"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 is because the idea is so absurd," I said, "that, if I felt the power were mine to imprison sunbeams, I should hardly care to repeat the effort. The sunshine rests upon the grass, freely we say, but in truth under some law that prevents its penetrating farther. A sunbeam existing in the absence of the sun is, of course, an absurdity. Yet they are there, the sunbeams of last spring, in your oval room, as I saw them one day in May."
"Which convinces me," said Miss Stuart, "that you are an artist. That is not real sunshine. You have created it. You are born for an artist-life. Do not go back to your drudgery."
"Daily work," I answered, "must become mechanical work, if we perform it in a servile way. A lawyer is perhaps inspired, when he is engaged in a cause on which he thinks his reputation hangs; but, day by day, when he goes down to the work that brings him his daily bread, he is quite as likely to call it his drudgery as I my daily toil."
She left her seat and walked with me towards a painting which hung not far from us. It represented sunset upon the water. "The tender-curving lines of creamy spray" were gathering up the beach; the light was glistening across the waves; and shadows and light almost seemed to move over the canvas.
"There," said Miss Stuart, "is what I call work that is worthy. I know there was inspiration in every touch of the brush. I know there was happy life in the life that inspired that painting. It is worth while to live and to show that one has been living in that way."
"But I think," said I, "that the artist even of that picture laid aside his brush heavily, when he sighed to himself that he must call it finished. I believe that in all the days that it lay upon his easel he went to it many times with weariness, because there was monotony in the work,because the work that he had laid out for himself in his fancy was far above what he could execute with his fingers. The days of drudgery hung heavily on the days of inspiration; and it was only when he carried his heart into the most monotonous part of his work that he found any inspiration in it, that he could feel he had accomplished anything."
We turned suddenly away into a room where we had not been before. I could not notice the pictures that covered the walls for the sake of one to which Miss Stuart led the way. After looking upon that, there could be no thought of finding out any other. It possessed the whole room. The inspiration which uplifted the eyes fell over the whole painting. We looked at it silently, and it was not till we had left the building that Miss Stuart said,
"We have seen there something which takes away all thought of artist or style of painting or work. I have never been able to ask myself what is the color of the eyes of that Madonna, or of her flowing hair, or the tone of the drapery. I see only an expression that inspires the whole figure, gives motion to the hands, life to the eyes, thought to the lips, and soul to the whole being."