on the night before, her bonnet designed as if to set off rather than hide it, her pale face, with the dark lashes shadowed upon her cheeks, her entire appearance singularly gsaceful and queenlike. * And you think this woman like mo I'she said, after standing before the picture as it seemed to Philip for quite five minutes. ‘ Chetwynd thought it like you.’ -i Chetwynd did ?' she said, still looking dfc the sketch. " ' ‘ Indeed, he recognised you from this clumsy description.’ ‘Not clumsy, but remarkable,’she replied. * You painted it after seeing me at the opera ?’ ‘Yes.’ * What if I have not been at the opera ?’ * Then I have dreamed it.’ said Philip. ‘ It reminds me of a girl I once knew years ago,’she said, t * I did not wish to show it to yon ; I felt it was a libel on you.’ * It is beautiful,’ she replied, now looking at him, aud with a sad expression in her eyes. ‘lt shall be, if you will give me the opportunity to study the original.’ . *1 suppose you have in your mind a sfcorv for your picture. It is called Tragedy, your mother tells me.’ Philip wished that his mother had not said so much to the Countess; but he only replied that it was the subject for the Academy gold medal. ‘ And in your mind the tragedy is the situation of that young man who is to die in the arms of the woman—in mine, eh, Mr Forsyth? I am to be the poor creature who extends her arms with all her good kind suffering heart in her pale face £o the poor dying student—is that so?’ ‘ And the general group • the old man is an incident of the tragedy. The spirit of the subject also lies not alone in the fact pourtrayed, but the idea of the road to Siberia.' ‘ Yes, yes—do not be afraid to say all you may think or feel of that, the most enormous of all tragedies it is true ; but there is worse than Siberia—there are perils worse than the road to it and the arrival. Perhaps in your picture the young man is her lover ; ah, my friend, to have been his companion in exile would have been bliss to that young girl whom tho face recalls to me ; her love was so great Siberia would have been heaven with him. Do yon ever th-nk of all the horrors of the Inferno of Dante ? They are as nothing compared with the fate of that young girl whom I knew in a Russian village long ago But, my dear Philip. v?hy aak me, who am rich and happy and of the noblesse, to sit for this poor mad creature ?’ Philip’s heart stood still for a moment when she called him her ‘ dear Philip,’ aud then began to beat fast aud furious. * That is why I did not wish you to see it,’ he said, his face aflame, his tongue running ou at a rapid rate. ‘ You, who are so beautiful ; you who should rather sit for a Queen of Beauty—a goddess for men to worship and women to admire—for Arthur’s queen, of Cleopatra. And ia that there would also be fcrag -dy, but the tragedy of the poet, not the vulgar tragedy of a troop of prisoners. Let me blot the libel out.’ He advanced towards the sketch, ns if he

■would have carried out his suggested threat, She laid her hand upon hia arm, and he fchriiled at the touch.

* Not so, dear friend/she said ; *it is a compliment to me that you can think of me as pathetically as that/ and she pointed to fehe picture. Ah 3if yon only knew ! And she was beautiful that girl I ara thinking f.bonfc; but Siberia was too good for her ; she was of the cursed race of the Jew, a'rid they* called her queen of the ghetto in the place where she lived in innocence and was engaged as you are, and" morn, with the day fixed for the wedding, and the year of betrothal at an end; and she, be sure, marked it in the calendar, and he her betrothed. You are in the right—it is tragic, this picture of yours ! It has also enough of sorrow in that one incident of the woman or her lover to call it tragedy—and perhapa the old man might be her father, oh ? Was that in your thought V "While she spoke she removed her bonnet, and drew her hair about hor head as suggested in the picture, as Philip had seen it at the opera, and she took her seat, and he followed her, palette in hand. * There, my friend, go on with your study ; at is not the first of the times I have sat for the artist. Icaa make that expression, perhaps, for you ; I try to look back to the pour girl I tell you of. There !’ The mouth fell into an expression of despair and the eyes looked up with a tearful idea of pain in them ; the hair fell around the pale beautiful features, Philip gained but did not paint. ‘ Why do you pause 2—will you not have me for your model 2 Do I not act well V Then she arose from the crouching attitude she bad assumed and laughed almost hysterically.

