Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches Part 6

Such revolutions, I know, are rare in everyday life, and but seldom occur; in fact, they never happen except in those rare instances where nature has stamped a character with the elements of inborn originality and force, which accident, or sudden revulsion, develops at once into full maturity. To such a soul, death of an only parent operates like the summer solstice upon the whiter snow of Siberia. It melts away the weakness and credulity of childhood almost miraculously, and exhibits, with the suddenness of an apparition, the secret and hitherto unknown traits that will forever afterwards distinguish the individual. The explanation of this curious moral phenomenon consists simply in bringing to the surface what already was in existence below; not in the instantaneous creation of new elements of character. The tissues were already there; circ.u.mstance hardens them into bone. Thus we sometimes behold the same marvel produced by the marriage of some characterless girl, whom we perhaps had known from infancy, and whose individuality we had a.s.sociated with cake, or crinoline--a gay humming-bird of social life, so light and frivolous and unstable, that, as she flitted across our pathway, we scarcely deigned her the compliment of a thought. Yet a week or a month after her nuptials, we meet the self-same warbler, not as of old, beneath the paternal roof, but under her own "vine and fig-tree," and in astonishment we ask ourselves, "Can this be the bread-and-b.u.t.ter Miss we pa.s.sed by with the insolence of a sneer, a short time ago?" Behold her now! On her brow sits womanhood. Upon her features beam out palpably traits of great force and originality. She moves with the majesty of a queen, and astounds us by taking a leading part in the discussion of questions of which we did not deem she ever dreamed. What a transformation is here! Has nature proven false to herself? Is this a miracle? Are all her laws suspended, that she might transform, in an instant, a puling trifler into a perfect woman? Not so, oh! doubter. Not nature is false, but you are yourself ignorant of her laws. Study Shakspeare; see Gloster woo, and win, the defiant, revengeful and embittered Lady Anne, and confess in your humility that it is far more probable that you should err, than that Shakspeare should be mistaken.

Not many days after the death of M. Marmont, it was agreed by all the friends of Lucile, that the kind offer extended to her by Pollexfen should be accepted, and that she should become domiciliated in his household. He was unmarried, it is true, but still he kept up an establishment. His housekeeper was a dear old lady, Scotch, like her master, but a direct contrast in every trait of her character. Her duties were not many, nor burdensome. Her time was chiefly occupied in family matters--cooking, was.h.i.+ng, and feeding the pets--so that it was but seldom she made her appearance in any other apartment than those entirely beneath her own supervision.

The photographer had an a.s.sistant in his business, a Chinaman; and upon him devolved the task of caring for the outer offices.

Courtland, with a small stock of money, and still smaller modic.u.m of health, left at once for Bidwell's Bar, where he thought of trying his fortune once more at mining, and where he was well and most cordially known.

It now only remained to accompany Lucile to her new home, to see her safely ensconced in her new quarters, to speak a flattering word in her favor to Pollexfen, and then, to bid her farewell, perhaps forever. All this was duly accomplished, and with good-bye on my lips, and a sorrowful sympathy in my heart, I turned away from the closing door of the photographer, and wended my way homewards.

Mademoiselle Marmont was met at the threshold by Martha McClintock, the housekeeper, and ushered at once into the inner apartment, situated in the rear of the gallery.

After removing her veil and cloak, she threw herself into an arm-chair, and shading her eyes with both her hands, fell into a deep reverie. She had been in that att.i.tude but a few moments, when a large Maltese cat leaped boldly into her lap, and began to court familiarity by purring and playing, as with an old acquaintance. Lucile cast a casual glance at the animal, and noticed immediately that it had but _one eye_!

Expressing no astonishment, but feeling a great deal, she cast her eyes cautiously around the apartment.

Near the window hung a large tin cage, containing a blue African parrot, with crimson-tipped shoulders and tail. At the foot of the sofa, a silken-haired spaniel was quietly sleeping, whilst, outside the window, a bright little canary was making the air melodious with its happy warbling. A noise in an adjoining room aroused the dog, and set it barking. As it lifted its glossy ears and turned its graceful head toward Lucile, her surprise was enhanced in the greatest degree, by perceiving that it, too, had lost an eye. Rising, she approached the window, impelled by a curiosity that seemed irresistible. Peering into the cage, she coaxed the lazy parrot to look at her, and her amazement was boundless when she observed that the poor bird was marred in the same mournful manner. Martha witnessed her astonishment, and indulged in a low laugh, but said nothing. At this moment Pollexfen himself entered the apartment, and with his appearance must terminate the second phase of his history.

