The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

But my eyes directly took in many things besides the flowery ground beneath me. At one end of the room stood a colossal bust of Juno, smiling grandly and imperturbably, as if she were looking out from the great far-away past. I think this would have held my looks and my attention completely, but that Mr. Stuart must introduce me to his friends. So I turned my glance away; but it was drawn directly towards a picture which hung before me,–a face that drove away all recollection of the colossal goddess. The golden hair was parted over a broad brow; from the gentle, dreamy eyes there came a soft, penetrating glance, and a vagueness as of fancy rested over the whole face. I scarcely heard a word that was spoken to me as I looked upon this new charm, and I could hardly find answers for the questions that surrounded me.

But I was again roused from my dreamy wonderment by a real form that floated in and sent away all visions of imagination. "My daughter," said Mr. Stuart, and I looked up into the same dreamy eyes which had been winning me in the picture. But these looked far beyond me, over me, perhaps, or through me,–I could scarcely say which,–and the mouth below them bent into a welcoming smile. While she greeted the other guests, I had an opportunity to watch the stately grace of Mr. Stuart's daughter, who played the part of hostess as one long accustomed to it.

"A queen!" I had exclaimed to myself, as she entered the room, "and my Juno!"

The gentlemen to whom I had been introduced had been summoned earlier, as in a learned committee, discussing the properties of the new discovery. After the entrance of the ladies, I was requested to lead Miss Stuart to dinner, and sat by her side through the clanging of dishes and a similar clangor of the table-talk of tongues.

"Speaking of light," said the Professor, turning to me, "why cannot you bring, by your unknown chemical ways, some real sunlight into our rooms, in preference to this metallic gas-light?"

I turned to the windows, before which the servant had just drawn the heavy, curtains still closer, to shut out the gleams of a glowing sunset which had ventured to penetrate between its folds.

"I see your answer," said Miss Stuart. "You wonder, as I do, why a little piece of artificial sunlight should astonish us so much more than the cheap sunlight of every day which the children play in on the Common."

"I think your method, Mr. Desmond," said the Chemist, "must be some power you have found of concentrating all the rays of a pencil of light, disposing in some way of their heating power. I should like to know if this is a fluid agent or some solid substance."

"I should like to see," interrupted another gentleman, "the anvil where Mr. Desmond forges his beams. Could not we get up a party, Miss Stuart, an evening-party, to see a little bit of sunlight struck out,–on a moonshiny night, too?"

"In my lectures on chemistry," began Mr. Jasper. He was interrupted by Mr. Stuart.

"You will have to write your lectures over again. Mr. Desmond has introduced such new ideas upon chemistry that he will give you a chance for a new course."

"You forget," said the Chemist, "that the laws of science are the same and immutable. My lectures, having once been written, are written. I only see that Mr. Desmond has developed theories which I have myself laid down. As our friend the Artist will tell us, sunlight is sunlight, wherever you find it, whether you catch it on a carpet or on a lady's face."

"But I am quite ashamed," said Miss Stuart, "that we ladies so seldom have the sunlight on our faces. I think we might agree to Mr. Green's proposal to go out somewhere and see where the sunbeams really are made. We shut them out with our curtains, and turn night into a make-believe day."

"But the sun is so trying!" put in Miss Lester. "Just think how much more becoming candle-light is! There is not one of my dresses which would stand a broad sunbeam."

"I see," said Mr. Stuart, "that, when Mr. Desmond has perfected his studies, we shall be able to roof over the whole of Boston with our woven sunlight by day and gas-light by night, quite independent of fogs and uncertain east-winds."

So much of the dinner-conversation dwelt upon what was supposed to be interesting to me, and a part of my profession. It was laggingly done; for presently the talk fell into an easier flow,–a wonder about Mrs. This, and speculation concerning Mr. That. Mr. Blank had gone to Europe with half his family, and some of them knew why he had taken the four elder children, and others wondered why he had left the rest behind. I was talked into a sort of spasmodic interest about a certain Maria, who was at the ball the night before, but could not be at the dinner to-day. In an effort to show me why she would be especially charming to me, her personal appearance, the style of her conversation and dress, her manner of life, all were pulled to pieces, and discussed, dissected, and classified, in the same way as I would handle one of the Composite.

