The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 13

"Well, Julia, how do you like poverty and love in a cottage?" asked Belmont, entering in his bridal dress.

"Not so well, sir, as you seem to like that borrowed suit," answered the bride, reddening with vexation.

"Very well; you shall suffer it no longer. My carriage awaits your orders at the door."

"Your carriage, indeed!"

"Yes, dearest, it waits but for you, to bear us to Belmont Hall, my lovely villa on the Hudson."

"And your mother?"

"I have no mother, alas! The old woman down stairs is an old servant of the family."

"Then you've been deceiving me, Frank--how wicked!"

"It was all done with a good motive. You were not born to endure a life of privation, but to s.h.i.+ne the ornament of an elegant and refined circle. I hope you will not love me the less when you learn that I am worth nearly half a million--that's the melancholy fact, and I can't help it."

"O Frank!" cried the beautiful girl, and hid her face in his bosom.

She presided with grace at the elegant festivities of Belmont Hall, and seemed to support her husband's wealth and luxurious style of living with the greatest fort.i.tude and resignation, never complaining of her comforts, nor murmuring a wish for living in a cottage.

THE CAREER OF AN ARTIST.

I woke up one morning and found myself famous.--BYRON.

Julian Montfort was a farmer's boy; bred up to the plough handle and cart tail. His father and mother were plain, honest people, of hard-working habits and limited ideas, and without the slightest dash of romance in their temperaments. Their house, their lands were unprepossessing in appearance. The soil was impoverished by long and illiberal culture; and old Montfort had a true old-fas.h.i.+oned prejudice against trees. Instead of smiling hedgerows, with here and there a weeping elm or plumy evergreen to cast their graceful shadows upon the pasture land, his acres were enclosed with harsh stone walls, or an unpicturesque Virginia fence with its zigzag of rude rails. The farmer had an equal prejudice against books, "book larnin', and book-larned men." Of course, with these ideas, Julian's education was limited to a few quarters' schooling under an old pedagogue, whose native language was Dutch, and who never took very kindly to the English tongue.

Besides, teaching was only an episode with him; for his vocation was that of a clergyman, and he held forth on Sundays in alternate Dutch and English to his little congregation--as is still the custom in many of the small agricultural parishes in New York State, where the scene of our veritable story lies.

Our hero, young Julian, early began to show a restiveness under the training he received, which sadly perplexed his plain matter-of-fact father. The latter could not conceive why the boy should sometimes leave his plough in the furrow, and sit upon a hillock, gazing curiously and admiringly upon a simple wild flower. He knew not why the youth should stand with his eyes fixed upon the western sky when it was pavilioned with crimson, and gold, and purple; or later yet, when, one by one, the stars came timidly forth and took their places in the darkening heaven. He shook his head at these manifestations, and confidently informed his help-mate that he feared the boy was "not right"--significantly touching, as he spoke, that portion of his anatomy where he fondly imagined a vast quant.i.ty of brain of very superior quality was safely stowed away, guarded by a sufficient quant.i.ty of skull to protect it against any accident. Neither he nor the good wife imagined, for a moment, that Julian was a genius, and that his talent, circ.u.mscribed by circ.u.mstances, was struggling for an outlet for its development.

At last the divine spark within him was kindled into flame. An itinerant portrait painter came round, with his tools of trade, and did the dominie in brown and red, and the squire's daughter in vermilion and flake white, and set the whole village agog with his marvellous achievements. Julian cultivated his acquaintance, received some secret instructions in the A B C of art, and bargained for some drawing and painting materials. His aspirations had at length found an object. Long and painfully he labored in secret; but his advances were rapid, for he took nature as a model. At last he ventured to display his latest achievement--a small portrait of his father. It was first shown to his mother, and filled her with astonishment and delight. It is the privilege of woman, however circ.u.mstanced, to appreciate and applaud true genius. Of course, Moliere's housekeeper occurs to the reader as an ill.u.s.tration. The picture was next shown to the old man.

