“But this painter!” cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. “He not only
excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all
other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather and gives
lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word, he will meet the
best-instructed man among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a
polished gentleman, a citizen of the world—yes, a true cosmopolite; for
he will speak like a native of each clime and country on the globe,
except our own forests, whither he is now going. Nor is all this what I
most admire in him.”
“Indeed!” said Elinor, who had listened with a women’s interest to the
description of such a man. “Yet this is admirable enough.”
“Surely it is,” replied her lover, “but far less so than his natural
gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that
all men—and all women too, Elinor—shall find a mirror of themselves in
this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told.”
“Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these,” said Elinor,
laughing, “Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you
telling me of a painter, or a wizard?”
“In truth,” answered he, “that question might be asked much more
seriously than you suppose. They say that he paints not merely a man’s
features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and
passions and throws them upon the canvas like sunshine, or perhaps, in
the portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is
an awful gift,” added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of
enthusiasm. “I shall be almost afraid to sit to him.”
“Walter, are you in earnest?” exclaimed Elinor.
“For Heaven’s sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look which
you now wear,” said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed.
“There! it is passing away now; but when you spoke, you seemed
frightened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?”
“Nothing, nothing!” answered Elinor, hastily. “You paint my face with
your own fantasies. Well, come for me tomorrow, and we will visit this
wonderful artist.”
But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a
remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face
of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance
with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of
wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart.
“A look!” said Elinor to herself. “No wonder that it startled him if it
expressed what I sometimes feel. I know by my own experience how
frightful a look may be. But it was all fancy. I thought nothing of it
at the time; I have seen nothing of it since; I did but dream it;” and
she busied herself about the embroidery of a ruff in which she meant
that her portrait should be taken.
The painter of whom they had been speaking was not one of those native
artists who at a later period than this borrowed their colors from the
Indians and manufactured their pencils of the furs of wild beasts.
Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prearranged his destiny,
he might have chosen to belong to that school without a master in the
hope of being at least original, since there were no works of art to
imitate nor rules to follow. But he had been born and educated in
Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or beauty of
conception and every touch of the master-hand in all the most famous
pictures in cabinets and galleries and on the walls of churches till
there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add
nothing to its lessons, but Nature might. He had, therefore, visited a
world whither none of his professional brethren had preceded him, to
feast his eyes on visible images that were noble and picturesque, yet
had never been transferred to canvas. America was too poor to afford
other temptations to an artist of eminence, though many of the colonial
gentry on the painter’s arrival had expressed a wish to transmit their
lineaments to posterity by moans of his skill. Whenever such proposals
were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant and seemed to
look him through and through. If he beheld only a sleek and comfortable
visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and
golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the
reward; but if the face were the index of anything uncommon in thought,
sentiment or experience, or if he met a beggar in the street with a
white beard and a furrowed brow, or if sometimes a child happened to
look up and smile, he would exhaust all the art on them that he denied
to wealth.
Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an
object of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the
technical merit of his productions, yet there were points in regard to
which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment
of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on
such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while
they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself as him
who seemed to rival her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was
tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it an
offence against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of the
Creator, to bring into existence such lively images of his creatures.
Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at will and
keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to consider
the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man of old
witch-times plotting mischief in a new guise. These foolish fancies
were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior circles
his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like
smoke-wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused by the
varied knowledge and talents which he made subservient to his
profession.
Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to
obtain their portraits as the first of what, they doubtless hoped,
would be a long series of family pictures. The day after the
conversation above recorded they visited the painter’s rooms. A servant
ushered them into an apartment where, though the artist himself was not
visible, there were personages whom they could hardly forbear greeting
with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole assembly were but
pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the idea of life and
intellect from such striking counterfeits. Several of the portraits
were known to them either as distinguished characters of the day or
their private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnett, looking as if
he had just received an undutiful communication from the House of
Representatives and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung
beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy and somewhat puritanical, as
befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed
them from the wall in ruff and farthingale, an imperious old dame not
unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a very young man, wore
the expression of warlike enterprise which long afterward made him a
distinguished general. Their personal friends were recognized at a
glance. In most of the pictures the whole mind and character were
brought out on the countenance and concentrated into a single look; so
that, to speak paradoxically, the originals hardly resembled themselves
so strikingly as the portraits did.
Among these modern worthies there were two old bearded saints who had
almost vanished into the darkening canvas. There was also a pale but
unfaded Madonna who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now
regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to
worship too.
