University of Virginia Library

TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL.

“Five hundred dollars a year!” echoed Fanny
Bellairs, as the first silver gray of the twilight spread
over her picture.

“And my art,” modestly added the painter, prying
into his bright copy of the lips pronouncing upon
his destiny.

“And how much may that be at the present rate
of patronage—one picture a year painted for love!”

“Fanny, how can you be so calculating!”

“By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose.
Why, my dear coz, we have another state of existence
to look forward to—old man-age and old woman-age!
What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year,
when my old frame wants gilding—(to use one of
your own similes)—I shan't always be pretty Fanny
Bellairs!”

“But, good Heavens! we shall grow old together!”
exclaimed the painter, sitting down at her feet, “and
what will you care for other admiration, if your husband
see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and
habit.”

“Even if I were sure he would so look upon me!”
answered Miss Bellairs more seriously, “I can not
but dread an old age without great means of embellishment.
Old people, except in poetry and in very
primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares.
And, indeed, before we are old—when neither young
nor old—we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and
conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains—all
quite out of the range of your little allowance, don't
you see!”

“You do not love me, Fanny!”

“I do—and will marry you, Philip—as I, long ago,
with my whole heart promised. But I wish to be
happy with you—as happy, quite as happy, as is at all
possible, with our best efforts and coolest, discreetest
management. I laugh the matter over sometimes,
but I may tell you, since you are determined to be in
earnest, that I have treated it, in my solitary thought,
as the one important event of my life—(so indeed it
is!)—and, as such, worthy of all fore-thought, patience,
self-denial, and calculation. To inevitable ills I can
make up my mind like other people. If your art were
your only hope of subsistence—why—I don't know—
(should I look well as a page!)—I don't know that I
couldn't run your errands and grind your paints in
hose and doublet. But there is another door open
for you—a counting-house door, to be sure—leading
to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happiness,
and through this door, my dear Philip, the art
you would live by comes to pay tribute and beg for
patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty
reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you
should refuse your brother's golden offer of partnership—my
share, in your alternative of poverty, left for
the moment out of the question.”

Rather overborne by the confident decision of his
beautiful cousin, and having probably made up his
mind that he must ultimately yield to her, Philip replied
in a lower and more dejected tone:—

“If you were not to be a sharer in my renown,
should I be so fortunate as to acquire it, I should feel
as if it were selfish to dwell so much on my passion
for distinction and my devotion to my pencil as the
means of winning it. My heart is full of you—but it
is full of ambition too, paradox though it be. I can
not live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to
press my love upon you—worthy to possess you—
except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You
make the world dark to me, Fanny! You close down
the sky, when you shut out this hope! Yet it shall
be so.”

Philip paused a moment and the silence was uninterrupted.

“There was another feeling I had, upon which I
have not insisted,” he continued. “By my brother's
project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even
the little stipend I have to offer you now, is absorbed
of course by the investment of my property in his
trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enriched
myself, would be even more hopeless than at present.
Say the interval were five years—and five years of
separation!”

“With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass,
my dear Philip!”

“But is there nothing wasted in this time? My
life is yours—the gift of love. Are not these coming
five years the very flower of it?—a mutual loss,
too, for are they not, even more emphatically, the very
flower of yours? Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at
which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the
entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness
—passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to
beauty and sweetness—all I have that can be diminished
or tarnished or made dull by advancing age and
contact with the world, is thrown away for its spring
and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for
this? Will it—even if we are rich and blest with
health, and as capable of an unblemished union as
now? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny!”

“I do—it is full of force and meaning, and could
we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competency,
it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock,
Philip—”

“What do you call poverty! If we can suffice for
each other, and have the necessaries of life, we are not
poor! My art will bring us consideration enough—
which is the main end of wealth, after all—and of
society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing.
Luxuries for yourself, Fanny, means for your dear
comfort and pleasure, you should not want if the
world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion
of one man to the support of the one woman he loves,
ought to suffice for the task! I am strong—I am

capable of labor—I have limbs to toil, if my genius
and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven, you
could not want!”

“No, no, no! I thought not of want!” murmured
Miss Bellairs, “I thought only—”

But she was not permitted to finish the sentence.

“Then my bright picture for the future may be
realized!” exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands together
in a transport of hope. “I may build up a
reputation, with you for the constant partner of its
triumphs and excitements! I may go through the
world and have some care in life besides subsistence,
how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold; some
companion, who, from the threshold of manhood,
shared every thought—and knew every feeling—some
pure and present angel who walked with me and purified
my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and received
from my lips and eyes, and from the beating
of my heart, against her own, all the love I had to give
in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet
cousin! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined
with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise
on earth for you and me?”

