At the Mercy of Tiberius Part 64

Hand in hand they walked to the door, and Leo pitied the future of this woman, whose lover was a wandering outlaw, with a price set upon his head; and beneath her gray flannel habit, Beryl's heart was torn with conflicting emotions, as she watched the placid, proud face, that showed no vestige of the storm of disappointment which had stranded her sweetest hope in life.

"Good-bye, Beryl; G.o.d keep you in His tender care."

"Good-bye, dear Miss Gordon. I will pray for your happiness, so long as I live."

She stooped, drew Leo's hands to her face, pressed her trembling lips twice upon them; then turned quickly, and locked herself in the studio.

Is it true, that "Orestes and Pylades have no sisters?"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

A Persian proverb tells us: "A stone that is fit for the wall is not left in the way." Strong artistic aspirations will plough through arid sands, leap across bottomless chasms, toil over bristling obstacles, climb bald, freezing crags to reach that s.h.i.+ning plateau, where "beauty pitches her tents", and the Ideal beckons. Favorable environment is the steaming atmosphere that fosters, forces and develops germs which might not survive the struggle against adverse influences, in uncongenial habitat; but nature moulds some types that attain perfection through perpetual elementary warfare which hardens the fibre, and strengthens the hold; as in those invincible algx towering in the stormy straits of Tierra del Fuego, swept from Antartic homes toward the equator,--defying the fierce flail of surf that pulverizes rock, "Breed is stronger than pasture; and no matter how savage a stepmother the circ.u.mstances of life may prove, the inherited psychological strain will sometimes dominate, and triumph." According to the Talmud: "A myrtle, even in a desert, remains a myrtle".

From her tenth year, Beryl had begun to build her castle in the Spain of Art; daubed its walls with wonderful frescoes, filled its echoing corridors with heroic men and lovely women of the cla.s.sic ages; and through its mullioned windows looked into an enchanted land, clothed with that witching "light that never was on sea or land". When all else on earth was sombre and dun-hued, sunlight and moonlight still gilded those magical towers. In darkest nights, through hissing rain and hurtling hail, she caught the glitter of its starry vanes smiling through murkiness, and above the wail and sob of the storms that had swept over the waste places of her youth, she heard the divine melodies which the immortal harper, Hope, played always in the marvellous palace of the Muses.

In early girlhood she had followed her father into the solemn mysteries of Greek Tragedy; and in that vast white temple dedicated to the inexorable Fates, where predestined victims moved like marble images to their immolation, her own plastic nature had been moulded in unison with the cla.s.sic cult. Among the throng of Attic types, an immortal statue of filial devotion and sisterly love had attracted her irresistibly, and to Antigone she rendered the homage of a boundless admiration, an unwavering fealty.

Intellectually, humanity cleaves to idolatry; and each of us wors.h.i.+ps in the Pantheon, where our favorite divinities in literature crowd the niches. To become a skilful artist, and paint the portrait of Antigone, vas the ambition that had shaped and colored Beryl's young dreams, long ere she suspected that a mournful parallelism in fate would consign her to a living tomb more intolerable than that devised by Theban Creon.

Our grandest pictures, statues, poems, are not the canvas, the marble, the bronze, and the gilded vellum, that the world handles, criticises, weighs, buys and sells, accepts with praise, or rejects with anathema.

Invisible and inviolate, imagination, keeps our best, our ideals, locked in the cerebrum cells of "gray matter", which we are pleased to call our workshop.

What art gallery, what library can rival the sublime and beautiful images that crowd the creased and folded labyrinth of the human brain; as far beyond the ken and a.n.a.lysis of the biologist's microscope, as some remote nebulae s.h.i.+ning in blue gulfs of interstellar s.p.a.ce, that no telescopic Jense can ever discover, even as a faint blur of silvery mist upon the black velvet vault that suns and planets spangle?

In some degree, Beryl's artistic dream had been realized; and the study of years slowly flowered into a large painting, which represented Antigone standing beside the heap of dust, strewn reverently to sepulchre the form dimly outlined at her feet. The sullen red sunset of a tempestuous day flared from the horizon, across a desolate plain; showed the city walls in the background, the hungry vultures poised high above the dead, the marauding dogs crouched in the wind-swept sand, watching their banquet, decreed by the king. The dust had been scattered from a black vase that bore on its front, in a circular medallion, the lurid head of grinning Hecate; and the last rite to appease the unquiet manes was performed by the uplifted right arm that poured libations from a burnished bra.s.s urn, held aloft over the pall of earth that denned the figure beneath. The left hand was stretched, not heavenward, but s.h.i.+eldingly over the mound, and in the beautiful, stern face bent a little downward in invocation of the infernal G.o.ds, one read sublime self-surrender, grief for Oedipus, regret for Hasmon, farewell to life,--mingled with exultant consciousness that a successful sacrifice had been accomplished for Polynices, and that the spirit of the brother rested in peace.

The soul of the artist seemed to look triumphantly through the solemn, purplish blue eyes of the young martyr, and Beryl knew that her own heart beat under the pamted folds of the diploidion; that she had epitomized in a symbolic picture, the history of her own joyless youth.

