WHITE MAGIC
[Illustration: “There was nothing about him which ... suggested the
ill-at-easeness she had anticipated.” [Page 100.]]
WHITE MAGIC
_A NOVEL_
BY
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY
A. B. WENZELL
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1909, 1910, by The Curtis Publishing Company
_Published March, 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--A TASTE FOR CANDY 1
II.--THE PAINTER GETS A MODEL 20
III.--A LESSON IN WOMAN 51
IV.--AN UPSET CANOE 68
V.--AN ATTEMPT TO DAZZLE 97
VI.--THE GUILE OF INNOCENCE 127
VII.--MR. RICHMOND CALLS 144
VIII.--AN INFURIATE FATHER 161
IX.--FAMILY BEHIND-THE-SCENES 175
X.--BEATRICE IN CHAINS 192
XI.--PETER VISITS THE PRISON 209
XII.--UNDER COVER OF NIGHT 225
XIII.--PETER’S BAD QUARTER HOUR 246
XIV.--THE SECOND FLIGHT 274
XV.--WADE’S LOST FORTUNE 280
XVI.--PETER CALLS ON ROGER 294
XVII.--RICHMOND TRIES TO MAKE PEACE 315
XVIII.--MRS. RICHMOND REBELS 334
XIX.--ROGER SORE BESET 351
XX.--BEATRICE LOSES 367
XXI.--ROGER WINS 388
WHITE MAGIC
I
A TASTE FOR CANDY
When Roger Wade’s Aunt Bella died she left him forty thousand dollars
in five-per-cent railway bonds and six hundred and ninety acres of
wilderness extending from the outskirts of Deer Spring village to
the eastern shore of Lake Wauchong, in northern New Jersey. She had
contrived to quarrel and break with all her other relations. This was
no easy undertaking, and in its success was a signal tribute to her
force of character; for, each and everyone of those relatives knew
of her possessions and longed and hoped for them and stood ready to
endure, even to welcome, any outrage she might see fit to perpetrate.
Roger she had not seen in fourteen years--not since he, a youth of
eighteen, a painter born, long and lean, with a shock of black-brown
hair and dreamy, gray-brown eyes, left his native Deer Spring to
study in Paris. He and she had not communicated, either directly
or indirectly--a fortunate circumstance for him, as several of
Arabella Wade’s bitterest quarrels had begun and had progressed to the
irreparable breach altogether by mail. Besides not knowing him she had
but one other reason for choosing him as her heir: a year before her
death and a week before her last will she happened to read on the cable
page of a New York newspaper an enthusiastic note about his pictures
and his success in Paris. So the bonds and the land went to him instead
of to a missionary society.
Much American newspaper puffery of Americans abroad is sheer invention,
designed to give us at home the pleasing notion that _we_ are capturing
the earth. But this notice of Roger Wade’s career had truth in it. He
was doing extraordinarily well for so young a man. His sense of color
and form was lifted toward genius by imagination and originality. His
ability had no handicap of cheap and petty--and glaring--eccentricity,
such as so often enters into the composition of an original and
boldly imaginative temperament to mar its achievement and to retard
the recognition of its merit. Thus he speedily made a notable place
for himself. He could count on disposing of enough pictures to bring
him in fifteen to twenty thousand francs a year; and that sum was
about as much as he, simple of tastes, single-hearted in devotion to
his work and indifferent to pose and pretense, could find time and
opportunity to spend. He knew that in a few years far more money than
he needed would be forced upon him--a prospect which he had the good
sense to view with distrust when he thought of it at all. About the
only thing that had stood in his way was his personal appearance. As
one of his friends--Berthier, whose panels will be admired so long as
the pale, mysterious glories of their elusive colors persist--said in a
confidential moment: “Roger, you look so much like a man of genius that
it’s hard to believe you are the real thing.”
Big is the word most nearly expressing that unusual appearance of his.
He was tall and broad and powerful. His features were large, bold,
handsome. The dark coloring of skin and hair and eyes added to the
impression of bigness. It was in part a matter of real size, but only
in part. Not the most casual glance could have reported a judgment
of mere bulk. He seemed big because his countenance, his whole body,
seemed an effort of Nature adequately to express a big nature. Herbert
Spencer uttered about the most superb compliment one human being ever
paid another when he said of George Eliot that she suggested “a large
intelligence moving freely.” There was in Roger Wade this quality of
the great bird high in the blue ether above the grime and littleness
of conventional life. His looks had caused him more than a little
trouble--of which he was not in the least aware. For a large part of
his charm lay in his childlike unconsciousness of himself--a trait
less rare in painters and sculptors than in any other class of men
of genius, probably because their work compels them to concentrate
constantly upon persons and things external and in no way related to
their own ego. Had Roger been physically vain, beyond doubt his good
looks would have ruined him. The envy of men and the infatuation of
women would have made escape impossible. As it was, he did his work,
ignored his enemies, and neither enslaved nor was enslaved by such
women as drifted into his life--and out again. It is fortunate for
men--especially for men who are striving for careers--that women are
bred to feebleness of purpose and much prefer being loved to loving,
being admired to admiring.
His long stay abroad and his success there had touched his Americanism
only to idealize it. The dream of his life continued to be building
a career at home. He was too able to be given to the fatuities of
optimism. He had no delusions on the subject of the difficulties that
would confront and assail him. He had observed that those Americans who
had the money to buy pictures usually lacked the breadth to appreciate
their own country, considered it “crude and commercial,” whatever
that might mean, and preferred foreign painters and foreign subjects.