The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned
forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the
deepening twilight, and she answered him with such
sweet words as are linked together by spells known
only to woman—but his palette and pencils were,
nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very
night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must.
And to the importation of silks from Lyons was devoted,
thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael—perhaps!
Who knows?

The reader will naturally have gathered from this
dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes,
and was rather below the middle stature. She was a
belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular
description which is not fusible by “burning words.”
She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance
and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and
knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde
(this complexion of woman being soluble in love and
tears), would have exhibited under a similar experment.
While the fire of her love glowed, therefore,
she opposed little resistance and seemed softened and
yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she
rang out “no!” the next morning, with a tone as little
changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers,
though it has passed meantime through the furnace
of an Italian noon.

Fanny was not a designing girl, either. She might
have found a wealthier customer for her heart than
her cousin Philip. And she loved this cousin as truly
and well as her nature would admit, or as need be,
indeed. But two things had conspired to give her
the unmalleable quality just described—a natural disposition
to confide, first and foremost, on all occasions,
in her own sagacity, and a vivid impression made upon
her mind by a childhood of poverty. At the age of
twelve she had been transferred from the distressed
fireside of her mother, Mrs. Bellairs, to the luxurious
roof of her aunt, Mrs. Ballister, and her mother dying
soon after, the orphan girl was adopted and treated as
a child; but the memory of the troubled health at
which she had first learned to observe and reason,
colored all the purposes and affections, thoughts,
impulses and wishes of the ripening girl, and to think
of happiness in any proximity to privation seemed to
her impossible, even though it were in the bosom of
love. Seeing no reason to give her cousin credit for
any knowledge of the world beyond his own experience,
she decided to think for him as well as love him, and
not being so much pressed as the enthusiastic painter
by the “besoin d'aimer et de se faire aimer,” she very
composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand,
the trifling achievement of getting rich—quite sure
that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run
that race without the incumbrance of matrimony.

The death of Mr. Ballister, senior, had left the
widow and her two boys more slenderly provided for
than was anticipated—Phil's portion, after leaving
college, producing the moderate income before mentioned.
The elder brother had embarked in his father's
business, and it was thought best on all hands for the
younger Ballister to follow his example. But Philip,
whose college leisure had been devoted to poetry and
painting, and whose genius for the latter, certainly,
was very decided, brought down his habits by a resolute
economy to the limits of his income, and took
up the pencil for a profession. With passionate enthusiasm,
great purity of character, distaste for all
society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and
an industry very much concentrated and rendered
effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was
very likely to develop what genius might lie between
his head and hand, and his progress in the first year
had been allowed by eminent artists to give very
unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together
under the maternal roof, and the painter's studies
were the portraits of the family, and Fanny's picture
of course much the most difficult to finish. It would
be very hard if a painter's portrait of his liege mistress,
the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and
Fanny Bellairs on canvass was divine accordingly. If
the copy had more softness of expression than the
original (as it was thought to have), it only proves that
wise men have for some time suspected, that love is
more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless
idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither
thumb-screws nor hot coals—nothing probably but repentance
after matrimony—would have drawn from
Philip Ballister, in words, the same confession of his
mistress's foible that had oozed out through his
treacherous pencil!

Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be
“taken in,” but it is a miracle that he is not invariably
drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle
of a gun—an enemy who has written a book—an Indian
prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tuscan
for John Bull),—is not more close upon demolition,
one would think, than the heart of a lady delivered
over to a painter's eyes, posed, draped and lighted
with the one object of studying her beauty. If there
be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in steadfast
gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither
—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved
in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered,
in freedom of admiration, “and all in the way of
business”—then is a loveable sitter to a love-like
painter in “parlous” vicinity (as the new school would
phrase it), to sweet-heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation
has no offset in political economy as honor has
(“the more honor the less profit,”) or portrait-painters
would be poorer than poets.

And malgré his consciousness of the quality which
required softening in his cousin's beauty, and malgré
his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover's
proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the
stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for
France on his apprenticeship to Mammon.

The reader will please to advance five years. Before
proceeding thence with our story, however, let
us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval.

Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple
vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind
and body to business, that he would not return till he
had made a fortune, and that such interstices as might
occur in the building up of this chateau for felicity
should be filled with sweet reveries about Fanny Bellairs.
The forsworn painter had genius, as we have

before hinted, and genius is (as much as it is any one
thing), the power of concentration. He entered upon
his duties accordingly with a force, and patience of
application, which soon made him master of what are
called business habits, and, once in possession of the
details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight
to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of
trade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house
were soon in a much more prosperous train, and after
a year's residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very
clear to manage them with a long arm and take up his
quarters in Paris.

