reached the lake when her canoe shot round the bend. He stood a few
yards from the water’s edge, observing her graceful maneuverings. She
controlled that canoe as perfectly as if it had been part of her own
body. He was too much the artist to be able to keep a stern countenance
in face of so enchanting a spectacle. Also, her features--her yellow
hair, the ever-changing, gray eyes, the mobile and rosy mouth, the
delicate skin--had too much of the soft and dazzling loveliness of the
morning. “If a man wished to let himself be bewitched,” thought he,
“there would be an ideal enchantress.” She was one of the few women
he had known who had worn well--about the only one, indeed. When he
first knew her he had not thought that she was especially attractive,
beyond the freshness that is the almost universal birthright of youth.
But as he had studied her, as he had observed and felt her varied
moods, her charm had grown. Even things about her, in themselves
unattractive, were fascinating in the glow and throb of her naturally
vivid personality--not an intellectual personality, not at all, but
redolent of the fresh fragrance of the primal, the natural. “An ideal
enchantress,” he muttered, and the lot he had sternly marked out for
himself seemed bare and lonely, like a monk’s cell beside the glories
of the landscape beyond its narrow window.
“How can you be out of humor on such a morning?” cried she, as the prow
of her canoe slid gently out of the water and she rose to her feet.
“On the contrary, I’m in a fine humor.” And his look and voice bore him
out. “Didn’t I tell you I was going to town to-day? I simply took my
walk here.”
She laughed. “Neither did I expect you. I simply took my outing here.”
And when he blushed in confusion and annoyance, she laughed the more
gayly.
“You are so amusing,” she said tenderly.
“I’ll admit,” said he, “that I thought there was a chance you might
come. And I thought, if you did, it would be the best opportunity to
have a plain talk with you.”
She seated herself, or, rather, balanced herself, on the forward curve
of her canoe. He occupied a big bowlder near the maple under which he
always painted. “I see,” observed she, “that you are getting ready to
say a lot of things you don’t mean. How you will thank me some day for
having been patient with you!” He averted his eyes, muttered something
incoherent, searched confusedly for his cigarettes. “You always keep
the case in your lower left-hand waistcoat pocket,” said she. And sure
enough, there it was--to his increased confusion. But, when their
glances met, the twinkle in her gray eyes--merry as the sunbeams that
were changing the yellow of her hair to the reddish yellow of the
finest gold--proved irresistible.
“It’s simply impossible to be serious with you,” cried he, in what he
would have liked to think a vexed tone.
“And why should you be?” inquired the girl. “You used to warn me that
I took everything, myself included, far too seriously. Now, you’re
getting into the habit of taking yourself, oh, _so_ solemnly!--which
is far worse than seriously. You’re more like a dismal preacher, a man
with a mission, than an artist with the joy of living laughing in his
heart. You made a great hit last night.”
He, off his guard, looked as pleased as a boy that has just got a
present of a gun. “Glad I didn’t disgrace you. You remember how nervous
you were about it.”
“Your talk about that shirt was a little disturbing. It came out well.
At least, I think it did. People don’t notice your clothes. They look
at _you_.”
“Now, how am I to say what I’ve got to say, if you keep on like that?”
demanded he. “Oh, but you are crafty!”
“I don’t want to be lectured, Chang.”
He settled himself with an air of inflexible resolution. “I’m not going
to lecture,” said he. “I’m going to deliver myself of a few words of
good sense and then say good-by.”
She looked upon the ground, and her expression wrenched his tender
heart. In vain he told himself that he was an egotistical fool; that
the girl was probably more than half faking, to work upon him; that the
other half of the feeling in her expression was the flimsiest youthful
infatuation, certain to disappear in a few days, a few weeks at most.
There, before him, was the look of suffering. And when she lifted her
eyes for an instant they said more touchingly than her voice could have
said it: “Why don’t you strike and have done with me? I am helpless.”
He got up, tossed his cigarette far into the lake. “This is too
rotten!” he cried. “How in the devil did I ever get into such a mess?”
She waited, meek, silent, pathetic.
“I’ve about decided to go away--to go back to Paris,” said he.
“Maybe we can cross together,” said she. “Mother and I are going soon.
She wants me to go right away--there, or anywhere, wherever I wish.”
He dropped to the bowlder again, a sense of helplessness weakening his
backbone and his knees. Of what use to fly? This girl was free--had the
means to travel wherever she chose, to stay as long as she liked. In
his excitement he saw visions of himself being pursued round and round
the earth--till his money gave out, and he, unable to fly farther, was
overtaken and captured. He began to laugh--laugh until the tears rolled
down his cheeks.