But, like many another American artist of ability, he longed to have a
personal share in bringing about the change toward national pride and
confidence that must come sooner or later. So, when his aunt left him a
competence, he felt free to engage in the hazardous American adventure.
Two months after he inherited his little fortune he landed in New
York with his Paris career a closed incident; a few days later he was
installed in the old farmhouse on the edge of his wilderness estate and
within a mile of the post office and railway station at Deer Spring.
On a hill near the Lake Wauchong end of his estate--a hill that seemed
a knoll in comparison with the steeps encompassing it on all sides--he
got the village carpenter hastily to build for him a house of one large
and lofty room, admitting light freely by way of big windows in the
walls and an enormous skylight in the roof. Such small impression as
his return made was wholly confined to his native Deer Spring. There
the gossip went that, having failed to make art pay, he had come back
home to “laze round” and live off his aunt’s money. As he had the doing
sort of man’s aversion to discussing his plans, such of the villagers
as succeeded in drawing him into lengthier parley than polite exchange
of greetings heard nothing that contradicted the gossip.
Toward the end of an April afternoon, not long after the studio was
finished, Roger reached it in the midst of a tremendous storm of
rain and wind. Just before he gained the shelter of the north wall a
swooping gust blew into his face a heavy cloud of wood smoke; so when
he strode in he was not altogether unprepared for the sight that met
his eyes as he dashed the water and smoke out of them. A fire had been
built with generous hands in the fireplace in the south wall. Upon the
long, low bench parallel with the outer edge of the broad hearth lay
the intruder who had doubtless sought the one refuge within a radius of
a mile when the storm came on suddenly about half an hour before. Roger
had assumed he would find a man; but he was not much surprised to see
that it was a woman for whom his roof was doing this good turn.
As he divested himself of dripping hat and water-proof he said
genially: “I’m glad you made yourself at home!”
No answer came and the figure did not move. He flung his wraps on one
of the heavy plain chairs which, with the bench, were all the furniture
he had--or wanted. He advanced to a corner of the hearth to take a look
at his guest. She was a girl--a young girl, sound asleep. Her head was
comfortably pillowed on one slim, round arm and her folded jacket.
Her sweet, healthily delicate face was toward the fire, and flushed
from its warmth. She had abundant yellow hair, long lashes somewhat
darker, a charming, determined mouth, a very fair skin. With such a
skin a woman far less well-favored otherwise than she could have felt
secure against any verdict of homeliness. His trained eyes told him
that she was above the medium height and that her figure was good, arms
and legs and body well-formed and in proper proportion to one another.
She had--in texture of skin, in look of the hair, of the hands--those
small but unmistakable indications that she had been brought up secure
from labor and from those frettings and worryings about the fundamental
necessities of life that react so early and so powerfully upon the
bodies of the masses of mankind. Even her dress gave this indication of
elevation above the common lot, though the felt hat pinned carelessly
on her head, the plain shirtwaist, the blue serge short skirt, the
leather leggings and shoes had all been through hard wear. There are
ways and ways of growing old; the way of expensive garments is as
different from the way of cheap garments as the way of expensively
nourished bodies is from that of bodies poorly supplied with poor food.
He stood for several minutes, enjoying the engaging spectacle--enjoying
it both as artist and as man. Then he went to the huge closet in the
west wall where he kept, under strong lock, everything of value he
had to have at the studio. He changed his boots for shoes. He took
out and opened a collapsible table. Having noiselessly set upon it
pots and dishes, including an alcohol stove and two cups and saucers,
he proceeded to make chocolate. When it was nearly ready he opened a
package of biscuits and filled a plate with them. All this with the
expertness of the old, experienced bachelor housekeeper. He moved
the table over to the hearth, to the corner nearer her feet, and
seated himself. Luck was with him. Hardly had he got settled when
her eyes--gray eyes--opened. She saw the table, the steaming pot of
chocolate. She raised herself on her elbow--saw him. He met her amazed
stare with a smile wholly free from impertinence.
“The chocolate is ready,” said he. “I have no tea. You see, I didn’t
know you were coming.” His voice carried the humorous suggestion of
old and intimate friendship, of a conversation continued after a brief
interruption.
She brushed her hand over her eyes, stared at him again, this time
a little wildly. His expression--the kind eyes, the mouth with no
suggestion of cruelty or guile, the smile of friendliness without
familiarity--reassured her straightway. A merry smile drifted over her
features--charming, pretty features, though not beautiful. “You know I
detest tea,” said she. “Besides, I’m hungry.”
“I’ve made enough for two large cups apiece,” he assured her. “But
I had only condensed milk. It’s hard to get the other kind in the
country.”
She took the cup into which he poured first, tasted it. “Splendid!” she
ejaculated.
“I’ve been famous for my chocolate for years,” said he complacently.
“If you weren’t so vain!”
“Everybody’s vain. _I_ have the courage to speak out.”
“_I’m_ not vain,” replied she. “If I were I should be embarrassed at
your catching me like this.” And she glanced down at her wrinkled and
mussy attire.
“Possibly you are so vain that you don’t care,” rejoined he. “You said
you were hungry, yet you haven’t tried the biscuit.”