PHASE THE THIRD.

"Come and sit by me, Mademoiselle Marmont," said Pollexfen, advancing at the same time to the sofa, and politely making way for the young lady, who followed almost mechanically. "You must not believe me as bad as I may seem at first sight, for we all have redeeming qualities, if the world would do us the justice to seek for them as industriously as for our faults."

"I am very well able to believe that," replied Lucile, "for my dear father instructed me to act upon the maxim, that good predominates over evil, even in this life; and I feel sure that I need fear no harm beneath the roof of the only real benefactor----"

"Pshaw! we will not bandy compliments at our first sitting; they are the prelude amongst men, to hypocrisy first, and wrong afterwards. May I so far transgress the rules of common politeness as to ask your age? Not from idle curiosity, I can a.s.sure you."

"At my next birthday," said Lucile, "I shall attain the age of seventeen years."

"And when may that be?" pursued her interlocutor. "I had hoped you were older, by a year."

"My birthday is the 18th of November, and really, sir, I am curious to know why you feel any disappointment that I am not older."

"Oh! nothing of any great consequence; only this, that by the laws of California, on reaching the age of eighteen you become the sole mistress of yourself."

"I greatly fear," timidly added the girl, "that I shall have to antic.i.p.ate the law, and a.s.sume that responsibility at once."

"But you can only contract through a guardian before that era in your life; and in the agreement _between us, that is to be_, no third person shall intermeddle. But we will not now speak of that. You must consider yourself my equal here; there must be no secrets to hide from each other; no suspicions engendered. We are both artists. Confidence is the only path to mutual improvement. My business is large, but my ambition to excel greater, far. Listen to me, child!" and suddenly rising, so as to confront Lucile, he darted one of those magnetic glances into the very fortress of her soul, which we have before attempted to describe, and added, in an altered tone of voice, "The sun's raybrush paints the rainbow upon the evanescent cloud, and photographs an iris in the skies.

The human eye catches the picture ere it fades, and transfers it with all its beauteous tints to that prepared alb.u.men, the retina. The soul sees it there, and rejoices at the splendid spectacle. Shall insensate nature outpaint the G.o.dlike mind? Can she leave her brightest colors on the dark _collodion_ of a thunder-cloud, and I not transfer the blush of a rose, or the vermilion of a dahlia, to my _Rivi_ or _Saxe_? No! no!

I'll not believe it. Let us work together, girl; we'll lead the age we live in. My name shall rival t.i.tian's, and you shall yet see me s.n.a.t.c.h the colors of the dying dolphin from decay, and bid them live forever."

And so saying, he turned with a suddenness that startled his pupil, and strode hastily out of the apartment.

Unaccustomed, as Lucile had been from her very birth, to brusque manners, like those of the photographer, their grotesqueness impressed her with an indefinable relish for such awkward sincerity, and whetted her appet.i.te to see more of the man whose enthusiasm always got the better of his politeness.

"He is no Frenchman," thought the girl, "but I like him none the less.

He has been very, very kind to me, and I am at this moment dependent upon him for my daily bread." Then, changing the direction of her thoughts, they recurred to the subject-matter of Pollexfen's discourse.

"Here," thought she, "lies the clue to the labyrinth. If insane, his madness is a n.o.ble one; for he would link his name with the progress of his art. He seeks to do away with the necessity of such poor creatures as myself, as adjuncts to photography. Nature, he thinks, should lay on the coloring, not man--the Sun himself should paint, not the human hand." And with these, and kindred thoughts, she opened her escritoire, and taking out her pencils sat down to the performance of her daily labor.

Oh, blessed curse of Adam's posterity, healthful toil, all hail!