Miss Stuart spoke but little. She fluttered gayly over the livelier conversation, but seemed glad to fall back into a sort of wearied repose, where she appeared to be living in a higher atmosphere than the rest of us. This air of repose the others seemed to be trying to reach, when they got no farther than dulness; and some of the gentlemen, I thought, made too great efforts in their attempts to appear bored. Especially one of them exerted himself greatly to gape so often in the face of a lady with whom he was striving to keep up an appearance of conversation, that the exertion itself must have wearied him.

After the ladies had left, the Chemist seated himself by me, that he might, as he openly said, get out of me the secret of my sunshine. The more I disowned the sunshine, the more he felt sure that I possessed some secret clue to it. I need not say, that, in all my talk with these gentlemen, I had constantly tried to show that I could claim no influence in setting the sun's rays among the green carpeted leaves.

I was urged to stay many days in Boston, was treated kindly, and invited here and there. I grew to feel almost at home at Mr. Stuart's. He was pleased to wonder at the education which I had given myself, as he called it. I sat many long mornings in Miss Stuart's drawing-room, and she had the power of making me talk of many things which had always been hidden even from myself. It was hardly a sympathy with me which seemed to unlock my inner thoughts; it was as though she had already looked through them, and that I must needs bring them out for her use. That same glance which I have already spoken of, which seemed to pass over and through me, invited me to say in words what I felt she was beginning to read with her eyes. We went together, the day before I was to leave town, to the Gallery of Paintings.

As we watched a fine landscape by Kensett, a stream of sunshine rested a moment on the canvas, giving motion and color, as it were, to the pictured sunlight.

Miss Stuart turned to me.

"Why will you not imprison sunlight in that way, Mr. Desmond? That would be artistic."

"You forget," I said, "if I could put the real sunlight into such a picture, it would no longer be mine; I should be a borrower, not a creator of light; I should be no more of an artist than I am now."

"You will always refuse to acknowledge it," she said; "but you can never persuade me that you have not the power to create a sunbeam. An imprisoned sunbeam! The idea is absurd."

"It is because the idea is so absurd," I said, "that, if I felt the power were mine to imprison sunbeams, I should hardly care to repeat the effort. The sunshine rests upon the grass, freely we say, but in truth under some law that prevents its penetrating farther. A sunbeam existing in the absence of the sun is, of course, an absurdity. Yet they are there, the sunbeams of last spring, in your oval room, as I saw them one day in May."

"Which convinces me," said Miss Stuart, "that you are an artist. That is not real sunshine. You have created it. You are born for an artist-life. Do not go back to your drudgery."

"Daily work," I answered, "must become mechanical work, if we perform it in a servile way. A lawyer is perhaps inspired, when he is engaged in a cause on which he thinks his reputation hangs; but, day by day, when he goes down to the work that brings him his daily bread, he is quite as likely to call it his drudgery as I my daily toil."

She left her seat and walked with me towards a painting which hung not far from us. It represented sunset upon the water. "The tender-curving lines of creamy spray" were gathering up the beach; the light was glistening across the waves; and shadows and light almost seemed to move over the canvas.

"There," said Miss Stuart, "is what I call work that is worthy. I know there was inspiration in every touch of the brush. I know there was happy life in the life that inspired that painting. It is worth while to live and to show that one has been living in that way."

"But I think," said I, "that the artist even of that picture laid aside his brush heavily, when he sighed to himself that he must call it finished. I believe that in all the days that it lay upon his easel he went to it many times with weariness, because there was monotony in the work,–because the work that he had laid out for himself in his fancy was far above what he could execute with his fingers. The days of drudgery hung heavily on the days of inspiration; and it was only when he carried his heart into the most monotonous part of his work that he found any inspiration in it, that he could feel he had accomplished anything."