The storm howled and moaned and clattered about the house; the
enormous fire poured out its gorgeous waves of color and heat, flung
a mysterious and fantastic glow upon the gray-white canvas covering
of the rough walls, beautified the countenance of the huge young man
with the shock of black-brown hair and of the slim, fair girl with the
golden-yellow crown. And they laughed and joked, keeping up their
pretense of old acquaintance and drinking all the chocolate and eating
all the biscuit.
“Such a strange idea of yours, to live all alone here in this one
room,” said she.
Roger did not undeceive her. “You must admit it’s comfortable,” said he.
“Except--I don’t see how you sleep.”
He waved his cigarette toward the closet. “I keep everything put away
in there,” he explained. “As for my bath--the tub’s only half a mile
away--Lake Wauchong.”
She looked thoughtfully at him. “Yes--you would need a good-sized tub,”
said she. He saw that she was full of curiosity, but did not wish to
break the spell of their fiction of old friendship. “What are you doing
now?” she asked--the careless inquiry of an old friend after a brief
separation.
“Same thing--always,” said he.
“That’s good,” said she, and both laughed. She looked round carefully,
noted the skylight, the canvas drapery, finally a broken easel flung
into a corner. “How does the painting go?” inquired she, in her eyes a
demand for admiration of her cleverness.
“Oh, so-so,” replied he with a glance at the big skylight, then at
the broken easel, to indicate that he did not regard her display of
detective talent as overwhelming.
“It’s a shame you’ve never painted me.”
“You know I wouldn’t touch portraits,” rebuked he severely. “I leave
that to the fellows who want to make money.”
“But why not make money?” urged she. “I rather like money--don’t you?”
“I’m married to my art,” explained he. “In marriage the only chance
for keeping love alive and warm is poverty. Show me a rich artist and
I’ll show you a poor one.” He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he
meant what he said.
The girl was not at all impressed. “You’d better never fall in love,”
laughed she, making a charming wry face. “You’ll not find any woman
who’d honestly marry you on those terms.”
“What a poor memory you have--for what I say,” reproached he. “Haven’t
I always told you I never should?”
“I remember perfectly,” replied she. “But I’ve always answered that you
can’t be sure.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” said he, with irritating, challenging confidence. “As
I said, I’m already in love. And I’m the most constant person you ever
knew.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said she, looking shrewdly at him. And
the gray eyes, with all the softness of sleep driven from them, were
now keen rather than kind. “You are young, for all your serious look;
and you are romantic, I suppose. Artists always are. You will fall in
love.”
“Not impossible,” conceded he.
“And marry,” concluded she, with the air of having proved her case.
“If I loved a woman I wouldn’t marry her. If I didn’t love her I
couldn’t.”
“That sounds like a puzzle--a--a conundrum. I give it up. What’s the
answer?”
“I’ve lived in France several years,” said he, “and I’ve learned the
sound sense back of their marriage system. Love and marriage have
nothing to do with each other.”
The gray eyes opened wide.
“Nothing to do with each other,” pursued he tranquilly. “Love is all
excitement; marriage ought to be all calm. Marriage means a home--a
family--a place to bring up children in peace and tranquillity, a safe
harbor. Love is a Bohemian; marriage is a bourgeois. Love is insanity;
marriage is sanity. Love is disease; marriage is solid, stolid health.”
“I think those ideas are just horrid!” cried she.
He laughed at her with his eyes. In a tone of raillery he said: “And
you--who love money, you say--do _you_ intend to marry for love?--just
love?--only love?”
Her eyes shifted. He laughed aloud. Her glance fell.
“Not a thought about his income--prospects?” he mocked.
She recovered from her confusion, laughed back at him a confession
that she had been fairly caught in a refined, womanly hypocrisy--woman
being the official high priestess of the sentimentalities. “But I don’t
approve of myself--not in the least,” cried she. “In my better moments
I’m ashamed of myself.”
“You needn’t be,” said he cheerfully. “You’re simply human. And one
need never apologize for being human.”
She was gazing earnestly into the fire. “Would _you_--marry a
girl--say, for--for money?” she asked. And her color was not from the
firelight.
“As I’ve told you,” replied he, “I wouldn’t marry for anything--not
even for the girl.”
“Wouldn’t you despise anyone who did such a thing?” Still she was
avoiding looking at him.
“I don’t despise,” replied he. “Everyone of us seeks that which he most
wants. I, who devote my life to my selfish passion for painting--who
am I to despise some one else for devoting himself to his passion
for--what you please--comfort--luxury--snobbishness--no matter what,
so long as it harms no one else?”
“You aren’t so very old--are you?” said she pensively. “You look and
talk experienced. And yet--I don’t believe you are _much_ older than I
am.”
“A dozen years--at least.”
“You aren’t thirty-four!” exclaimed she in genuine dismay.
“No, but I’m thirty-two. So you’re ten years younger than I. I guessed
you younger than you are.”
“Yes, I’m twenty-two. But in our family we hold our own well--that is,
mother does.”
These discoveries as to age seemed to give both the liveliest
satisfaction. Said he: “You look younger--and talk younger.”
“That’s because I don’t make pretenses. People think that anyone who is
still frank and simple must be very young--and very foolish.... I’ve
been out four years. Do I seem ignorant and uninteresting to you?”
“No--very frank--naïve.”
She smiled, flushed, glanced shyly at him. “Do you know, I feel I know
you better than I ever knew any man in my life--even my brothers!”
“Everyone says I’m easy to get acquainted with,” said he, practical and
unappreciative.