“How singular a thought,” observed Walter Ludlow, “that this beautiful
face has been beautiful for above two hundred years! Oh, if all beauty
would endure so well! Do you not envy her, Elinor?”
“If earth were heaven, I might,” she replied. “But, where all things
fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade!”
“This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he
be,” continued Walter; “he troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at
us.”
“Yes, but very sorrowfully, methinks,” said Elinor.
The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that
had been recently commenced. After a little inspection they began to
recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev. Dr. Colman,
growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud.
“Kind old man!” exclaimed Elinor. “He gazes at me as if he were about
to utter a word of paternal advice.”
“And at me,” said Walter, “as if he were about to shake his head and
rebuke me for some suspected iniquity. But so does the original. I
shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before
him to be married.”
They now heard a footstep on the floor, and, turning, beheld the
painter, who had been some moments in the room and had listened to a
few of their remarks. He was a middle-aged man with a countenance well
worthy of his own pencil. Indeed, by the picturesque though careless
arrangement of his rich dress, and perhaps because his soul dwelt
always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait
himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist and
his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the
canvas to salute them.
Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the painter, explained the
object of their visit. While he spoke a sunbeam was falling athwart his
figure and Elinor’s with so happy an effect that they also seemed
living pictures of youth and beauty gladdened by bright fortune. The
artist was evidently struck.
“My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston
must be brief,” said he, thoughtfully; then, after an observant glance,
he added, “But your wishes shall be gratified though I disappoint the
chief-justice and Madame Oliver. I must not lose this opportunity for
the sake of painting a few ells of broadcloth and brocade.”
The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into
one picture and represent them engaged in some appropriate action. This
plan would have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily rejected
because so large a space of canvas would have been unfit for the room
which it was intended to decorate. Two half-length portraits were
therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave, Walter Ludlow asked
Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influence over their
fates the painter was about to acquire.
“The old women of Boston affirm,” continued he, “that after he has once
got possession of a person’s face and figure he may paint him in any
act or situation whatever, and the picture will be prophetic. Do you
believe it?”
“Not quite,” said Elinor, smiling. “Yet if he has such magic, there is
something so gentle in his manner that I am sure he will use it well.”
It was the painter’s choice to proceed with both the portraits at the
same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he
sometimes used, that the faces threw light upon each other.
Accordingly, he gave now a touch to Walter and now to Elinor, and the
features of one and the other began to start forth so vividly that it
appeared as if his triumphant art would actually disengage them from
the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade they beheld their
phantom selves, but, though the likeness promised to be perfect, they
were not quite satisfied with the expression: it seemed more vague than
in most of the painter’s works. He, however, was satisfied with the
prospect of success, and, being much interested in the lovers, employed
his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon sketch of
their two figures. During their sittings he engaged them in
conversation and kindled up their faces with characteristic traits,
which, though continually varying, it was his purpose to combine and
fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the portraits
would be ready for delivery.
“If my pencil will but be true to my conception in the few last touches
which I meditate,” observed he, “these two pictures will be my very
best performances. Seldom indeed has an artist such subjects.” While
speaking he still bent his penetrative eye upon them, nor withdrew it
till they had reached the bottom of the stairs.
Nothing in the whole circle of human vanities takes stronger hold of
the imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why
should it be so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the
andirons, the mirror-like water, and all other reflecting surfaces,
continually present us with portraits—or, rather, ghosts—of ourselves
which we glance at and straightway forget them. But we forget them only
because they vanish. It is the idea of duration—of earthly
immortality—that gives such a mysterious interest to our own portraits.
Walter and Elinor were not insensible to this feeling, and hastened to
the painter’s room punctually at the appointed hour to meet those
pictured shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity.
The sunshine flashed after them into the apartment, but left it
somewhat gloomy as they closed the door. Their eyes were immediately
attracted to their portraits, which rested against the farthest wall of
the room. At the first glance through the dim light and the distance,
seeing themselves in precisely their natural attitudes and with all the
air that they recognized so well, they uttered a simultaneous
exclamation of delight.
“There we stand,” cried Walter, enthusiastically, “fixed in sunshine
for ever. No dark passions can gather on our faces.”
“No,” said Elinor, more calmly; “no dreary change can sadden us.”
This was said while they were approaching and had yet gained only an
imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them,
busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his
visitors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At
intervals he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching
their countenances in profile with his pencil suspended over the
sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other’s
picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without
uttering a word. At length Walter stepped forward, then back, viewing
Elinor’s portrait in various lights, and finally spoke.
