"I can do nothing. I cannot answer." | cept husbands because marriage is not "I may speak to you again on the sub- possible without possession; with totally ject? differing aims the method is the same on "Yes." both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off. I may think of you?” "Yes, I suppose you may think of me." "And hope to obtain you?" "No - do not hope! Let us go on." "I will call upon you again to-morrow." "No-please not. Give me time." "Yes I will give you any time," he said earnestly and gratefully. "I am happier now.' "No I beg you! Don't be happier if happiness only comes from my agreeing. Be neutral, Mr. Boldwood! I must think." But a disquiet filled her, which was somewhat to her credit, for it would have affected few. Beyond the mentioned reasons with which she combated her objections, she had a strong feeling that having been the one who began the game she ought in honesty to accept the consequences. Still the reluctance remained. "I will wait," he said. She said in the same breath that it would And then she turned away. Boldwood be ungenerous not to marry Boldwood, dropped his eyes to the ground, and and that she couldn't do it to save her stood long like a man who did not know life. where he was. Realities then returned Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature upon him like the pain of a wound re-under a deliberative aspect. An Elizaceived in an excitement which eclipses it, and he, too, then went on. CHAPTER XX. PERPLEXITY: GRINDING THE SHEARS : "He is so disinterested and kind to offer me all that I can desire," Bathsheba said, musingly. beth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit, she often performed actions of the greatest temerity with a manner of extreme discretion. Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds. The next day to that of the declaration, Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by na- she found Gabriel Oak at the bottom of ture kind or the reverse to kind, did not her garden, grinding his shears for the exercise kindness here. The rarest offer- sheep-shearing. All the surrounding ings of the purest loves are but a self-in-cottages were more or less scenes of the dulgence, and no generosity at all. Bathsheba, not being the least in love with him, was eventually able to look calmly at his offer. It was one which many women of her own station in the neighbourhood, and not a few of higher rank, would have been wild to accept and proud to publish. In every point of view, ranging from politic to passionate, it was desirable that she, a lonely girl, should marry, and marry this earnest, well-to-do, and respected man. He was close to her doors his standing was sufficient: his qualities were even supererogatory. Had she felt, which she did not, any wish whatever for the married state in the abstract, she could not reasonably have rejected him as a woman who frequently appealed to her understanding for deliverance from her whims. Boldwood as a means to marriage was unexceptionable: she esteemed and liked him: yet she did not want him. It appears that men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that women ac same operation; the scurr of whetting spread into the sky from all parts of the village as from an armoury previous to a campaign. Peace and war kiss each other at their hours of preparation, sickles, scythes, shears, and pruning-hooks mingling with swords, bayonets, and lances, in their common necessity for point and edge. Cainy Ball turned the handle of Gabriel's grindstone, his head performing a melancholy see-saw up and down with each turn of the wheel. Oak stood somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of sharpening his arrows: his figure slightly bent, the weight of his body thrown over on the shears, and his head balanced sideways, with a critical compression of the lips and contraction of the eyelids to crown the attitude. His mistress came up and looked upon them in silence for a minute or two; then she said, "Cain, go to the lower mead and catch the bay mare. I'll turn the winch of the grindstone. I want to speak to you, Gabriel." Cain departed, and Bathsheba took the handle. Gabriel had glanced up in intense surprise, quelled its expression, and looked down again. Bathsheba turned the winch and Gabriel applied the shears. The peculiar motion involved in turning a wheel has a wonderful tendency to benumb the mind. It is a sort of attenuated variety of Ixion's punishment, and contributes a dismal chapter to the history of gaols. The brain gets muddled, the head grows heavy, and the body's centre of gravity seems to settle by degrees in a leaden lump somewhere between the eyebrows and the crown. Bathsheba felt the unpleasant symptoms after two or three dozen turns. "Will you turn, Gabriel, and let me hold the shears?" she said. 66 My head is in a whirl, and I can't talk." Gabriel turned. Bathsheba then began with some awkwardness, allowing her thoughts to stray occasionally from her story to attend to the shears, which required a little nicety in sharpening. "I wanted to ask you if the men made any observations on my going behind the sedge with Mr. Boldwood yesterday?" 