“What is it?” asked she. “Tell me. I want to laugh.”
“You are making me into an imbecile,” replied he. “I was laughing
at myself. I’m glad I had that laugh. I think I can talk sensibly
now--without making myself ridiculous.” Once more he put on a highly
impressive, highly ominous air of sober resoluteness. He began: “A
short time ago you did me the honor of telling me you were in love with
me.”
“Yes. Do you--do you think poorly of me for having been frank?” And the
gray eyes looked innocent anxiety.
“No, I don’t,” confessed he. “As a general proposition, I think I
should have thought--well, queerly--of a girl who came out with such
a startler on no especial provocation. But in this case the effect is
puzzlingly different. Probably because I can’t in the least believe
you.”
“Oh, no--that’s not the reason,” cried she. “It was only right that
I should speak first. You see, when the girl’s poor, and marrying
her is going to put the man to great expense--it’d be--be--downright
impertinent for her to say such a thing. It’d be as if she asked him to
support her for life.”
“Maybe so,” said he. “The money side of it didn’t occur to me.
Naturally, you, who have much money, would think more about it than I,
who have little.”
“Would you be afraid to--to marry--a woman who had a lot more money
than you?”
“Not in the least,” declared he. “How ridiculous!”
A chill of suspicion crept into her face.
“I don’t want to marry, and I shan’t marry,” continued he. “But if
I did want to marry, and wanted the woman, I’d not care who she was
or what she was or what she had or hadn’t--so long as she was what I
wanted. And I don’t think even you, crazy as you are about money,
could suspect me of having the same mania.”
His tone and his manner would have convinced anyone. They convinced
her. She drew a huge sigh of relief. “I’m glad you said that--in just
that way,” said she.
“I’m sure I don’t see what difference it makes,” replied he. “You don’t
mean to say you’ve been suspecting me of wanting your money?”
She hung her head foolishly. “I’ve got a horrid mind,” confessed she.
“It came to me that maybe you might be holding out for fear father’d
cut me off.”
“You _have_ got your nerve!” ejaculated he. “I never heard of the
like!--never!”
“Now you’re disgusted with me,” cried she. “I know I oughtn’t to have
told you. But I can’t help telling you everything. It isn’t fair,
Chang, to think I’m worse than most girls, just because I let you see
into me. You know it isn’t fair.”
“You’re right, Rix,” said he impulsively; and the sense that he had
wronged her pushed him on to say, “It’s your frankness and your courage
that I admire so much. I wish you weren’t attractive. Then it’d be
easier for me to do what I’ve got to do.”
Her face became radiant. “Then you do care for me?”
“Why, of course I do,” said he heartily--but in a tone most
unsatisfactory to ears waiting to drink in what her ears longed for.
“Do you suppose I could stand so much of anyone I didn’t like?”
“You aren’t frank with me!” said she a little sullenly.
“Why not?”
“You’ve some reason why you won’t let yourself say you love me. And you
won’t tell me what it is.”
“How many times have I got to tell you,” cried he heatedly, “that I
don’t care for you in that way--any more than you care for me?”
She was all gentleness and freedom from guile. “But every time you say
that, you say it angrily--and then I know you don’t mean it.”
“But I do mean it!”
Her face looked stubbornly unconvinced.
“I tell you, I do mean it!” he repeated with angry energy.
“You are mad at yourself for liking me so much.”
He made a gesture of despair. “Well, have it your way--if it pleases
you better to think so.” He rose and stood before her, his hands thrust
deep into the outside pockets of his loose sack coat. “Whatever I may
or may not think of you, I am not going to marry anybody. Do I make
myself clear?”
“But everybody gets married,” said she innocently. “Oh, Chang, why do
you want to be eccentric?” And up into his gazed the childlike eyes.
“You told me yourself that eccentricity was a stupid caricature of
originality.”
“Eccentric--eccentric,” he muttered, for lack of anything else to say.
What an impossible creature to talk seriously with! She was always
flying off at a tangent. Controlling his exasperation he said in a low,
intense voice: “Eccentric or not, I am not going to marry. _Do_ you
understand? I--am--not--going--to--marry.”
“Why do you get angry?” she pleaded sweetly. “It’s unreasonable. I
can’t _make_ you marry me--can I? I don’t want to marry you if you
don’t want to marry me--do I?”
He strode away, back again to where she sat in graceful ease on the end
of her canoe. “I’m not so thundering sure of that!” he cried. “By Jove,
you sometimes make me feel as if I had a halter round my neck. Where
did you get this infernal insistence?”
