CHAPTER III.

The Noonday was nearly finished. The city was ringing with the surpassing beauty and the matchless voice of the young singer Alice. And Martin Gray’s numerous and powerful friends every where declared that the picture on which he worked so diligently, would add the greenest leaf to his glory-wreath.

The artist loved his picture—loved he the original? No! he could have worshiped the canvas on which that matchless face was impressed, but when he looked on Alice, and listened to her beautiful words and the so musical, delicious pronunciation, though he saw and heard with the most enthusiastic admiration, it was still only that of the artist—the _man’s_ heart was untouched.

He had never shown to her the “child-angel.” After his call upon “Alice,” so strengthened was become Martin Gray’s persuasion that it was _the_ Alice of bygone recollections, that he feared to hazard the display of the portrait to her.

Let us see if his precaution was a wise one.

It was the last sitting. On the following day the lady was to depart with a distinguished company of singers, on a long professional tour through the Western and Southern cities. She had risen, for the hour was passed, and stood looking for the last time on the beautiful works of the artist, which adorned the room.

“Do you remember,” said Martin, approaching her, “I promised to show you the portrait which I called the Sunrise, pardon me that I have not done so before, this is the one.”

He raised his hand and turned to the light a small picture, which for the few past days had looked upon the wall.

A broken exclamation of surprise, rather than the usual tribute of warm praise, escaped the young creature.

“Did _you_ paint this?” she asked. “Pray tell me when and how?” she added, recovering her self-possession immediately.

“I was a youth, very poor and needy, having some talent, and a great deal of taste for sketching and painting. Very unfortunately, as I thought, I was forced either to altogether resign this employment so delightful to me, or to pursue it in order to supply myself with food and clothes. To me it must not be a pastime—I could not hesitate long—it became my profession. But I had, what to you may seem an inconceivable dislike to painting faces merely as a workman paints letters on a sign. I imagined that it was just as easy to win the smiles of dame Fortune by picturing only the exceedingly beautiful, and giving them emblematic names, and I was not altogether wrong. Passing one day through the streets of this very city, I came upon a group of children playing—one of that little band struck me as being nothing short of perfection, I could think of nothing as I looked on her, but how beautiful a sunrise!—how splendid will be the day that ensues! At my request the child guided me to her home, it was a poor one, and therein bore a great resemblance to my own. The mother consented that I should take the child’s likeness, and—this is it, I never saw the little one again. Afterward, as I have told you, for many years I traveled in Europe, but though constantly on the look out, I never found a Noonday worthy to follow a Sunrise like this child’s. I thank you, madam, that I have in you, and in my own city, at last found what Europe could not show me.”

“May I ask,” said the lady, with face slightly averted from the gaze of Martin Gray, “may I ask the name of the girl?”

It was the question which of all others the artist most wished her to propose, and he watched her closely, as in a careless tone that belied his glance, he said—

“I remember it very well—it was Alice Flynn!”

“Thank you—it is indeed a lovely picture! You have amply deserved, sir, all the honors that are, or can be awarded to you.”

Martin Gray attended her to the carriage that stood in waiting, but Alice the songstress did not look upon him till she gave him her hand in parting, when he saw her face, then, the artist knew he had not been deceived; she was pale as death.

A few months afterward, came from a city far to the South, a letter to our _hero_, its contents were a five hundred dollar note, and these words:

“The child for whose education you so generously provided when both she and yourself were poor and unknown, would fain convince you that with increase of years, and fortune, and happiness, she has not forgotten—that she is not ungrateful. All the good that has fallen to her in this life she is glad and proud to trace directly to you, to that one act of well-timed charity. May the God of Heaven for ever bless you. The ‘Sunrise’ and the ‘Noonday’ of your life you have made unspeakably glorious, may the night be without a cloud, and complete in its magnificence!”

It required no shrewd _guesser_ to determine for Martin Gray the author of this brief note. The cities of the South were at that very moment vieing with each other in lauding the Northern songsters, and the queen of beauty and of song, the lady “Alice”—and the artist rejoiced in her brilliant success, and waited with impatience till he should see and speak with her again.

In the years when honors thickly clustered around his brow, when Fortune had laid many of her choicest gifts at his feet, there was yet one thing wanting to complete his happiness.

There were few homes on earth so beautiful as his, and his wife and children (for Martin in course of time became an old man,) were all that the heart of man could desire. There were no lines betokening care, or a fierce strife with the world, on the artist’s handsome face. He had labored, and that constantly, it is true, but his had not been a wearying toil, rather such as had been intensely satisfying. The visions of beauty with which he mentally surrounded himself; had never been frightened away by rough and harsh experience—to him even as in his youth, “all things beautiful were what they seemed!”