The canvas had been framed and hung at the art exhibition of the new "Museum", opened in September; and only the "U" traced in one corner beneath an anchor, indicated that it was the work of the Umilta Sisters' "Anchorage".

The public peered, puzzled, shook its sapient head, shrugged its authoritative shoulders, and sundry criticisms crept into the journals; but the prophet was judged in "his own country"; and home work, according to universal canons, rarely finds favor among home awarding committees, whose dulness its uncomprehended excellence affronts.

One censured vehemently the masonry of the city wall; another deplored pathetically the "defective foreshortening of a dog's shoulders"; the picture "lacked depth of tone"; the "coloring was too bizarre", the "tints too neutral".

Like chemicals tested in a laboratory, or like Pharaoh's lean kine, each objection devoured the preceding one; and unanimity of blame a.s.saulted only one salient point on the entire canvas: the red sandals of the Greek girl--upon which outraged good taste fell with pitiless fury.

Undismayed, Beryl withdrew her picture, erased the ciphers in the corner, and s.h.i.+pped it to New York to Doctor Grantlin, who had recently returned from Europe; requesting him to place it at a picture dealer's on Broadway, and to withhold the name of its birth-place.

Two weeks later, a popular journal published an elaborate description of "A painting supposed to have been obtained abroad by a New York collector, who merited congratulation upon possession of a masterpiece, which recalled the marvellous technique of Gerome, the atmosphere of Jules Breton, the rich, mellow coloring, and especially the scrupulous fidelity of archaic detail, which characterized Alma Tadema; and was conspicuously manifest in the red shoes so distinctively typical of Theban women".

Mr. Kendall caused this article to be copied into the leading newspaper of his own city; and the first mail, thereafter, carried to New York an offer of eight hundred dollars for the painting, from the President of the "Museum" Directors, who had been so shocked by the unknown significance of the "red shoes". After a few days, it was generally known, but mentioned with bated breath, that the "Antigone" had been bought by a wealthy Philadelphian, who paid for it two thousand dollars, and hung it in his gallery, where Fortunys, Madrazos, and Diazs ornamented the walls.

Why should journeying abroad to render "Caesar's things" to foreign Caesars, demand such total bankruptcy that we must needs repudiate the just debts of home creditors, whose chimneys smoke just beyond the fence that divides us? De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a traditional and sacred duty to departed workers; but does it exhaust human charity, or require contemptuous crusade against equally honest, living toilers?

Are antiquity and foreign birthplace imperatively essential factors in the award of praise for even faithful and n.o.ble work? We lament the caustic moroseness of embittered Schopenhauer, brooding savagely over his failure to secure contemporaneous recognition; yet after all, did he malign his race, or his age, when, in answer to the inquiry where he desired to be buried, he scornfully exclaimed: "No matter where; posterity will find me."

It was on the 26th of October, a week subsequent to the receipt of the letter which contained the check sent in payment for the picture, that Beryl sat down on the stone sill of her oriel window, to rest in the seclusion of her room, after the labors of the day.

It was the anniversary of her ill-starred visit to X----, and melancholy memories had greeted her at dawn, clung to her skirts, chanted their dismal refrain, and renewed the pain which time had in some degree dulled. Four years ago she had felt her mother's feverish lips on hers, in a parting kiss, and four years ago to-day the sun of her girlhood had pa.s.sed suddenly into total eclipse. Since then, moving in a semi-twilight, suffering had prematurely aged her, and she had schooled herself to expect no star, save that of duty, to burn along her lonely path. To-day, she thought of the pride her picture would have aroused in her devoted father; of the comforts the money would have purchased for her invalid mother; of the pleasure, success as an artist would have brought to her own ambitious soul, if only it had not come so many years too late. What crown could fame bring to one, dwelling always in the chill shadow of a terrible shame? The glory of n.o.ble renown could never gild a name that had answered at the convicts'

roll call; a name which, at any moment, Bertie's arrest might drag back to the disgrace of established felony.

Of all mocking fiends, the arch torturer is that hand which draws aside the black curtain of grim actuality, and shows us the wonderful realm of "might have been", where lost hopes blossom eternally, and the witchery of hallowed illusions is never dispelled.

Wearily Beryl closed her eyes, as though the white lids availed to shut out visions, tantalizing as the dream of bubbling springs, and palm-fringed isles of dewy verdure, to the delirious traveller dying of thirst, in the furnace blasts of mid-desert.

If she had defied her mother's wishes, and refused to go to X--? How different the world would seem to her; but, what was a world worth, that had never known Mr. Dunbar?

Over burning ploughshares she had walked to meet one destined to stir to its depths the slumbering sea of her tenderest love; and to forego the pain, would she relinquish the recompense?

During the months that elapsed after Leo's visit to the "Anchorage", Beryl had surrendered her heart to the great happiness of dwelling, unrebuked by conscience, upon the precious a.s.surance that the love of the man whom she had so persistently defied and shunned, was irrevocably hers. The sharpest pain that can horrow womanhood, springs from the contemplation of the superior right of another to the object of her affection; and though honor coerces submission to the just claims of a rival, renunciation of the beloved entails pangs that no anaesthetic has power to quiet.

