LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1360, 24 June 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ONLY TOO TRUE. (“Argosy.”) ( Concluded.) ‘What would you call reason ?’ ‘This. Rouse yourself from these delusive dreams. Throw them off. Turn to some manly and us ful employment, which will benefit yourself, and make the world better for you and for me.’ ‘ What shall I turn to ?’ he asked, some dedsion in his tone. ‘ Raymond told me yesterday his head gardener was going to leave : shall I apply for the post ?’ ‘Better that than what you are doing now frittering your life away uselessly. Vou must know, you must have have learned that you will never do any good at painting. And oh, Mark, dear husband, think of the dread day that must surely come, when you will have to render up an account of your doings on earth !’ No reply. We sat a few minutes in silence. I went on with my work again. Presently Mark came across, kissed my forehead without speaking, and shut himself into his studio. The days wont on. Mark shut himself up more than over ; I tried to do well all I had to do, spite of my dreary heart. Mark began to look haggard and feverish. There was a wild, restless light in his eye that pained and alarmed me. He was silent and gloomy : I do not think I once saw a smile upon his face. Even at meals he did not speak, and he ate nothing. He was not unkind ; rather sad, gentle. I sewed on, and wept in secret. At last there came a break in this dreadful monotony. It was towards the close of a beutiful day in June —that sweetest of months. Alas ! it had not been sweet to me I was standing at the open door, plucking the yellow leaves from the honeysuckle which twined about the trelliswork, wondering whether I might venture to see after Mark, for he had n t been down since early morning, when I heard his step behind me. Turning, I met his blazing eyes, and felt the clasp of his burning hand, as it took mine. * W ill you come to the studio, Helen ?’ He pnlled me almost fiercely after him, threw open the door, and drew me in. ‘ See, Helen, I have completed a picture. Your bitter words have wrought much good.’ But as Mark spoke, ho reeled with sudden famine-s, a-d caught at the back of a chair. Steadying himse’f, he added, half petulantly —‘ Why are ym looking with such a face at me ? Look at the picture. I shall never paint another.’ So I turned the picture, not yet dry from the finishing strokes. The centre figure was a wild-eyed, eager-looking youth, stretching out his arms impetuously towards a beautiful phantom. A phantom whose bewildering face ro*e like an alluring star from a mass of clouds which rolled even to the feet of the madly pursuing worshipper. At the right, and all unheeded, stood a form less fair and ethereal than the vision in the clouds, hut calm, lofty, and dignified, with the implements o.f industry and. labour scattered about her, and her great, earnest eyes gating honestly and fearlessly into the misty dis'ancc. In the background stood another figure a woman, with more of the mortal about !mr than distinguished the others, watching the deluded yonth, and seeming to reason and to plead with him. ‘ls it a true picture, Helen ?’ ‘ Yes,’ I said ‘ drawing a deep breath, ‘it is a true picture. ’ ‘ And what of the execution ?’ Ah, I doubted there, But I praiied that. How could 1 do else, seeing him as he was now ? ‘ You look weary and sick, dear Mark, and you have tested nothing to-day. Come down now : J have something all ready and waiiing for you.’ ‘No,’ bo re* bed, ‘I want nothing but rest. My head Pels strangely. Only rest. Let me rest! He staggered to our little bedroom, and lay down in his clothes. Only at night could I get him to undress, and some tea that I took him up he would not touch, Water, only water, ho said : that costs nothing. All night he was tossing feverishly to and fro. In the morning I ran out and got the gardener’s boy next door to go for Dr. Rine. He came at once ;ho looked grave. Mark was very ill indeed, ho said. It was fever of some kind—brain or nervous. ‘What’s amiss with Mark now?’ asked Henry Raymond, catching mo as I was washing out the tea-pot. ‘ Pine says ho is ill,’ ; Oh, very ill indeed ; very ill! What shall I do, Mr Raymond, what shall I do?’ ‘Come, toino, Mrs Kcrrison, it won’t do for you to break down, you know,’ho said, kindly. ‘And see—l have brought M-rk in a few strawberries,’ putting the plate of delicious fruit in my hand. ‘ Perhaps they may tempt him, Pino says ho is feverish,’ 1 And oh, as yet I have not been able to get him to touch anything,’ I sobbed ; ‘ho says it costa money. Even the toast-and water ho refused, because it had taken a piece of broad to make it.’ ‘Coming to Ida senses at last, perhaps,’ said Henry Raymond in his pleasant manner. ‘ But be must not be lot starve, for all that.’ ‘Co has been painting a picture for several wool- s past; has not, so to say, eater, and slept, only worked. .And,’ I added, betraying the fear that lay on my heart, ‘I think it h .s turned his brain.’ ‘ Tuined his brain ?’ Ami. with that, I told this good Moud of onvs f what I had spoken that night in May to ■ y husband. How bitterly I reproached myself for it none could know.

