about her head and shoulders; at the sight the color faded from his lip and cheek, and his great frame shook with a sudden tremor. Margaret had seen and heard nothing; but she rose and shivered even as he had done, and laying her hand upon his arm said, "Take me home; we have stayed too long."
CHAPTER V.
Margaret had received her first commission! What artist does not remember the day when he sold his first picture? What sculptor but has made a broad red mark in his memory against the day his first model was accepted? What writer can recall without a smile of reflected pleasure the hour when the post brought him, not his own carefully written manuscript, "returned with regrets and thanks," but a letter telling him that his thoughts are to be scattered abroad to the world through the mighty medium of the printing-press? He may learn later that what he thought was living seed is nothing but chaff, thrown out from other brains, and mistaken by him for original inspiration; he may find that the seed, though living, falls upon stony ground, and perishes. But in that hour of maiden success there is no gnawing doubt of self; all is pure, triumphant happiness. Perhaps only second to one moment in all our lives is this first victory—that moment when the one heart in all the world whose beating is attuned to our own acknowledges the sweet concord, and we know that the two can never again be entirely divided.
Margaret had received her first commission. Her voice was heard singing a happy little tune over the work which, from that time forth, acquired a new dignity in her eyes. It had a market value. It was merchantable, like sugar and cotton, bricks and breadstuffs. Men would exchange that which they love best after—and sometimes before—their own souls for its possession. She was an amateur no longer. She had become a money-getter, a bread-winner, a producer. The mere fact that she was to get so many dollars for fulfilling the order would not have accounted for the exhilaration of Margaret's spirits. It would be hard to imagine a person to whom the possession of wealth was of less importance. She had never wanted for anything in her life. Her tastes were simple. She gave away half the income which was settled on herself because she did not care to take the time or thought to spend it. She was not an heiress, but had a sufficient fortune to maintain her comfortably all her days. Money meant only to her what it does to those who have neither suffered the need of it nor felt the embarrassment of its excess. There must have been some reason, then, for Margaret's happiness, beyond the mere prospect of winning a certain number of bank-notes. What is this feeling which urges the queen on her throne to put her thoughts into merchantable shape and offer them to be sold at a stall alongside the book of some humble writer starving in a garret? What induces a princess of the blood to hang her pictures in the great exhibitions, laying aside her royalty for the nonce, and claiming equality with her artist subjects? It is a strange instinct, this; it seems like an acknowledgment that in proportion as a thing is salable, so is it valuable. And yet Theodore Winthrop died broken-hearted, his three noble books, still in manuscript, rejected by every publisher in the land, while authors of certain dime-novels of his time have grown rich through the sale of their very unsavory works.
Why Margaret was so happy, the recorder of her triumph cannot say, and must leave the question to the reader, trusting that he may find the proper solution of this problem.
It was a curious order, the like of which it is doubtful if ever sculptor was intrusted with.
Perhaps the nearest parallel to it that the history of art affords is the snow statue commanded from Michael Angelo by the Medici. Tradition says that though Angelo received the order of his patron with a very bad grace, he nevertheless executed it with his never-failing skill. I have never known, but have always wondered what subject the sculptor chose to typify in the fleeting marble of the snowdrift. May he not have moulded an image of the god Eros, youngest, fairest, most remorseless of the Olympians, whose touch, like that of the snow, at once burns and freezes?
Margaret was commissioned to summon forth from the depths of a salt-mine its tutelary deity; and having once seen its face, to sculpture it on the living wall of its invaded domain. She visited the mine; and what she saw and learned there can be best told in her own words. We take the liberty of making an extract from Miss Ruysdale's private journal:—
PAGES FROM THE DIARY OF MARGARET RUYSDALE.
"The order is now given to make ready the lift, and in a twinkling we find ourselves dropping out of the light of day, below the surface of the earth. Swiftly but steadily the small square platform drops down, down, into the bosom of the earth. The motion is so rapid that we seem to be flying from the daylight. At the bottom of the shaft we alight, to find ourselves in the upper gallery of the salt-mine. It is Sunday, and the great shining corridor, hewn out of the pure crystal, is silent and without sign of life. A group of flickering oil-lamps stand prepared for us, and each of us hastens to take possession of one, eager to keep back the great sea of darkness by the small beacon of a miner's lamp.
"The vaulted roof is upborne by gigantesque pillars sculptured from the living crystal, and we pass down the wide aisles full of a wonder not untouched by awe. Leading the way is one slight figure, which we might well imagine to be that of the genius of the mine—a young woman, whose graceful form assumes at each instant some new and classic pose. She now holds her lamp high above her head, to show a splendid crystal shining like a diamond on the side of the mine, and again stoops to pick a fragment of rock-salt from the floor. As she pauses and looks over her shoulder at us who follow, she recalls one of the figures which Pompeii has preserved on the walls of its ruined villas, graceful, airy, with the careless, light beauty of Greek art domiciled in Italy. As we turn into one of the branching galleries, a new spectacle meets our view. High up against the roof a faint light glimmers out of the heavy darkness. It grows stronger and brighter, and at last springs into a triumphant glory, illuminating vaulted roof and pillared aisle, floor, and shining walls with its warm glow. It sparkles on the wondrous crystals, and reveals the great drilled holes of the blasts; it throws itself triumphantly down the midnight gallery, and is lost in its distant shadows; it touches the face of a youth, beautiful as a young faun, who bends close beside the flame and feeds it with a steady hand. It is dynamite, this rosy, searching radiance, and the young man is its guardian. The light wanes slowly, and at last flickers out, and the shadows come trooping about us again thick and fast.
"The others are going to another part of the mine; but I linger behind them, unwilling to leave so soon this strange place. They have turned into the main aisle again; the voices and torches grow fainter and dimmer, and are finally lost. Moved by a sudden impulse, I quench the small spark of light I carry in my hand, and the darkness settles visibly about me like a pall. It presses upon my shoulders with an irresistible weight, and forces me to my knees upon the soft, salt-sanded earth. I cannot stand alone in this wonderful quiet darkness. A power that I have never felt before compels me to bend my head before the Invisible. My life, it seems to me, was in some mysterious way burning with that tiny point of flame in the vase of oil. With the failing of the flame my life has been extinguished, and I am now nothing but a shadow, like those that fled before me but a moment ago. Will the flame ever be rekindled? Shall I ever again reclaim my lost humanity? And if I could, would I raise my voice to make that claim heard? There is a pause unmeasured by sight or sound. Is it of minutes or of centuries? Am I still a human being, or a shadow of the mine? No senses are left me, but a power of vision which is not of the senses.
"I am conscious of a vast plain of water, blue, tranquil, limitless, waveless, for it is a sea without a shore; and in the heaven shines a spotless sun, calm, radiant, all-powerful. Time passes; are they seconds or eons that elapse before the sapphire sea is troubled and broken into crested lines of white sea-foam? Dark streaks seem trembling upwards, striving with and at last conquering the all-powerful sea; for a low ridge of land appears, defying the waters, which must now for all time fret and chafe against its stubborn sides. The brown streaks grow and grow, stretch out towards each other, and link themselves at last into a great ring, prisoning in its midst a disk of conquered water. In vain the bounded sea rebels and tries to break down the wall of earth that holds it fast, and rush back to its mother element. In vain; for it is the day when God said, 'Let there be land!' And the ring grows broad, and strong, and firm, and at last beautiful and green; for the great sun is its friend, and the lake is land-locked—a hopeless captive. But while the