“Is there not a change?” said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone.
“Yes; the perception of it grows more vivid the longer I look. It is
certainly the same picture that I saw yesterday; the dress, the
features, all are the same, and yet something is altered.”
“Is, then, the picture less like than it was yesterday?” inquired the
painter, now drawing near with irrepressible interest.
“The features are perfect Elinor,” answered Walter, “and at the first
glance the expression seemed also hers; but I could fancy that the
portrait has changed countenance while I have been looking at it. The
eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression.
Nay, it is grief and terror. Is this like Elinor?”
“Compare the living face with the pictured one,” said the painter.
Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and
absorbed, fascinated, as it were, in contemplation of Walter’s
portrait, Elinor’s face had assumed precisely the expression of which
he had just been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before
a mirror, she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the
picture itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her present
aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared quite
unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover.
“Elinor,” exclaimed Walter, in amazement, “what change has come over
you?”
She did not hear him nor desist from her fixed gaze till he seized her
hand, and thus attracted her notice; then with a sudden tremor she
looked from the picture to the face of the original.
“Do you see no change in your portrait?” asked she.
“In mine? None,” replied Walter, examining it. “But let me see. Yes;
there is a slight change—an improvement, I think, in the picture,
though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than
yesterday, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes and
about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it
becomes very decided.”
While he was intent on these observations Elinor turned to the painter.
She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with
sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore she could but vaguely
guess.
“That look!” whispered she, and shuddered. “How came it there?”
“Madam,” said the painter, sadly, taking her hand and leading her
apart, “in both these pictures I have painted what I saw. The
artist—the true artist—must look beneath the exterior. It is his
gift—his proudest, but often a melancholy one—to see the inmost soul,
and by a power indefinable even to himself to make it glow or darken
upon the canvas in glances that express the thought and sentiment of
years. Would that I might convince myself of error in the present
instance!”
They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands
almost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church-towers, thatched
cottages, old thunder-stricken trees, Oriental and antique costume, and
all such picturesque vagaries of an artist’s idle moments. Turning them
over with seeming carelessness, a crayon sketch of two figures was
disclosed.
“If I have failed,” continued he—“if your heart does not see itself
reflected in your own portrait, if you have no secret cause to trust my
delineation of the other—it is not yet too late to alter them. I might
change the action of these figures too. But would it influence the
event?” He directed her notice to the sketch.
A thrill ran through Elinor’s frame; a shriek was upon her lips, but
she stifled it with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who
hide thoughts of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from the
table, she perceived that Walter had advanced near enough to have seen
the sketch, though she could not determine whether it had caught his
eye.
“We will not have the pictures altered,” said she, hastily. “If mine is
sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast.”
“Be it so,” answered the painter, bowing. “May your griefs be such
fanciful ones that only your pictures may mourn for them! For your
joys, may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely
face till it quite belie my art!”
After the marriage of Walter and Elinor the pictures formed the two
most splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side,
separated by a narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly,
yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen who
professed a knowledge of such subjects reckoned these among the most
admirable specimens of modern portraiture, while common observers
compared them with the originals, feature by feature, and were
rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third
class—neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people
of natural sensibility—that the pictures wrought their strongest
effect. Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming
interested, would return day after day and study these painted faces
like the pages of a mystic volume. Walter Ludlow’s portrait attracted
their earliest notice. In the absence of himself and his bride they
sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended
to throw upon the features, all agreeing that there was a look of
earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less
diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor’s picture. They differed,
indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom
that dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom and alien from
the natural temperament of their youthful friend. A certain fanciful
person announced as the result of much scrutiny that both these
pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy strength of
feeling in Elinor’s countenance bore reference to the more vivid
emotion—or, as he termed it, the wild passion—in that of Walter. Though
unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch in which the action of the
two figures was to correspond with their mutual expression.
It was whispered among friends that day by day Elinor’s face was
assuming a deeper shade of pensiveness which threatened soon to render
her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the
other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had
given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward
flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering within. In course
of time Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of purple silk wrought with
flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels before the pictures,
under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues or the light dim
them. It was enough. Her visitors felt that the massive folds of the
silk must never be withdrawn nor the portraits mentioned in her
presence.
