while sam and clarissa were fighting the battles of vanity and the affections down in the southern shire in quite a rural district, among mills and ash-trees, and houses with gardens and garden bowers, william and dulcie were combating real flesh-and-blood woes—woes that would not so much set your teeth on edge, as soften and melt your tough, dry heart—among the bricks and mortar of london. these several years were not light sunshiny years to the young couple. it is of no use saying that a man may prosper if he will, and that he has only to cultivate potatoes and cabbages in place of jessamine and passion flowers; no use making examples of sir joshua and vandyke, and telling triumphantly that they knew their business and did it simply—only pretending to get a livelihood and satisfy the public to the best of their ability, but ending in becoming great painters. one man's meat is another man's poison; one man's duty is not his neighbour's. when shall we apprehend or apply that little axiom? the duchess of portland killed three thousand snails in order that she might complete the shell-work for [page 152]which she received so much credit; dulcie would not have put her foot voluntarily on a single snail for a pension.
it was will locke's fate to vibrate between drudgery and dreaming; always tending more inevitably towards the latter, and lapsing into more distant, absorbing trances, till he became more and more fantastic and unearthly, with his thin light hair, his half-transparent cheek, and his strained eyes. to prophesy on cardboard and canvas, in flower and figure, with monster and star, crescent and triangle, in emerald green and ruby red and sea blue, in dyes that, like those of the bassani, resembled the clear shining of a handful of jewels, to prophesy in high art, to be half pitied, half derided, and to starve: was that will locke's duty?
will thought so, in the most artless, unblemished, unswerving style; and he was a devout fellow as well as a gifted one. he bowed to revelation, and read nature's secrets well before he forsook her for heaven, or rather hades. he devoted himself to the sacrifice; he did not grudge his lust of the eye, his lust of the flesh, his pride of life. he devoted dulcie, not without pangs; and he devoted his little sickly children pining and dying in st. martin's lane. he must follow his calling, he must fulfil his destiny.
dulcie was not quite such an enthusiast; she did love, honour, and obey will locke, but she was sometimes almost mad to see him such a wreck. it had been a sent evil, and she had looked down into the gulf; but she had missed the depths. she had never seen its gloomy, dark, dreary nooks, poor lass! in her youthful boldness and [page 153]lavishness; and our little feminine curtius in the scoured silk, with the powdered brown curls, had not merely to penetrate them in one plunge, but had to descend, stumbling and groping her way, and starting back at the sense of confinement, the damp and the darkness. who will blame her that she sometimes turned her head and looked back, and stretched up her arms from the desert to the flesh-pots of egypt? she would have borne anything for her husband; and she did work marvels: she learned to engrave for him, coloured constantly with her light, pliant fingers, and drew and painted from old fresh memories those articles of stoneware for the potteries. she clothed herself in the cheapest and most lasting of printed linen sacques and mob caps, and hoods and aprons, fed herself and him and the children on morsels wellnigh miraculously. she even swallowed down the sight of clary in her cut velvet and her own coach, whose panel sam winnington himself had not thought it beneath him to touch up for clary's delectation and glory. if will would only have tarried longer about his flowers and bees, and groves and rattlesnakes: if he had even stopped short at faces like those of socrates, cæsar, cleopatra, fair rosamond—what people could understand with help—and not slid off faster and more fatally into that dim delirium of good and evil, angels and archangels, the devil of temptation and the goblin of the flesh, the red fiend of war, and the pale spirit of peace!
the difference which originated at will and dulcie's marriage had ended in alienation. dulcie thought that sam winnington would have bridged it over at one time, [page 154]if will would have made any sign of meeting his overtures, or acknowledged sam's talents and fortune: nay, even if will had refrained from betraying his churlish doubts of sam's perfect deserts.
but no, this will would not deign to do. the gentle, patient painter, contented with his own estimation of his endowments, and resigned to be misjudged and neglected by the world, had his own indomitable doggedness. he would never flatter the world's low taste for commonplace, and its miserable short-sightedness; he would never pay homage to sam winnington which he did not deserve—a man very far from his equal—a mere clever portrait-painter, little better than a skilled stonemason. thus sam winnington and will locke took to flushing when each other's names were mentioned—sitting bolt upright and declining to comment on each other's works, or else dismissing each other's efforts in a few supremely contemptuous words. certainly the poor man rejected the rich not one whit less decidedly than the rich man rejected the poor, and the mordecais have always the best of it. if we and our neighbours will pick out each other's eyes, commend us to the part of brave little jack, rather than that of the belligerent giant, even when they are only eyeing each other previous to sitting down to the ominous banquet.
