CHAPTER XII.

Mrs. Lang returned from her wedding-journey happy and beautiful, charmed by all she had seen, and Mr. Lang was unusually demonstrative to every one in the excess of his joy; but I had reason to suppose that the announcement of our engagement reduced his exuberance considerably. Miss Darry did not, however, admit the least disappointment in their manner of receiving it; her own judgment was an estimate, from which, for herself, there was no appeal. She was the most entirely self-sustained woman I have ever met. Having decided that I was a genius, and that she loved me, the opinion of others was of no moment in her eyes. Mr. Lang merely offered his congratulations to me by saying,--

"Well, Sandy, my dear fellow, you are to obtain, it seems, what many a man of wealth and position will envy you. You must pardon me for saying that Miss Darry's choice is quite astonishing to her friends. If you possess the genius of Raphael, I shall still regard you as two very peculiar persons to come together; but I am in no mood to cavil at love."

Mrs. Lang said, kindly,--

"We must see more of you than ever, Mr. Allen, if you are finally to deprive us of Miss Darry. She has lived with me ever since the death of her parents, who were old friends of my mother, and we shall miss her very much. She is a splendid woman. You are sure you understand her?" she added, naively; "I freely confess I don't."

My pride swelled at all this. Frank Darry's love was the most blissful proof yet afforded of the personal power of the man who had captivated her, and more vehemently than was perhaps natural under the circumstances, I professed to comprehend, love, nay, worship Miss Darry.

The efforts for my culture were now redoubled. In order to demonstrate the wisdom of Miss Darry's choice, I must give palpable proof of superiority. I had earned enough for present support, and my forge must be given up. I must cut off all my old connections, go to the city, visit studios, draw from casts, attend galleries of paintings, have access to public libraries, make literary and artistic acquaintances, pursue my classical studies, and display the powers which Miss Darry, by her own force of will, projected into me. Such were the business-like plans which usurped the place of those mutual adulatory confidences presumed to occupy the first elysian hours of an engagement. Miss Darry's love was not of that caressing, tendril description, so common with her sex, which plays in tender demonstrativeness around the one beloved; it helped constantly to keep the highest standard before him, and to sustain rather than depend.

About a week after Mr. and Mrs. Lang's return, Mr. Leopold, who had accompanied them, came back; and Miss Darry intimated that it would be well for me to inform him of our engagement. I said to him, therefore, rather abruptly one afternoon, as I was about leaving to seek Miss Darry, (who was never quite ready to see me, if my painting-hours were abridged,)--

"Mr. Leopold, I have sold my forge to-day. I wanted to ask your advice about the course to be pursued in town; but I am under orders now of the most binding kind, I am engaged to Miss Darry."

Mr. Leopold was busy at his easel, his profile toward me. I was certainly not mistaken; the blood rushed over his face, subsided, leaving it very pale, and he made a quick, nervous movement which overthrew his palette. He rose quietly and replaced it, however, saying, in his usual tone,--

"Very well, Sandy. I am ready to help you in any way I can."

"But you do not--no one congratulates me," I said, deceived by his calmness, and supposing the momentary suspicion that his was the love rejected by Miss Darry must have been a mistaken one.

"If they do not, it is not because of any lack appreciation for either of you," he answered slowly, "but that they fail to see the point of union. I admire the pine; it is straight, strong, self-reliant, and yet wind-haunted by many tender and melancholy sentiments; I like the peach-tree, too, with its pink tufts of fanciful blooming in the spring-time: but if these two should grow side by side, I am not sure but I should wonder a little."

His smile, as he looked me full in the eye, had genuine good-will mingled with its humor; and it softened the indignation I felt at the implied comparison.

"You make me out the weaker vessel of the two, then?" I asked, resentfully.

"No, Sandy, I don't say that; possibly, as whatever power we have runs parallel with Providential forces or against them, it makes mortal strength or weakness. But may you become a truly noble man, if you are to be Miss Darry's husband!" he answered, rising and extending his hand.

I believe he was one to scorn a lack of self-control in himself; but I do not think he cared either to reveal or to hide the love which I read at that moment. I grasped his hand as cordially as it was given, and hurried down stairs, out of the door, and over the hill, with a strong conviction that Miss Darry was a mistaken and foolish woman, and a prompting to disinterestedness not quite compatible with my relations to her. I was in no mood for her society, so I resolved to delay seeing her until evening, and conclude my arrangements at the forge, as I was to go to the city the next week.

