The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 37

"_I_ get mine from _you_," said Traynor, calmly, "and never felt myself a slave on that account."

"Forgive me, my dear, kind friend. I could hate myself if I gave you a moment's pain. This temper of mine does not improve by time."

"There's one way to conquer it. Don't be broodin' on what's within.

Don't be magnifyin' your evil fortunes to your own heart till you come to think the world all little, and yourself all great. Go out to your daily labor, whatever it be, with a stout spirit to do your best, and a thankful, grateful heart that you are able to do it. Never let it out of your mind that if there's many a one your inferior, winnin' his way up to fame and fortune before you, there's just as many better than you toilin' away unseen and unnoticed, wearin' out genius in a garret, and carryin' off a G.o.dlike intellect to an obscure grave!"

"You talk to me as though my crying sin were an overweening vanity,"

said the youth, half angrily.

"Well, it's one of them," said Billy; and the blunt frankness of the avowal threw the boy into a fit of laughing.

"You certainly do not intend to spoil me, Billy," said he, still laughing.

"Why would I do what so many is ready to do for nothing? What does the crowd that praise the work of a young man of genius care where they 're leading him to? It's like people callin' out to a strong swimmer, 'Go out farther and farther,--out to the open say, where the waves is rollin' big, and the billows is roughest; that's worthy of you, in your strong might and your stout limbs. Lave the still water and the shallows to the weak and the puny. _Your_ course is on the mountain wave, over the bottomless ocean.' It's little they think if he's ever to get back again. 'T is their boast and their pride that they said, 'Go on;' and when his cold corpse comes washed to sh.o.r.e, all they have is a word of derision and scorn for one who ventured beyond his powers."

"How you cool down one's ardor; with what pleasure you check every impulse that nerves one's heart for high daring!" said the youth, bitterly. "These eternal warnings--these never-ending forebodings of failure--are sorry stimulants to energy."

"Is n't it better for you to have all your reverses at the hands of a crayture as humble as me?" said Billy, while the tears glistened in his eyes. "What good am I, except for this?"

In a moment the boy's arms were around him, while he cried out,--

"There, forgive me once more, and let me try if I cannot amend a temper that any but yourself had grown weary of correcting. I'll work--I'll labor--I'll submit--I'll accept the daily rubs of life, as others take them, and you shall be satisfied with me. We shall go back to all our old pursuits, my dear Billy. I'll join all your ecstasies over aeschylus, and believe as much as I can of Herodotus, to please you. You shall lead me to all the wonders of the stars, and dazzle me with the brightness of visions that my intellect is lost in; and in revenge I only ask that you should sit with me in the studio, and read to me some of those songs of Horace that move the heart like old wine. Shall I own to you what it is which sways me thus uncertainly,--jarring every chord of my existence, making life a sea of stormy conflict? Shall I tell you?"

He grasped the other's hand with both his own as he spoke, and, while his lips quivered in strong emotion, went on:--

"It is this, then. I cannot forget, do all that I will, I cannot root out of my heart what I once believed myself to be. You know what I mean.

Well, there it is still, like the sense of a wrong or foul injustice, as though I had been robbed and cheated of what never was mine! This contrast between the life my earliest hopes had pictured, and that which I am destined to, never leaves me. All your teachings--and I have seen how devotedly you have addressed yourself to this lesson--have not eradicated from my nature the proud instincts that guided my childhood.

Often and often have you warmed my blood by thoughts of a triumph to be achieved by me hereafter,--how men should recognize me as a genius, and elevate me to honors and rewards; and yet would I barter such success, ten thousand times told, for an hour of that high station that comes by birth alone, independent of all effort,--the heirloom of deeds chronicled centuries back, whose actors have been dust for ages. That is real pride," cried he, enthusiastically, "and has no alloy of the petty vanity that mingles with the sense of a personal triumph."

Traynor hung his head heavily as the youth spoke, and a gloomy melancholy settled on his features; the sad conviction came home to him of all his counsels being fruitless, all his teachings in vain; and as the boy sat wrapped in a wild, dreamy revery of ancestral greatness, the humble peasant brooded darkly over the troubles such a temperament might evoke.

"It is agreed, then," cried Ma.s.sy, suddenly, "that we are to accept of this great man's bounty, live under his roof, and eat his bread. Well, I accede,--as well his as another's. Have you seen the home they destine for us?"