After the long struggle to aid Miss Gordon's accepted lover in keeping his vows of loyalty, the discovery of his freedom, and the belief that Bishop Dougla.s.s had supplanted him in the affection of her generous benefactress, had brought to Beryl an exquisite release; sweet as the spicy breath of the tropics wafted suddenly to some stranded, frozen Arctic voyager. Heroic and patient, keeping her numb face steadfastly turned to the pole star of duty, where the compa.s.s of conscience pointed--was the floe ice on which she had been wrecked, drifting slowly, imperceptibly, yet surely down to the purple warmth of the Gulf Stream, dotted with swelling sails of rescue? Like oceanic streams meeting, running side by side, freighted with cold for the equatorial caldrons, with heat for the poles, are not the divinely appointed currents of mercy and of affliction, G.o.d's agents of compensation, to equalize the destinies of humanity?

We rail at Fate as triple monsters; but sometimes it happens, that the veil of inscrutability floats aside, for an instant, and we catch a glimpse of the radiant smile of an infinite love.

Hope had set in Beryl's sky, but a tender afterglow held off the coming night, when she thought of the face that had bent so yearningly above her, of the pa.s.sionate voice and the thrilling touch that were now her most precious memories. The pearl which Miss Gordon had cast away as worthless, the discarded convict might surely, without sin, claim as her own for ever. To-day an intense longing to see him once more, to hear from his lips praise of her "Antigone", disturbed the tranquillity that was spreading its robes of minever over a stony path; but she put aside the temptation.

To the Sisterhood of the "Anchorage" she had given one-half the proceeds of the picture sale; and the remainder would enable her at last to renew the search for her unhappy brother. So vague were the topographical lines furnished by the English tourist, that prosecuting her quest in the remote wilderness of mountains, which wore their crown of snow, seemed a reckless waste of hope, time and money; nevertheless, she must make the attempt. She knew that a gigantic railway system was crawling like an anaconda under rocky ranges, over foaming rivers, stretching its sinuous steel trail from Bay of Chaleur to Georgia Gulf; with termini that saw the sun rise from the Atlantic Ocean, and watched its setting in the red glory of the far Pacific; and perhaps steam shovels, and iron tight-ropes might furnish her facilities on her long journey.

Winter would soon overtake her, and in the inhospitable region where her brother had been surprised at his prayers, how could a lonely woman travel without protection? Doubt, apprehension flitted as ill-boding birds of night, flapping dusky wings to hide the signal beacon, which love and duty swung to and fro; yet the yearning to see her brother's face again, dwarfed all barriers, and she trusted G.o.d's guidance.

On a chair near her, lay, on this afternoon, a map which for many days she had been studying; and opening it once more, she ran a finger along the dotted lines, mentally debating whether it would be best to go by rail to Ottawa, by water to Sault St. Marie, whence the new railway could be easily reached, or whether the most direct route would be via St. Paul to Winnepeg. When she left the "Anchorage", her destination must remain a secret; hence she could ask no counsel. In view of approaching cold weather, economy of time seemed imperative; and she resolved to buy a railway ticket to Fargo, where she could elude suspicion, should the threatened invisible detective "shadow" her; and whence another Pacific highway offered egress to western wilds. With this definite conclusion she closed the map, and a moment later, some one knocked at her door.

"Come in."

She went forward, and met Sister Katrina, a robust dame of forty years, blond as Gerda; with the "light of the glowworm's tails" in her golden-lashed violet eyes, and the "ruby spots of the cowslip's leaves"

on her full, frank lips.

"Will you sit a while with me? There is still a half hour, before your evening work begins in the carving shop. Come in."

"I am sorry I have not time now, to indulge myself in such luxury as a chat with you always proves. I came to beg the loan of your India ink copy of the marble screens at Agra; which I have an idea would be very effective done in cherry, for the panels under the new bookcases we are designing for the library."

"The copy is up stairs in the studio; but I shall be glad to get it for you."

"No; with your permission I can help myself, and I am going up there now, for some red chalk. I know exactly where to find the picture, because I was examining it two days ago. What think you of my idea?"

"I am afraid you will find cherry too dark. A lighter wood, I think, would be better adapted to the exceeding delicacy of the design."

"Wait till I cut out a sample scroll, and we will talk it over. Sister Ruth asked me to hand to you this paper, which contains a very complimentary notice of your lovely picture. I read it as I came up, and congratulate you on all the fine things said. You scarcely know how proud we feel of our Sister's work. Thanks for the use of the drawing."

She smiled, nodded and closed the door; and when her bright cheery countenance vanished, it seemed as though a film of cloud had drifted across the sun.

Beryl went back to a low chair in front of the window, and opened the paper, which chanced to be the New York "Herald." Unfolding it to hunt the designated article, her glance fell accidentally upon the personal column. Her heart leaped, then almost ceased beating, as she read:

"Important. Bertie will meet Gigina in the Museum at Niagara Falls, Canada side, any day during the last week in October."