Approaching the village, I overtook Miss Dinsmore; and though my new pretensions had not increased my popularity among the villagers, I had reason to consider her my firm friend and advocate; so I was quite willing to escape my unpleasant train of thought in listening to her.

"Well, Sandy, nobody gets a sight of you nowadays down this way. I never was so set up as when I heard tell you was goin' to marry the schoolmarm. Why, I was always certain sure you'd take to Annie Bray. Such a sweet little lamb as she is; not a bit high-strung 'cause she's made much of at the great house on the hill, though she does sing like a bird in an apple-tree every Sunday, when Louisy Purdo doesn't drown her voice with screechin'; but she's grown more sober an' quiet-like than ever. Miss Bray says she helps a powerful deal about house, and Amos don't swear so much now he sees it hurts her."

"She's a dear little thing," I interrupted, impatiently; "but, Miss Dinsmore, do you know Mr. Bray may have all the blacksmith-work to himself now? for I'm going to town for the rest of the summer and autumn."

"You don't say so, Sandy! Well, old Dr. Allen wasn't one of us, as I tell 'em, and there's no sort of reason why you should be; and your mother was a real born lady, though she was so gentle-spoken 't wasn't half the women could tell the difference between her and them."

"But, Miss Dinsmore," I said, "I don't expect to forget my old friends, because I hope to do better somewhere else than here. I shall often come down to Warren."

"Oh, yes, you'll come down, I don't mistrust that," she replied, slowly nodding her green calash, "as long as the schoolmarm is at the Hill; but Annie will look paler than ever. She thinks a sight of you, poor thing, and it will never be the same to her. She loves you like--a sister," added Miss Dinsmore, the tears in her faded blue eyes, and her sense of womanly modesty supplying the familiar title.

We were very near the Variety Store. If I could for a moment drift away from this annoying theme!

"How did you like Mr. Leopold, that afternoon I introduced him to you, Miss Dinsmore?" I asked, in desperation.

"Oh! ah! Well, Sandy, to speak plain, I've seen him a matter of three or four times, may-be, since. He set down, quite friendly-like, to a bit of supper, last time he come. I suppose he feels lonely; he seems pleasant-spoken, and is liked by everybody round here; poor man, he oughtn't to be without a mate. He's taken a great likin' to Annie Bray; but then, of course, he's got some sense of what's becomin'; she's years too young for him."

"Too young! I should think so," indignantly; "he's old enough to be her grandfather."

"No, Sandy,--no, I think not," said Miss Dinsmore, pausing thoughtfully at her door-step. "Old Mr. Bray would have been nigh upon eighty come next harvest; but then Annie has nobody to look out for her now you know, exceptin' Amos, who a'n't over wide-awake, between you and me, though an honester man never lived."

I was very willing to part with Miss Dinsmore.

"Another afternoon experience like this will make a hermit of me," I muttered, impatiently, as I strode away in the same direction from which I had come.

Miss Darry, Mr. Leopold, anybody, was better than Annie Bray, with her sweet, pale face, in my present mood.

"Annie has nobody to look out for her now, you know": many a day I remembered with a pang that this was too true.

CHAPTER. XIII.

I sold my forge and went to the city. My name appeared in the catalogue of the fall exhibition:--"Forest Scene, by Alexander Allen." I have no reason to suppose that the genuine merit of my picture secured for it a place in the gallery, though doubtless some as poor by established artists found their way there; but these having proved they could do better could afford to be found occasionally below concert pitch. However, Mr. Leopold commended it as highly as his conscience would permit, and I reaped the reward; while Miss Darry gloried over its admission as an unalloyed tribute to ability, and treasured the catalogue more carefully than my photograph. The same course of study and labor which I had pursued in Warren was continued in the city, with this difference: I had not the pure air, simple food, regular life, manual exertion, or social evenings at Hillside. Miss Darry wrote to me regularly, but I felt wearied after her letters. There were no tender assurances of undying affection, so soothing, doubtless, to tired brain and heavy heart; but they read somewhat in this style:--