Time wore on, and the painter came again. He had been far enough to the
north to see the silver cascade of the Crystal Hills, and to look over
the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New England’s
loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of
his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George,
making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur till not a
picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He had
gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had flung
his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as soon
paint the roar as aught else that goes to make up the wondrous
cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery
except as a framework for the delineations of the human form and face,
instinct with thought, passion or suffering. With store of such his
adventurous ramble had enriched him. The stern dignity of Indian
chiefs, the dusky loveliness of Indian girls, the domestic life of
wigwams, the stealthy march, the battle beneath gloomy pine trees, the
frontier fortress with its garrison, the anomaly of the old French
partisan bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts,—such were
the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous
moments, flashes of wild feeling, struggles of fierce power, love,
hate, grief, frenzy—in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old
earth—had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was
filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory which
genius would transmute into its own substance and imbue with
immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art which he had
sought so far was found.
But amid stern or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its
overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the
companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing
purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of humankind.
He had no aim, no pleasure, no sympathies, but what were ultimately
connected with his art. Though gentle in manner and upright in intent
and action, he did not possess kindly feelings; his heart was cold: no
living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For
these two beings, however, he had felt in its greatest intensity the
sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil.
He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight and pictured the
result upon their features with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall
short of that standard which no genius ever reached, his own severe
conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the future—at least, so
he fancied—a fearful secret, and had obscurely revealed it on the
portraits. So much of himself—of his imagination and all other
powers—had been lavished on the study of Walter and Elinor that he
almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the thousands with
which he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore did they flit
through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of waterfalls,
look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in the noontide
sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries of life nor
pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of portraits, each with an
unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of
the soul. He could not recross the Atlantic till he had again beheld
the originals of those airy pictures.
“O glorious Art!” Thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the
street. “Thou art the image of the Creator’s own. The innumerable forms
that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live
again; thou recallest them to their old scenes and givest their gray
shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou
snatchest back the fleeting moments of history. With thee there is no
past, for at thy touch all that is great becomes for ever present, and
illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of
the very deeds which made them what they are. O potent Art! as thou
bringest the faintly-revealed past to stand in that narrow strip of
sunlight which we call ‘now,’ canst thou summon the shrouded future to
meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I not thy prophet?”
Thus with a proud yet melancholy fervor did he almost cry aloud as he
passed through the toilsome street among people that knew not of his
reveries nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man
to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him by
whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires and hopes
will become extravagant and he the semblance—perhaps the reality—of a
madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost preternatural,
the painter failed to see the disorder of his own.
“And this should be the house,” said he, looking up and down the front
before he knocked. “Heaven help my brains! That picture! Methinks it
will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it
is framed within them, painted strongly and glowing in the richest
tints—the faces of the portraits, the figures and action of the
sketch!”
He knocked.
“The portraits—are they within?” inquired he of the domestic; then,
recollecting himself, “Your master and mistress—are they at home?”
“They are, sir,” said the servant, adding, as he noticed that
picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,
“and the portraits too.”
The guest was admitted into a parlor communicating by a central door
with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was
empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes
were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured
representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an
interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing
before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich
and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel
with one hand, while the other grasped that of his bride. The pictures,
concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished splendor,
appearing to throw a sombre light across the room rather than to be
disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been almost
prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had successively
dwelt upon her countenance, deepening with the lapse of time into a
quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very
expression of the portrait. Walter’s face was moody and dull or
animated only by fitful flashes which left a heavier darkness for their
momentary illumination. He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and
thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he finally stood
absorbed.
The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him
on its progress toward its victims. A strange thought darted into his
mind. Was not his own the form in which that Destiny had embodied
itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which he had
foreshadowed?
Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as
with his own heart and abandoning himself to the spell of evil
influence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his
eyes kindled, while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his
face her own assumed a look of terror; and when, at last, he turned
upon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.
“Our fate is upon us!” howled Walter. “Die!”
Drawing a knife, he sustained her as she was sinking to the ground, and
aimed it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude of
each the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with
all its tremendous coloring, was finished.
“Hold, madman!” cried he, sternly.
He had advanced from the door and interposed himself between the
wretched beings with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny
as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician
controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.
“What!” muttered Walter Ludlow as he relapsed from fierce excitement
into sullen gloom. “Does Fate impede its own decree?”
“Wretched lady,” said the painter, “did I not warn you?”
“You did,” replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the
quiet grief which it had disturbed. “But I loved him.”
Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one or all
our deeds be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it fate
and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires,
and none be turned aside by the prophetic pictures.