University of Virginia Library

16

9. IX.
SUNSHINE.

IN the morning, Miriam found Sir Rohan's
promise fulfilled. Torrents lashed the panes,
the bowing branches swept the lawn, the wind
whistled round and through the house, the
gray sky seemed to open and close with gluts
of rain, and the great roar of the sea filled the
diapason of the tempest. But to Miriam there was
a world of sunshine within, and when she met Sir
Rohan, himself like one fired with purpose and
strength that day, and St. Denys with his unvarying
equipoise, she could not have been gayer had
sunshine reigned without as well. Nevertheless,
indoor amusements were not many in that house,
and on the third day of the storm Sir Rohan had
recourse to a last expedient; and as Miriam rather
shyly proposed it, instnatly invited them into the
room which she dignified by the name of studio.

Here, strewn in every position, was a day's delight
for her: portfolios of bold drawing; rustling watercolors,
as many and strong, she thought, as the
brown leaves of an oak in autumn; and wonderful
things, where the artist in experimenting with
his tints could not avoid expressing beautiful conceits.
Leaning against the wall, one upon another,
were strange, half-finished pictures without
frames, pitifully dented by their mutual weight;
and here, scattering them around her, Miriam sat
upon the floor for their better enjoyment, while
St. Denys betook himself to a black-letter chronicle,
and Sir Rohan stretched a canvas.

A few, such as an aspen shaking through a
south-wind into the likeness of a silvery ghost;
the centre of a forest rich in every shade of green,
gorgeous with every flower and fruit and plumage
multiplied in stagnant pools below, but from
whose virid mosses noisome vapors rose, and in
whose countless reeds the fiends of plague and malaria
lurked, — a spot fecund with every venomous
reptile and stinging insect, — a spot damned
with luxuriance; or the awful brows of an eclipse
brooding over space and stifling the shrinking
earth; or a little chrisom baby stretched stiff and

stark on a yew bough, and watched by a school of
wizard eyes; or yet again, a dread assemblage of
the artist's imaginative terrors, flocculent faces,
that had stared in his eye, hissed in his ear,
flapped in his path, and from whom he could gain
no release except by imprisoning them here; —
these and other kindred Miriam flung aside, as she
would have flung the study of a foot or anything
not promising immediate satisfaction.

Indeed, in every one there was an anomaly, a
trait of the artist's individuality, that could only
be described by supposing a soul to the picture,
expressing, after all, that wherein his pencil failed;
and this expression was always the Ghost, as much
as if thrown herself in broad dashes of glimmering
color upon the canvas. But in the others, where
it was less explicit, Miriam soon found sufficient
enjoyment.

Here was a pearly, crepusculine sky, through
which the spirit of the tenderest young crescent
held up her lucid vase to catch the earth's light
that foamed high as the rim of the old moon
between its golden horns; here a white midnight
moon rose behind a line of broken columns surrounded
by tideless lagunas and crowned by an

albatross taking her glow on the tips of his white
drooping wings; and here a long stretch of green
waves washed themselves to froth, and clamored
for a falling moon that sunk hastily into their
bosom.

“She has drunk her pearl, this sea,” said Miriam,
“and now for the asp, Sir Rohan.”

“The darkness will bring that soon enough,”
he responded, quickly.

“I think you must have experienced a kind of
lunacy in painting these three,” she said, laughingly.

“Or found,” he murmured half inaudibly,
“relief from it.”

“You are moon-mad!” she exclaimed, taking
up another sea-scene, where, in an atmosphere of
delicious darkness a yellow waning moon peered
half risen over a gloomy tide, and in the light of
whose trailing splendor myriad sea-sprites rose in
shoals, with twining arms and tossing hair, springing
from the spray.

Soon she turned to others. One, where a
mountain brook falling from a ledge, half-way
down tore itself to diamond dust out of whose
depth looked a face like sunlight, below a wind-blown

scarf of rainbows; another, a delicate shell,
from whose inmost spire protruded a minute and
perfect foot lying rosily along the whorl; a third,
where stepping from a colossal lotus, clothed in
a white shimmer of raiment, her brow rubescent
with lambent lanceolate flames, stood the goddess
of the Ganges; and one whence casting out rays
like a shooting star, a rebellious angel plunged
headlong over a black vault, known by his shining
wake and the fixedness of sad still stars behind.
Again, — one of the immense yellow-haired Cimbri,
nude and brawny, slid gleefully on his shield down
the icy glare of an Alp, the hollow of a starlit
sky above, and around him frozen boulders fulgent
and sparkling in prisms, while beyond the horns
of some towering crag a fleshless hand rose, like
an apparition, and gathered the night down closer
over his young savageness. In another, he had
caught all the changes of an endless moor, the
shadows of sailing clouds, the warm hues of sky
and earth; and over the rosy edge of one only
heath-flower in the luxuriant growth appeared
the face of a tiny curious being, who, full of droll
amazement, stared at another sleeping in its heart.
But all these Miriam piled together, when catching
a glimpse of the next, in which were the
beginnings of a certain grandeur soon melting
into pathos.

“O Sir Rohan,” she cried, “what is this?
Where did you see it? Is it your genius, your
dæmon, — or is it Demogorgon?”

“Your ideas are larger than mine, Miss Miriam,”
he replied, glancing indifferently towards it.
“No. It is Spring, or Autumn, or something of
the kind.”

“But has n't it any precise title?”

“You can call it the Nemesis of Spring, if you
like.”