66 'Yes, they did," said Gabriel. "You don't hold the shears right, Miss knew you wouldn't know the way - hold like this." He relinquished the winch, and enclosing her two hands completely in his own (taking each as we sometimes clasp a child's hand in teaching him to write). grasped the shears with her. "Incline the edge so," he said. Hands and shears were inclined to suit the words, and held thus for a peculiarly long time by the instructor as he spoke. "That will do," exclaimed Bathsheba. "Loose my hands. I won't have them held! Turn the winch." Gabriel freed her hands quietly, retired to his handle, and the grinding went "They must have heard our conversation," she continued. "Well, then, Bathsheba!" said Oak, stopping the handle, and gazing into her face with astonishment. "Miss Everdene, you mean," she said, with dignity. "I mean this, that if Mr. Boldwood really spoke of marriage, I am not going to tell a story and say he didn't to please you. I have already tried to please you too much for my own good." Bathsheba regarded him with roundeyed perplexity. She did not know whether to pity him for disappointed love of her, or to be angry with him for having got over it his tone being ambiguous. "I said I wanted you just to mention that it was not true I was going to be married to him," she murmured, with a slight decline in her assurance. "I can say that to them if you wish, Miss Everdene. And I could likewise give an opinion to you on what you have done." "I daresay. But I don't want your opinion.” "I suppose not," said Gabriel bitterly, and going on with his turning, his words Irising and falling in a regular swell and cadence as he stooped or rose with the winch, which directed them, according to his position, perpendicularly into the earth, or horizontally along the garden, his eyes being fixed on a leaf upon the ground. 1 With Bathsheba a hastened act was a rash act; but, as does not always happen, time gained was prudence ensured. It must be added, however, that time was very seldom gained. At this period the single opinion in the parish on herself and her doings that she valued as sounder than her own was Gabriel Oak's. And the outspoken honesty of his character was such that on any subject, even that of her love for, or marriage with, another man, the same disinterestedness of opinion might be calculated on, and be had for the asking. Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stocial virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. Knowing he would reply truly, she asked the question, painful as she must have known the subject would be. Such is the selfishness of some charming women. Perhaps it was some excuse for her thus torturing hon esty to her own advantage, that she had perating. He had not finished, either. absolutely no other sound judgment with- He continued in a more agitated voice: in easy reach. "Well, what is your opinion of my conduct?” she said, quietly. "That it is unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman." 66 My opinion is (since you ask it) that you are greatly to blame for playing pranks upon a man like Mr. Boldwood, merely as a pastime. Leading on a man you don't care for is not a praiseworthy col-action. And even, Miss Everdene, if you seriously inclined towards him, you might have let him discover it in some way of true loving-kindness, and not by sending him a valentine's letter." In an instant Bathsheba's face oured with the angry crimson of a Danby sunset. But she forbore to utter this feeling, and the reticence of her tongue only made the loquacity of her face the more noticeable. The next thing Gabriel did was to make a mistake. "Perhaps you don't like the rudeness of my reprimanding you, for I know it is rudeness; but I thought it would do good." She instantly replied sarcastically. "On the contrary, my opinion of you is so low that I see in your abuse the praise of discerning people." Bathsheba laid down the shears. "I cannot allow any man to-to criticise my private conduct!" she exclaimed. "Nor will I for a minute. So you'll please leave the farm at the end of the week!" It may have been a peculiarity — at any rate it was a fact that when Bathsheba was swayed by an emotion of an earthly sort her lower lip trembled: when by a refined emotion, her upper or "I am glad you don't mind it, for I said heavenward one. Her nether lip quivit honestly, and with every serious mean-ered now. ing." beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break. "I should be even better pleased to go at once,” he added. "Very well, so I will," said Gabriel, I see. But, unfortunately, when you calmly. He had been held to her by a try not to speak in jest you are amusing just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes say a sensible word." It was a hard hit, but Bathsheba had unmistakably lost her temper, and on that account Gabriel had never in his life kept his own better. He said nothing. She then broke out, "I may ask, I suppose, where in particular my unworthiness lies? In my not marrying you, perhaps !" "Not by any means," said Gabriel, quietly. "I have long given up thinking of that matter." "Or wishing it, I suppose," she said, and it was apparent that she expected an unhesitating denial of this supposition. Whatever Gabriel felt, he coolly echoed her words "Or wishing it either." "Go at once then, in