“Les fats sont les seuls hommes qui aient soin d'eux
mêmes,” says a French novelist, but there is a period,
early or late, in the lives of the cleverest men, when
they become suddenly curious as to their capacity for
the graces. Paris, to a stranger who does not visit in
the Faubourg St. Germain, is a republic of personal
exterior, where the degree of privilege depends with
Utopian impartiality on the style of the outer man;
and Paris, therefore, if he is not already a Bachelor
of Arts (qu?—beau's Arts), usually serves the traveller
as an Alma Mater of the pomps and vanities.

Phil. Ballister, up to the time of his matriculation
in Chaussée D'Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven.
From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step,
and to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of
fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation.
But—to obtain superiority of presence with no apparent
aid from dress and no describable manner, and to display
at the same time every natural advantage in effective
relief, and, withal, to adapt this subtle philtre,
not only to the approbation of the critical and censorious,
but to the taste of fair women gifted with judgment
as God pleases—this is a finish not born with
any man (though unsuccessful if it do not seem to be),
and never reached in the apprenticeship of life, and
never reached at all by men not much above their
fellows. He who has it, has “bought his doublet in
Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany,
and his behavior everywhere,” for he must know,
as a chart of quicksands, the pronounced models of
other nations; but to be a “picked man of countries,”
and to have been a coxcomb and a man of fashion, are,
as a painter would say, but the setting of the palette
toward the making of the chef-d'æuvre.

Business prospered and the facilities of leisure increased,
while Ballister passed through these transitions
of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and
time to read, and opportunity to indulge; as far as he
could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in
the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement
of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and
passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as
the reader will already have included, wasted on culture
comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would have
been better employed but for the meddling of Miss
Fanny Bellairs.

Ballister's return from France was heralded by the
arrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and
numberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The
reception of these by the family at home threw rather
a new light on the probable changes in the long-absent
brother, for, from the signal success of the business
he had managed, they had very naturally supposed
that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding
care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal appearance
had reached them, such as might be expected
from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who
had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subsequently
on the family in New York, were not people
qualified to judge of the man, either from their own
powers of observation or from any confidence he was
likely to put forward while in their society. His
letters had been delightful, but they were confined to
third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to interest
them, &c., and Fanny had few addressed personally
to herself, having thought it worth while, for
the experiment's sake or for some other reason, to see
whether love would subsist without its usual pabulum
of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters
having served her for a parting injunction at Phil's
embarkation for Havre. However varied by their
different fancies, the transformation looked for by the
whole family was substantially the same—the romantic
artist sobered down to a practical, plain man of business.
And Fanny herself had an occasional misgiving
as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and
manners; though, on the detection of the feeling, she
immediately closed her eyes upon it, and drummed
up her delinquent constancy for “parade and inspection.”

All bustles are very much alike (we use the word
as defined in Johnson), and the reader will appreciate
our delicacy, besides, in not intruding on the first reunion
of relatives and lovers long separated.

The morning after Philip Ballister's arrival, the
family sat long at breakfast. The mother's gaze
fastened untiringly on the features of her son—still her
boy—prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile
the face of the man with the cherished picture of the
child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the
work of inward change upon the countenance and expression.
The brother, with the predominant feeling
of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who
had made the fortunes of the house, read only subdued
sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior.
And Fanny—Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie
and leger-bred hardness of manner which she had
looked for were not there, nor any variety of the
“foreign slip-slop” common to travelled youth, nor
any superciliousness, nor (faith!) any wear and tear
of youth or good looks—nothing that she expected—
nothing! Not even a French guard-chain!

What there was in her cousin's manners and exterior,
however, was much more difficult to define by
Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the
renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits,
herself—the simple nature and unpretendingness of
his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure
at seeing him again—but she soon began to suspect
there was an exquisite refinement in this very simplicity,
and to wonder at “the trick of it;” and after
the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when
he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she
was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his
passionate love-making. And with all her faculties she
studied him. What was the charm of his presence! He
was himself, and himself only. He seemed perfect, but
he seemed to have arrived at perfection like a statue,
not like a picture—by what had been taken away, not
by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird,
and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced
conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the drawing-room,
and his attitudes were full of repose; yet she
was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had
been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred politeness,
and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny
felt there was a change in her relative position to her
cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the advantage,
she was perplexed to discover—but she bit
her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were
not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should
suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love
with him.

It would have been a novelty in the history of Miss
Bellairs that any event to which she had once consented,
should admit of reconsideration; and the
Ballister family, used to her strong will, were confirmed
fatalists as to the coming about of her ends and
aims. Her marriage with Philip, therefore, was

discussed, cœur ouvert, from his first arrival, and, indeed,
in her usual fashion of saving others the trouble
of making up their minds, “herself had named the
day.” This, it is true, was before his landing, and
was then, an effort of considerable magnanimity, as
the expectant Penelope was not yet advised of her
lover's state of preservation or damages by cares and
keeping. If Philip had not found his wedding-day
fixed on his arrival, however, he probably would have
had a voice in the naming of it, for with Fanny's new
inspirations as to his character, there had grown up a
new flower in her garden of beauties—timidity!
What bird of the air had sown the seed in such a soil
was a problem to herself—but true it was!—the confident
belle had grown a blushing trembler! She
would as soon have thought of bespeaking her wings
for the sky, as to have ventured on naming the day in
a short week after.