"Yes, it's a real paradise, and in a garden that would beat Adam's now," exclaimed Traynor; "for there's marble fountains, and statues, and temples, and grottos in it; and it's as big as a prairie, and as wild as a wilderness. And, better than all, there's a little pathway leads to a private stair that goes up into the library of the palace,--a spot n.o.body ever enters, and where you may study the whole day long without hearin' a footstep. All the books is there that ever was written, and ma.n.u.scripts without end besides; and the Minister says I'm to have my own kay, and go in and out whenever I plaze. 'And if there's anything wantin',' says be, 'just order it on a slip of paper and send it to me, and you 'll have it at once.' When I asked if I ought to spake to the librarian himself, he only laughed, and said, 'That's me; but I'm never there. Take my word for it, Doctor, you 'll have the place to yourself.'"

He spoke truly. Billy Traynor had it, indeed, to himself. There, the gray dawn of morning, and the last shadows of evening, ever found him, seated in one of those deep, cell-like recesses of the windows; the table, the seats, the very floor littered with volumes which, revelling in the luxury of wealth, he had acc.u.mulated around him. His greedy avidity for knowledge knew no bounds. The miser's thirst for gold was weak in comparison with that intense craving that seized upon him.

Historians, critics, satirists, poets, dramatists, metaphysicians, never came amiss to a mind bent on acquiring. The life he led was like the realization of a glorious dream,--the calm repose, the perfect stillness of the spot, the boundless stores that lay about him; the growing sense of power, as day by day his intellect expanded; new vistas opened themselves before him, and new and unproved sources of pleasure sprang up in his nature. The never-ending variety gave a zest, too, to his labors that averted all weariness; and at last he divided his time ingeniously, alternating grave and difficult subjects with lighter topics,--making, as he said himself, "Aristophanes digest Plato."

And what of young Ma.s.sy all this while? His life was a dream, too, but of another and very different kind. Visions of a glorious future alternated with sad and depressing thoughts; high darings, and hopeless views of what lay before him, came and went, and went and came again.

The Duke, who had just taken his departure for some watering-place in Germany, gave him an order for certain statues, the models for which were to be ready by his return,--at least, in that sketchy state of which clay is even more susceptible than canvas. The young artist chafed and fretted under the restraint of an a.s.signed task. It was gall to his haughty nature to be told that his genius should accept dictation, and his fancy be fettered by the suggestions of another. If he tried to combat this rebellious spirit, and addressed himself steadily to labor, he found that his imagination grew sluggish, and his mind uncreative.

The sense of servitude oppressed him; and though he essayed to subdue himself to the condition of an humble artist, the old pride still rankled in his heart, and spirited him to a haughty resistance. His days thus pa.s.sed over in vain attempts to work, or still more unprofitable lethargy. He lounged through the deserted garden, or lay, half-dreamily, in the long, deep gra.s.s, listening to the cicala, or watching the emerald-backed lizards as they lay basking in the sun. He drank in all the soft voluptuous influences of a climate which steeps the senses in a luxurious stupor, making the commonest existence a toil, but giving to mere indolence all the zest of a rich enjoyment. Sometimes he wandered into the library, and noiselessly drew nigh the spot where Billy sat deeply busied in his books. He would gaze silently, half curiously, at the poor fellow, and then steal noiselessly away, pondering on the blessings of that poor peasant's nature, and wondering what in his own organization had denied him the calm happiness of this humble man's life.

CHAPTER x.x.xI. AT Ma.s.sA

Billy Traynor sat, deeply sunk in study, in the old recess of the palace library. A pa.s.sage in the "Antigone" had puzzled him, and the table was littered with critics and commentators, while ma.n.u.script notes, scrawled in the most rude hand, lay on every side. He did not perceive, in his intense preoccupation, that Ma.s.sy had entered and taken the place directly in front of him. There the youth sat gazing steadfastly at the patient and studious features before him. It was only when Traynor, mastering the difficulty that had so long opposed him, broke out into an enthusiastic declamation of the text that Ma.s.sy, unable to control the impulse, laughed aloud.

"How long are you there? I never noticed you comin' in," said Billy, half-shamed at his detected ardor.

"But a short time; I was wondering at--ay, Billy, and was envying, too--the concentrated power in which you address yourself to your task.

It is the real secret of all success, and somehow it is a frame of mind I cannot achieve."