‘ Let me have a look at this picture, Mrs K^rrisan,’

He went up on tu-too to the studio, treading softly. Henry Raymond, who was a bit of a judge, stood examining the painting. ‘ A grand idea,’ he said at length ‘ Rut, as usual, very imperfectly carri d out. This picture would not sell for live pounds.’ I sighed ; knowing it was only too true. S'raw berries in hand, *lr Raymond went on to the bedroom Alas, Mark was past eating strawberries. Tossing and t. rring on the bed in delirium, the fever had already laid sharp hold of him. It was brain fever : no mistaking that now. ‘ I’ll send our old nurse in at once, my dear ; she’s worth her weight in gold in illness,’ said Mr Raymond kindly as he went away. 4 And Mrs Raymond will come in and see you as soon as she can. Please God, we will bring Mark through this.’ °h, it was a terrible illness! My poor husband! For long days and nights the fever held him Now raving, now prostrate, there he lay. Sometimes he seemed to bo wildly fighting with a mysterious, hidden Apollyon, whose fiery darts assailed him and threatened destruction. I thought, we all thought, ho would have died in the struggle. And what would have become of him or of me without the Raymonds, and how much they did for us, heaven only knew. The madness and the sickness passed away. Weak and helpless as a little child, Mark was given back to me. My whole soul went up in thankfulness. One day when Mark had grown strong enough to sit at the open window, I was at work on a stool by his side ; he drew me to him, kissed me tenderly, and told me how paie and thin I had grown. ‘But it is all over n w, Helen, that old mistake. lam going to be a man.’ There was certainly a touch of bitterness in his tone. Was he speaking in reproach ? My thoughts flew back to that long-past M iy night and to what I had said in it. ‘ Oh, Mark, forgive, f orgive me I ’ ‘Forgive you for what, my darling? ’ ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you mean — what I said that evening ? ’ ‘ What you said was just what I needed, Helen. I had been indistinctly thinking so myself lor some little time before. I was not prepared to acknowledge the truth then, but I felt it in my secret soul. I have so long cherished the hope of future fame and triumph; I had dreamed such magnificent dreams, had built such glorious castles in the air : to give all up at once was too hard, too hard. But my senses have come to me, as Raymond calls it; the mistake’s over, the trouble at an end.’ ‘And—you mean—that you shall not go on painting?’ said I, my pulses beating wildly. ‘ Never again.’ 4 And then ?’ * And then, you would ask, what am I going to do. How get bread and cheese—when I don’t paint and you don’t sew ? for we will have no more working, Helen. Well, Raymond —how kind he has been ! has told me I may go back to them when I will: at the old salary, too. So, my love, our troubles are over ’ Whether I laughed most or cried most I cannot tell. The sun at that moment burst out from behind a cloud in the blue sky : to rae it seemed as if those bright beams came direct from our Father in heaven—an earnest of His love. Some years have gone by since that day, and two little children are playing at my knee. We are well off now, for the firm is Raymond, Raymond, and Kerrison. And that last picture of Mark’s hangs up in our dining-room : a memento, Mark says, of a man’s folly.