She looked disappointed, but persisted. “I feel freer to talk with
you. I’d tell you--anything--the things I think, but never dare say.”
“There aren’t any such things,” said he, hastening away from the
personal. “Anything one really thinks one can’t help saying.”
“Oh, that isn’t a bit true,” cried she. “I think lots of things I don’t
dare say, just as I want to do lots of things I don’t dare do.”
“You _imagine_ you think them, you _imagine_ you want to do them,” he
assured her. “But really, what you say and do--that is your real self.”
She sighed. “I hate to believe so.”
“Yes. It is unpleasant to give up the flattering notion that our grand
dreams are our real selves, and that our mean little schemes and
actions are just accidental--or devil--or somebody else besides self.”
She looked at him and he was astonished to see that there were tears in
her eyes. “Don’t--please!” she pleaded. “Don’t make it harder for me to
do what I’ve got to do.”
“Got to do? Nonsense.”
“No, indeed,” said she, intensely in earnest. “Remember, I’m a woman.
And a woman has got to do--what’s expected of her.”
“So has a man if he’s the weak sort.”
He studied her with an expression of sympathy bordering on pity, but
without the least condescension; on the contrary, with a radiation of
equality, of fellow-feeling that was perhaps his greatest charm. “Don’t
mind what I’ve said,” he went on in the kindliest, friendliest tone.
“I’m not fit to talk with young girls. I’ve got my training altogether
in a world where there aren’t any young girls, but only experienced
women of one kind and another. You’ve been brought up to a certain sort
of life, and the only thing for you to do is to live it. I’ve been
talking the creed of my sort of life, and that’s as different from your
sort as wild duck from domestic.”
He rose, gave a significant glance toward the windows through which
clear sky and late afternoon light could be seen. She felt rather than
saw his hint, and rose also. She looked round, gave a queer little
laugh. “Am I awake--or still asleep?” said she. “I’m not feeling--or
talking--or acting--a bit like my usual self.” She laughed again a
little cynically. “My friends wouldn’t recognize me.” She looked at
him, laughed again, with not a trace of cynicism. “I don’t recognize my
present self,” she added. “It’s one that never was until I came here.”
But Roger showed no disposition to respond to her coquetry. He said in
matter-of-fact tones: “Do you live far? Hadn’t I better take you home?”
“No, no!” she cried. “We mustn’t spoil it.”
“Spoil what?”
“The romance,” laughed she.
He looked amused, like a much older person at a child’s whimsicalities.
“Oh, I see! Once I was in a train in the Alps bound for Paris, and it
halted beside a train bound for Constantinople. My window happened to
be opposite that of a girl from Syria. We talked for half an hour.
Then--we shook hands as the trains drew away from each other. This is
to be like that? A good idea.”
She was listening and observing with almost excited interest. “Didn’t
you ever meet that Syrian girl again?” inquired she.
He laughed carelessly, shrugged his shoulders. “Yes--unfortunately.”
The girl’s face became shadowed. “You loved her?”
His frank, boyish eyes twinkled good-humored mockery at her
earnestness. “As you see, I survived,” said he.
She frowned at him. “You’re very disappointing,” said she. “You’re not
a bit romantic--are you?”
“I save it all for my painting.”
She laughingly put out her hand. They shook hands; he accompanied
her to the door. She said: “I’d like to have a name to remember you
by.” And she looked at him with candid and friendly admiration for
his handsome bigness. “Not your real name. That wouldn’t be a bit
romantic--and, as you see, I’m crazy about romance.” She sighed.
“Probably because I never get any. Don’t laugh at me. You can’t
understand my taste for candy, because with you--it’s been like keeping
a confectionery shop.”
“Yes--that’s true,” said he, looking at her with a new and more
personal friendliness of sympathy.
“So,” said she, with a wistful smile, “give me a name.”
He reflected. “You might call me Chang. That was my nickname at school.”
“Chang,” said she. “Chang.” She nodded approvingly. “I like it.... They
called me Rix before I came out.”
“Then--good-by, Rix. Thank you for a charming hour.”
“Good-by, Chang,” she said, with a forced little smile and pain in her
eyes. “Thank you for--the fire and the chocolate--and--” She hesitated.
“Don’t forget the biscuit.”
“Oh, yes. And for the biscuit.”
As she went reluctantly away he closed the door and, standing well
back from the window, watched her gracefully descend the slope of the
knoll. Just as she was about to lose sight of the little house she
turned and looked back. She could not have seen him, so far back was
he; but she waved her hand and smiled precisely as if he were in plain
view, waving at her.
II
THE PAINTER GETS A MODEL
Lake Wauchong is the crowning charm of that whole north New Jersey
wilderness, rich though its variety is--watercourses hard to equal in
sheer loveliness; lonely mountains from whose steeps look majesty and
awe; stretches of stony desolation and of gloomy, bittern-haunted swamp
that seem the fitting borderland of an inferno. At the southwestern
end of the lake it receives the waters of a creek by way of a small
cataract. In the spring, especially in the early spring, when there is
most water on the cataract and when the foliage is at its freshest,
most exquisite green, the early morning sunbeams make of that little
corner of the lake a sort of essence and epitome of the lovely
childhood of Nature.
On the next morning but one after the adventure of the studio in the
storm, Roger was industriously sketching in a view of this cataract,
his canvas on an easel before which he was standing--he always stood at
his work. Across his range of vision shot a canoe, a girl kneeling in
it and wielding the paddle with expert grace. He instantly recognized
her. “Hello!” he called out friendlily--after a curiously agitated
moment of confusion and recovery.
