The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
thinking that I was keeping something behind, waiting to make my profit on a discovery so interesting to him. He called me back to tell me, that, after working so long under his employ, he hoped I should never be induced by higher wages or other proffers to leave for any rival establishment.
I was not left long in quiet. I received a summons to Boston. Mr. Stuart, the millionnaire, had bought the wonderful carpet at an immense price. He had visited our agent himself, had invited the designer to dinner, and now would not be satisfied until I had made him a visit in Boston.
I went to his house. I passed up through broad stairways, and over carpets such as I had never trod nor woven. I should have liked to linger and satisfy my eyes with looking at the walls decorated with paintings, and at the statuary, which seemed to beckon to me like moving figures. But I passed on to the room where Mr. Stuart and his friends awaited me. Here the first thing that struck me was the glowing carpet across which I must tread. It was lying in an oval saloon, which had been built, they told me, for the carpet itself. The light was admitted only from the ceiling, which was so decorated that no clear sunlight could penetrate it; but down below the sunbeams lay flickering in the meadow of leaves, and shed a warm glow over the whole room.
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