Felix young finished Gertrude's portrait, and he afterwards transferred to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre.
I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a hundred dollars to a young man who made "sitting" so entertaining.
For Felix was paid for his pictures, making, as he did, no secret of the fact that in guiding his steps to the Western world affectionate curiosity had gone hand in hand with a desire to better his condition.
He took his uncle's portrait quite as if Mr. Wentworth had never averted himself from the experiment; and as he compassed his end only by the exercise of gentle violence, it is but fair to add that he allowed the old man to give him nothing but his time.
He passed his arm into Mr. Wentworth's one summer morning--very few arms indeed had ever passed into Mr. Wentworth's--and led him across the garden and along the road into the studio which he had extemporized in the little house among the apple-trees. The grave gentleman felt himself more and more fascinated by his clever nephew, whose fresh, demonstrative youth seemed a compendium of experiences so strangely numerous. It appeared to him that Felix must know a great deal; he would like to learn what he thought about some of those things as regards which his own conversation had always been formal, but his knowledge vague. Felix had a confident, gayly trenchant way of judging human actions which Mr. Wentworth grew little by little to envy; it seemed like criticism made easy.
Forming an opinion--say on a person's conduct--was, with Mr. Wentworth, a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard.
He seemed to himself to go about the world with a big bunch of these ineffectual instruments at his girdle. His nephew, on the other hand, with a single turn of the wrist, opened any door as adroitly as a horse-thief. He felt obliged to keep up the convention that an uncle is always wiser than a nephew, even if he could keep it up no otherwise than by listening in serious silence to Felix's quick, light, constant discourse.
But there came a day when he lapsed from consistency and almost asked his nephew's advice.
"Have you ever entertained the idea of settling in the United States?" he asked one morning, while Felix brilliantly plied his brush.
"My dear uncle," said Felix, "excuse me if your question makes me smile a little. To begin with, I have never entertained an idea.
Ideas often entertain me; but I am afraid I have never seriously made a plan. I know what you are going to say; or rather, I know what you think, for I don't think you will say it--that this is very frivolous and loose-minded on my part.
So it is; but I am made like that; I take things as they come, and somehow there is always some new thing to follow the last.
In the second place, I should never propose to settle.
I can't settle, my dear uncle; I 'm not a settler.
I know that is what strangers are supposed to do here; they always settle. But I have n't--to answer your question--entertained that idea."
"You intend to return to Europe and resume your irregular manner of life?"
Mr. Wentworth inquired.
"I can't say I intend. But it 's very likely I shall go back to Europe.
After all, I am a European. I feel that, you know. It will depend a good deal upon my sister. She 's even more of a European than I; here, you know, she 's a picture out of her setting. And as for 'resuming,' dear uncle, I really have never given up my irregular manner of life. What, for me, could be more irregular than this?"
"Than what?" asked Mr. Wentworth, with his pale gravity.
"Well, than everything! Living in the midst of you, this way; this charming, quiet, serious family life; fraternizing with Charlotte and Gertrude; calling upon twenty young ladies and going out to walk with them; sitting with you in the evening on the piazza and listening to the crickets, and going to bed at ten o'clock."
"Your description is very animated," said Mr. Wentworth;
"but I see nothing improper in what you describe."
"Neither do I, dear uncle. It is extremely delightful;
I should n't like it if it were improper. I assure you I don't like improper things; though I dare say you think I do,"
Felix went on, painting away.
"I have never accused you of that."
"Pray don't," said Felix, "because, you see, at bottom I am a terrible Philistine."
"A Philistine?" repeated Mr. Wentworth.
"I mean, as one may say, a plain, God-fearing man."
Mr. Wentworth looked at him reservedly, like a mystified sage, and Felix continued, "I trust I shall enjoy a venerable and venerated old age. I mean to live long. I can hardly call that a plan, perhaps; but it 's a keen desire--a rosy vision.
I shall be a lively, perhaps even a frivolous old man!"
"It is natural," said his uncle, sententiously, "that one should desire to prolong an agreeable life. We have perhaps a selfish indisposition to bring our pleasure to a close.
But I presume," he added, "that you expect to marry."
"That too, dear uncle, is a hope, a desire, a vision," said Felix.
It occurred to him for an instant that this was possibly a preface to the offer of the hand of one of Mr. Wentworth's admirable daughters.
But in the name of decent modesty and a proper sense of the hard realities of this world, Felix banished the thought.
His uncle was the incarnation of benevolence, certainly; but from that to accepting--much more postulating--the idea of a union between a young lady with a dowry presumptively brilliant and a penniless artist with no prospect of fame, there was a very long way.