The day was named, however, and the preparations
went on—nem. con.—the person most interested (after
herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion,
touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity.
The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services,
were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and
Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse
in his rooms, or at other times, engrossed by troops
of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect
than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By
particular request, also, he took no part in the 'plenishing
and embellishing of the new abode—not permitted
even to inquire where it was situated, and under this
cover, besides the pleasure of having her own way,
Fanny concealed a little secret, which, when disclosed,
she now felt, would figure forth to Philip's comprehension,
her whole scheme of future happiness. She had
taken the elder brother into her counsels a fortnight
after Philip's return, and, with his aid and consent,
had abandoned the original idea of a house in town,
purchased a beautifully-secluded estate and cottage
ornée, on the East river, and transferred thither all the
objects of art, furniture, &c. One room only of the
maternal mansion was permitted to contribute its
quota to the completion of the bridal dwelling—the
wing, never since inhabited, in which Philip had made
his essay as a painter—and without variation of a cobweb,
and with whimsical care and effort on the part
of Miss Fanny, this apartment was reproduced at
Revedere—her own picture on the easel, as it stood
on the night of his abandonment of his art, and palette,
pencils and colors in tempting readiness on the table.
Even the fire-grate of the old studio had been re-set
in the new, and the cottage throughout had been refitted
with a view to occupation in the winter. And
to sundry hints on the part of the elder brother, that
some thought should be given to a city residence—
for the Christmas holydays, at least—Fanny replied,
through a blush, that she should never wish to see the
town—with Philip at Revedere!

Five years had ripened and mellowed the beauty
of Fanny Bellairs, and the same summer-time of youth
had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud
and flower. She was ready now for love. She had
felt the variable temper of society, and there was a
presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and
the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach
that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of
her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with
the power to recall time, she would have thanked
God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing
the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a
day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to herself,
was the wealth they had purchased.

It lacked as little as one week of “the happy day,”
when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere,
and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be succeeded
by the agreeable surprise to Philip of inform
ing him he was at home, were finally completed. One
or two very intimate friends were added to the party,
and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed
simply a dejeuner sur l'herbe in the grounds of an unoccupied
villa, the property of an acquaintance.

With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the
early associations which had temporarily confused and
colored the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradually
away, leaving uppermost once more the fastidious
refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium,
thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the
heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Ballisters
held a good station in society, without caring
for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and
Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had
not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her
manners above that of her immediate friends. Without
being positively distasteful to Philip, the family
circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the
way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of
his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded
occupation more frequently, and passed his time in
the more congenial company of his library of art.
This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs
the opportunity to make frequent visits to the workmen
at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her
betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected
but her own daily increasing tenderness and admiration.

The morning of the fête came in like the air in an
overture—a harmony of all the instruments of summer.
The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten,
and the drive through the avenue to the lawn drew a
burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was
exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny's heart was
brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She
assumed at once the dispensation of the honors, and
beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven
ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like
Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped
bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the
place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels,
she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and
with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the
grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours
passed off like dreams, and no one even hinted a regret
that the house itself was under lock and bar. And
so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the
guests were permitted to order round their carriages
and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the
gate. And, on the return of the family through the
avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thither,
till lights began to show through the trees, and by
the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows
of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the
open doors, and servants busy within, completed a
scene more like magic than reality. Philip was led in
by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and
his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and
pictures, books and furniture, arranged in complete
order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight
of love in authority.

When an hour had been spent in examining and
admiring the different apartments, an inner room was
thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this
fourth act in the day's drama was lingered over in untiring
happiness by the family.

Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and
Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown
to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the
curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by
Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain,
and with her hands affectionately crossed on his arm,
led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited,
and with a good-night kiss left him at the open door
of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a

bachelor's bed. Turning upon the threshold, he
closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams,
and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope
of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lingering
again on her way back, to be overtaken by her
surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining
the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of
tears and joy.

Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace
overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation,
that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none
but the family were to be present, she had stolen a
march on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her
demi-toilet a morning cap of exquisite becomingness.
Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did
the honors of the breakfast-table with a grace and
sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even
from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip
had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered
long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be
ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door
before a servant could be summoned.

The rooms were open, and the bed had not been
occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and
on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter
addressed—“Miss Fanny Bellairs.”