"Oh! I suspected that your cursed obstinacy would meet me here, as well as elsewhere in your life. You have been a source of trouble and sorrow from your birth; but the time has come to end all this. You know that I never menace idly, and if you refuse to hear reason, I will utterly disinherit you, though you are my only child. Ponder it well. You have been raised in luxury, and taught to believe yourself one of the wealthiest heiresses in the state; contrast your present position, your elegant home, your fastidious tastes gratified to the utmost; contrast all this, I say, with poverty--imagine yourself left in the world without one cent! Think of it!

think of it! My wealth is my own, mark you, and I will give it to whom I please, irrespective of all claims of custom. Now the alternative is fully before you, and on your own head be the consequences. Will you accede to my wishes, as any dutiful child should, or will you deliberately incur my everlasting displeasure? Will you marry Hugh?"

"Father, I will not marry Hugh, so help me, G.o.d!".

Silence fell between them for several moments; something in that fixed, calm face of his child awed him, but it was temporary and, with a bitter laugh, he exclaimed--

"Oh, very well! Your poverty be upon your own head in coming years, when the grave closes over me. At my death every cent of my property pa.s.ses to Hugh, and with it my name, and between you and me, as an impa.s.sable gulf, lies my everlasting displeasure. Understand that, though we live here in one house, as father and child, I do not, and will not, forgive you. You have defied me; now eat the bitter fruit of your disobedience."

"I have no desire to question the disposition of your wealth; if you prefer to give it to my cousin, I am willing, perfectly willing. I enjoy wealth as well as most people do, I suppose; but poverty does not frighten me half so much as a loveless marriage. Give Hugh your fortune, if you wish, but, father! father! let there be no estrangement between you and me. I can bear everything but your displeasure; I dread nothing so much as the loss of your love. Oh, father! forgive a disappointment which my conscience would not permit me to avert. Forgive the pain which, G.o.d knows, I would not have caused you if I could have avoided it without compromising principle. Oh, my father! my father! let not dollars and cents stand between you and your only child. I ask nothing now but your love."

She drew nearer, but he waved her off, and said with a sneering laugh--

"Away with all such cant! I gave you the choice, and you made your selection with your eyes fully open. Accept poverty as your doom, and with it my eternal displeasure. I intend to make you suffer for your obstinacy.

You shall find, to your sorrow, that I am not to be trifled with, or my name is not Leonard Huntingdon. Now go your own way, and find what a th.o.r.n.y path you have made for yourself."

He pointed to the door as he had done years before, when the boarding-school decree went forth, and without remonstrance she left him, and sat down on the steps of the greenhouse. Soon after, the sound of his buggy wheels told her that he had gone to town, and, leaning her cheek on her hand, she recalled the painful conversation from first to last. That he meant all he had threatened, and more, she did not question for an instant, and, thinking of her future, she felt sick at heart. But with the shame and sorrow came also a thrill of joy; she had burst the fetters: she was free.

Wounded affection bled freely, but brain and conscience exulted in the result.

CHAPTER XIX

RUSSELL VISITS ELECTRA

The patient work of twelve months drew to a close; the study of years bore its first fruit; the last delicate yet quivering touch was given; Electra threw down palette and brush, and, stepping back, surveyed the canvas. The Exhibition would open within two days, and this was to be her contribution.

A sad-eyed Ca.s.sandra, with pallid, prescient, woe-struck features--an over-mastering face, wherein the flickering light of divination struggled feebly with the human horror of the To-Come, whose hideous mysteries were known only to the royal prophetess. In mute and stern despair it looked out from the canvas, a curious anomalous thing--cut adrift from human help, bereft of aid from heaven--yet, in its doomed isolation, scorning to ask the sympathy which its extraordinary loveliness extorted from all who saw it. The artist's pride in this, her first finished creation, might well be pardoned, for she was fully conscious that the cloud-region of a painful novitiate lay far beneath her; that henceforth she would never miss the pressure of long-coveted chaplets from her brow; that she should bask in the warm, fructifying rays of public favour; and measureless exultation flashed in her beautiful eyes.

