“Very well, just as you like, Alfred. If you should want any of it, you must help yourself. You will find it in my drawer.”
“I’ll call on you if I should get out of pocket,” was replied to this in a playful tone of voice.
Both felt relieved. But it grew out of the fact that Ellison had been able to disguise his real feelings, and this was but a false security. There was a certainty, however, about the means of paying the weekly charge for boarding, that was a great relief to the mind of Ellison, and which enabled him the better to hide his real feelings from his wife. Happily for him, the four pictures which had been talked about were ordered. He completed them in about five weeks, and received two hundred dollars, the price agreed upon. One hundred of this sum he paid to the friend who had loaned him the money to lift the obligation that was felt to be so oppressive. Fifty of what remained he placed in the hands of Clara, playfully saying to her as he did so, that she must be his banker. The remark was timely and well expressed, and it had its effect both upon his own mind and that of his wife. But the source of trouble lay too deep to be easily removed.
Seek to disguise it as he would, Ellison could not hide from himself the fact, that he had suffered a great disappointment. Often and often, would come back upon him his old dream of the sunny clime of art and music, and he would feel the old, irrepressible longing to visit the shores of Italy. At last, it was some months after his marriage, he said to Clara, something favoring the remark —
“I don’t think I shall ever be happy until I have seen the galleries of Rome and Florence.”
Clara looked surprised at this remark, it was so unexpected, for no intimation of such a feeling had ever been breathed ere this by her husband.
“Why do you wish to go there?” she naturally inquired.
“To took upon the glorious old masters,” replied Ellison. “I will never be any thing in my art until I have studied them.”
“You think too meanly of your present attainments,” said Clara. “N—— has been to Italy, but with all his study of the old masters he has not half the ability as an artist that you possess.”
“It isn’t in him, Clara,” replied Ellison with some warmth. “He might study in the galleries of Florence forever, and not make a painter.”