The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is looking up!" The picture of the face hung in my memory long after, with the sound of the happy voice, as though it came out of another world. But it remained only a picture, and I never asked myself whether that sunny face ever made any home happy, nor did I ever listen for that voice again from behind the high stone-wall.
Many years of my life passed away. There were changes in the factories. The machines grew more like human beings, and we men could act more like machines. There were fewer of us needed; but I still held my place, and my steadiness gave me a position.
One day, in the end of May, I was walking early in the morning towards the factories, as usual, when suddenly there fell across my path a glowing beam of sunshine that lighted up the grass before me. I stopped to see how the green blades danced in its light, how the sunshine fell down the sloping, bank across the stream below. Whirring insects seemed to be suddenly born in its beam. The stream flowed more gayly, the flowers on its brim were richer in color. A voice startled me. It was only that of one of my fellow-workmen, as he shouted, "Look at Gloomy Robert!–there's a sunbeam in his way, and he stumbles over it!" It was really so. I had stumbled over a beam of sunlight. I had never observed the sunshine before. Now, what life it gave, as it gleamed under the trees! I kept on my way, but the thought of it followed me all up the weary stairs into the high room where the great machines were standing silently. Suddenly, after my work began, through a high narrow window poured a strip of sunshine. It fell across the colored threads which were weaving diligently their work. This day the work was of an unusually artistic nature. We have our own artists in the mills, artists who must work under severe limitations. Within a certain space their fancy revels, and then its lines are suddenly cut short. Nature scatters her flowers as she pleases over the field, does not measure her groups to see that they stand symmetrically, nor count her several daisies that they may be sure to repeat themselves in regular order. But our artist must fit his stems to certain angles so that their lines may be continuous, constantly repeating themselves, the same group recurring, yet in a hidden monotony.
My pattern of to-day had always pleased me, for we had woven many yards of it before,–the machines and I. There were rich green leaves and flowers, gay flowers that shone in light and hid themselves in shade, and I had always admired their grace and coloring. To-day they had seemed to me cold and dusky. All my ideas that I had gained from conventional carpet-flowers, which, woven almost beneath my hand, had seemed to rival Nature's, all these ideas had been suddenly swept away. My eyes had opened upon real flowers waving in real sunshine; and my head grew heavy at the sound of the clanking machine weaving out yards of unsunned flowers. If only that sunshine, I thought, would light up these green leaves, put a glow on these brilliant flowers, instead of this poor coloring which tries to look like sunshine, we might rival Nature. But the moment I was so thinking, the rays of sunlight I have spoken of fell on the gay threads. They seemed, before my eyes, to seize upon the poor yellow fibres which were trying to imitate their own glow, and, winding themselves round them, I saw the shuttle gather these rays of sunlight into the meshes of its work. I was to stand there till noon. So, long before I left, the gleam of sunshine had left the narrow window and was hidden from the rest of the long room by the gray stone-walls of another building which rose up outside. But as long as they lingered over the machine that I was watching, I saw, as though human fingers were placing them there, rays of sunlight woven in among the green leaves and brilliant flowers.
After that gleam had gone, my work grew dark and dreary, and, for the first time, my walls seemed to me like prison-walls. I longed for the end of my day's work, and rejoiced that the sun had not yet set when I was free again. I was free to go out across the meadows, up the hills, to catch the last rays of sunset. Then coming home, I stooped to pick the flowers which grew by the wayside in the waning light.
All that June which followed, I passed my leisure hours and leisure days in the open air, in the woods. I chased the sunshine from the fields in under the deep trees, where it only flickered through the leaves. I hunted for flowers, too, beginning with the gay ones which shone with color. I wondered how it was they could drink in so much of the sun's glow. Then I fell to studying all the science of color and all the theories which are woven about it. I plunged into books of chemistry, to try to find out how it was that certain flowers should choose certain colors out from the full beam of light. After the long days, I sat late into the night, studying all that books could tell me. I collected prisms, and tried, in scattering the rays, to learn the properties of each several pencil of light. I grew very wise and learned, but never came nearer the secret I was searching for,–why it was that the Violet, lying so near the Dandelion, should choose and find such a different dress to wear. It was not the rarer flowers that I brought home, at first. My hands were filled with Dandelions and Buttercups. The Saint-John's-Wort delighted me, and even the gaudy Sunflower. I trained the vines which had been drooping round our old house,–the gray time-worn house; the "natural-colored house," the neighbors called it. I thought of the blind boy who fancied the sound of the trumpet must be scarlet, as I trained up the brilliant scarlet trumpet-flower which my sister had planted long ago.
So the summer passed away. My companions and neighbors did not wonder much, that, after studying so many books, I should begin to study flowers and botany. And November came. My occupation was not yet taken away, for Golden-Rod and the Asters gleamed along the dusty roadside, and still underneath the Maples there lay a sunny glow from the yellow leaves not yet withered beneath them.
One day I received a summons from our overseer, Mr. Clarkson, to visit him in the evening. I went, a little disturbed, lest he might have some complaint to make of the engrossing nature of my present occupations. This I was almost led to believe, from the way in which he began to speak to me. His perorations, to be sure, were apt to be far wide of his subject; and this time, as usual, I could allow him two or three minutes' talk before it became necessary for me to give him my attention.
At last it came out. I was wanted to go up to Boston about a marvellous piece of carpet which had appeared from our mills. It had lain in the warehouse some time, had at last been taken to Boston, and a large portion of it had been sold, the pattern being a favorite one. But suddenly there had been a change. In opening one of the rolls and spreading it broadly in the show-room of Messrs. Gobelin's warehouse, it had appeared the most wonderful carpet that ever was known. A real sunlight gleamed over the leaves and flowers, seeming to flicker and dance among them as on a broad meadow. It shed a radiance which paled the light that struggled down between the brick walls through the high windows. It had been subject of such wonder that Messrs. Gobelin had been obliged to ask a high price of admission for the many that flocked to see it. They had eagerly examined the other rolls of carpeting, in the hope of finding a repetition of the wonder, and were inclined at one time to believe that this magical effect was owing to a new method of lighting their apartments. But it was only in this beautiful pattern and through a certain portion of it that this wonderful appearance was shown. Some weeks ago they had sent to our agent to ask if he knew the origin of this wonderful tapestry. He had consulted with the designer of the pattern, who had first claimed the discovery of the combination of colors by which such an effect was produced, but he could not account for its not appearing throughout the whole work. My master had then examined some of the workmen, and learned, in the midst of his inquiries, what had been my late occupations and studies.
"If," he continued, "I had been inclined to apply any of my discoveries to the work which I superintended, he was willing, and his partners were willing, to forgive any interference of that sort, of mine, in affairs which were strictly their own, as long as the discoveries seemed of so astonishing a nature."
I am not able to give all our conversation. I could only say to my employer, that this was no act of mine, though I felt very sure that the sunshine which astonished them in Messrs. Gobelin's carpet-store was the very sunbeam that shone through the window of the factory on the 27th of May, that summer. When he asked me what chemical preparation could insure a repetition of the same wonderful effect, I could only say, that, if sunlight were let in upon all the machines, through all the windows of the establishment, a similar effect might be produced. He stared at me. Our large and substantial mill was overshadowed by the high stone-walls of the rival company. It had taken a large amount of capital to raise our own walls; it would take a still larger to induce our neighbors to remove theirs. So we parted,–my