He gazed at it with a sort of silent horror, puffing the smoke from his pipe in short, spasmodic jerks, and slowly shaking his head before he spoke.

"Do you know it, father?" asked the young artist.

"Know it!" exclaimed the old man. "Yes--yes--I see myself there like I was lookin' into a gla.s.s. There's my nose, and eyes, and mouth, and hair; yes, and there's my pipe. It ain't right--it can't be right--it's witchcraft. Satan must ha' helped you, boy--you couldn't never ha' done it without the aid of the evil one."

This was a sad damper. But just then the dominie luckily happened in to take a pipe with his paris.h.i.+oner. He p.r.o.nounced the work excellent, and satisfied his old friend's doubts as to the honesty of the transaction. Julian blessed the old man in his heart for the comfort he afforded.

And now the fame of the young painter flew through the village. The tavern keeper ordered a head of General Was.h.i.+ngton for his sign board, the old one--originally a portrait of the Duke of Cambridge with the court dress painted out--not satisfying some of his critical customers. And for the blacksmith, Montfort painted a rampant black horse, prevented from falling backward by a solid tail. The stable keeper also gave him orders for sundry coats of arms to be depicted on wagon panels and sleigh dashers, so that the incipient artist had plenty of orders and not a little cash.

But he soon grew tired of this local reputation. He panted for the a.s.sociation of kindred spirits; for the impulse and example to be found in some great centre of civilization; for refinement, fame--all that is dear to an ardent imagination. And so, one morning, he announced his intention of seeking his fortune in the city of New York.

His mother was sad, but did not oppose his wishes; his father shook his head, as he always did when any thing was proposed--no matter what. The old gentleman seemed to derive great pleasure from shaking his head, and no one interfered with so harmless an amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Goin' to York, hey?" said he, emitting sundry puffs of smoke. "The Yorkers are a curious set of people, boy. I read into a paper once't about how they car' on--droppin' pocket books, and sellin' bra.s.s watches for gold, and knockin' people down and stompin' onto 'em."

"But the dominie thinks I might make money there," said the young man.

"O, then you'd better go. The dominie's got a longer head than you or I, boy," said the old man.

"Yes, father," said the youth, kindling with animation. "In New York I am sure to win fame and fortune. I shall come back, then, and buy you a better farm, and hire hands for you, so that you won't be obliged to work so hard--and you can set out trees."

"Hain't no opinion of trees," said the old man, shaking his head.

"Well, well, father, you shall have money, and do what you like with it; for my part I shall be content with fame."

"Fame! what is that?" said the old man, laying down his pipe in bewilderment.

"Fame! Do you ask what fame is?" exclaimed the romantic boy. But he paused, convinced in a moment of the perfect futility of attempting to convey an idea of the unsubstantial phantom to the old man's intellect. Perhaps the old farmer was the better philosopher of the two.

But Julian gained his point, and departed for the great city--the goal of so many struggles, the grave of so many hopes. He was at first dazzled by the splendors of the artificial life, into the heart of which he plunged; and then, with a homesick feeling, he sighed for that verdurous luxury of nature he had left. He missed the trees--for he thought the shabby and rusty foliage of the Battery and Park hardly worthy of that name. But, in time to save him from utter disappointment and heart sickness, there opened on his vision the glorious dawning of the world of art. He pa.s.sed from gallery to gallery, and from studio to studio, drinking in the beauties that unfolded before him with the eyes of his body and his soul. He was enraptured, dazzled, enchanted. Then he settled down to work in his humble room, economizing the scanty funds he had brought with him to the city. Like many young aspirants, he grasped, at first, at the most difficult subjects. He constantly groped for a high ideal. He would fly before he had learned to walk. With an imperfect knowledge of architecture and anatomy, and a limited stock of information, he would paint history--mythology. He sought to ill.u.s.trate poetry, and dared attempt scenes from the Bible, Shakspeare, and Milton. He failed, though there were glimpses of grandeur and glory in his faulty attempts.