The door opened, and Russell came into the studio. She was not expecting him; his sudden appearance gave her no time to adjust the chilling mask of pride, and all her uncontrolled affection found eloquent language in the joyful face.

"Russell! my own dear Russell!"

He drew his arm around her and kissed her flushed cheek, and each looked at the other, wondering at the changes which years had wrought.

"Electra, you have certainly improved more than anyone I ever knew. You look the impersonation of perfect health; it is needless to ask how you are." And again his lips touched the beaming face pressed against his shoulder. Her arms stole tremblingly around his neck, past indifference was forgotten in the joy of his presence.

"Sit down, and let me look at you. You have grown so tall and commanding that I am half afraid of my own cousin. You are less like Aunt Amy than formerly."

"Allow me to look at your painting first, for it will soon be too dark to examine it. This is the Ca.s.sandra of which you wrote me."

He stood before it for some moments in silence, and she watched him with breathless eagerness--for his opinion was of more value to her than that of all the _dilettanti_ and _connoisseurs_ who would soon inspect it.

Gradually his dark cold face kindled, and she had her reward.

"It is a masterly creation; a thing of wonderful and imperishable beauty; it is a great success--as such the world will receive it--and hundreds will proclaim your triumph. I am proud of it, and doubly proud of you."

He held out his hand, and, as she put her fingers in his, her head drooped, and hot tears blinded her. Praise from the lips she loved best stirred her womanly heart as the applause of the public could never do.

"Come, sit down, Electra, and tell me something of your life, since the death of your friend, Mr. Clifton."

"Did you receive my last letter, giving an account of Mrs. Clifton's death?"

"Yes; just as I stepped upon the platform of the cars it was handed to me.

I had heard nothing from you for so long, that I thought it was time to look after you."

"You had started, then, before you knew that I was going to Europe?"

"Yes."

He could not understand the instantaneous change which came over her countenance--the illumination, followed as suddenly by a smile, half compa.s.sionate, half bitter. She pressed one hand to her heart, and said--

"Mrs. Clifton never seemed to realize her son's death, though, after paralysis took place, and she became speechless, I thought she recovered her memory in some degree. She survived him just four months, and, doubtless, was saved much grief by her unconsciousness of what had occurred. Poor old lady! she suffered little for a year past, and died, I hope, without pain. I have the consolation of knowing that I did all that could be done to promote her comfort. Russell, I would not live here for any consideration; nothing but a sense of duty has detained me this long. I promised him that I would not forsake his mother. But you can have no adequate conception of the feeling of desolation which comes over me when I sit here during the long evenings. He seems watching me from picture-frames and pedestals; his face, his pleading, patient, wan face, haunts me perpetually. And yet I tried to make him happy; G.o.d knows I did my duty."

She sprang up and paced the room for some moments, with her hands behind her, and tears glittering on her cheeks. Pausing at last on the rug, she pointed to a large square object, closely shrouded and added--

"Yonder stands his last picture, unfinished. The day he died he put a few feeble strokes upon it, and bequeathed the completion of the task to me.

For several years he worked occasionally on it, but much remains to be done. It is the 'Death of Socrates.' I have not even looked at it since that night; I do not intend to touch it until after I visit Italy; I doubt whether my hand will ever be steady enough to give the last strokes. Oh, Russell! the olden time, the cottage days, seem far, far off to me now!"

Leaning against the mantelpiece, she dropped her head on her hand, but when he approached and stood at the opposite corner, he saw that the tears had dried.

"Neither of us has had a sunny life, Electra; both have had numerous obstacles to contend with; both have very bitter memories. Originally there was a certain parallelism in our characters, but with our growth grew the divergence. You have preserved the n.o.bler part of your nature better than I; for my years I am far older than you; none of the brightness of my boyhood seems to linger about me. Contact with the world is an indurating process; I really did not know how hard I had grown, until I felt my heart soften at sight of you. I need you to keep the kindly charities and gentle amenities of life before me, and, therefore, I have come for you. But for my poverty I never would have given you up so long; I felt that it would be for your advantage, in more than one respect to remain with Mr. Clifton until I had acquired my profession. I knew that you would enjoy privileges here which I could not give you in my straitened circ.u.mstances. Things have changed; Mr. Campbell has admitted me to partnership; my success I consider an established fact. Give up, for a season, this projected tour of Europe; wait till I can go with you--till I can take you; go back to W---- with me.

