Barriers Burned Away · Chapter 38 (2/2)

“I have been compelled to supply your place in your absence: therefore your services will be no longer needed at this store. Enclosed you will find a check for the small balance still due you,

Dennis’s brow grew very dark, and in bitter soliloquy he said, half aloud, as he strode up and down his little room in great agitation: “And so it all ends! The girl at whose side my mother would have watched in the most dangerous and loathsome of diseases; the woman of ice whom I sought to melt and render human by as warm, true love as ever man lavished on one who rewarded his affection⁠—this beautiful monster will not even visit my mother when dying; she holds a revel on the day of the funeral; and now, through her influence no doubt, I am robbed of the chance of winning honest bread. She cannot even endure the sight of the man who once told her the unvarnished truth. Poor as you deem me, Christine Ludolph, with God’s help not many years shall pass before it will be condescension on my part to recognize you.”

He would not even go to the store again. The Bruders, having heard what had occurred, took Ernst away also; but Dennis soon found him a better situation elsewhere.

The day on which Dennis returned, Christine was speeding in a palace-car toward the Rocky Mountains, outwardly gay, determined to enjoy herself and carry out her reckless purpose to get the most possible out of life, cost what it might.

If she had been a shallow girl, thoughtless and vain, with only mind enough to take in the events of the passing moment, she might have bought many fleeting pleasures with her abundant wealth. But this she was not, with all her faults, and wherever she went, in the midst of gayest scenes, and in the presence of the grandest and most inspiring scenery, thought and memory, like two spectres that no spell could lay, haunted her and robbed her of peace and any approach to happiness. Though possessing the means of gratifying every whim, though restrained by no scruples from doing what she chose, she felt that all around were getting more from life than she.

During her absence she experienced a sudden and severe attack of illness. Her friends were much alarmed about her, and she far more about herself. All her old terror returned. In one respect she was like her mother; she had no physical courage, but shrank with inexpressible dread from danger, pain, and death. Again the blackness of darkness gathered round her, and not one in the gay pleasure party could say a word to comfort her.

She recovered, and soon regained her usual health, but her self-confidence was more thoroughly shaken. She felt like one in a little cockleshell boat out upon a shoreless ocean. While the treacherous sea remained calm, all might be well, but she knew that a storm would soon arise, and that she must go down, beyond remedy. Again she had been taught how suddenly, how unexpectedly, that storm might rise.

Dennis resolved at once to enter on the career of an artist. He sold to Mr. French, at a moderate price, some paintings and sketches he had made. He rented a small room that became his studio, sleeping-apartment⁠—in brief, his home, and then went to work with all the ordinary incentives to success intensified by his purpose to reach a social height that would compel Christine to look upward if their acquaintance were renewed.

Disappointment in love is one of the severest tests of character in man or woman. Some sink into weak sentimentality, and mope and languish; some become listless, apathetic, and float down the current of existence like driftwood. Men are often harsh and cynical, and rail at the sex to which their mothers and sisters belong. Sometimes a man inflicts a well-nigh fatal wound and leaves his victim to cure it as best she may. From that time forth she may be like the wronged Indian, who slays as many white men as he can. Not a few, on finding they cannot enter the beautiful paradise of happy love, plunge into imbruting vice, and drown not only their disappointment but themselves in dissipation. Their course is like that of some who deem that the best way to cure a wound or end a disease is to kill the patient as soon as possible. If women have true metal in them (and they usually have) they become unselfishly devoted to others, and by gentle, self-denying ways seek to impart to those about them the happiness denied to themselves.

But with all manly young men the instinct of Dennis is perhaps the most common. They will rise, shine, and dazzle the eyes that once looked scornfully or indifferently at them.

As he worked patiently at his noble calling this smaller ambition was gradually lost in the nobler, broader one, to be a true artist and a good man.

During his illness some gentlemen of large wealth and liberality, who wished to stimulate and develop the native artistic talent of their city, offered a prize of two thousand dollars for the finest picture painted during the year, the artist also having the privilege of selling his work.

On his return after his illness Dennis heard of this, and determined to be one of the competitors. He applied to Mr. Cornell, who had the matter in charge, for permission to enter the lists, which that gentleman granted rather doubtfully. He had known Dennis only as a critic, not as an artist. But having gained his point, Dennis went earnestly to work on the emblematic painting he had resolved upon, and with what success the following chapters will show.

His mother’s sickness and death, of course, put a complete shop to his artistic labors for a time, but when entering on his new career, he gave himself wholly to this effort.

The time for exhibition and decision was fixed⁠—Saturday morning October 7, 1871.