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Файл:The Dynamiter. More new arabian nights
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THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION
(CONTINUED)
As soon as the old lady had fi nished her relation, Somerset
made haste to offer her his compliments.
“Madam,” said he, “your story is not only entertaining but
instructive; and you have told it with infi nite vivacity. I was
much affected towards the end, as I held at one time very liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret society
if I had been able to fi nd one. But the whole tale came home to
me; and I was the better able to feel for you in your various
perplexities, as I am myself of somewhat hasty temper.”
“I do not understand you,” said Mrs. Luxmore, with some
marks of irritation. “You must have strangely misinterpreted
what I have told you. You fi ll me with surprise.”
Somerset, alarmed by the old lady’s change of tone and
manner, hurried to recant.
“Dear Mrs. Luxmore,” said he, “you certainly misconstrue
my remark. As a man of somewhat fi ery humour, my conscience
repeatedly pricked me when I heard what you had suffered at
the hands of persons similarly constituted.”
“Oh, very well indeed,” replied the old lady; “and a very
proper spirit. I regret that I have met with it so rarely.”
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
“But in all this,” resumed the young man, “I perceive nothing that concerns myself.”
“I am about to come to that,” she returned. “And you have
already before you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of
the elements of the affair. I am a woman of the nomadic sort,
and when I have no case before the courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have ever been ill; but
then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in a crowd.
Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now on the wing
for Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must leave behind
and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a very good
turn into the bargain, by lending you the mansion, with all
its fi ttings, as it stands. The idea was sudden; it appealed to
me as humorous: and I am sure it will cause my relatives, if
they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible chagrin. Here,
then, is the key; and when you return at two to-morrow afternoon, you will fi nd neither me nor my cats to disturb you
in your new possession.”
So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but Somerset, looking somewhat blankly on the key,
began to protest.
“Dear Mrs. Luxmore,” said he, “this is a most unusual proposal. You know nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both impudence and timidity. I may be the worst kind of
scoundrel; I may sell your furniture –”
“You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what
I care!” cried Mrs. Luxmore. “It is in vain to reason. Such is
the force of my character that, when I have one idea clearly
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THE DYNAMITER
in my head, I do not care two straws for any side consideration.
It amuses me to do it, and let that suffi ce. On your side, you
may do what you please – let apartments, or keep a private
hotel; on mine, I promise you a full month’s warning before
I return, and I never fail religiously to keep my promises.”
The young man was about to renew his protest, when he
observed a sudden and signifi cant change in the old lady’s
countenance.
“If I thought you capable of disrespect!” she cried.
“Madam,” said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration, “madam, I accept. I beg you to understand that I accept with joy and gratitude.”
“Ah well,” returned Mrs. Luxmore, “if I am mistaken, let
it pass. And now, since all is comfortably settled, I wish you
a good-night.”
Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she
hurried Somerset out of the front door, and left him standing,
key in hand, upon the pavement.
The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man
found his way to the square, which I will here call Golden
Square, though that was not its name. What to expect, he knew
not; for a man may live in dreams, and yet be unprepared for
their realisation. It was already with a certain pang of surprise
that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a solid
among solids. The key, upon trial, readily opened the front
door; he entered that great house, a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed the empty
chambers. Cats, servant, old lady, the very marks of habitation,
like writing on a slate, had been in these few hours obliterated.
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
He wandered from fl oor to fl oor, and found the house of great
extent; the kitchen offi ces commodious and well appointed;
the rooms many and large; and the drawing-room, in particular, an apartment of princely size and tasteful decoration. Although the day without was warm, genial, and sunny,
with a ruffl ing wind from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it
were, of suspended animation inhabited the house. Dust and
shadows met the eye; and but for the ominous procession of
the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the garden
trees, the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.
Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to
by the old lady in her tale, looked upon the fl at roofs and
netted cupolas of the kitchen quarters; and on a second visit,
this room appeared to greet him with a smiling countenance.
He might as well, he thought, avoid the expense of lodging:
the library, fi tted with an iron bedstead which he had remarked, in one of the upper chambers, would serve his purpose
for the night; while in the dining-room, which was large, airy,
and lightsome, looking on the square and garden, he might
very agreeably pass his days, cook his meals, and study to bring
himself to some profi ciency in that art of painting which he
had recently determined to adopt. It did not take him long to
make the change: he had soon returned to the mansion with
his modest kit; and the cabman who brought him was readily
induced, by the young man’s pleasant manner and a small gratuity, to assist him in the installation of the iron bed. By six in
the evening, when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to
look back upon the mansion with a sense of pride and property.
Four-square it stood, of an imposing frontage, and fl anked on
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THE DYNAMITER
either side by family hatchments. His eye, from where he stood
whistling in the key, with his back to the garden railings, reposed on every feature of reality; and yet his own possession
seemed as fl imsy as a dream.
In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of
the square began to remark the customs of their neighbour.
The sight of a young gentleman discussing a clay pipe, about
four o’clock of the afternoon, in the drawing-room balcony of
so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more, his periodical
excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his
unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently
raised to a high pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of the square. The disfavour of some of these gentlemen at fi rst proceeded to the length of insult; but Somerset
knew how to be affable with any class of men; and a few rude
words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably shared,
gained for him the right of toleration.
The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly
from a notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offi ces. He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and
proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into a studio for
the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen, the drawingroom, and the back garden; and there spent his days in smiling
assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon his imagination. To hold so great
a stake and to do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and
he at length determined to act upon the hint given by Mrs.
Luxmore herself, and to stick, with wafers, in the window of
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
the dining-room, a small handbill announcing furnished
lodgings. At half-past six of a fi ne July morning, he affi xed
the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result.