We turned suddenly away into a room where we had not been before. I could not notice the pictures that covered the walls for the sake of one to which Miss Stuart led the way. After looking upon that, there could be no thought of finding out any other. It possessed the whole room. The inspiration which uplifted the eyes fell over the whole painting. We looked at it silently, and it was not till we had left the building that Miss Stuart said,–

"We have seen there something which takes away all thought of artist or style of painting or work. I have never been able to ask myself what is the color of the eyes of that Madonna, or of her flowing hair, or the tone of the drapery. I see only an expression that inspires the whole figure, gives motion to the hands, life to the eyes, thought to the lips, and soul to the whole being."

"The whole inspiration, the whole work," I said, "is far above us. It is quite above me. No, I am not an artist; my fingers do not tingle for the brush. This is an inspiration I cannot reach; it floats above me. It moves and touches me, but shows me my own powerlessness."

I left Boston. I went back to winter, to my old home, to my every-day's work. My work was not monotonous; or if one tone did often recur in it, I built upon it, out of my heart and life, full chords of music. The vision of Margaret Stuart came before my eyes in the midst of all mechanical labor, in all the hours of leisure, in all the dreams of night. My life, indeed, grew more varied than ever; for I found myself more at ease with those around me, finding more happiness than I had ever found before in my intercourse with others. I found more of myself in them, more sympathy in their joy or sorrow, myself more of an equal with those around me.

The winter months passed quickly away. Mr. Clarkson frequently showed his disappointment because the mills no longer produced the wonder of last year. For me, it had almost passed out of my thoughts. It seemed but a part of the baser fabric of that vision where Margaret Stuart reigned supreme. I saw no way to help him; but more and more, daily, rejoiced in the outer sunshine of the world, in the fresh, glowing spring, in the flowers of May. So I was surprised again, when, near the close of May, after a week of stormy weather, the sunlight broke through the window where it had shone the year before. It hung a moment on the threads of work,–then, seeming to spurn them, fell upon the ground.

We were weaving, alas! a strange "arabesque pattern," as it was called, with no special form,–so it seemed to my eyes,–bringing in gorgeous colors, but set in no shape which Nature ever produced, either above the earth or in metals or crystals hid far beneath. How I reproached myself, on Mr. Clarkson's account, that I had not interceded, just for this one day of sunshine, for some pattern that Nature might be willing to acknowledge! But the hour was past, I knew it certainly, when the next day the sun was clouded, and for many days we did not see its face again.

So the time passed away. Another summer came along, and another glowing autumn, and that winter I did not go to Boston. Mr. Clarkson let me fall back again into my commonplace existence. I was no longer more than one of the common workmen. Perhaps, indeed, he looked upon, me with a feeling of disappointment, as though a suddenly discovered diamond had turned to charcoal in his hands. Sometimes he consulted me upon chemical matters, finding I knew what the books held, but evidently feeling a little disturbed that I never brought out any hidden knowledge.

This second winter seemed more lonely to me. The star that had shone upon me seemed farther away than ever. I could see it still. It was hopelessly distant. My Juno! For a little while I could imagine she was thinking of me, that my little name might be associated in her memory with what we had talked of, what we had seen together, with some of the high things which I knew must never leave her thoughts. But this glimmering memory of me I knew must have faded away as her life went on, varied as it was with change of faces, sounds of music, and whirl of excitement. Then, too, I never heard her name mentioned. She was out of my circle, as far away from my sphere as the heroines of those old romances that I had read so long ago; but more life-like, more warm, more sunny was her influence still. It uplifted my work, and crowned my leisure with joy. I blessed the happy sunshine of that 27th of May, which in a strange way had been the clue that led to my knowledge of her.