She turned her head, smiled. With a single skillful dip she rounded the
canoe so that it shot to the shore within a few feet of where he stood.
“Good morning, Chang,” said she. “Did you miss me at tea--or, rather,
chocolate--yesterday?”
“I didn’t expect you,” replied he.
“You didn’t invite me.”
“That was ill-mannered, wasn’t, it? But, no--I forgot. We said good-by
forever, didn’t we? Well, it was safer to prepare for the worst in a
world as uncertain as this. Aren’t you rather early?”
She looked a little confused. “I’m very energetic for the first
few days after I get to the country,” she explained. “Besides, I’m
dreadfully restless of late.... Are you working?”
“I was.”
“Oh--I’m disturbing you.” She made a movement to push off. He smiled
in a noncommittal way, but said nothing. She did not conceal her
discontent with treatment of a kind to which she apparently was not
used. “You might at least have the politeness to say no. I’d not take
advantage of it,” said she--a rebuke for his rudeness in her raillery.
“I was debating something.... I need you in my picture. But posing is
tiresome work.”
She brightened. “I’d be glad to. Will you let me? I do so wish to be of
some use. How long would it take?”
“Not long--that is, not long any one morning,” was his apologetic
assurance.
“You mean--several mornings?” said she, a mingling of longing and
hesitation in her expressive features.
“I work slowly.” The more he considered the matter the more necessary
she seemed to his picture. His artist’s selfishness was aroused. “I’m
sure you’d not mind,” said he, deliberately using a tone that would
make refusal difficult, ungracious.
A curious strained expression came into her eyes as she reflected.
“I--I--don’t know what to say.”
“You think I’m asking heavy pay for my hospitality?”
“No--no, indeed,” protested she earnestly. “I can’t tell you what I was
thinking.”
The more he considered the idea the apparition of her in that graceful
posture in the canoe had suggested the more it seemed an inspiration.
He was regarding her now with the artist’s eye only. She leaned on
her paddle, lost in reverie; the look of the self-satisfied, over-petted
American girl faded from her face; the sunbeams flung a golden
glamour over her yellow hair and her delicate skin. He saw alluring
possibilities of idealizing her face into the center and climax of
the dreamy romance he was going to try to make of his first American
picture. His original impulse to get rid of her as a useless, perhaps
disquieting intruder had gone altogether. He was resolved to have this
providential model. “I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said he, “but I
really need you. It’d be a--a service to”--he smiled--“to art.”
She seemed not to hear. Presently she compressed her lips, looked
at him defiantly--a strange look that somehow disquieted him for an
instant. “Where do you want me to put myself?” she asked, stepping into
the canoe.
They spent half an hour in trying various positions and poses before
he got just what he wanted. His impersonal way of treating her, his
frank comments, some of them flattering, others the reverse, amused
her immensely. But he was as unconscious of her amusement as of her
personality or his own. She obeyed him without a protest, patiently
held the pose he asked--held it full fifteen minutes. He had a way--the
way of the man who knows what he is about--that inspired her with
respect and made her feel she was at something worth while. “That’ll
do beautifully,” he said at last. “You must be tired.”
“I can stand it a while longer,” she assured him.
“Not a second. I’ve enough for to-day. And I don’t want to frighten you
off. I mustn’t tempt you to leave me in the lurch--disappear--never
show up again.”
“I’ve promised,” said she. “I’ll keep my word. Besides”--she flushed,
with eyes sparkling; her smile was merry, but embarrassed--“I’m not
doing this for nothing.”
“We haven’t talked business yet, have we?” said he, not a bit
embarrassed. “You can have anything you like, within reason.”
She laughed at him. “I want more than money. I want your valuable time.
In exchange for my services as model you must amuse me. I’m lonely and
bored--and full of things I want to forget.”
“How much amusement per pose?” said he.
“Oh--I shan’t be hard. Say--an hour.”
“The bargain’s closed.”
She paddled ashore, seated herself on a log a short distance before
him, and rested while he filled in his notes. He glanced at her
after a few minutes, was about to speak; instead he gave a grunt of
satisfaction, fell to sketching her face; for the thoughts that were
gilding her reverie gave her features precisely the expression of
exalted, ethereal longing which he wished to put into the face in his
picture. He worked feverishly, hoping she would not move and dissolve
the spell until he had what he needed--enough to fix that expression.
A quarrel between two robins over a worthless twig which neither wanted
startled her, drove the spiritual look from her features.
“But I got it,” said he. “Thank you.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“You’ve given me a second sitting--much better, because you didn’t
realize it.”
“May I see?”
His sudden alarm revealed the profoundly modest man, uneasy about the
merits of his unfinished work. “Not yet,” said he positively. “Wait
till there’s something to look at.”
“Very well,” she acquiesced.
A certain note in her voice made him laugh. “You don’t care in the
least about the picture--do you?”
“Yes, indeed,” protested she. But the attempt to conceal his having hit
upon the truth was far from successful. She realized it herself. “I
care only about the pay,” confessed she.
“We can talk while I work, now.”
She protested. “No, that isn’t honest. I gave you my whole attention.
You must pay in the same way. You must do your best to amuse me.”
“Well?”
“Come here, and sit on this log.”
He obeyed. “You deserve better pay,” said he. “I never had a
professional model who behaved so well.”