"How is the boy Bacchus goin' on?" asked Billy, eagerly.

"I broke him up yesterday, and it is like a weight off my heart that his curly bullet head and sensual lips are not waiting for me as I enter the studio."

"And the Cleopatra?" asked Traynor, still more anxiously.

"Smashed,--destroyed. Shall I own to you, Billy, I see at last myself what you have so often hinted to me,--I have no genius for the work?"

"I never said,--I never thought so," cried the other; "I only insisted that nothing was to be done without labor,--hard, unflinching labor; that easy successes were poor triumphs, and bore no results."

"There,--there, I'll hear that sermon no more. I'd not barter the freedom of my own unfettered thoughts, as they come and go, in hours of listless idleness, for all the success you ever promised me. There are men toil elevates,--me it wearies to depression, and brings no compensation in the shape of increased power. Mine is an unrewarding clay,--that's the whole of it. Cultivation only develops the rank weeds which are deep sown in the soil. I'd like to travel,--to visit some new land, some scene where all a.s.sociation with the past shall be broken.

What say you?"

"I'm ready, and at your orders," said Traynor, closing his book.

"East or west, then, which shall it be? If sometimes my heart yearns for the glorious scenes of Palestine, full of memories that alone satisfy the soul's longings, there are days when I pant for the solitude of the vast savannas of the New World. I feel as if to know one's self thoroughly, one's nature should be tested by the perils and exigencies of a life hourly making some demand on courage and ingenuity. The hunter's life does this. What say you,--shall we try it?"

"I 'm ready," was the calm reply.

"We have means for such an enterprise, have we not? You told me, some short time past, that nearly the whole of our last year's allowance was untouched."

"Yes, it's all there to the good," said Billy; "a good round sum too."

"Let us get rid of all needless equipment, then," cried Ma.s.sy, "and only retain what beseems a prairie life. Sell everything, or give it away at once."

"Leave all that to me,--I'll manage everything; only say when you make up your mind."

"But it is made up. I have resolved on the step. Few can decide so readily; for I leave neither home nor country behind."

"Don't say that," burst in Billy; "here's myself, the poorest crayture that walks the earth, that never knew where he was born or who nursed him, yet even to me there's the tie of a native land,--there's the soil that reared warriors and poets and orators that I heard of when a child, and gloried in as a man; and, better than that, there's the green meadows and the leafy valleys where kind-hearted men and women live and labor, spakin' our own tongue and feelin' our own feelin's, and that, if we saw to-morrow, we 'd know were our own,--heart and hand our own.

The smell of the yellow furze, under a griddle of oaten bread, would be sweeter to me than all the gales of Araby the Blest; for it would remind me of the hearth I had my share of, and the roof that covered me when I was alone in the world."

The boy buried his face in his hands and made no answer. At last, raising up his head, he said,--

"Let us try this life; let us see if action be not better than mere thought. The efforts of intellect seem to inspire a thirst there is no slaking. Sleep brings no rest after them. I long for the sense of some strong peril which, over, gives the proud feeling of a goal reached,--a feat accomplished."

"I'll go wherever you like; I'll be whatever you want me," said Billy, affectionately.

"Let us lose no time, then. I would not that my present ardor should cool ere we have begun our plan. What day is this? The seventh. Well, on the eighteenth there is a s.h.i.+p sails from Genoa for Porto Rico. It was the announcement set my heart a-thinking of the project. I dreamed of it two entire nights. I fancied myself walking the deck on a starlit night, and framing all my projects for the future. The first thing I saw next morning was the same placard, 'The "Colombo" will sail for Porto Rico on Friday, the eighteenth.'"

"An unlucky day," muttered Billy, interrupting.

"I have fallen upon few that were otherwise," said Ma.s.sy, gloomily; "besides," he added, after a pause, "I have no faith in omens, or any care for superst.i.tions. Come, let us set about our preparations. Do _you_ bethink you how to rid ourselves of all useless enc.u.mbrances here.

Be it _my_ care to jot down the list of all we shall need for the voyage and the life to follow it. Let us see which displays most zeal for the new enterprise."

Billy Traynor addressed himself with a will to the duty allotted him. He rummaged through drawers and desks, destroyed papers and letters, laid aside all the articles which he judged suitable for preservation, and then hastened off to the studio to arrange for the disposal of the few "studies," for they were scarcely more, which remained of Ma.s.sy's labors.