The longest winter-months melt away at last into spring, and so did these. May came with her promises and blights of promise. Recalling, this time, how sunshine would come with the latter end of May through the dark walls, I begged of Mr. Clarkson that a favorite pattern of mine might be put upon the looms. Its design was imagined by one of my companions in my later walks. He was an artist of the mills, and had been trying to bring within the rigid lines that were required some of the grace and freedom of Nature. He had scattered here some water-lilies among broad green leaves. My admiration for Nature, alas! had grown only after severe cultivation among the strange forms which we carpet-makers indulge in with a sort of mimicry of Nature. So I cannot be a fair judge of this, even as a work of art. I see sometimes tapestries in a meadow studded with buttercups, and I fancy patterns for carpets when I see a leaf casting its shadow upon a stone. So I may be forgiven for saying that these water-lilies were dear to me as seeming like Nature, as they were lying upon their green leaves.

Mr. Clarkson granted my request, and for a few days, this pattern was woven by the machine. These trial-days I was excited from my usual calmness. The first day the sunshine did not reach the narrow window. The second day we had heavy storm and rain. But the third day, not far from the expected hour, the sunshine burst through the little space. It fell upon my golden threads; it seemed directly to embrace them joyously, to encircle them closely. The sunlight seemed to incorporate itself with the woolly fibre, to conceal itself among the work where the shuttle chose to hide it. I fancied a sort of laughing joy, a clatter and dash in the machinery itself, as though there were a happy time, where was usually only a monotonous whirl. I could scarcely contain myself till noon.

When I left my room, I found, on inquiry, that Mr. Clarkson was not in the building, and was to be away all day. I went out into the air for a free breath, and looked up into the glowing sky, yet was glad to go back again to my machines, which I fancied would greet me with an unwonted joy. But, as I passed towards the stairway, I glanced into one of the lower rooms, where some of the clerks were writing. I fancied Mr. Clarkson might be there. There were women employed in this room, and suddenly one who was writing at a desk attracted my attention. I did not see her face; but the impression that her figure gave me haunted me as I passed on. Some one passing me saw my disturbed look.

"What have you seen? a ghost?" he asked.

"Who is writing in that room? Can you tell me?" I said.

"You know them all," was his answer, "except the new-comer, Miss Stuart. Have not you heard the talk of her history,–how the father has failed and died and all that, and how the daughter is glad enough to get work under Mr. Clarkson's patronage?"

The bell was ringing that called me, and I could not listen to more. My brain was whirling uncertainly, and I doubted if I ought to believe my ears. I went back to my work more dazed and bewildered than ever in my youthful days. I forgot the wonder of the morning. It was quite outshone by the wonder of the afternoon. I longed for my hour of release. I longed for a time for thought,–to learn whether what had been told me could be true. When the time came, I hastened down-stairs; but I found the door of the office closed. Its occupants had all gone. I hastened through the village, turned back again, and on the bridge over the little stream met Margaret Stuart. She was the same. It made no difference what were her surroundings, she was the same; there was the same wonderful glance, the same smile of repose. It made no difference where or how I met her, she ruled me still. She greeted me with the same air and manner as in her old home when I saw her first.

She told me afterwards of the changes and misfortunes of the past year, of her desire for independence, and how she found she was little able to uphold it herself.

"Some of my friends," she said, "were very anxious I should teach singing,–I had such a delicious voice, which had been so well cultivated. I could sing Italian opera-songs and the like. But I found I could only sing the songs that pleased me, and it was doubtful whether they would happen to suit the taste or the voice of those I should try to teach. For, I must confess it, I have never cultivated my voice except for my own pleasure, and never for the sake of the art. I did try to teach music a little while, and, oh, it was hopeless! I remembered some of our old talks about drudgery, and thought it had been a happy thing for me, if I had ever learned how to drudge over anything. What I mean is, I have never learned how to go through a monotonous duty, how to give it an inspiration which would make it possible or endurable. It would have been easier to summon up all my struggling for the sake of one great act of duty. I did not know how to scatter it over work day after day the same. Worse than all, in spite of all my education, I did not know enough of music to teach it."

She went on, not merely this evening, but afterwards, to tell me of the different efforts she had made to earn a living for herself with the help of kind friends.