Heaven's name!" said she, her eyes flashing at his, though never meeting them. "Don't let me see your face any more." "Very well, Miss Everdene - so it shall be." And he took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity, as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh. From Macmillan's Magazine. SPANISH LIFE AND CHARACTER IN THE INTERIOR, DURING THE SUMMER OF 1873. LETTER XII. A woman may be treated with a bitterness which is sweet to her, and with a A VISIT TO MURILLO'S HOUSE. rudeness which is not offensive. Bathsheba would have submitted to an indig WHO, among painters, has done his nant chastisement for her levity had Ga-work more nobly, or more skilfully, than briel protested that he was loving her at the painter of Seville, Bartolomé Esteban the same time; the impetuosity of pas- Murillo? sion unrequited is bearable, even if it It was a bright sunny evening in Destings and anathematizes - - there is a tri-cember, 1873, when, fresh from the tonumph in the humiliation, and a tender- templation of the fixed, dark, stedfast ness in the strife. This was what she gaze of his "San Francisco receiving the had been expecting, and what she had not got. To be lectured because the lecturer saw her in the cold morning light of open-shuttered disillusion was exas Stigmata" (now in the Academia de Bellas Artes at Cadiz), and his exquisitely sweet "Angel de la Guarda," in the cathedral of Seville, I bent my hasty steps towards the home of this great artist in Seville. I passed through the narrow winding streets of the "Judería," or Jewish quarter, now no longer restricted to the Jewish population. The sun hardly ever looks upon these narrow paved paths, with their tall houses seeming almost to meet overhead: but they were growing wet with the evening dews, which fall heavily in winter, partly making up for the lack of rain. ill-lighted room, with floors of common red tiles, and a dark cupboard in each room, if my memory serves me in good stead. My Andalucian lassie trundled up the narrow winding stairs-so narrow, so dark, only the width of five bricks placed lengthways, and with a little fronting of worn wood-work. On the first storey the doors are still small, the rooms dark and narrow. They were inhabited by a Spanish family, and I did not more than step inside them. In a little street, now called "Plaza de Alfaro," or running out of that little To the top, or second storey, the stairsquare, is the great painter's simple case is little better than a creaking house, with "No. 2" written over its wooden ladder; but at the top my guide lowly Spanish portals. A Spanish man- showed me a little niche in the wall. servant and a dark-eyed, good-natured" Here," she said, "used to be one of his Andalucian lassie were laughing and love- paintings." All the rooms have floors of making at the door. I told them my errand, and the girl pointed lazily and wondering evidently what on earth the English señor had come to see the house for to a little marble tablet just inside the door, fixed in the wall, to the left hand as you enter. Like the house itself, and all the surroundings, it was most unpretending and unobtrusive. On it was the simple inscription En esta casa fué ciertamente En la que murió el dia 3 de Abril de 1682 red brick or tile; all are narrow and dark. On the top storey is the old kitchen, the only inhabitant of which was a black, white-breasted retriever puppy, who welcomed us with every noisy demonstration of delight, and evidently did not at all appreciate the honour of being a prisoner in Murillo's kitchen! The lassie, romping with her mute companion, threw open a door, through which I crouched and squeezed, and we stood upon the roof a tiny space, sloping down to the front, only five yards by three, looking straight down into the walled garden of the alcazar, a typical Spanish garden, with its gorgeous orange and lime trees, its rich irrigated plots of vegetables, its square regular beds, and neat evergreen borders. It is a plain, white-washed, modest Spanish house, consisting of a ground floor and two upper floors. The little street Here, I thought, more likely than in in which it stands, is narrow; part of the the dark, narrow rooms, the great master house fronts another house, the rest over- wrought. The view was very beautiful → looks a garden, with a high wall around Spanish housetops, remember, are not it, making the lookout from the lower like our smoky English housetops, fit rooms still duller than would a house only for sparrows, and smoke, and cats. fronting it. Under the wall of this gar- Spanish cities are smokeless, chimneyless; den a few muleteers and gitanos, in pic-no smuts fly about, and on Spanish turesque and gaudy costumes, their housetops, we can safely dry our white bronzed brown faces reminding one of snowy linen. the truthfulness of the great painter's colouring, were watering their donkeys and mules. I asked leave to go over the house, and asked where, in which room, Murillo painted. "Why, how can I tell," said the good-natured lassie, "in which room he painted? Everyone says that he painted under the orange-trees in the old walled garden of the alcazar opposite; but vamos! come over the house." So we went. On either side of the tiny "hall," as you enter, is