II.
When we reached my home, a violent gust of rain made my friend step inside the open doorway. I asked him to come into the parlor till the shower should lighten; and he did so. My mother sat by the fender in her armchair, the fire burned blithely, the tea-things were on the table. The room looked very cosy after the stormy streets.
My mother received the unexpected visitor cordially. She had heard of his kindness to me before. Hessie came in with the bread and butter, in her brown housefrock, with her bright curls a little tossed, and her blue eyes wondering wide at sight of a stranger. My mother asked him to stay for tea, and I went upstairs to take off my bonnet.
Never before had I felt so anxious to have my hair neat, and to find an immaculate collar and cuffs. My hands trembled as I tied my apron and drew on my slippers. This was always to me a pleasant hour, when my return made Hessie and my mother glad, when I got refreshingly purified from the stains and odor of paint, and when we all had tea together. To-night a certain excitement mingled with my usual quiet thankful satisfaction.
I hurried down to the parlor. Hessie was filling the cups, and Edward Vance (our new friend) was talking pleasantly to my mother. He looked up as I came in, and when I reached my seat a sensation of gladness was tingling from my heart's core to my finger-ends. My mother took my hand and fondled it in hers, and thanked him for his kindness to her "good child." I felt that he could not but sympathize with my dear, sick, uncomplaining mother, and I somehow felt it sweet that she should give me that little word of praise while speaking to him. After tea Hessie played us dreamy melodies from Mozart in the firelight, and I sat by mother's side tracing pictures in the burning coals.
After that first evening Edward Vance often came to our house. At these times our conversation was chiefly upon art-subjects. Hessie and my mother were deeply interested in them for my sake; I, for their own, and for [{316}] the hopes which were entwined about them.
I thought him an ambitious man, one whose whole soul was bent upon success. I liked him for it. I thought, "The noblest man is he who concentrates all his powers upon one worthy aim, and wins a laurel-crown from his fellow-men as the reward of his stead-fastness." Yet he seemed often troubled when we asked him about his own works.
A remark I overheard one day in the gallery puzzled me. Some one said, "Vance? Oh, yes! he's a clever copyist—a determined plodder; but he originates nothing." I don't know that I had any right to be indignant; but I was. That very evening I asked him to show us some of his designs. His face got a dark troubled look upon it, and he evaded the promise.
Meantime he took a keen interest in my work. He taught me how to finish my etchings more delicately, and his remarks on my compositions were always most useful. His suggestions were peculiarly happy. The drawing was ever enhanced in strength or beauty by his advice. His ideas were just and true; his taste daintily critical. This convinced me that the remark overheard in the gallery was made either in ignorance or ill-nature; or perhaps that there were more artists called Vance than one.
He came often now, very often. I ceased to feel angry at myself for starting when his knock came. Many small things, too trivial to be mentioned, filled my life with a delicious calm, and breathed a rose-colored atmosphere around me. Everything in my inner and outer world had undergone a change. I grew subject to idle fits at my work; but then the suspended energy came back with such a rush of power, almost like inspiration, that I accomplished far more than I ever had done in the former quiet days when there was little sunshine to be had, and I thought I had been born to live contentedly under a cloud all my life. Art seemed glorified a thousandfold in my eyes. The galleries had looked to me before like dim treasuries of phantom beauty, shadowy regions of romance and perfection, through the gates of which I might peer, though the key was not mine. Now they teemed with a ripe meaning; the meaning which many glorious souls that once breathed and wrought on this earth have woven into their creations;—a meaning which unlocked for me the world of love, and gave me long bright visions of its beautiful vistas.
My mother looked from Edward Vance to me, and from me to him; and I knew her thought. It sweetened yet more that food of happiness on which I lived. Something said to me, "You may meet his eye fearlessly, place your hand frankly in his clasp, follow his feet gladly."
One evening after he had gone my mother stroked my head lying on her knee.
"You are very happy, Grace?" she said.
"I am, mother," I whispered.
"Ah! your life is set to music, my love," she murmured; "the old tune."