“From my father,” said she, quiet and calm. “I can’t help it. When my
heart gets set on a thing I hold on like grim death.”
He looked round, like a man dreaming. “Am I awake? Am I really awake?”
he demanded of lake and trees and stones. Then he addressed her, “What
are you up to? I know you don’t love me. I know you don’t want to marry
me. Then _why_ do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just can’t help it. Sometimes when I’m
alone and think over things I’ve said to you I can’t believe it was
really I--or that such words really were uttered.... There can be only
one explanation.”
“And what is that? For Heaven’s sake, let’s have it.”
“That I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you love me.”
“Really!” exclaimed he, with a fantastic attempt at scornful irony; and
away he strode, to halt at his former seat, the big bowlder under the
tree. “Really!” he repeated.
“You must see it yourself,” urged she, serious and earnest. “Honestly,
Chang, could a girl talk to you as I have--a girl as proud and as
modest as I am--and with no experience--could she do it, unless she
were absolutely sure she was talking to a man who loved her?”
There was something akin to terror in his eyes--the terror of a man who
feels himself sinking in ocean or quicksand and looks about in vain for
aid. Down he sat, to stare out over the shining, sparkling lake.
“You know I’m right,” said she with quiet conviction.
Up he started again in agitation. “I must be getting weak-minded!” he
cried. “Or are you hypnotizing me?”
“If anybody’s done any hypnotizing I guess it must be you that have
hypnotized me.”
“Maybe so,” said he, with a confused gesture. “Maybe so. Lord knows. I
don’t.”
“And now,” pursued she, “that it’s settled that we love each other----”
“What!” he cried, with some of his former energy. But it subsided
before her calm, surprised gaze. He stared stupidly at her feet,
extended and crossed. “Is it settled?” he muttered. “Is it?” And then
he straightened himself--a kind of rearing, insurgent gesture--the
gesture of the last fierce stand in the last ditch.
“Yes, Chang, it’s settled,” said she soothingly. “You are such a big,
foolish dear! But--as I was about to say--” She hesitated.
“Go on,” he urged, with a large, ironic gesture matching the boisterous
irony of his tone. “Say anything you like. Only, don’t keep me in
suspense.”
“Have you had your breakfast?” she asked solicitously.
“I take only coffee. I had it.”
“But that’s not enough for such a long morning as you have,” protested
she.
“Isn’t it? All right. I’ll eat whatever you say--eat till you tell me
to stop.”
“It really isn’t enough,” said she, refusing to relax her seriousness.
“But, to go on--now that it’s settled that we love each other--the
question is: What shall we do about it?”
“Yes,” said he, nodding his head in solemn mockery. “That’s it. What
shall be done about it?”
“How queer your voice is, Chang,” observed she, with a look of gentle,
innocent worriment. “What’s the matter?”
“I had only coffee,” said he.
“You mustn’t do that again.... Have you any suggestion to make?”
“None. Have you?”
“Chang!” she said reproachfully. “You have a suggestion.”
“Have I? What is it?”
“The only possible suggestion. You know very well that the only
sensible thing to do is to get married.”
“I’m dreaming,” jeered he. “Yes, I’m dreaming.”
“You’re laughing at me, Chang!”
“Am I?”
“Oh, I don’t care. I’m so happy! The only thing that stands in the way
is father.”
“Oh, father! Yes; there is father!” And he nodded ironically,
repeating: “Father--there’s father.”
“But I’ll soon bring him round,” cried she. “His will’s very strong,
but mine’s much stronger.”
“I believe that!” said he with energy. “You’ve got the strongest will
we’ve had since Joshua ordered the sun to stand still and the sun did
it.”
“You’re laughing at me again!” reproached she with an injured air.
“No, no! How could I?” protested he. “But suppose father refuses his
consent. What then?”
“But he won’t,” she said with an emphatic little nod.
“But he might. He doesn’t know me as well and love me as dearly as his
daughter does.”
“Chang, I feel as if you were laughing at me!”
“How can you!” said he. “But let’s go back to father and stick to him.
Suppose he refuses--absolutely refuses! What then?”
“I hadn’t thought. It’s so unlikely.”
“Well--think now. You’d give up your romantic dream, wouldn’t you?”
She beamed, happy, confident. “Oh, that won’t happen. He’s sure to
consent.”
“He’s sure _not_ to consent,” said Roger, dropping his irony. “What
then?”
She was silent. Her face slowly paled. A drawn look came round her
eyes and mouth. He laughed--a sarcastic laugh--a sincere sound that
indicated to her acute ears an end of the irony she had been pretending
not to suspect. She glanced up quickly. Her eyes fell before his.
