Chapter 25

Nugent puzzles Madame Pratolungo



I was far from sharing Lucilla's opinion of Nugent Dubourg. His enormous self-confidence was, to my mind, too amusing to be in the least offensive. I liked the spirit and gaiety of the young fellow. He came much nearer than his brother did to my ideal of the dash and resolution which ought to distinguish a man on the right side of thirty. So far as my experience of them went, Nugent was (in the popular English phrase) good company--and Oscar was not. My nationality leads me to attach great importance to social qualities. The higher virtues of a man only show themselves occasionally on compulsion, His social qualities come familiarly in contact with us every day of our lives. I like to be cheerful: I am all for the social qualities.

There was one little obstacle in those early days, which set itself up between my sympathies and Nugent.

I was thoroughly at a loss to understand the impression which Lucilla had produced on him.

The same constraint which had, in such a marked manner, subdued him at his first interview with her, still fettered him in the time when they became better acquainted with one another. He was never in high spirits in her presence. Mr. Finch could talk him down without difficulty, if Mr. Finch's daughter happened to be by. Even when he was vaporing about himself, and telling us of the wonderful things he meant to do in Painting, Lucilla's appearance was enough to check him, if she happened to come into the room. On the first day when he showed me his American sketches (I define them, if you ask my private opinion, as false pretenses of Art, by a dashing amateur)--on that day, he was in full flow; marching up and down the room, smacking his forehead, and announcing himself quite gravely as "the coming man" in landscape painting.

"My mission, Madame Pratolungo, is to reconcile Humanity and Nature. I propose to show (on an immense scale) how Nature (in her grandest aspects) can adapt herself to the spiritual wants of mankind. In your joy or your sorrow, Nature has subtle sympathies with you, if you only know where to look for them. My pictures--no! my poems in color--will show you. Multiply my works, as they certainly will be multiplied, by means of prints--and what does Art become in my hands? A Priesthood! In what aspect do I present myself to the public? As a mere landscape painter? No! As Grand Consoler!" In the midst of this rhapsody (how wonderfully he resembled Oscar in his bursts of excitement while he was talking!)--in the full torrent of his predictions of his own coming greatness, Lucilla quietly entered the room. The "Grand Consoler" shut up his portfolio; dropped Painting on the spot; asked for Music, and sat down, a model of conventional propriety, in a corner of the room. I inquired afterwards, why he had checked himself when she came in. "Did I?" he said. "I don't know