The Author of Beltraffio

ted by strangers, and especially by my country-people, and not exempt from the suspicion that he had the irritability as well as the dignity of genius. Moreover, the pleasure, if it should occur-for I

able to judge for himself. I had been in England, briefly, a twelve-month before the time to which I began by alluding, and had then learned that Mr. Ambient was in distant lands-was making a considerable tour in the East; so that there was nothing to do but to keep my letter till I should be in London again. It was of little use to me to hear that his wife had not left England and was, with her little boy, their only child, spending the period of her husband's absence-a good many months-at a small place they had down in Surrey. They had a house in London, but actually in the occupation of other persons. All this I had picked up, and also that Mrs. Ambient was charming-my friend the American poet, from whom I had my introduction, had never seen her, his relations with the great man confined to the exchange of letters; but she wasn't, after all, though she had lived so near the rose, the author of "Beltraffio," and I didn't go down into Surrey to call on her. I went to the Continent, spent the following winter in Italy, and returned to London in May. My visit to Italy had opened my eyes to a good many things, but t

iments, and the effect of the entire appeal was to elicit from the great man the kindest possible invitation. He would be delighted to see me, especially if I should turn up on the following Saturday and would remain till the Monday morning. We would take a walk over the Surrey commons, and I could tell him all about the other great man, the one in America. He indicated to me the best train, and it may be imagined whether on the Saturday afternoon I was punctual at Waterloo. He carried his benevolence to the point of coming to meet me at the little station at which I was to alight, and my heart beat very fast as I saw his handsome face, surmounted with a soft wide-awake and which I knew by a photograph long since ensh

le things in it, and they chased each other in and out of his face. I have seen people who were grave and gay in quick alternation; but Mark Ambient was grave and gay at one and the same moment. There were other strange oppositions and contradictions in his slightly faded and fatigued countenance. He affected me somehow as at once fresh and stale, at once anxious and indifferent. He had evidently had an active past, which inspired one with curiosity; yet what was that compared to his obvious future? He was just enough above middle height to be spoken of as tall, and rather lean and long in the flank. He had the friendliest frankest manner possible, and yet I could see it cost

he life of happy and distinguished people was fashioned in their image. Mark Ambient called his house a cottage, and I saw afterwards he was right for if it hadn't been a cottage it must have been a villa, and a villa, in England at least, was not a place in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated; it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale-and might besides have been the dearest haunt of the old English genius loci. It nestled under a cluster of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattic

ossy and cracked were these-which connected the different parts with each other. The limits of the place, cleverly dissimulated, were muffled in the great verdurous screens. They formed, as I remember, a thick loose curtain at the further end, in one of the folds of which, as it were, we pres

uired, feeling the ques

oo-the sound of these critical words. They weren't petulant; they expressed rather a sudden coldness, a mechanical

Ambient had her arm round the child's waist, and he was leaning against her knee; but though he moved at his father's call she gave no sign of

e me vaguely ask myself if he were perchance henpecked-a shocking surmise which I instantly dismissed. Mrs. Ambient was quite such a wife as I should have expected him to have; slim and fair, with a long neck and pretty eyes and an air of good breeding. She shone with a certain coldness and practised in intercourse a certain bland detachment, but she was clothed in gentleness as in one of those vaporous redundant scarves that muffle the heroines of Gainsborough and Romney. She had also a vague air of race, justified by my afterwards learning that she was "connected with the aristocracy." I have seen poets married to women of whom it was difficult to conceive that they should gratify the poetic fancy-women with dull faces and glutinous minds, who were none the l

nd he came and held out his hand and smiled at me I felt a sudden strange pity for him-quite as if he had been an orphan or a changeling or stamped with some social stigma. It was impossible to be in fact more exempt from these misfortunes, and yet, as one kissed him, it was hard to keep from murmuring all tenderly "Poor little devil!" though why one should have applied this epithet to a living c

of life so profane, as it were, so independent and so little likely in general to be thought edifying, that I should have expected to find him an object of horror to vicars and their ladies-of horror repaid on his own part by any amount of effortless derision. This proved how little I knew as yet of the English people and their extraordinary talent for keeping up their forms, as well as of some of the mysteries of Mark Ambient's hearth and home. I found afterwards that he had, in his stu

bient said to the boy, who had s

but Dolcino turned and looked at her

ask you to s

mamma," said the child in

." And Mrs. Ambient, who had seated herself again, h

vicaress, but this good lady, I think, had lost the thread of her attention. She looked at Mrs. Ambient

ld, "mamma wants me

till he goes to bed. Otherwise he won't sleep." These declaratio

ress gave a genial irrelevant laugh and observed that he was a precious little pet. "Let him choos

ed the vicar's lady wi

, making his voice very low and confidential. "But I'v

sen!" On which Mark Ambient walked off with his son, accompanied

ed herself, to express the sufficiently civil hope that I didn't mind having had to walk from the station. I reassured her on this point, and she went on: "We've got a thing that might have gone for you, but my husband wouldn't

s run," I laug

an absence in her pretty eyes. "I s

the pleasure to me of finding myself here," I add

at. He likes b

happy life, then. He

te, her tone, that the sight was scarcely edifying, and I guessed her quickly enough to be in no great intellectual sympathy with the author of "Beltraffio.

tless with a due suffisance-"he's q

course he's very clever," s

it, and what I said was a good deal less than what I felt. I was by no means sure I should dare to say even so much as this to the master himself, and there was a kind of rapture in speaking it out to his wife which was not affected by the fact that, as a wife, she appeared peculiar. She listened to me with her face grave again and her lips a little compressed, listened as if in no doubt, of course, that her husba

ng round her, said abruptly and a trifle dryly: "

es and pears, flattened and fastened upon the rusty bricks, looked

k very dull. We ha

for her husband's return with the child. "Is Mr. Ambient fond of gardening?" it occurred to me to as

nd of plums,"

lovely old place," I continued. "The whole impression's that of cert

t my glow. "It's a pleasant little

g on my point the more sharply that my companion appeared to see in m

tone?" she repeated with a harder look

as a tone, M

't care for that in the least," she went on with a smile that had in some degree the effect of converting her r

ng immediately afterwards that I had been both familiar and patronising. My only consolation was in t

d. If you like him you won't like me. You needn't say

I could but honou

nglish quality of being able to be mute without unrest. But at last she spoke-she asked me if there seemed many people in town. I gave her what satisfaction I coul

ld you say?" I proceeded from point to point in this malign inquiry simply because my hostess, who probably thought me an odious chattering person, gave me time; for when I paused-I've not represented my pauses-she simply continued to let her eyes wander while her long fair fingers played with the medallion on her neck. When I stopped altogether, however, she was obliged to say something, and what she said was that she hadn't the least idea where her husband

han I do. I haven't the least idea what he's doing," she then added in a slightly different, that is a more

g this seem to me anything less than monstrous. I stared at her and I thi

first words that rose to her lips; she repeated what she had said a few minutes before. "