a narrow door, each door opening into a small, narrow, The view was very beautiful-over the old garden, over the tops of snow-white houses with flat, brown roofs; above was nothing but the cloudless blue sky, with the setting sun sinking below the distant sierra, in red and golden splendours to his rest. And then I passed out; the dark-eyed hoyden locked up her dog once more in the classic kitchen, only too glad to return to her love-making. This, then, was the humble house of the great painter. Here he lived, and here died in April, 1682, aged sixty-four, by an unlucky fall from the scaffold, as, scented geranium, or "malva-rosa" of the he was painting one of his grandest, or at Spaniards, the heliotrope, the scarlet geleast most elaborate, paintings, the ranium, and the crimson and clove carna"Marriage of Santa Catalina," taken from tions, straggled over the trim box-hedges its home in the Convent of Los Capuchi- that enclosed their beds. nos in Cadiz during the Revolution of the In the inner quadrangle — like the first summer of 1873, and now in the "Aca- very small an ancient mule, under the demia de Bellas Artes," in the same city. shade of a fig-tree, still more ancient, was Here, in this humble house, lived and slowly turning round the water-wheel, died the one perhaps of all painters who with its shining, dripping caskets, of an excelled in every style that he under- old Moorish noria; all around him, and took the frio, or dark and sternly overhead, the lime-tree and the orangemarked, as in his "St. Francis receiving tree showed their bright yellow fruit to the Stigmata;" his earliest style, the the setting sun; truly, I thought to mycálido, defined outline, with warmer col-self, here a painter might paint, a poet our, as in his "Adoration of the Shep- sing to the tune of the turning wheel and herds," in the Gallery at Madrid; and the gushing fountains, with the scent of the vaporoso, or blending style, some- exotic plants filling the balmy evening thing akin to the style of our own Turner, air. of which, as an example, may be quoted his "Martyrdom of St. Andrew," also in the Madrid Gallery. Here dwelt and died the painter of the "Holy Family," a a work full of peace and love; of more than one exquisite "Concepcion;" of "La Virgen de los Dolores," so full of mournful pathos, of "San Juan con el Cordero," full of fervour, of "St. Francis embracing his Crucified Son." A few doors from this house is an open, small, dusty space, a barren oval, belted in by stunted acacia-trees, with a solitary gas-lamp in its centre; it is called now Plaza de Santa Cruz," Santa Cruz being the name of a tiny church, pulled down in 1858. On one of the walls (of a private house) fronting this little hovel, is a marble tablet, with the inscription, Para perpetuar la memoria de que en el ambito de esta plaza hasta poco hace templo sagrado hastan depositadas las cenizas del celebre pintor Sevillano Bartolomé Esteban Murillo la Academia de Bellas Artes Acordó poner esta lapida. Modesto monumento, però el primero Que se consagra a su ilustre fundador 1858. And so, as the shades of eve drew on I left the haunts of the great painter - the painter of truth and of life as he saw it, and as those in Andalucia see it at the present day. A few doors from the little house which "ciertamente" was that of Murillo, stands another, more pretentious, which claims the honour of having been the house in whose bright, quiet garden he was wont to paint. The kindly señora on my presenting my card, and asking leave to enter 'the garden, at once sent her servant to conduct me thither. We passed through the courtyard of the house and into the garden, which consisted of two small quadrangles, but, oh, so beautiful! Well might the great master exchange his dark narrow rooms, and his tiny strip of sunny roof aloft, for the peacefulness and beauty of this quiet spot. The orange-trees, crowded with green and yellow fruit, lent their shade; the lime-tree, with its larger fruit of sickher hue, and the fig-tree, with its broad, cool leaves, grew in quiet profusion; hard by, sheltered by cypresses, was a tank, and a trickling, gurgling fountain of crystal water; the grape-vine climbed over a rustic trellis work: the pimiento, works that have elevated or pepper-tree, the most graceful of Span- and refined thousands of souls and he ish trees, like to, but more graceful than, cannot die; he needs no memorial stone, the English weeping-willow, also lent its no tablet, no biography; as is the case shade. Two fountains, with their trick- with all the good and great, "his works ling waters, soothed the ear of those who do follow him; and perhaps amid all sate and worked, or read, in this shady his toils and labours to the last for he spot; magnolias, camelias, climbed the died at the age of sixty-four of a fall from walls; the sweet lemon-verbena, the a scaffold while painting one of his master Of Murillo's life I know nothing; but no scandalous or libellous report has ever, I believe, currently attached itself to his name, as it did most falsely for a period to that of another exceedingly beautiful painter, Alonso Cano. Murillo, however, neither needs nor claims any notice of his life; into his works he threw his life, and he lives in his works |