“You see,” said he, a little disdain in his jocose mockery, “I’ve shown
you your own true self. Now, you will be sensible. Go back to your
Peter and let the poor artist alone.” He rose, came to her, held out
his hand. “Good-by, Rix. I must catch my train.”
She did not take his hand.
“Surely you’ll shake hands,” said he gently, friendlily. “I understand.
I like you for what you are, not for what you ought to be. Come, give
me your hand, my friend.”
She sighed, gazed up at him. “Suppose I said I’d give up everything for
you. What then?” she asked.
“Why, you’d be saying what isn’t true.”
“Chang,” she said earnestly, “I _think_ I’d give up everything for
you. But since it is you who ask me--you to whom I feel I must tell the
exact truth--I had to be honest. And the honest truth is I don’t know.
And any girl, in the same circumstances, would say precisely the same
thing--if she weren’t lying--or just romancing.”
“You are a trump, Rix!” he exclaimed. There was a look in his eyes that
would have thrilled her, had she seen it. But before she turned her
gaze upon him again, he had controlled his impulsive self-revelation.
In his usual manner he went on: “I’m proud of your friendship. It’s
always good to be reminded that there are people of the right sort on
earth. But you see yourself now that I was right from the beginning. We
don’t belong in the same class. We couldn’t comfortably travel the same
road. We----”
“Would you marry me if I gave up everything for you?” she interrupted.
“No,” was the prompt reply. “Any man who did that to your sort of girl
would be a fool--and worse. But don’t forget another fact, my dear. I
wouldn’t marry you in any circumstances. I’m not marrying. I’m married
already, as I told you before. I don’t believe in any other kind of
marriage--for my kind of man. I love my freedom. And I shall keep it.”
There was no mistaking the ring of those decisive words. The girl
shrank a little. She began in a choked, uncertain voice: “But you
said----”
“Rix, my dear friend, I said nothing that contradicted what I’ve always
told you--what I believe in as I believe in my work. You knew perfectly
well that I was merely ironic a few minutes ago. I didn’t want to part
from you with you imagining you were broken-hearted. That’s why I let
you run on and on--until you came that fearful cropper. Oh, _what_ a
cropper for romantic Rix!”
She laughed with a partial return of her old gayety. “I do feel cheap,”
said she--“dirt cheap.”
“Not at all. Just human. But--really I must be going,” said he briskly.
“When shall I see you again?” And she tried to speak steadily, with
smiling eyes.
“Let me see. I’ll be back in two or three days. In a week or ten days
I’ll have that picture about done. I suppose you’d like to see it. I’ll
send your mother a note, asking her to bring you. Well--good-by, Rix.”
He took her hand, released it. She stood, paling and flushing and
trembling. “Is that--all?” she murmured. “Won’t you--” Voice failed her.
He bent and kissed her hair at her temple. Suddenly she flung her arms
round his neck, kissed him passionately, her embrace tight; and a
shower of tears rained upon his cheek. With a hysterical cry more like
joy than like grief, yet like neither, she flung herself free, sprang
into the canoe and pushed off. And she went her way and he his without
either looking back.
VII
MR. RICHMOND CALLS
Roger was working in the studio, with doors and windows wide. It was
fiercely hot. He had reduced his costume to outing shirt and old
flannel trousers--the kind they make in the Latin Quarter--baggy at
the hips, tapering to a close fit at the ankles and hanging with a
careless, comfortable, yet not ungraceful looseness. He was working at
_the_ picture. He had not decided on a name for it. Should he call it
April?--or Dawn?--or The Water Witch? Or should he give it its proper
name--Rix? That title would mean nothing to anyone save himself. But to
him the picture meant nothing else. True, there was landscape in it;
the play of early morning light on foliage, on leaping water, on placid
water made it the best landscape he had ever done--incomparably the
best. The canoe, too, was a marvel in its way. But the girl--_there_
was the picture! He made another infinitesimal change--it would have
been impossible to count the number of those changes he had made. Then
he stood off at a little distance to look again.
“Is it in the canvas--or is it in my mind?” said he aloud.
He could not tell. He rather feared he was largely imagining the
wonders he thought he saw in that pictured face and form.
“It may be rotten, and I a fool hypnotized by her and by my own vanity,
for all I know. But--what do I care? I am getting the pleasure.”
Pleasure? Never before had he taken such deep, utter joy in his work.