Offspring of sin and shame--still heaven's best gift to man. Oh, wondrous miracle of Providence! divinest alchemy of celestial science!

by which the chastis.e.m.e.nt of the progenitor transforms itself into a priceless blessing upon the offspring! None but G.o.d himself could trans.m.u.te the sweat of the face into a panacea for the soul. How many myriads have been cured by toil of the heart's sickness and the body's infirmities! The clink of the hammer drowns, in its music, the lamentations of pain and the sighs of sorrow. Even the distinctions of rank and wealth and talents are all forgotten, and the inequalities of stepdame Fortune all forgiven, whilst the busy whirls of industry are bearing us onward to our goal. No condition in life is so much to be envied as his who is too busy to indulge in reverie. Health is his companion, happiness his friend. Ills flee from his presence as night-birds from the streaking of the dawn. Pale Melancholy, and her sister Insanity, never invade his dominions; for Mirth stands sentinel at the border, and Innocence commands the garrison of his soul.

Henceforth let no man war against fate whose lot has been cast in that happy medium, equidistant from the lethargic indolence of superabundant wealth, and the abject paralysis of straitened poverty. Let them toil on, and remember that G.o.d is a worker, and strews infinity with revolving worlds! Should he forget, in a moment of grief or triumph, of gladness or desolation, that being born to toil, in labor only shall he find contentment, let him ask of the rivers why they never rest, of the sunbeams why they never pause. Yea, of the great globe itself, why it travels on forever in the golden pathway of the ecliptic, and nature, from her thousand voices, will respond: Motion is life, inertia is death; action is health, stagnation is sickness; toil is glory, torpor is disgrace!

I cannot say that thoughts as profound as these found their way into the mind of Lucile, as she plied her task, but nature vindicated her own laws in her case, as she will always do, if left entirely to herself.

As day after day and week after week rolled by, a softened sorrow, akin only to grief--

"As the mist resembles the rain"--

took the place of the poignant woe which had overwhelmed her at first, and time laid a gentle hand upon her afflictions. Gradually, too, she became attached to her art, and made such rapid strides towards proficiency that Pollexfen ceased, finally, to give any instruction, or offer any hints as to the manner in which she ought to paint. Thus her own taste became her only guide; and before six months had elapsed after the death of her father, the pictures of Pollexfen became celebrated throughout the city and state, for the correctness of their coloring and the extraordinary delicacy of their finish. His gallery was daily thronged with the wealth, beauty and fas.h.i.+on of the great metropolis, and the hue of his business a.s.sumed the coloring of success.

But his soul was the slave of a single thought. Turmoil brooded there, like darkness over chaos ere the light pierced the deep profound.

During the six months which we have just said had elapsed since the domiciliation of Mlle. Marmont beneath his roof, he had had many long and perfectly frank conversations with her, upon the subject which most deeply interested him. She had completely fathomed his secret, and by degrees had learned to sympathize with him, in his search into the hidden mysteries of photographic science. She even became the frequent companion of his chemical experiments, and night after night attended him in his laboratory, when the lazy world around them was buried in the profoundest repose.

Still, there was one subject which, hitherto, he had not broached, and that was the one in which she felt all a woman's curiosity--_the offer to purchase an eye_. She had long since ascertained the story of the one-eyed pets in the parlor, and had not only ceased to wonder, but was mentally conscious of having forgiven Pollexfen, in her own enthusiasm for art.

Finally, a whole year elapsed since the death of her father, and no extraordinary change took place in the relations of the master and his pupil. True, each day their intercourse became more unrestrained, and their art-a.s.sociation more intimate. But this intimacy was not the tie of personal friends.h.i.+p or individual esteem. It began in the laboratory, and there it ended. Pollexfen had no soul except for his art; no love outside of his profession. Money he seemed to care for but little, except as a means of supplying his acids, salts and plates. He rigorously tested every metal, in its iodides and bromides; industriously coated his plates with every substance that could be alb.u.menized, and plunged his negatives into baths of every mineral that could be reduced to the form of a vapor. His activity was prodigious; his ingenuity exhaustless, his industry absolutely boundless. He was as familiar with chemistry as he was with the outlines of the geography of Scotland. Every headland, spring and promontory of that science he knew by heart. The most delicate experiments he performed with ease, and the greatest rapidity. Nature seemed to have endowed him with a native apt.i.tude for a.n.a.lysis. His love was as profound as it was ready; in fact, if there was anything he detested more than loud laughter, it was superficiality. He instinctively pierced at once to the roots and sources of things; and never rested, after seeing an effect, until he groped his way back to the cause. "Never stand still," he would often say to his pupil, "where the ground is boggy. Reach the rock before you rest." This maxim was the great index to his character; the key to all his researches.