"At last," she said, "I bethought me of my handwriting, of the 'elegant' notes which used to receive such praise; and when I met Mr. Clarkson one day in Boston, I asked him what price he would pay me for it. I will tell you that he was very kind, very thoughtful for me. He fancied the work he had to offer would be distasteful to me; but he has made it as agreeable, as easy to be performed, as can be done. My aunt was willing to come here with me. She has just enough to live upon herself, and we are likely to live comfortably together here. So I am trying that sort of work you praised so much when you were with me; and I shall be glad, if you can go on and show me what inspiration can bring into it."

So day after day I saw her, and evening after evening we renewed the old talks. The summer passed on, and the early morning found her daily at her work, every day pursuing an unaccustomed labor. Her spirit seemed more happy and joyous than ever. She seemed far more at home than in the midst of crowded streets and gay, brilliant rooms. Her expression was more earnest and spiritual than ever,–her life, I thought, gayer and happier.

So I thought till one evening, when we had walked far away down the little stream that led out of the town. We stopped to look into its waters, while she leaned against the trunk of a tree overshadowed it. We watched the light and shade that nickered below, the shadow of the clover-leaves, of the long reeds that hung almost across the stream. The quiet was enhanced by the busy motion below, the bustle of little animal life, the skimming of the water-insects, the tender rustling of the leaves, and the gentle murmuring of the stream itself. Then I looked at her, from the golden hair upon her head down to its shadow in the brook below. I saw her hands folded over each other, and, suddenly, they looked to me very thin and white and very weary. I looked at her again, and her whole posture was one of languor and weariness,–the languor of the body, not a weariness of the soul. There was a happy smile on the lips, and a gleam of happiness from under the half-closed eyes. But, oh, so tired and faint did the slender body look that I almost feared to see the happier spirit leave it, as though it were incumbered by something which could not follow it.

"Margaret!" I exclaimed. "You are wearing yourself away. You were never made for such labor. You cannot learn this sort of toil. You are of the sunshine, to play above the dusty earth, to gladden the dreary places. Look at my hands, that are large for work,–at my heavy shoulders, fitted to bear the yoke. Let me work for us both, and you shall still be the inspiration of my work, and the sunshine that makes it gold. The work we talked of is drudgery for you; you cannot bear it."

I think she would not agree to what I said about her work. She "had began to learn how to find life in every-day work, just as she saw a new sun rise every day." But she did agree that we would work together, without asking where our sunshine came from, or our inspiration.

So it was settled. And her work was around and within the old "natural-colored" house, whose walls by this time were half-embowered in vines. There was gay sunshine without and within. And the lichen was yellow that grew on the deeply sloping roof, and we liked to plant hollyhocks and sunflowers by the side of the quaint old building, while scarlet honeysuckles and trumpet-flowers and gay convolvuli gladdened the front porch.

There was but one question that was left to be disputed between us. Margaret still believed I was an artist, all-undeveloped.

"Those sunbeams"–

"I had nothing to do with them. They married golden threads that seemed kindred to them."

"It is not true. Sunbeams cannot exist without the sun. Your magnetic power, perhaps, attracted the true sunbeam, and you recreated others."

She fancies, if I would only devote myself to Art, I might become an American Murillo, and put a Madonna upon canvas.

But before we carried the new sunshine into the old house, I had been summoned again by Mr. Clarkson. Another wonderful piece of carpeting had gone out from the works, discovered by our agent before it had left our warehouse. It was the Water-Lily pattern,–lilies sitting among green leaves with sunshine playing in and out and among them. So dazzling it seemed, that it shed a light all round the darkened walls of the warehouse. It was priceless, he thought, a perfect unique. Better, almost, that never such a pattern should appear again. It ought to remain the only one in the world.

And it did so remain. The rival establishment built a new chimney to their mill, which shut out completely all sunshine or hope of sunshine from our narrow windows. This was accomplished before the next May, and I showed Mr. Clarkson how utterly impossible it was for the most determined sunbeam ever to mingle itself with our most inviting fabrics. Mr. Clarkson pondered a long time. We might build our establishment a story higher; we might attempt to move it. But here were solid changes, and the hopes were uncertain. Affairs were going on well, and the reputation of the mills was at its height. And the carpets of sunshine were never repeated.