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Epilogue
ROSE, BLANCHE, AND VIOLET.
THE IDLER'S DAY.
"Nature hath given us legs to go to our objects, not wings to fly to them."--EASTWARD HOE.
The spring of 1841 was very mild, and this enabled Cecil and Blanche to endure the wretched, comfortless state of Mrs. Tring's boarding-house, better than if the weather had been more rigorous. The cheapness, which was now becoming more and more important to them, was therefore a sufficient compensation for the want of comfort. They had renewed their engagement, hoping that either the comic opera, or the historical picture, would so improve their circumstances as to admit of their removal in the summer.
They had long awakened from their holiday dream to find that, however pleasant the change in their position, it was only pleasant as a change; the novelty once worn off, the scene appeared in all its ugliness; or rather, let me say, appeared so to Cecil. He was of a luxurious habit, and felt privation keenly. Blanche felt it less, and her love for him made home happy. She had never been so happy. Cecil was all she could desire.
As may be imagined, Cecil once relaxing in the energy with which he had begun to work, never recovered his former happiness. The charms of society were charms he could not withstand; the more so because he was fitted for it, shone in it. Having dined occasionally at the club was sufficient to give him an incurable disgust to the meagre fare Mrs. Tring spread before him, and he consequently began to absent himself more and more.
Added to this, his painting proceeded slowly. "Inspiration," wait for it as he would, seemed unwilling to descend upon him. Then there were so many days lost: sometimes the weather was foggy, and that prevented him; sometimes it was fine, and tempted him to exercise; sometimes he had visits to pay; sometimes men "looked in" upon him at his rooms. One way or another, the week slipped from him without leaving behind it any record of labour.
Besides--and this perhaps was one great cause of his idleness, giving strength to the other influences--he grew less satisfied with his picture the nearer it approached its termination. Cecil was a man whose designs were always finer than his productions, his sketches gave a promise which his execution never realized. In this little trait we may see the whole man. It might serve as a description of his character. With a certain freshness, delicacy, and even grandeur in his conceptions, he wanted strength, energy, and mastery, to endow them with vitality. Who can wonder that he raved about "genius," and scorned the "mechanical labour" of mere technical execution?
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