You can continue your art studies, if you wish it; you can prosecute them there as well as here. You are ambitious, Electra; so am I; let us work together."

She raised her head and looked up at the powerful, n.o.bly-proportioned form, the grand, kingly face, calm and colourless, the large, searching black eyes, within whose baffling depths lay all the mysteries of mesmerism, and a spasm of pain seized her own features. She shaded her brow, and answered--

"No, Russell; I could not entertain that thought an instant."

"Are you too proud to accept a home from me?"

"Not too proud, exactly; but, as long as I have health, I mean to make a support. I will not burden you."

"Full value received for benefit rendered is not charity; come to W----, share my future, and what fortune I may find a.s.signed me. I have bought the cottage, and intend to build a handsome house there some day, where you and Mr. Campbell and I can live peacefully. You shall twine your aesthetic fancies all about it, to make it picturesque enough to suit your fastidious artistic taste. Come and save me from what you consider my worse than vandalian proclivities. I came here simply and solely in the hope of prevailing on you to return with me. I make this request, not because I think it will be expected of me, but for more selfish reasons--because it is a matter resting very near my heart."

"Oh, Russell! you tempt me."

"I wish to do so. My blood beats in your veins; you are the only relative I value, and were you indeed my sister, I should scarcely love you more. With all a brother's interest, why should I not claim a brother's right to keep you with me, at least until you find your Pylades, and give him a higher claim before G.o.d and man? Electra, were I your brother, you would require no persuasion; why hesitate now?"

She clasped her hands behind her, as if for support in some fiery ordeal, and, gathering up her strength, spoke rapidly, like one who fears that resolution will fail before some necessary sentence is p.r.o.nounced.

"You are very kind and generous, Russell, and for all that you have offered me I thank you from the depth of a full heart. The consciousness of your continued interest and affection is inexpressibly precious; but my disposition is too much like your own to suffer me to sit down in idleness, while there is so much to be done in the world. I, too, want to earn a n.o.ble reputation, which will survive long after I have been gathered to my fathers; I want to accomplish some work, looking upon which, my fellow-creatures will proclaim: 'That woman has not lived in vain; the world is better and happier because she came and laboured in it.' I want my name carved, not on monumental marble only, but upon the living, throbbing heart of my age!--stamped indelibly on the generation in which my lot is cast. Perhaps I am too sanguine of success; a grievous disappointment may await all my ambitious hopes, but failure will come from want of genius, not lack of persevering patient toil. Upon the threshold of my career, facing the loneliness of coming years, I resign that hope with which, like a golden thread, most women embroider their future. I dedicate myself, my life, unreservedly to Art."

"You believe that you will be happier among the marble and canvas of Italy than in W---- with me?"

"Yes; I shall be better satisfied there. All my life it has gleamed afar off, a glorious land of promise to my eager, longing spirit. From childhood I have cherished the hope of reaching it, and the fruition is near at hand.

Italy! bright Alma Mater of the art to which I consecrate my years. Do you wonder that, like a lonely child, I stretch, out my arms toward it? Yet my stay there will be but for a season. I go to complete my studies, to make myself a more perfect instrument for my n.o.ble work, and then I shall come home--come, not to New York, but to my own dear native South, to W----, that I may labour under the shadow of its lofty pines, and within hearing of its murmuring river--dearer to me than cla.s.sic Arno, or immortal Tiber.

I wrote you that Mr. Clifton had left me a legacy, which, judiciously invested, will defray my expenses in Europe, where living is cheaper than in this country. Mr. Young has taken charge of the money for me, and has kindly offered to attend to my remittances. Aunt Ruth's friends, the Richardsons, consented to wait for me until after the opening of the Exhibition of the Academy of Design, and one week from to-morrow we expect to sail."

"What do you know of the family?"