“Do you know, I never did anything so obediently in my whole life,”
declared she. “I don’t understand myself.” There was seriousness behind
the mirth in the glance she flung at him. “I’m a little afraid of you.
I half believe you hypnotize me. You--seem to--to put to sleep my
ordinary, every-day self and to wake up one that’s usually asleep--one
I’ve only known--until--until recently--as a--a sort of troublesome
ghost that haunts me from time to time.”
He, thinking of his picture, was only half attending to her. “But
you’ll marry the man with the money, all right,” said he absently.
She startled. “How did you know?” she demanded. “Have you found out who
I am?”
“Certainly. You’re Rix, model to Chang.... No, I was joking. I know
only what you told me yesterday--or, rather, what you enabled me to
guess.”
“And you approve of my marrying--that way?”
“I’d hardly be guilty of the impertinence of either approving or
disapproving.”
“Frankness wouldn’t be impertinence--between you and me. At least,
that’s the way I feel about it. Do you really approve of--of marriage
for--for other reasons than love?”
“Heartily.”
A long silence. Then she, with an effort: “When I got back home night
before last all that happened up there seemed unreal--absolutely
unreal--like a dream.”
“Even the biscuit and the chocolate?”
“Even you,” she replied.
Her tone made his wandering attention concentrate, made him glance
swiftly at her.
She smiled. “Don’t be alarmed,” said she. “There’s not the slightest
cause.”
“Sure?” inquired he jestingly. “You see, I’m not used to young
girls--American girls. You talk so freely. If I weren’t an American I’d
misunderstand.”
“What would it matter if you did?” retorted she.
“To be sure--it wouldn’t matter at all,” he admitted. “Do go on.”
“If it weren’t that my knowing you--this way--would always seem
unreal--not at all a part of life--I’d not dare come. Now, don’t
misunderstand. That doesn’t mean I’m falling in love with you--at
least, I don’t think it does.” Dreamily--“No, I don’t think so.”
“Depressing,” said he, with an awkward attempt at humor. He did not
like these frank personalities from his model--these alarming skirtings
of the subject he wished to discuss or consider with no woman. It was
interesting, refreshingly interesting, this unheard-of, direct way of
dealing with a matter invariably ignored by an unmarried, marriageable
girl--that is, so far as his experience went, it was ignored--but,
perhaps, in the America growing up during his absence--yes, this
interesting audacity was disquieting.
“No--I’ve thought it out carefully, Chang,” pursued she. “I’m not
afraid of falling in love with you. It’s simply that what you are--what
you stand for--appeals to my other self--the self I’m soon going to
wrap in a shroud and lay in a grave--forever.... Coming here is a kind
of dissipation for me. But I shan’t lose control of myself.” She nodded
positively, and there was a shrewd flash in her eyes.
“I’ll back you up,” said he. “So you needn’t worry. Falling in love is
entirely out of my line.”
He saw that she had no more belief in this than the next woman would
have had. For, little though he knew about women--the realities as to
women, the intricacies of women--he had not failed to learn that every
young or youngish woman regards herself as an expert at compelling men
to love, as a certain victor whenever she cares to exert herself to
win. “You have your career, I mine,” he went on. “They have nothing in
common. So we needn’t waste time worrying about impossibilities.”
“That’s true,” exclaimed she with enthusiasm.
He changed the subject to safer things, acting as if the whole matter
of their relations were settled. But, in reality, he was profoundly
disturbed. If the scheme of his picture had not taken such firm hold
upon him--the hold that compels an artist, in face of any debt to
consequences, however heavy--he would have contrived to rid himself of
her that day for good and all. He had had too many adventures not to
know the dangers filling the woodland in the springtime for a young man
and a young woman with no one to interrupt. He did not like his own
interest in her; he was little reassured by her explanations as to her
interest in him, though he told himself he must be careful not to judge
American girls by foreign standards. But the picture must be made, and
she was indispensable.
* * * * *
The bright weather held for several days. Every morning artist and
model met near the cascade and worked and talked alternately until
toward lunch time. She came earlier and earlier, until it was hardly
six when her canoe shot round the bend which divided off that end of
the lake into a little bay. He was always there before her. “Do you
spend the night here?” she asked.
“Why, this is late for me,” he replied. “I have breakfast before
sunrise and go up to the studio for an hour’s work before I come down
here. You see, light--sunlight--is all-important with me. So I go to
bed with the chickens.”
“You don’t live at the studio?” Then she reddened and hastily cried:
“No--don’t answer. I forgot.”
At her suggestion they had been careful about letting slip things that
might betray their identity in the outside world. This had become a
fetich with them, as if betrayal would break the charm and end their
friendship. “I never had anything like a romance in my life before,”
she had said. “I suppose I seem very silly to you, but I want to do
the best I can with this. You’ll humor me, won’t you?” And he agreed,
with a superior smile at her folly--a smile not nearly so sincere as he
fancied, for, like all men of his stamp, he was still the boy and would
be all his life.
Though she came earlier she lingered later; once it was noon before
she slowly paddled away in her graceful canoe with its high, curved
ends. His uneasiness about what was going on in her head ended with
her second visit; for she did not again speak of personal things and
treated him in a charming, comradelike fashion that would have quieted
the suspicions of a greater egotist than he. She made him do most of
the talking--about painting and sculpture, about books and plays--the
men he had known in Paris--about his curious or amusing experiences
in out-of-the-way parts of Europe. It was flattering to have such a
pretty listener, one so tireless, so interested; her many questions,
the changes in her expressive countenance, the subtle sense of the
sympathetic she radiated, were all proof convincing of her eagerness to
hear, of her delight in what she heard.