"You cannot realise that I who am ao gay and rich and so high-burn should act such a part as the miserable woman of the. prison—the lash perhaps. Well, you are right do not alter the picture ; it has all the spirit of the misery of persecution—outrage, the rod, the lash ; you have felt it in yonr heart ; I am glad I have seen what you feel; but go seek the wretched, not the happy such as I for your model !’ She was putting on her bonnet. ‘ But you are not going ?’ exclaimed the artist.

‘ YVhy not ? sha said ; * you will not paint me. You do not think I can be of use in your picture.' Forgive mo/ he said, ‘ you have perplexed me ; 1 was not prepared for so wonderful a realisation of the woman I saw at the opera—the face I have tried to paint.’ ‘Some other day, then/ she said, ‘when we are both less embarrassed. I have other engagements —a luncheon, a dinner, a dance —and I must get up my Society spirits, eh ? It is not for me to think of such sorrowful things.’

She comprehended with a long sweeping action of hor arm Philip's entire sketch.

‘ You are angry with me/ said Philip. ‘No, no/ she said, ‘I am never angry; despair is not anger ; revenge is nob anger ; longing is not anger. Ah ! I see I bewilder you ! Thank you.' Sho had pointed to her cape ; Philip assisted her to put it on.

‘You have excited into action some old memories/ she snid, and you have a strange resemblance to that poor girl’s lover ; he had marked the day a 3 I tell you with a white stone, and its sun set in biood ; you are not so engrossed with the betrothal of your love. It is well ; I admire your English sang froid ; it is the reason why you are great ; you can look love and destiny, victory and defeat, heaven and hell in the eye straight, and you do not flinch. Indeed, j*ou are a great people !‘ * Ah ! Madame, for some reason you mock me/ said Philip. ‘ I have offended you ; if I dared say all I think and feel about you the admiration you have inspired in me, the ambition that lies beyond that mere daub you have been good enough to praise ; that boyish fancy, the weakness of which since last night I see with the eyes of a man !’ ‘ Another day,’ she said, interrupting. ‘ Please ring for my carriage : and believe what I say when I toll you I am nob angry ; that I feel all you say deep in my heart ; that you have awakened . there sensations that have been dead for years ; and if we do not meet again, let me beg of you to finish that picture; it will bring you fame ; I commission it ; paint it for me ; it shall have the first place in my gallery ; it shall have a home in my heart.’ She turned as if o go; then, with her eyes full upon him, she said, quickly, ' In my country there is the kiss of friendship and the kiss of peace ; 1 give to you that salute, and with me it is the kiss of a sweet memory that lasted for a momect, to be lost in the shadow of a tragedy more terrible than that you have dreamed of in your art and in your tender sympathies with the persecuted and distressed. Adieu f She kissed him on both cheeks and was gone out at the open door before he could attend her. While the wheels of her brougham rattled at the portal of the courtyard, he stood in a heat of strange delightful surprise, looking amazed and bewildered at the open doorway where the sun came "streaming in like a benediction. CHAPTER X. Dolly is Determined to bb Happy. Philip had not seen Dolly since he had asked her to be his wife : it seemed an age—it was only two days ago. What an eventful two days ! To Dolly also they had seemed a long time, but somewhat uneventful. Mrs Milbanke had not refrained from remarking that it was odd Philip had not called the next day ; and on this morning of the Countess's visit to Philip’s studio she had expressed some wonder as to Philip’s health. * He must be ill, mv darling,’ said Jenny at breakfast, after Walter had started for the city. * It is Lady Forsyth’s dny, I will call ; you shall not go ; 1 will go alone ; if he is ill we ought to have had the fact made known to us ; if he is well his conduct must he explained. When I was engaged to Walter every day that I did nob see him I had a letter from him.’ 8 fie mast be ill/ said Dolly, taking up

one of the last remaining strawberries th&t had come up from Walter’s place ia Gloucestershire. ‘ Poor Sam would have been here every five minutes if he had been allowed.’