Not merely joy in the doing--that was his invariable experience--but
joy in the completed work. Never before had he brought anything so near
to the finish without a feeling of dissatisfaction, sense of failure,
of having just missed his aim. He viewed the picture from a dozen
points. And each time he beheld in it something new, something yet more
wonderful.
“I’m damned if it’s there! It simply can’t be. Not the greatest genius
who ever lived could produce what I imagine I see.”
He took a dozen new positions, standing long at each view point. But
the illusion--it must be illusion!--refused to vanish. The work--the
figure part of it--persisted in appealing to him as a product of
transcendent genius.
“That business didn’t stop a minute too soon--not a minute! For it’s
evident I was on the verge of falling in love.”
“On the verge?”... What was the meaning of the illusion of a picture
greater than ever artist made?... On the verge?
“Why, hang it all, I’ve done nothing but think about her since we
kissed. I’m bewitched! I’m in love!”
The kiss was a week old now--ought to have lost its power long ago;
for there is power in a kiss from a pretty woman, even though a man
does not love her. But this kiss had an extraordinary, an unprecedented
quality. Other kisses--in days gone by--had given their little
sensation and had straightway drifted into the crowd of impressions
about the woman or about the general joyousness of life when the senses
are normal and responsive. But this kiss--it had individuality, a body
and soul of its own, a Jack’s bean-stalk kind of vitality. It was
more vigorous day by day. He could feel it much more potently to-day
than on the day it was given. Really, it did not make a very powerful
impression then. He had experienced much better kisses. He had felt
awkward--a little ridiculous--rather uneasy and anxious to escape.
Now----
“Not a minute too soon--not a minute! As it is, I’m going to have the
devil’s own time forgetting her.”
What had become of all his projects for a career, for rapid striding
into fame? Gone--quite gone. He simply wanted to stay at the studio
and work on and on and yet on at the one picture--at the one figure in
that picture. He had vaguely decided on a scheme for another picture
when this should be done. What was it? Why, a picture of a woman
sitting under a tree, her hands listless, her whole body relaxed and
inert--except her eyes. Her eyes were to be winging into the depths
of the infinite. He had planned out the contrast between the eyes, so
intensely, so swiftly alive, and the passive rest of her. And who was
this woman? Rix! He had still more vaguely planned a third picture. Of
what? Rix again.
“Not a minute too soon? By Heaven, a minute too late!”
“Well, what of it?” demanded he gloomily of his gloomy self. Why, pay
the bill. Pay like a man. “I couldn’t marry her if I would. I wouldn’t
marry her if I could. But I can pay the bill for making a fool of
myself.” He glowered savagely around. “The next time a good-looking
woman comes here,” he muttered, “I’ll take to my heels and hide in the
woods till she’s gone. I see I’m no longer to be trusted in female
society. At my age--with my plans--after all I’ve been through--to
make such an easy ass of myself!” He sat down despondently on the
bench--sprang up--for was it not there--lying there--just where he
had seated himself--that he had first seen her? He glanced round the
studio. He groaned. Everything in it reminded him of her; and there, in
the center, in the most favorable light, on the easel--was she herself!
He rushed outdoors. Sunshine shimmering and sparkling on the
foliage--he could see her, the yellow hair aflame with sunbeams,
flitting gracefully through the aisles of the forest! A heavy bill
it was to be! But he set his teeth. “She is not for me, nor I for
her. If she were here now I’d talk to her just as I did. But, thank
God, I didn’t realize until I had done the only thing that’s sane and
honorable. I wonder how long it will be before I can begin to forget?”
Every morning he awoke vowing he would not touch or look at her picture
that day. Every morning he cut short his walk that he might get to the
studio earlier and busy himself at the picture. He partially consoled
himself with the reflection that at least he was improving it, was not
altogether wasting his time. And he found evidence of real strength
of purpose in the fact that he kept away from the waterfall. For two
weeks he daily feared--or hoped--whether fear or hope or both he was
not sure--that she would come to the studio. As the days passed and
she did not appear he felt that she was getting over her infatuation;
to stay away thus long unless her enthusiasm had cooled was wholly
unlike her impetuous and brave nature. This thought did not make him
happier exactly, but athwart its gloom shot one sincerely generous
gleam: “Anyhow, I’m paying alone,” said he to himself. “And that’s as
it should be. It was altogether my fault. I am older, more experienced.
I ought to have seen that the strangeness and novelty of our meetings
were appealing to her young imagination--and I ought to have broken off
at the very outset. If she had been a poor girl leading a quiet, dull
life the consequences might have been serious. Yes, and I might have
been weak enough to marry her out of regret--and that would have been
misery for us both.”