"Yes," he carelessly replied, "it amuses me in the morning."
"Oh, it amuses you very much, Cornelius?"
"Why, yes."
She took up her work; laid it down, rose, went up to her brother, and standing before him said, resolutely, "Cornelius, tell me the truth."
He sat up, and making her sit down by him, he calmly observed, "Why do you look so frightened, Kate?"
"The truth!" she exclaimed, almost passionately, "the truth!"
"You have had it."
"What does that morning drawing mean?"
"You know it."
"You mean to become an artist?"
"I am an artist," he replied, drawing himself up slightly.
She rocked herself to and fro, looking at her brother drearily. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and said, with earnest tone and look--
"Kate, I know all you dread; there are obstacles; I see them, and I will conquer them. Obstacles! why if there were none, would anything in this world be worth the winning?"
He had begun calmly; he ended with strange warmth and vehemence, throwing back his head with the presumptuous but not ungraceful confidence of youth. His look was daring, his smile full of trust; to both his sister responded by a mournful glance dimmed with tears.
"You had promised--" she began.
"Not to give it up for ever, Kate," he interrupted; "I have kept my promise, I have tried not to draw; I might as well try not to breathe."
"I know now why you took that paltry situation; you did not mean to stop there."
"No, indeed, Kate."
"I always knew you were ambitious."
"So I am."
"A nice mistress Fame will make you, my poor brother! Oh yes, very!"
"I won't make a mistress of her, Kate; she is too much used to that; she shall be my hand-maiden."
"First catch her!" shortly replied his sister.
He laughed good-humouredly; she gave a deep, impatient sigh.
"I know I must seem harsh," she said, "but our father's death--of a broken heart--is always before me. You are very like him in person and temper; for God's sake be not like him in destiny! I know painting; once it has taken hold of a man's mind, soul and being, he must either win or perish. Love is nothing to it. I would rather see you in love with ten girls."
"At a time?" interrupted Cornelius, looking shocked. "Am I a Turk?"
"You foolish boy, is a Turk ever in love? I mean I would rather see you wasting, in successive follies, the best years of your youth, than see you a painter. There comes a time, when, of his own accord, a man gives up passion; but when does the unlucky wight who has once begun to write poetry or paint pictures give them up?"
"Never, unless he never loved them," replied Cornelius, with a triumphant smile; "poetry or painting, which I hold to be far higher, becomes part of a man's being, and follows him to the grave. But it is a desecration to speak of it as a human passion. I am not hard-hearted; but if Venus in all her charms, or, to use a stronger figure of speech, if one of Raffaelle's divine women were to become flesh and blood for my sake, and implore me to return her passion--"
"Why you would of course; don't make yourself out more flinty than you are; it would not take one of Raffaelle's women to do that either."
"Hear me out: if to win this lovely creature I should give up painting, not for ever, not for ten years, nor yet five, but just for one year,-- Kate, she might walk back to her canvas."
"Conceited fellow!" indignantly said Kate, divided between vexation at his predilection for Art, and the slight thrown on her sex.
"It is not conceit, Kate; it is the superior attraction of Art over passion. How is it you do not see there is and can be nothing like painting pictures?" Kate groaned. "It beats all else hollow,--poetry, music, ambition, war, and love, which is held master of all. Alexander, unhappy man! wept because he had no more worlds to win. Did Apelles ever weep for having no more pictures to paint? Paris carried off Helen to Troy, which was taken after a ten years' siege. Imagine Paris an artist; he paints Helen under a variety of attitudes: Menelaus benevolently looking on; little Hermione plays near her mamma; Troy stands in the distance, with Priam on the walls; everything peace and harmony.--Moral: if fine gentlemen would take the portraits, and not the persons of fair ladies, we should not hear so much of invaded hearths and affairs of honour."
"Will you talk seriously?" impatiently said Kate.
"As seriously as you can wish," he replied gravely. "What do you fear for me? It is late to begin, but I have been working hard these two years.
What about our poor father? many a great painter has been the son of a disappointed artist. What even about the difficulty of winning fame? I am ambitious, not so much to be famous, as to do great things. There is the aim of a life; there is the glorious victory to win."
His handsome face had never looked half so handsome: it expressed daring, power, hope, ardour, all that subdues the future to a man's will.
"I tell you," he resumed, with a short triumphant laugh, "that I shall succeed. I feel the power within me; I shall give fame to the name of O'Reilly, stuff your pockets with money, charm your eyes with fair forms; in short I shall conquer Art."
He passed his arm around his sister's neck, and gave her a warm kiss. She half smiled.
"That always was the way," she said, with a sigh: "I argued; you talked me out of my better knowledge, and then you would put your arm around my neck, and--"
"There was no resisting that, Kate; but then I looked up, and now I look down."
"Yes, you are a man now," she replied, looking at him with an admiring smile, "and the O'Reillys have always been fine men."
"And the women lovely, gifted, admired--"
"And minded as much as the whistling of the wind. Don't look vexed, my poor boy. I know I am not fair to you; that many a son is not so good and dutiful to his mother as you are to me; but, you see, it is as if you had been marrying a girl I hated; I can't get over it, even though I feel you have a right to please yourself. The best course will be not to talk of it: we should not agree; and where's the use of disagreeing?"
"If wives were as sensible as you are--"
"Nonsense!" she interrupted, smiling; "no woman of spirit would give in to her husband; but to her boy! oh, that's very different. Please yourself; paint your pictures, my darling, only--only--if the public don't like them, don't break your heart."
She now stood by him, with her hand resting lightly on his fine dark hair, and her eyes seeking his with wistful fondness. He laughed at her last words, laughed and knit his brow as he said--
"The public may break its heart about me, Kate--not that I wish it such a fate, poor thing!--but against the reverse I protest. And now have mercy on your brother, who has heard something about Daisy, and a good deal about painting, but nothing about tea."
"Are you hungry?"
"Starving."
"Poor fellow! I had no idea of it,--I shall see to it myself."