"MY DEAR SANDY,--Won't you begin at once a course of German reading? 'Das Leben Jesu' of Strauss will help you wonderfully. The old Platonic philosophers have done you some good; but you have a faith too childlike, a complete reliance upon Providence quite too unreasoning, for a man of your ability. Through your own developed self you must learn to find the Supreme Intelligence,--not to spell him out letter by letter in every flower that grows, every trifling event of your life. You began with belief in the old theological riddle of the Trinity; then with perception of the Creator in his visible world; but to your Naturalism you must add at least a knowledge of Mysticism, Transcendentalism,--mists which, veiling indeed the outward creation, are interpenetrated by the sun for personal illumination, more alluring by their veiled light, like those sunned fogs Mr. Leopold deals with occasionally, than the clear every-day atmosphere of beliefs sharply outlined by a creed. When you have sounded the entire scale of prevailing and past theories, even to the depths of unbelief, then alone are you able, as a reasoning being, to translate God's dealings with you into consistent religious faith."

And ended often with,--

"I hope you work hard, intensely, in your art. Do not think, when you lay aside your brush, you lay aside the artist also. Genius is unresting. A picture may shape itself in your brain at any hour, by day or night; and don't be too indolent, my dear boy, to give it outward embodiment, if it does."

"I was sadly disappointed at the result of the last," she wrote once. "Mr. Lang showed it to Mr. Peterson, the sculptor, who pronounced it slightly below the average first attempts. Of course, from your devotion to coloring, you did not feel sufficiently interested to put forth all your powers; still I accept the trial as a proof of your affection. Having greater genius for painting, you could certainly succeed in sculpture, nevertheless, if you heartily labored at it. I could never accept the definition of genius given by the author of 'Rab and his Friends,' which limits it, if I remember rightly, to an especial aptitude for some one pursuit. Genius is a tremendous force, not necessarily to succeed only in one channel, although turned to one by natural bent."

* * * * *

Little Annie, at my earnest request, wrote to me occasionally. It was a brief parting with her: she feared her own self-control, possibly. I know I feared mine; for, had she showed actual grief, I might have pacified it at the cost of my profession or my life. She wrote in this wise:--

"DEAR SANDY,--I know of course you are very busy, for Miss Darry told me at Hillside that your painting was in the Exhibition, and that you were rapidly becoming a great artist; and this makes me think I ought to confess to you, Sandy, that I was wrong that morning when I called Miss Darry proud. She has been very kind to me lately. She said it was not right that I should be taught music, and all sorts of lovely, pleasant studies, and not know how to write and cipher. So she teaches me with Mrs. Lang's sisters. She says I already express myself better than I did, and I can cast up father's account-book every Saturday night; but please forgive me, dear brother Sandy, I long for that stiff old work-hour to be over, that I may run up to Mrs. Lang's sun-shiny room, with its flowers, pictures, piano, and herself. Miss Darry, because of her very great talents, Sandy, is far above me. Do you know, though you are to be a great painter, she seems to me more talented than you, with your old home-like ways? But then we sha'n't have those home-like ways any more. Oh, Sandy, we miss you! but I do hope you will be good and great and happy. Miss Darry says you work night and day. But you must sleep some, or you'll be sick. I always fancied great men were born great; it must be hard to have to be made so. I guess you will be glad to hear that father don't swear and scold now; he says he is doing well, and he bought me a new dress the other day at Miss Dinsmore's. She has got back from the city with the gayest flowers and ribbons. My dress is orange-colored. I don't fancy one quite so bright, and wear the old violet one you gave me oftener; but I can't exactly see why I don't like it, after all; for the very same color, on the breast of the Golden Oriole that builds a nest in our garden, I think is perfectly splendid. I hope you won't forget your loving little sister,

"ANNIE BRAY."

Sometimes she wrote less brightly and hopefully; but, oh, what a blessing it was to have her write at all! I found myself watching for those natural, loving words, for the acknowledgment of missing me, as, wearied after viewing Alpine peaks, one might stoop cheered and satisfied to pluck a tiny flower. Miss Darry never missed me. She discouraged the idea of a long autumn vacation, and offered to come to the city and board, that my work might still go on. I began to entertain serious doubts, if, when we were married, I should be suffered to live with her,--or whether she would not send me to boarding-school, or to pursue my studies abroad.

