Read Online The Dark Clue by James Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

awkwardly to shake my hand, I at last recognized their odd mixture of pride and diffidence and concern for what it was, and felt suddenly – and quite unexpectedly – like a schoolboy invited to the home of a gifted but over-sensitive friend.
    â€˜Will you indulge me, Mr. Hartright,’ said Ruskin, ‘and take a walk in the garden? I’ve been in the thick of it all morning, and can’t see for the smoke, or think for the noise of the guns.’
    Without waiting for a reply, he ushered me quickly out of the front door again, as if anxious to make good his escape before his parents had time to forbid it.
    â€˜In the thick of what, may I ask?’ I said, as we turned on to the carriage sweep. ‘A new piece of criticism?’
    â€˜I
am
struggling to finish the last volume of
Modern Painters,
’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve come to the wretched conclusion that all my critical and historical work up till now has been almost valueless.’
    â€˜Oh, come .. .!’ I said.
    â€˜It
is
a sad thought,’ he said. ‘Especially when you’ve devoted your whole life to a thing, as I have. But when I look about me, and see the burden of dumb misery in the world, and calculate what an infinitesimally small fraction of it I have managed to lift with my ruminations on Turner or Veronese or the Gothic …’ He shook his head.
    â€˜But
Modern Painters
’ , I said, ‘has given delight – and instruction – to thousands. Millions.’ I confess that I was slightly abashed, when I reflected how little of it I had read, and how long ago; but not sufficiently to prevent my adding: ‘Myself included.’
    â€˜You are kind to try to console me, Mr. Hartright,’ he said. He stopped, and turned on me a gaze of extraordinary candour. ‘But – forgive me – you do not look miserable – at least, not in the way I mean. When I speak of misery, I am thinking of that great mass of suffering humanity which surrounds us, and which we see – and yet do not see – every day; and which we barely touch with all our ideals and concerns.’
    He rounded the end of the house, and ducked his head to enter a dark tunnel, pungent with the scent of damp leaves, formed by a dense old laurel bush pressing against the wall.
    â€˜And that is why’, he said, the words – suddenly muffled now – floating back to me in the close air, ‘I have begun to turn my attention to the question of political economy.’
    I was, I must admit, surprised that he should be so frank with me, and not a little flattered; yet mingled with my gratification, as I followed his stooping figure through the dimness, was a slight repugnance – although I could not, at the time, have told you the reason for it.
    â€˜You may, of course, feel I have little enough reason to complain myself,’ he said with a laugh, as we emerged behind the house. He gestured languidly towards the lawn, dotted with trees and artfully laced with winding paths that stretched away below us; and at the kitchen gardens and orchards and a row of farm buildings beyond. ‘Our own milk and pigs,’ he said, ‘and peaches from the hothouses; and a meadow for the horses. Everything a mortal could desire, in fact, save a stream – and mountains.’ I glanced towards him, and saw that he was smiling, and that he had the grace to blush.
    â€˜But enough of me, Mr. Hartright,’ he said, suddenly setting off again. ‘I have a lecture this evening, and fear I must leave at four o’clock. So, tell me, how fares your tremendous undertaking?’
    â€˜It’s scarcely begun,’ I said. ‘But I have spoken to a few people who knew Turner.’
    â€˜Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Who?’
    I told him. He made no response of any kind; so I went on:
    â€˜And my sister has been to see his housekeeper.’
    â€˜Ah, the good Mrs.