Many enchanting, perfect works had gone forth from the rooms of Martin Gray into the world, but there were two original ones for which he rejected every offer, however extravagant. Copies and engravings of them had been given to the public, but the canvas on which his fingers worked while his eyes were gazing on the loveliest and most perfect specimens of beauty to his mind conceivable, were precious beyond all price to him.

The series had not been completed, for Martin Gray had never seen a human being fearfully beautiful, and irrevocably fallen, whereby to represent the “Night.” And as years passed on, his heart more earnestly and continually hoped that he never might.

The great artist is dead. The passing visions of a beautiful fancy have forever flitted away—“he sleeps the last sleep”—but his works live after him. They live to speak to us of their creator—to tell us of his goodness, of the deep unfathomed spring of human love within his heart. He sleeps, but he has left a name that is cherished by his country, and his genius is a source of national pride. How well is he remembered and loved by those who knew him! And the students in his own glorious art, with what enthusiasm and reverence do they cherish a memory of him!

During his widow’s life his studio remained as he had left it—it was a Mecca to which for years pilgrims most devout resorted. To many that artist’s rooms were sacred places; standing in them they breathed the air of inspiration, and held sweet communings with the spirit of the Beautiful.

Of the sublime lessons, and they were many, which spoke forth from those walls, there was one that made the gazer shudder and turn pale. No one gazing on the three faces which were separated from all other paintings wrought by the same hand, could have resisted the conviction that the artist had meant, ay, and that he had succeeded in conveying to the mind of the gazer, a deep and awful moral lesson, for the “Night” was with the “Sunrise” and the “Noonday!”

It was marvellous, it was dreadful to trace the great resemblance between the likeness of the angelic little child, the incomparably beautiful maiden, and the splendid, but fallen woman!

The same bright curling hair, the same deep, sapphire eyes, the fresh bloom on the fair cheek, the graceful form—they were unmistakeable. But oh! there was an expression on those features of the eldest woman, that the innocent child and the guileless maiden could not have interpreted—it was a bold, defiant look, that told it was a sorrowful and an ever-to-be-lamented day that saw her come before the world to wrestle for its honors—a very siren, but ah! how weak to strive against its sinful allurements, its awful temptations.

They are one and the same, said every heart that gazed upon them. Reader, _they were_! For the “Night” was also a _portrait_, and the last work of Martin Gray!

Alas! alas! sweet Alice! splendid and courted Alice! wretched and ruined Alice!