‘ You miisfc not say what Sam would have done,' said Jenny. ‘lt is not proper, and it is not wise, \Vhy, I declare it ia twelve o’clock. Walter is later and later for the city every morning.’ ‘ It is all owing to my engagement/said Dolly ; * before it was settled he talked of nothing else, now it is settled he finds it an equally absorbing topic, and one would think our trip to Venice was my honeymoon. he make) so much of it.’

‘He is a dear, good fellow/ Jenny replied ; ‘lives for everybody except himself, more particularly for you and me, Do’ly. You must not think to get as good and devoted a husband as Walter, but Philip Forsyth is far cleverer, and he is famous, or will be, and one day yon will be Mrs Forsyth, It. A., an 3 perhaps Lady Forsyth—who knows 2 There is no eud to the possible triumphs of the wife of a great artist—and Philip will be great. Ivlr Ghetwynd says ao ; and there is no more severe critic aud perhaps none so influential—he is said to have been the critical god-father of Burne Jone?, and Watts, and Albert Moore, and several others.’

‘ Bnt, my dear, Watts is old enough to be his father.’

‘ I can’t heln that,’ Jenny replied, fastening a sprig of white lilac in the bosom of her dress—the white lilac from Walter’s place in the country, a bunch of which had adorned the breakfast table, making a sort of little bower f >r the neat of plover’s eggs which had formed part of the msiiu. * 1 suppose I ought to be very unhappy,’ Dolly remarked as her sister rose to leave the table, ‘and yet I am not.’ ‘You don’t feel things as I did/ said Jenny ; ‘we live in a more practical age, I suppose. ’ ‘ Indeed, since when 2’ asked Dolly. ‘ You are not old enough to be my mother, if Watts is old enough to he Chetwynd’s father ; and sometimes I could almost imagine you to bo my younger sister.’ ‘Then you don’t love Philip as I loved Walter 2’

‘I don’t know how much you loved Walter.’

* Then you are not a person of much observation/ said jenny.’ ‘ I suppose one loves a ,man according to how much he loves us. You seem to think Philip has neglected me already.’ ‘No, I do not ; I think he is ill : and if you had been me, and Philip bad been Walter. I should have beyn so certain ot it that I should have made immediate inquiries, in person or by telegram or both. And, what puzzles me, is that you take it all as quietly as if you had been married five years, and one day your husband had not come home to dinner, and had not seat you word that he was detained.’

‘ I suppose it was such a strain upon me to get him to propose that the reaction has left me limp and played out, as that American lady said the other day.’' ‘She said “wilted,” my dear/ Jenny rejoined ; * but 1 am sorry to hear you speak as if you had given Mr Forsyth positive encouragement to propose.’ * Now don’t be a hypocrite, Jenny ; you know I did, and that it was in its way a little conspiracy on all our parts, and that Walter was in it as bad as any of ns, the darling !’ ‘ Doily ! said Jenny reprovingly’, but at the same time linking her arm within her sister’s and leading her into the morniug room where they generally amused themselves with needlework and novels, mostly novels. \ ‘ You are trying to be cynical because you feel anuoyed with Philip ; I know you are ; as if it was necessary for you to try and force his hand !’