Time fled so rapidly and to Lucile so pleasantly, too, that she had reached the very verge of her legal maturity before she once deigned to bestow a thought upon what change, if any, her eighteenth birthday would bring about. A few days preceding her accession to majority, a large package of letters from France, _via_ New York, arrived, directed to M.

Marmont himself, and evidently written without a knowledge of his death.

The bundle came to my care, and I hastened at once to deliver it, personally, to the blooming and really beautiful Lucile. I had not seen her for many months, and was surprised to find so great an improvement in her health and appearance. Her manners were more marked, her conversation more rapid and decided, and the general contour of her form far more womanly. It required only a moment's interview to convince me that she possessed unquestioned talent of a high order, and a spirit as imperious as a queen's. Those famous eyes of hers, that had, nearly two years before, attracted in such a remarkable manner the attention of Pollexfen, had not failed in the least; on the contrary, time had intensified their power, and given them a depth of meaning and a dazzling brilliancy that rendered them almost insufferably bright. It seemed to me that contact with the magnetic gaze of the photographer had lent them something of his own expression, and I confess that when my eye met hers fully and steadily, mine was always the first to droop.

Knowing that she was in full correspondence with her lover, I asked after Courtland, and she finally told me all she knew. He was still suffering from the effect of the a.s.sa.s.sin's blow, and very recently had been attacked by inflammatory rheumatism. His health seemed permanently impaired, and Lucile wept bitterly as she spoke of the poverty in which they were both plunged, and which prevented him from essaying the only remedy that promised a radical cure.

"Oh!" exclaimed she, "were it only in our power to visit _La belle France_, to bask in the suns.h.i.+ne of Dauphiny, to sport amid the lakes of the Alps, to repose beneath the elms of Chalons!"

"Perhaps," said I, "the very letters now unopened in your hands may invite you back to the scenes of your childhood."

"Alas! no," she rejoined, "I recognize the handwriting of my widowed aunt, and I tremble to break the seal."

Rising shortly afterwards, I bade her a sorrowful farewell.

Lucile sought her private apartment before she ventured to unseal the dispatches. Many of the letters were old, and had been floating between New York and Havre for more than a twelvemonth. One was of recent date, and that was the first one perused by the niece. Below is a free translation of its contents. It bore date at "Bordeaux, July 12, 1853,"

and ran thus:

EVER DEAR AND BELOVED BROTHER:

Why have we never heard from you since the beginning of 1851?

Alas! I fear some terrible misfortune has overtaken you, and overwhelmed your whole family. Many times have I written during that long period, and prayed, oh! so promptly, that G.o.d would take you, and yours, in His holy keeping. And then our dear Lucile! Ah! what a life must be in store for her, in that wild and distant land! Beg of her to return to France; and do not fail, also, to come yourself. We have a new Emperor, as you must long since have learned, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of the great Napoleon. Your reactionist principles against Cavaignac and his colleagues, can be of no disservice to you at present. Napoleon is lenient. He has even recalled Louis Blanc.

Come, and apply for rest.i.tution of the old estates; come, and be a protector of my seven orphans, now, alas! suffering even for the common necessaries of life. Need a fond sister say more to her only living brother?

Thine, as in childhood,

ANNETTE.

"Misfortunes pour like a pitiless winter storm upon my devoted head,"

thought Lucile, as she replaced the letter in its envelope. "Parents dead; aunt broken-hearted; cousins starving, and I not able to afford relief. I cannot even moisten their sorrows with a tear. I would weep, but rebellion against fate rises in my soul, and dries up the fountain of tears. Had Heaven made me a man it would not have been thus. I have something here," she exclaimed, rising from her seat and placing her hand upon her forehead, "that tells me I could do and dare, and endure."