It seemed, to his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room balcony, to consider, over a studious pipe, the knotty problem of how much he was to charge.
Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to
the art of painting. Indeed, from that time forth, he would
spend the best part of the day in the front balcony, like the attentive angler poring on his fl oat; and the better to support
the tedium, he would frequently console himself with his clay
pipe. On several occasions, passers-by appeared to be arrested by the ticket, and on several others ladies and gentlemen
drove to the very doorstep by the carriageful; but it appeared
there was something repulsive in the appearance of the house;
for with one accord, they would cast but one look upward, and
hastily resume their onward progress or direct the driver to
proceed. Somerset had thus the mortifi cation of actually meeting the eye of a large number of lodging-seekers; and though
he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to compose his features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded by so much
as an inquiry. “Can there,” he thought, “be anything repellent
in myself?” But a candid examination in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to dismiss the fear.
Something, however, was amiss. His vast and accurate calculations on the fl y-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been an idle sacrifi ce of time. By these,
he had variously computed the weekly takings of the house,
from sums as modest as fi ve-and-twenty shillings, up to
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THE DYNAMITER
the more majestic fi gure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in despite of the very elements of arithmetic, here he was making
literally nothing.
This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his
thoughtful leisure on the balcony; and at last it seemed to
him that he had detected the error of his method. “This,” he
refl ected, “is an age of generous display: the age of the sandwich-man, of Griffi ths, of Pears’ legendary soap, and of Eno’s
fruit salt, which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most
disgusting pictures I ever remember to have seen, has overlaid
that comforter of my childhood, Lamplough’s pyretic saline.
Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent; Lamplough
was trite, Eno original and abominably vulgar; and here have
I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of the world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a few cold words
which do not directly address the imagination, and the adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red wafers! Am
I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno? Am I to
adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke?
or to take hold of the red facts of life with the emphasis of
the tradesman and the poet?”
Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several
sheets of the very largest size of drawing-paper; and laying
forth his paints, proceeded to compose an ensign that might
attract the eye, and at the same time, in his own phrase, directly
address the imagination of the passenger. Something taking in
the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words, and a realistic design setting forth the life a lodger might expect to lead
within the walls of that palace of delight: these, he perceived,
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
must be the elements of his advertisement. It was possible,
upon the one hand, to depict the sober pleasures of domestic
life, the evening fi re, blond-headed urchins and the hissing
urn; but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it
were more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat wider in its range or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did the artist waver between
these two views, that, before he arrived at a conclusion, he had
fi nally conceived and completed both designs. With the proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifi ce either of these offsprings of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate days. “In this way,” he thought,
“I shall address myself indifferently to all classes of the world.”
The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point;
and the more imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune, and appeared fi rst in the window of the mansion. It was of
a high fancy, the legend eloquently writ, the scheme of colour
taking and bold; and but for the imperfection of the artist’s
drawing, it might have been taken for a model of its kind. As it
was, however, when viewed from his favourite point against
the garden railings, and with some touch of distance, it caused
a pleasurable rising of the artist’s heart. “I have thrown away,”
he ejaculated, “an invaluable motive; and this shall be the subject of my fi rst academy picture.”
The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit.
A crowd would certainly, from time to time, collect before
the area-railings; but they came to jeer and not to speculate;
and those who pushed their inquiries further, were too plainly
animated by the spirit of derision. The racier of the two car-
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THE DYNAMITER
toons displayed, indeed, no symptom of attractive merit; and
though it had a certain share of that success called scandalous,
failed utterly of its effect. On the day, however, of the second
appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did actually present himself before the eyes of Somerset.
This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent
merriment, and his voice under inadequate control.
“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but what is the meaning of
your extraordinary bill?”
“I beg yours,” returned Somerset hotly. “Its meaning is
suffi ciently explicit.” And being now, from dire experience,
fearful of ridicule, he was preparing to close the door, when
the gentleman thrust his cane into the aperture.
“Not so fast, I beg of you,” said he. “If you really let apartments, here is a possible tenant at your door; and nothing
would give me greater pleasure than to see the accommodation and to learn your terms.”
His heart joyously beating, Somerset admitted the visitor,
showed him over the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive eloquence, expounded their attractions.
The gentleman was particularly pleased by the elegant proportions of the drawing-room.
“This,” he said, “would suit me very well. What, may I ask,
would be your terms a week, for this fl oor and the one above it?”
“I was thinking,” returned Somerset, “of a hundred pounds.”
“Surely not,” exclaimed the gentleman.
“Well, then,” returned Somerset, “fi fty.”
The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement. “You seem to be strangely elastic in your demands,” said
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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
he. “What if I were to proceed on your own principle of division, and offer twenty-fi ve?”
“Done!” cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden
embarrassment, “You see,” he added apologetically, “it is all
found money for me.”
“Really?” said the stranger, looking at him all the while
with growing wonder. “Without extras, then?”
“I – I suppose so,” stammered the keeper of the lodginghouse.
“Service included?” pursued the gentleman.
“Service?” cried Somerset. “Do you mean that you expect
me to empty your slops?”
The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest. “My dear fellow,” said he, “if you take my advice, you will
give up this business.” And thereupon he resumed his hat and
took himself away.
This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on
the artist of the cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up
his rosier illusions. First one and then the other of his great
works was condemned, withdrawn from exhibition, and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration of the diningroom. Their place was taken by a replica of the original wafered announcement, to which, in particularly large letters,
he had added the pithy rubric: “No service.” Meanwhile he
had fallen into something as nearly bordering on low spirits
as was consistent with his disposition; depressed, at once by
the failure of his scheme, the laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of the public to the merit of
the twin cartoons.
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