* * * * *

THE MISANTHROPE.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

Speak no more! Thou canst not comfort me. I’d rather hear The serpent’s hiss than speech from a false heart. There was a time thy voice had power to calm, And lay the fiend within me: Let me rest Lonely and cursed amid my wretchedness; I have ventured all and lost—’twas Destiny! There are dark spirits moving through the world, Casting a saddening influence over all Within their vortex: Such perchance is mine; With its wild, fitful struggles, and its gleams Now good, now evil, stronger with my strength The eclipse of Heaven’s brightness. Who can read The unknown language of the human heart, Though writ in fiery characters? Where the power To judge an erring creature, when the thoughts, Hidden even to himself, cannot be fathomed Save by Omniscience? In thy hollow hand Measure the waters of the depthless sea, Or with far-seeing vision through the expanse Of yonder firmament of Heaven, speak Of that which is to be, though yet unseen In its bright pages: Easier task for man Than judge his brother justly. To myself I am a mystery, why not to thee? The waters of my heart are deeper far Than plummet ever sounded. Oh, dark Future! Thy veil once lifted, will the power be given To note their secret depths. Why have I trusted But to be deceived? and not by man alone! Why have I ever loved, if but to love Has been to bind myself upon the wheel Of wretchedness? The punishment of gods! Why should I ask for sunshine on my heart, If with it, it must wither? ask thyself. Reading thine own heart’s secret, thou may’st learn How much I needed sympathy. My path, Now filled with rankest weeds, might have been pure Under thy smile and teaching. Now, too late! To wrestle with the world for an existence, Bowed, but not crushed by Fate, is of itself Enough to turn the heart to bitter gall, And make it curse, where, in its sunnier hours, It might have shed a blessing. Fortune’s smile, Unto the favored, clothes the earth with flowers; Its frown, alas! will make the brightest spot Black as a demon’s glance—its fruit as bitter As the Dead Sea’s—and like it naught but ashes! The meanest thing, Infuriated in the hunter’s toils, Turns at the last with fierce and vengeful cry To battle with its foe; and some there are, Lost to all hope, in their own quiv’ring flesh Implant their poisonous venom, choosing thus To be themselves their executioners, Than fall upon the spear of might and wrong. Such do I fear myself: That I have been, In happier days, a lover of my kind— Heart as capacious, hand as firm and true, As ever graced the proudest in the land. I have been thus—ANSWER! what am I now? I have found coldness where I looked for love— Ingrates ’mid friends—the half averted head, With the neglectful glance, that seemed to say, Thou art not of us now! Half-way to meet And pay back scorn by scorn, keener than that The eye of man e’er threw upon me—thus Was I ever—thus will ever be: Though it heap coals of fire upon my head, And writhe me with its tortures, still my soul, Strong in its desperate fury, asks no boon But hate, to be repaid by darker hate— Failing in that, to die unwept, unsung. Madness is not my portion—I shall live! And from the chaplet round the brow of Fame Yet seize, perchance, a leaf. Love in my heart Is not yet all extinct: what it has been, Brighter and purer than the present hour, Has fled forever! Yet I cannot live Unloving and unloved. But hand in hand With my ambition, upward must it rise, Subordinate, yet true unto the truthful. Into the channels where deceit has crept— Into the hearts unfaithful—o’er the paths Of those who have repaid my love with guile, The blast of my sirocco hate shall sweep, Sudden to rise and swift to overthrow. Such are my thoughts. Would they were written on my brow, that all Might read the tale untold. My story’s brief. ’Tis the twin passions—they have mastery, And sway my pulse of life. There are brief moments When passion lieth sleeping, and my mind Reveling in its dominion, far removed From petty cares and struggles, soars aloft (Smiling amid its tortures, then forgotten,) Through the dark Future; with untiring wing, Restless as the young eaglet, seeks the sun Of light, and truth, and wisdom: or retiring Back to the brilliant, unforgotten past, Where every foot of earth contains a portion Of immortality, seeks out its mate, That may have wrestled with the storms of Time And won the victor’s crown: or, from the page Of mighty spirits, who have left a deep And never-failing well of giant thought, Feeding my flickering lamp of life, nor dream There is a world elsewhere, but in the visions The arch-enchanters have raised up for Time! God’s blessings on ye, noble-hearted men! How often to this saddened soul of mine Have ye brought strength and hope! Earth has not Jewels so rare, as those ye thickly scatter Upon the wind for your posterity. To me your voices, In the still midnight, in the garish day, Have ever gently come: I trust in you— And ye are faithful: Rest forever with me. The prophet lore of Israel—the sound Of swelling harps by Grecian wizards strung— Promethean echoes!—the ever-burning page Of England’s brighter days—the undying song Of richest Shakspeare—and the noble strains Of master-minds drinking their inspiration From his pure fountain—all the mighty line— Sweeps by this distant shallow generation, The monody of Time! Sweet friends! My heart henceforth must nestle in your loves, Or be forever lost. When forgotten, For a brief period, ’mid the worldly strife And emptiness of things, how sinks my spirit, Imprisoned ’mid the iron bars of forms. I have no hope of happiness in life, That is not bound up with the mighty past. The present is a Hell—the future, dark. Earth’s comforters are for the happy few. No denizen am I. I stand alone. Alone, for judgment? Stormy and wild my passions—full of sins, Grievous and bitter. Who shall succor me? I looked to love—I found it hollowness. I looked to hate—I found it bitterness. Unto ambition—and it smiled upon me But to elude my grasp:—unto a future, My stubborn heart refuses its belief. I have not learned deceit, nor schooled myself To be a hypocrite. What I am, I am! The secret sin of man—Hypocrisy— Can never mate with me: Would that it could. Wer’t so, I would not suffer as I must. Could I but veil myself thus from men’s eyes, And seem the thing I am not, I might live Happier in this world’s love. But let that pass. I will not bend my knee, or lose one spark Of Heaven’s heritage—my manhood’s truth— But trample on the vampires of the world, Who fatten on the blood of noble things. What though the strife’s unequal? Let me fall, Strong in my ruined hopes; the shrine profaned Within the inner temple, is to me Dearer than all now opened to my soul; So let me die with prayer upon my lips, And like old Israel’s stricken one, pull down A glorious desolation in my fall! Wild are my thoughts, oh God! And wilder still the passionate heart that beats With a fallen angel’s power. There liveth not Among earth’s myriads, a more restless spirit, So formed for good or ill! I have been gentle, Loving and kind to all. My curse has been To feel the unkind thought—to doubt all truth— Of woman and of man. Naught’s left me now But shaken confidence and cheated hopes, A long and drear account to be repaid With interest manifold. The restless fire That has preyed upon my brain, and blasted life— Destroyed my peace, and made me stern and strong As the avenging fury, must recoil Upon the heads of those whose path has been In triumph o’er my heart. Shall I then spare? Who spared me where I trusted most? Whose hand Clasped firmly mine? Speak! whose kind word, When sorrow was upon me, came unto me, As it should come, in peace, and bid me hope? The butterflies that thronged around my steps, But to fly from me when the sun went down? I think of them, not to give blow for blow, But to tramp out their false hearts ’neath my heel. They left a sting behind—but yet I live! Ay! they shall feel I live. Their loss was naught. The serpent’s tooth was nearer to my heart That tortured me to madness. I had loved; Thou knowest it. Call it love—idolatry! For it was my religion. All but that— Power, wealth and friends—I could have lost, Hadst thou but trustfully still kept thy vow, Calming the raging fever of my brain! Well! when these painted lizards crawled aside, And I clung, like the wretched mariner, Unto a straw, I deemed a plank, for life. Whose voice came o’er the deep and angry sea, Bidding me be of faith and hope? Speak, now! What! art thou voiceless? Nearer, bend thine ear! Nay, shudder not—there’s “method in my madness!” I would not shriek it out aloud, for fear The sound might create revelry in Hell! Not the one I loved. Not hers, whose every thought was mine—not hers, Who should have searched my deep, unquiet heart, And soothed it in its agony. Oh no! Too hard a task to ask this boon of her, Whose dearest thought seemed but to learn the way To help to crush—not save. Oh God! forgive me! How much of sorrow, sin and shame, my life Would have been guiltless of, had but the one— The only one of earth—reached forth her hand, And with that hand, her heart, to lift me up And keep my manhood pure. It was a dream! I only deemed it but her duty here; I may have asked too much! ’Tis over now. The sharpest strife is o’er, and I must be Sufficient to myself. The past can ne’er Recall itself to me, but with my tears, That have been tears of blood. Would that the fate Of the Olympus-stricken Niobe Had been mine also—that I had been marble. Oh charity! oh love! how much we need Thy softening power. Ye, whose hearts are bowed Before a great Creator; ye, whose thoughts Should be all purity—cannot ye feel The power given you to soothe and calm The troubled souls of weary-hearted men, Who wrestle, like the Titan, ’gainst the power Of the Omnipotent! Hurling ever back Against the thunderer’s bolts, an avalanche, Cleft from the cloud-topped hills of human pride, The settlings of a world of hate and scorn. So fades my life, And with it, all the poetry of youth, The summer of existence—lost forever. As fleeting as the bubble, Reputation— As false as social ties—delusive all— The mirage of the world. In this, my deep communing with myself, New strength has come upon me. Oh, my soul! Gird on thy armor of Indifference, And forth into the world to toil and strive, Bearing thy secret ever present to thee, Lest weak Humanity should tamely yield Unto its earlier promptings: Up and work! There is a pathway left for Lucifer; All portals are not closed. Up, up, the time Is present now; fearless and bold press on; Stay not for counsel or impediment, But, like the Roman matron’s chariot, Pass recklessly upon thy destined course, Though Nature’s holiest ruin stops the way.