Then he turned back, with a sickening feeling, to the elements of art, distasteful as he found them. It was hard to pore over rectangles and curves, bones and muscles, angles and measurements, after sporting with irregular forms and fascinating colors. He tried portraiture, but he had no feeling for the business. He could not transfigure the dull and commonplace heads he was to copy. He had not the nice tact that makes beauty of ugliness without the loss of ident.i.ty. He could not enn.o.ble vulgarians. The sordid man bore the stamp of baseness on his canvas. His pictures were too true; and truth is death to the portrait painter.

He began to grow morbid in his feelings, and was fast verging to a misanthrope. His clothes grew shabby, and looked shabbier for his careless way of wearing them. He was often cold and hungry. There were times when he viewed with envy and hate the evidences of prosperity he saw about him. He railed against those pursuits of life which made men rich and prosperous. He began to think with the French demagogue, that "property was a theft," and to regard with great favor the socialistic doctrines then coming into vogue. The American social system he p.r.o.nounced corrupt and rotten, and deserving to be uprooted and subverted. And this was the rustic boy, who, a few months before, had left his home so full of hope, and generous feeling, and high aspiration.

There were times when he yearned for the humble scenes of his boyhood.

But he was too proud to throw up his pencils and palette, and go back to the old farm house; and so he found a vent for his home feeling in painting some of the scenes of his earliest life--the rustic dances, the huskings, the haymakings, and junketings with which he was so familiar.

One of these pictures--a rustic dance was the subject--he sent to a gilder's to be framed. He had consecrated three dollars to this purpose, and went one day to see how his commission had been executed.

He found the picture framer, who was also a picture dealer, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, talking with a middle-aged gentleman, who was praising his performance.

"Really a very clever thing," said the gentleman, scanning the painting through his gold-bowed eye gla.s.ses.

"The composition, coloring, and light and shade, are admirable; but the life, animation, and naturalness of the figures make its great charm. Ah, why don't our artists study to produce life as it exists around them, and as they themselves know it and feel it, instead of giving us the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of a defunct and false religion, and scenes three thousand miles and years away?"

"Mr. Greville," said the picture framer, "allow me to make you acquainted with the artist, Mr. Montfort; he's a next-door neighbor of yours--lives at No ----, Broadway."

"Mr. Montfort," said the gentleman, warmly shaking the hand the artist shyly extended, "you found me admiring your work. And I'm sure I did not know I had so talented a neighbor. I shall be glad to be better acquainted with you. I presume your picture is for sale."

"Not so, sir," replied the artist, coldly. "It is a reminiscence of earlier and happier days. It was painted for my own satisfaction, and I shall keep it as long as I have a place to hang it in. It is a common mistake, sir, with our patrons, to suppose they can buy our souls as well as our labor."

Mr. Greville's cheek flushed; but as he glanced at the shabby exterior and wan face of the artist, his color faded, and he answered gently--

"Believe me, Mr. Montfort, I am not one of the persons you describe--if, indeed, they exist elsewhere but in your imagination. I should be the last person to fail in sympathy for the high-toned feelings of an artist; for in early life I was thought to manifest a talent for art--and, indeed, I had a strong desire to follow the vocation."

"And you abandoned it--you turned a deaf ear to the divine inspiration--you preferred wealth to glory--to be one of the vulgar many rather than to belong to the choice few. I congratulate you, Mr.

Greville, on your taste."

"You judge me harshly, Mr. Montfort," replied the gentleman, pleasantly. "I am hardly required to justify my choice of calling to a perfect stranger; and yet your very frankness induces me to say a word or two of the motives which impelled me. My parents were poor. An artist's life seemed to hold no immediate prospects of competence.

They to whom I owed my being might die of want before I had established a reputation. I had an opportunity to enter commercial life advantageously. I prospered. I have lived to see the declining days of my parents cheered by every comfort, and to rear a family in comfort and opulence. One of my boys promises to make a good artist.

Fortunately, I can bestow on him the means of following the bent of his inclination. Instead of being an indifferent painter myself, I am an extensive purchaser of works of art, so that my conscience acquits me of any very great wrong in the course I adopted."