Miriam bent over it spell-bound, all her fancy
charmed in the long champaign, the golden-green
quivering of a near willow, the dull red hollow,
the rich violet haze that bathed the level distance,
and far, far away, a titanean head and shoulder
heaved to sight, a dim brow receding in the light,
slanting showers falling from half-closed eyelids,
and a watery smile breaking over the sad, grand
mouth.

“Do you like it, Miss Miriam?” he asked, at
length.

“O sir, so much!”

“Will you accept it?”

“Sir Rohan! Truly? Will you give this priceless
thing to me?” she exclaimed. “Listen papa,
— look!” and she sprung to his side to display it.

“Yes, my dear,” he said, absently. “But you
don't thank Sir Rohan.”

“Thank him?” she repeated. “I don't know
how. To think I can see this always! Upon my
word, I believe I never said `thank you' in my life,
— it is so awkward now! It must be very tedious
to have thanks.”

“Small fee will answer here,” said Sir Rohan.
“But now, Miss Miriam, essay the art yourself;”
and he placed palette and brushes in her hand, and
commenced his instructions which, amidst peals of
laughter, she did her best to obey, producing grotesque
caricatures in design and color, and soon
showing him that her customary drawing-lessons
had not been wasted, although cultivating no peculiar
talent.

“The way to catch God's idea in a landscape, or
an architect's in a building, I have heard,” said
she, “is to look at it with inverted eyes. Now it 's
not so easy to turn the world upside down, but
for my picture, — presto! it 's done in a minute!”

and she twirled the work round in her fingers till
whether it were saint or scaramouch one could
not tell.

“What are you two doing?” asked St. Denys,
looking up.

“Canvassing matters of art,” she answered,
gayly.

“I should think you were canvassing votes, by
the noise,” he rejoined.

“Do you catch any idea?” she asked, inclining
her head critically on one side and the other. “I
don't. I am afraid I 've left it out.”

“How is it, Sir Rohan,” she continued, after a
pause, “that all your female faces, when you put
anything of the weird into their construction, resemble
me? — though one could not be more matter-of-fact
flesh and blood than I. They were
painted, too, before you saw me. It must have
been a prescience of my coming.”

Sir Rohan started; — did they? But he could
not convince himself that such was the case, and
guided her pencil along a difficult curve before
replying,

“It would n't be singular if when Heaven is to
come into my house, I receive some premonition.”

Miriam bowed with the coupée of a minuet,
palette and maulstick waving in either hand, and
glancing over her brows at him, with eyes full of
merriment.

It was not long, however, before she deserted
her new employment, to look at the blossoms
snowing the grass; and after lunch some needlework
was found, in which she busied herself,
while St. Denys read aloud from his book, with an
oral commentary.

Listening as long as she could, she exclaimed at
last, “O papa! The man who wrote that chronicle
was afflicted with chronical dulness.”

“For shame, Miriam!”

“And what a dirty book!” she resumed. “As
yellow as a war-whoop, and the great wry letters
making eyes at each other! I wonder it don't use
its cleansing power inwardly, it 's such a soporific.
Where 's the use now, for a book of old sinners
with new names, as full of scandal as a teacup?
It must have been written by a confrère in wickedness,
who scampered through his life while he
could, and when he was prevented, made his book
racy by imagining all the course he should like to
run. See how indifferently he huddled kings and

queens and crimes together, like flies in a swarm.
If he had any sconce, he might have emblazoned
other things than royal peccadilloes and saintly
impostures.”

“Apollo pastured the flocks of Admetus,” said
Sir Rohan.

“Long ago. Pasturage past your comprehension.
Really, Sir Rohan, do you care a rush for
what papa reads? I don't believe a word of it; it
is just inef-fable, and not to be re-lied upon; like a
bee in a blossom, all a humbug.”

“You 'll burn your fingers, you Will with the
Wisp! Language and powder are dangerous play-things.”

“Both can blow one up? Well, papa, proceed
with your augury, though some of us, Sir Rohan
and I, may be unwilling to endure such a somnolent
procedure. There, don't fear any more interference;
that was a cobbler's armorial shield, —
my last and my all.”

“Miriam, I am ashamed of you.”

“Nonsense! As if you would n't have said it
yourself, if you had thought!” she retorted.

Indeed, far from interesting to the child who
lived in the present was this archæological gossip;

and after the preceding feu de joie and one or
two vain efforts at wakefulness, the voice lulled
her into a dream, nor did she wake till dinner was
announced, when Sir Rohan had sketched her
sleeping face for that of a Semele.

As the night fell, they all gathered round the
fire in the drawing-room, (which was now quite
repaired,) and Miriam, sitting on a low cushion
between the others, bent forward, her face illuminated
by the blaze, and recited the savage tales
she had heard from the Pifferari at Rome, till the
blood forsook her cheek.

“You have succeeded in thoroughly frightening
one, at least, Miriam,” said St. Denys.

“And another too, papa, I dare say, only you
must be desperate and conceal it. I should n't
like to have felt so, the first night we came,
though.”

“And what makes the difference?”

“Why, I feel almost as much at home here as at
the Castle, now.”

“That speaks well for your hospitality, Rohan.”

“Thank you, Miss Miriam.”

“I should be better satisfied if you, sir, looked
slightly perturbed or pallid. But I solace myself

by thinking no brigand of the Apennines would
succeed where I fail, since you are so bold to live
here alone. Marc Arundel tells a good story,
though; he 'll im-pale you on its point!” and
quickly making her adieux, her feet were heard
scampering along the hall, as if expecting each
flag to sink under them before gaining another.

But Sir Rohan might well afford to laugh at
such machinery for terror, when, in the lack of
any other excitement, he could always fall back
on his Ghost.