After many days--not so very many, either--when their friendship was
well into the stage of intimacy, she began to try to draw him out on
the subject of women. At first she went about it adroitly--and an
adroiter cross-examiner never put questions seemingly more trivial in
tones seemingly more careless or lay in wait behind eyes seemingly
more innocent. But she set her traps in vain. Of the love affairs of
other men he would talk, taking even more than the necessary care to
avoid things a young girl was supposed not to know or understand.
Of his own love affairs he would say nothing--not a hint, not so
much as a suggestion that romance had ever gladdened his youth. That
chance allusion to the mysterious Syrian woman was his first and last
indiscretion, if anything so vague could be called an indiscretion. So,
she abandoned the tactics of guile and attacked him frankly.
“You certainly are trustworthy,” said she. “You have a wonderful sense
of honor.”
“What’s this about?” inquired he, ignorant of her train of thought.
“About women,” explained she.
“Oh, about women,” repeated he. “It’s time to begin work again.”
“Not for twenty minutes. You kept me at it ten minutes’ overtime--and
you agreed I was to have double pay for overtime.”
He sat down again, a little cross.
“As I was saying,” pursued she, “you never talk about yourself and
women--except the Syrian girl. Were you _terribly_ in love with her?”
“That’s been so long ago. I don’t recall----”
“I’m sure she was crazy about you--and that you got tired of her--and
broke her heart----”
He laughed. “She’s married to a friend of mine, and she weighs a ton.
They’ve got a rug shop and how they do swindle rich Americans! Did
I ever tell you about how two men in Paris bought a rug for eleven
thousand francs and sold it to an American for----”
“Why do you always dodge away? Are you really a woman hater?”
“Not I. Just the reverse.”
“And you’ve been in love?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Her smile kept bravely on, but her tone wasn’t quite the same as she
said, “_Really_ in love?”
“Madly. Lots of times.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean once--_the_ once. I somehow feel that you’ve
had a great love in your life--a love that has saddened you--has made
you put women out of your life.”
He was laughing frankly at her. “What a romancer you are,” cried he.
“It’s very evident that you’ve had no experience. If you had, you’d
know that isn’t the way of love at all. Anyone who can catch it once
can catch it any number of times. It’s a disease, I tell you. You want
to fall in love and you proceed to do it, taking whoever happens to be
convenient.”
This seemed to content her. “I see you’ve never been in love,” said
she. “You’ve simply had experience. I like that. I hate a man who
hasn’t had experience. Not that I ever thought you hadn’t--no, indeed.
In the first five minutes I knew you I said to myself, ‘Here’s a man
who has been over the road.’ I could tell by the way you took hold.”
“Took hold!” cried he.
“That’s it--took hold--made me like you--made me interested in you.”
He looked uncomfortable--glanced at his watch.
“Oh, so much has happened to you. And nothing has ever happened to
me--nothing but this,” she sighed.
“But this!” laughed he. “Don’t you call it something--to be
clandestinely an artist’s model? Think how horrified your prim, proper,
pious people would be if they knew!”
“What kind of people do you think I come from?” she inquired, gazing at
him quizzically.
“That’s tabooed,” he answered. “I’ve never speculated about it. When
your canoe rounds that bend yonder I never follow. You begin and end at
the bend.”
“I don’t see how you can help wondering,” mused she. “I wonder a great
deal about you. Not that I want to know. I’d rather wonder--fancy
it as I please--differently every day. You see, I haven’t much to
think about--much that’s interesting. Honestly, don’t you wonder--at
all--about me?”
“I’ve always been that way about my friends,” replied he, and went on
to explain sincerely: “They interest me only as they appear to me. Why
should I bother about what they are to other people--people I don’t
know and don’t care to know?”
“Isn’t that strange!” mused she. “Do you really mean it?” She blushed,
hastily added: “Of course, I know you mean it. You mustn’t mind my
saying that. You see, the people I know are entirely different. That’s
why I feel this is all--unreal--a dream.... You honestly don’t care
about wealth--and social position--and all that? Not a bit?”
“Why should I?” said he indifferently. “It isn’t in my game--and one
cares only about the things that are in his game.”
“That other game--it seems a very poor sort to you, doesn’t it?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, I know it does. It seems so to me, whenever I’m--here--and even
when I’m not here.”
“Why bother about such things?” said he in the tone that indicates
total lack of interest.
After a pause she said: “You may not believe it, but I’m a frightful
snob--out there.”
“But not here. There’s nothing here to be snob about--thank God!”
“Yes--I’m as different as possible--out there,” she went on. “There
are people I detest whom I’m sweet to because of what they are
socially. I’m like the rest of the girls--crazy about social position
and fond of snubbing people--and----”
“Don’t tell me about it,” he interrupted gently, but with an expression
in his straight, honest eyes that made her blush and hang her head.
“I’m sorry for what you are when the black magician who rules beyond
the bend takes possession of you. But what he does to you doesn’t
change what the white magic makes of you here.”