* * * * *

ALICE VERNON.

BY E. CURTISS HINE, U. S. N.

There is many a bright star gleaming, In memory’s distant sky, And their soft light is streaming On days long, long gone by. And often hover round me The loved and lost of yore, Ere cankering care had found me, Or life’s young dream was o’er!

We see at early morning Soft hues steal o’er the sky, Its eastern arch adorning, To glad the raptured eye, But deem not their complexion, Like flowers in joyous spring, Is caused by the reflection From passing angel’s wing!

E’en thus, our thoughts concealing. We watch o’er woman’s cheek The hues of beauty stealing, With hearts too full to speak, And little think those blushes, Like June’s young roses fair, Come when some angel brushes His loving pinions there!

O, fair young ALICE VERNON, To thee fond memory turns, As loving sun-flowers turn on Their stems when noon-day burns! We roamed the woods together In life’s young break of day, Ere clouds and wintry weather Had shadowed o’er our way!

Bright were thy braided tresses, As braided sunbeams are, And like a glimpse of Heaven The smile that thou didst wear. That smile still haunts my memory Like tale of fairy land, And oft in dreamy mood I see Thy form before me stand!

Sweet, laughing ALICE VERNON, It seemeth strange to me, And yet they tell me Time hath laid His heavy hand on thee! I cannot deem thee faded, Though weary suns have set On weary, weary, weary days And years since last we met!

I feel it now—the fairest things Are doomed to pass away, And yet my heart the firmest clings To those that first decay! And so, sweet ALICE VERNON, I turn to thee always, As flowers their stems will turn on To drink the sun’s bright rays!

* * * * *

SONG.

ON THE WIDE WORLD I AM SAILING.

On the wide world I am sailing, My bark is on the tide; The lead and the line are trailing, And the spread sail reaches wide.

With the ebb and flow I’m gliding, Adown the stream of Time; ’Mong breakers oft I am riding, And o’er the wrecks of crime.

’Mid troubled waves wild dashing, When storms and tempests come; ’Mid heaven and earth’s wild crashing, My life-boat is my home.

Then out on the wild world roaming, In troubles or in sport; On the stream of Time wild foaming, My cold grave is my port! AGNES.

* * * * *

MAJOR ANSPACH.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MARC FOURNIER.

(_Concluded from page 286_)