but this was a difficulty to dulcie, as it is to most women. no one thinks of men's never showing a malign influence in this world; it is only good women who are expected to prove angels outright here below. but it does seem that there is something more touching in their having [page 155]to stifle lawful instincts, and in their being forced to oppose and overcome unlawful passions—covetousness, jealousy, wrath, "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness."
dulcie, with the sharpness of her little face, divested of all its counterbalancing roundness—a keen, worn little face since the day it had smiled so confusedly but generously out of the scurvy silk in the church at redwater—was a sweet-looking woman under her care-laden air. some women retain sweetness under nought but skin and bone; they will not pinch into meanness and spite; they have still faith and charity. one would not wonder though dulcie afforded more vivid glimpses of il beato's angels after the contour of her face was completely spoilt.
you can fancy the family room in st. martin's lane, some five or six years after will locke and dulcie were wed, with its strange litter of acids and aquafortis, graving tools and steel plates. will and dulcie might have been some of the abounding false coiners, had it not been for the colours, the canvas, and the vessels from the potteries, all huddled together without attention to effect. yet these were not without order, for they were too busy people to be able to afford to be purely disorderly. they could not have had the curtain less scant, for the daylight was precious to them; they had not space for more furniture than might have sufficed a poor tradesman or better sort of mechanic; only there were traces of gentle birth and breeding in the casts, the prints and portfolios, the dutch clock, and the great hulk of a state-bed hung with the perpetual dusky yellow damask, which served as a nursery for the poor listless little children.
[page 156]presently dulcie looked after the sops, and surreptitiously awarded will the benjamite's portion, and will ate it absently with the only appetite there; though he, too, was a consumptive-looking man—a good deal more so than when he attracted the pity of the good wife at the "nine miles inn." then dulcie crooned to the children of the milk-porridge she would give them next night, and sang to them as she lulled them to sleep, her old breezy, bountiful english songs, "young roger came tapping at dolly's window," and "i met my lad at the garden gate," and brushed their faces into laughter with the primroses and hyacinths she had bought for will in covent garden market. will asked to see them in the spring twilight, and described the banks where they grew, with some revival of his early lore, and added a tale of the fairies who made them their round tables and galleries, which caused the eldest child (the only one who walked with dulcie in his little coat to the church where he was christened) to open his heavy eyes, and clap his hot hands, and cry, "more, father, more." will and dulcie looked gladly into each other's eyes at his animation, and boasted what a stamping, thundering man he would yet live to be—that midge, that sprite, with dulcie's small skeleton bones, and will's dry, lustreless, fair hair!
anon while dulcie was still rocking one of these weary children moaning in its sleep, will must needs strike a light to resume his beloved labours; but first he directed his candle to his canvas, and called on dulcie to contemplate and comprehend, while he murmured and raved to her of the group of fallen men and women crouching in [page 157]the den—of the wind of horror raising their hair,—of the dawn of hope bursting in the eastern sky, and high above them the fiendish crew, and the captains of the blessed still swaying to and fro in the burdened air, and striking deadly blows for supremacy. and dulcie, open-eyed and open-mouthed as of old, looked at the captives, as if listening to the strife that was to come, and wellnigh heard the thunder of the captains and the shouting, while her eye was always eagerly pointed to that pearly streak which was to herald the one long, cool, calm, bright day of humanity. no wonder dulcie was as demented as will, and thought it would be a very little matter though the milk-porridge were sour on the morrow, or if the carrier did not come with the price in his pocket for these sweet pots, and bowls, and pipkins: she believed her poor babies were well at rest from the impending dust, and din, and danger; and smiled deep, quiet smiles at clary—poor clary, with her cut velvet, her coach, and her black boy. verily will and dulcie could afford to refer not only pleasantly but mercifully, to sam winnington and clary that night.
"it is contemptible to lose sight of the sublimity of life even to enjoy perfect ease and happiness." that is a very grand saying; but, oh dear! we are poor creatures; and though dulcie is an infinitely nobler being now than then, the tears are fit to start into our eyes when we remember the little brown head which "bridled finely," the little feet which pranced lightly, and the little tongue which wagged, free from care, in the stage waggon on the country road yon clear september day.