Her eyes, her whole face lighted up. “The white magic,” she repeated
softly. After a brief reverie she came back to the subject and went
on, “I told you because I--I’m ashamed to be a fraud with you.... I
wonder if you’re really as big and honest as you seem? Nobody is--out
there. They’re mean and petty!--when you see through what they pretend
to be--pretend even to themselves. I’m just as big a fraud as the rest.
And I often convince myself I’m sweet and good and-- If I could only--”
There she stopped, leaving her wish unexpressed but easy to imagine.
“The way to keep the little things out is to fill one’s mind with the
big things,” said he. “But you’re not to blame for being what your
surroundings compel.”
“Do you think I could be different?” she asked, waiting in a sort of
breathlessness for his answer.
“I’ve not thought about it,” was his depressing answer. “Offhand I
should say not. You’re at the age when almost everybody does a little
thinking. But that’ll soon stop, and you’ll be what you were molded to
be from babyhood.”
“I know I don’t amount to much,” said she humbly. “Out there--under the
black magic--I’m vain and proud. But here--I feel I’m just nothing.”
“You’re a superb model,” said he consolingly. “Really--superb.”
“Please don’t mock at me. Honestly, don’t you think I’m commonplace?”
He gave her that fine, gentle smile of his, particularly fine coming
from such a big, masculine sort of man. And he said, “Nothing that the
sun shines on is commonplace.”
* * * * *
She developed strong curiosity as to the general aspects of his
affairs--as to his hopes and fears for the future. Her efforts to draw
him out on these subjects amused him. His frank confession that he was
unknown in America threw her quite off the track; it never occurred to
her that he might be known abroad. “And you have worked many years?”
she said.
“All my life.”
She looked tenderly sympathetic distress. “Doesn’t your not being
recognized discourage you?” she said.
“Not a bit,” declared he, with every indication of sincerity.
“Everything worth while takes time. Anyhow, I don’t much care. My
living is secure. You see, I’m quite rich.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Rich!” she exclaimed. “Really? Why, I thought--”
There she halted, blushing.
“Oh, yes. I’ve got forty thousand--not to speak of my land.”
“Forty--thousand--a year! That’s _very_ good.” And her face revealed
that her brain was busy and what it was busy about.
He laughed loudly. “Forty thousand a _year_!” he cried. “No--_two_
thousand a year.”
Her chagrin was pitiful. “Oh!” she exclaimed dismally. “I thought you
said you were rich.”
“And I am. Why, when I think of how I used to live on less than two
thousand francs a year I feel like a Rothschild.” He tried to keep his
face and his tone serious as he added: “What’s the matter? Why do you
look so woe-begone?”
“Nothing. Only-- You gave me such a shock! For a minute I thought you
were--were different.”
He took advantage of her mournful abstraction to slip back to his work.
So absorbed was she that she did not observe how he was “cheating” her,
though all his other attempts to do it had been promptly detected and
stopped. From time to time he looked at her and puzzled over the cause
of her deep gloom. Finally he decided to interrupt. A mischievous look
came into his eyes. He said: “You thought of transferring yourself from
that other rich man?”
She was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Then she met his laughing eyes
with a brave attempt at mockery. “Well--I’d rather marry a rich man I
liked than one I didn’t.”
“Naturally. But forget about me, please. I’m not a candidate,
remember.” He was glad of this chance to remind her of his views as to
marriage.
“Never fear,” said she, forcing a laugh and a look of coquettish scorn.
“We’re equally safe from each other.”
* * * * *
On the eighth morning it began to drizzle at dawn, and by the time
artist and model should have been at work a heavy, cold rain was
falling. However, Chang in his waterproofs walked down to the lake
shore. He had to take a walk--he always took a walk--no matter what
the weather; why not in that direction? As he drew near the cascade
he was amazed to see the canoe beached in the usual place. And there,
huddled under a tree, as doleful as the shivering birds, stood Rix. He
hesitated, started quietly back the way he had come. “No,” said he to
himself, “she might catch sight of me. Then she’d be offended--and what
would become of my picture?” So he turned about--in obedience to these
counsels of calm and unprejudiced good sense.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded with friendly severity as he
came forward. “You’ll catch your death of cold.”
At sound of his voice her drooping form straightened ecstatically. At
sight of him, looking more tremendous than ever in the big waterproofs,
she gave a smile like a sunburst. “You’re _frightfully_ late!” she
reproached.
“Late! We can’t work to-day.”
“You didn’t tell me not to come if it rained,” said she, with a
convincing air of innocence. “And--I didn’t want to lose a day’s pay.”
He was still frowning. “I came very near not coming at all,” said he.
“It was by the merest accident that I took my walk in this direction.”
“But--you did,” said she slyly.
“Why not?” was his carefully careless reply. “I walk, rain or shine.”
“I don’t mind rain, either--when I’m prepared for it,” said she
cheerfully. “You don’t know how fascinating canoeing in the rain is.”
But he was not convinced. He stood staring gloomily out over the lake,
as if he were seeing formidable enemies approaching under cover of the
thick, blue mist. “I’ve got to go in a few minutes,” said he almost
curtly. “I’ve arranged for a trip to town, as I can’t work to-day.”
“To sell a picture?”
“I haven’t any. Those from the other side aren’t here yet. Anyhow, I’m
going to show only American work.”
A long pause--an uncomfortable pause. Then she said in her artless,
impersonal way: “I should think a wife would be of great assistance to
an artist----”
“As a roper-in, you mean?” he interrupted fiercely. “No real painter
would stoop to anything so degrading to his art and to himself.”