‘lt might not have been necessary,' said Dolly, ‘ but we did it.’ ‘Ob, Dolly, you are in a wicked temper.’ ‘ Not at all. I know that what you did was out of your great love for me, and that Walter had no other object ; and I will not deny that Philip seemed to like it, and that he was very devoted and very eloquent, anti that he proposed to me with fervent empressmeat ; but for all that we had prepared the little trap for him, had we not, dear V ‘ Not more than it has to be prepared for ail of them, the awkward creatures ; they must have assistance. Bnt one does nob prepare the way for uu willing lovers ! Philip loves you, are you not sure of that?’ ‘ Oh, yea/ said Dolly ; ‘ he thinks I have beautiful eye 3, and a fine ooir.plexion, and a good temper, and that I dress we .1, and have an independent fortune, and all that !' ‘And all that ?' exclaimed Jenny, ‘and much more. What silly novel have you been reading lately ?’ 1 Only the novel we really sea about us all the time—the novel that nobody writes—the reality of London society and London life—the troth of every day. I don’t mind, Jenny, I take it all as it is : but when you and I are alone, dear, don’t expect mo to pretend, as' I do when Walter is with us or anybody else. * Waltei 2 Dolly ! Do you mean to say I deceive Walter 2'

■* Deceive him 2 No, my darling, not more than he knows you do ; we all deceive each other ; it is necessary to our happiness more or leas. But you and me, Jenny, we are generally perfectly frank ; we have no two natures to keep separated from each other. I love Philip and he loves me, but not in that ecstatic devoted Romeo and •Juliet fashion that you have been trying to think of for me in a sentimental momenr..’

‘ Oh, Dolly, you are growing worldly—l am sure you are. I would not have believed it if you had not told me !’ ‘I have not told you anything of the kind. I am not growing anything different from what I have ever been, but I do not try to persuade myself that I am different ; and I am not going to make out that I am breaking my heart because Mr Forsyth has not called or written or done something that is usual with young men when they ask young women to marry them. I like Philip well enough,' I quite appreciate all you say about the possibilities of the future, but, as the song says, if he doe 3 not oave for me what care I how fair he be.’

‘ln the first place the song dobs not say

anything of the kind,’ Jenny replied, ‘ and in the next place please to remember that you are engaged to be his wife, and that all London knows about it—that is, all that part of London that we care anything about.’

‘ Aly dearest sis, it is of no good your lecturing me. I was born under a merry star, and nothing is going to make me sad.’ ‘ Oh, don’t shy that, dear ; it is like a challenge to Heaven 2’ ‘I was going to say nothing was going to make m 6 sad except old age,’ went on Doily, defiantly. * I mean to enjoy my life, and I atn sure Heaven does not desire any of us to do otherwise ao long as we fulfil our duties, visit the poor, go regularly to church, bear no malice, and covet no man’s goods, neither his ox, nor hia ass, nor anything that is hia.’ Jenny bad never seen Dolly in so curious a mood, and did not quite know what to make of it.

‘ I mean to enjoy my life/ her sister continued, ‘and if Philip Forsyth likes to enjoy it with me ho is welcome. I have accepted his proposal of partno*ship, but if he is going to be stiff about it, formal, neglectful, proud, or grumpy, I can’t help it ; he will find he i 3 not going to make mo unhappy—at all events without a struggle on my part to be happy.' * A struggle, dear !’ said Jenny. ‘Happiness i 3 not obtained by struggling ; it comas of itself, free, and bright like a summer morning ; you don’t get it by fighting and wrangling. Ido not understand you to day, unless it is that you are really troubling about Philip ; that you care for him a great deal more than you would for some strange reason have me believe.’

‘Jenny, let U 3 drop the subject.’ ‘I will not, Dolly. I know exactly what you feel, and what distresses me is that you should try to conceal it from me. 5 ‘ Then, dearest, if you know all you say, why not act upon it without making all this fuss 2’

‘ Fuss !’ exclaimed Jenny. ‘ With all your determination to be happy whatever may occur, Dolly, it will be a sad day for us both that casts a shadow upon my love for you and your love for .me !’ Jenny’s voice had tears in it ; and Dolly could fight no longer. She flung herself sobbing into her sister's arms ; which Jenny afterwards explained to Walter ; fully endorsed all she (Jenny) had said about the serious character of the situation between Dolly and Philip—a situation which was more or lass modified, soon after this unusual scene between the sisters, by a call from Philip himself. (To be continued.)