Chapter XV

Worn out and jaded, I began my travels. I strove to make these travels as inexpensive as possible. I walked much, and at times lived both cheaply and luxuriously, as one learns to do after a little experience abroad. At first I resolved to make this tour one long summer day of pleasure through the outward senses. I took no books with me. I painted no picture. I rarely even sketched. Brain and heart rested, while there flowed into them, through the outward avenues of eye and ear, new pictures and harmonies,—I fancied, for present enjoyment merely, but in reality for future use.

When I reached Rome, my funds, which had even previously been eked out by the sale of the few sketches I had made, were quite exhausted. Anticipating this, I had, after great hesitation, written to Mr. Leopold, desiring letters of introduction to some artists, in the hope of obtaining work from them. I found his reply to this letter awaiting my arrival in Rome; and though I had not hinted at my destitution, he must have guessed it, for he inclosed a check and all the information I desired. I provided myself with a humble studio and recommenced work. How fresh and charming was this return to my old mode of life! I even bought a few choice books at the old stalls, and revelled in poetry. Dante opened his Purgatory to me just as I escaped from my own, and I basked in the returning sun-light of a free and happy life.

Copying in a painting-gallery one day, I beheld with pain, albeit he was my benefactor, a ghost of my former life arising to haunt me. Mr. Leopold, having arrived the night before, was enjoying the pictures preparatory to hunting me up. His greeting was cordial; he cheered me by most favorable opinions as to my progress in my art, and was dumb about the past. He desired that I should again work in connection with himself; and the profound respect I had always felt for his abilities was confirmed and heightened by the affection he inspired in me. His really harmonious character guided mine without the absolute surrender of my individuality. One by one I resumed the old interests, and began to feel the old heart which has throbbed through the centuries, from Adam downward, beating within me. How very much I was like other men, after all!

"Sandy," Mr. Leopold said to me one day, as we sat sketching some old ruin on the Campagna, "is it your wish to be silent as to the past? Are you restrained by fear of yourself or me?"

For only answer I exclaimed,—

"How and where is Miss Darry?"

"She is well, and at Munich," he answered, smiling pleasantly,—"developing in herself the powers with which she invested you. As a sculptress she gives great promise; her figures show wonderful anatomical knowledge."

"And you, Mr. Leopold," I asked breathlessly, "how could you forgive and befriend one who had so weakly treated the woman you alone were worthy to love?"

"You are indeed breaking silence, Sandy," he replied; "it is with you the Chinese wall or illimitable space. Perhaps you have not really wronged either her or me. She worked off some extravagant theories on you. You exhausted your weakness, I trust, on her; and as for me, I have learned to conquer through both."

I have lived several years since that morning in Rome, where, at the headquarters of the confessional, I opened my heart to Mr. Leopold. Standing, as he does, at the head of his art, I follow him. Those who prefer fancy to vigorous thought and imagination, the lovely and familiar in Nature to the sublime, sometimes rank me above him. Time has not evolved the genius which Miss Darry prophesied, yet I am as fully convinced that I occupy my true position and do my appropriate work in the world as though it had. Mrs. Leopold professes occasionally to me, with a smile, that her opinion is unaltered, that my weakness was only an additional proof of genius, but that her husband is a hero worth all the geniuses in the world. She holds this subtile essence more lightly in estimation now than formerly. Some think she possesses it; and her groups of statuary fairly entitle her to more laurels than in her happy domestic life she is likely to win. She laughs at my wife, and calls her sentimental, because her Art instincts, like vines over a humble dwelling, embroider only the common domestic life. Her many fanciful ways of adorning our home, and her own sweet, sunny self, its perpetual light and comfort, are to me just so many 'traps to catch the sunbeams' of life, especially as I see beneath all this the earnest, developed womanhood of the blacksmith's daughter. Do you ask me how I won her? I can describe my passionate admiration, even the weakness and limitations of my nature; but I will not unveil my love. Is it not enough that I am a thorough democrat, have little faith in the hereditary transmission of good or evil, and welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bray to my home and hearth? I am not hurried now.

"You have only this lifetime to make a man in, Sandy," Annie pleads occasionally, when a call for service outside my profession presents itself; "but any special power of mind, it seems to me, will have the mending ages in which to unfold."

To love men, to labor for them and for the ideas which free and redeem them, seems the special mission of our times; and my little wife has caught its spirit, and so helps me to recognize the virtue which eighteen hundred years ago was crucified to rise again, which has been assailed in our country, and is rising again to be the life and inspiration of Christendom, the death-blow to slavery and oppression, the light of many a humble home and simple heart. Unselfishness! keystone to the arch through which each pure soul looks heavenward!