When October came, with the rich sadness of its days, at once a prophecy of grief and an assurance of its soothing, I broke down utterly. My aesthetic and literary friends did not feel that sympathy for my worn-out body and soul which both demanded. I applied to the only legitimate source for aid in my weakness and the permission to yield to it; but before either arrived, Nature proved more than a match for Miss Darry, and sent me exhausted to bed. Miss Darry appeared the next morning, and if the whole breezy atmosphere of Hillside had clung to her garments, she could not have had a more bracing effect. How bright, loving, and gentle she was, when she found me really ill! To be sure, she prescribed vigorous tonics, as was in accordance with her style; in fact, she was one herself; but she relieved my weak and languid dejection by brilliant talk, when I could bear it,--by tender words of hope, when I could not. My late internal censures upon her, as a hard task-mistress, were now the ghosts of self-reproach, which a morbid condition conjured about my pillow; and the vision of her healthy, self-restrained nature presided over every dream, recalling most derisively Mr. Leopold's simile of the pine- and peach-trees.

I left my bed, from very shame at prostration, long before I was able, and returned with her to Hillside, whither Mrs. and Mr. Lang invited me for the rest which she now considered necessary. Mr. Leopold had left Warren, and retaken a studio in town for the fall and winter; but many a memory of his kind deeds and pleasant manners lingered in the place. Every village must have its hero, its great man of past or present, looking down, like Hawthorne's great stone face, in supreme benignity upon it. Mr. Leopold had been the first occupant of this royal chair in Warren; for the enthusiasm which seeks a better than itself had just been called forth by the teaching and influence of Hillside.

One morning, when Miss Darry was occupied with her scholars, I wandered through the village and to the Brays' cottage to make my first call. Mrs. Bray was busy making cake. Annie, so tall and slender, that, as she stood with her face turned from me, I wondered what graceful young lady they had there, was prepared for her walk to Hillside, her books in a little satchel on her arm. Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of my thin, pale face, though her own was fragile as a snow-drop; but she at once apologized for and explained her sorrow by calling me her "dear old brother Sandy." I proposed one of our old-time strolls together up the hill, and we soon started in company. Half way up, at the meadow, where we had arranged and painted our first picture, I yielded to the impulse, which heretofore I had resisted, to sit again on the old stump and recall the scene. I was really weary, for this was my first long walk, and Annie looked as though rest would not come amiss; so I helped her over the stile, and we sat down. The rich, fervid hues I used so homoeopathically by the stroke of my brush were spread over miles of forest; a vaporous veil of mist hung over every winding stream and mountain lake, and, reflecting the brilliant-colored shrubbery which bordered them, they glared like stained glass; the sunshine filtered down through haze and vapor like gold-dust on the meadow-land; gold and purple key-notes of autumn coloring in many varying shades of tree, water, and cloud blended to the perfect chord, uttering themselves lastly most quietly in the golden-rods and asters at our feet. That hazy, dreamy atmosphere uniting with my vague, aimless state of mind, I would fain make it accountable for the talk which followed.

First we went over the old times, I recalling, Annie assenting in a quiet, half-sad way, or brightening as though by an effort, and throwing in a reminiscence herself. We talked of those we had mutually known, and I was just recalling the rude admiration of Tracy Waters to her mind, when she suggested that she should be late for her lesson,--it was time to leave.

"No, indeed, Annie!" I exclaimed, seizing her hand as she sat beside me,--"this is the first hour's actual rest I have had for months; it is like the returning sleep of health after delirium. You shall not go. When have I ever had you to myself before? The time is beautiful; we are happy; do not let us go up to Hillside to-day--or any more."

I spoke not so much wildly as naturally and weariedly; but Annie's cheek flushed scarlet, as she started, with a touch of Miss Darry's energy, from the stump beside me.

"Yes, Sandy, we will go to Hillside at once; you shall tell Miss Darry, that, in talking over by-gone days with your little sister, you forgot yourself and overstayed your time; and I, too, must make my excuses."

She walked quickly away, and before I had risen, in a half-stupefied way, she was at the stile.

It was rather difficult to rejoin her. I had the novel and not altogether pleasing sensation of having been refused before I had asked; and my child-friend, taught of Nature's simple dignity and sense of right, was more at ease for the remainder of the walk than I.