About Vard’s portrait? (he began.) Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a queer
story, and most people wouldn’t see anything in it. My enemies might
say it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure; but you know better
than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. Between me and Vard there could be no
question of failure. The man was made for me--I felt that the first time
I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep from asking him to sit to me
on the spot; but somehow one couldn’t ask favors of the fellow. I
sat still and prayed he’d come to me, though; for I was looking for
something big for the next Salon. It was twelve years ago--the last
time I was out ere--and I was ravenous for an opportunity. I had the
feeling--do you writer-fellows have it too?--that there was something
tremendous in me if it could only be got out; and I felt Vard was the
Moses to strike the rock. There were vulgar reasons, too, that made
me hunger for a victim. I’d been grinding on obscurely for a good many
years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made
a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There’d
been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I
wanted to follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. Then
the critics had been insinuating that I could do only Spanish things--I
suppose I _had_ overdone the castanet business; it’s a nursery-disease
we all go through--and I wanted to show that I had plenty more shot in
my locker. Don’t you get up every morning meaning to prove you’re equal
to Balzac or Thackeray? That’s the way I felt then; _only give me a
chance_, I wanted to shout out to them; and I saw at once that Vard was
my chance.
I had come over from Paris in the autumn to paint Mrs. Clingsborough,
and I met Vard and his daughter at one of the first dinners I went to.
After that I could think of nothing but that man’s head. What a type!
I raked up all the details of his scandalous history; and there were
enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers were full of him just then;
he was mud from head to foot; it was about the time of the big viaduct
steal, and irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues to
put him down. And all the time one kept meeting him at dinners--that was
the beauty of it! Once I remember seeing him next to the Bishop’s wife;
I’ve got a little sketch of that duet somewhere... Well, he was simply
magnificent, a born ruler; what a splendid condottiere he would have
made, in gold armor, with a griffin grinning on his casque! You remember
those drawings of Leonardo’s, where the knight’s face and the outline of
his helmet combine in one monstrous saurian profile? He always reminded
me of that...
But how was I to get at him?--One day it occurred to me to try talking
to Miss Vard. She was a monosyllabic person, who didn’t seem to see an
inch beyond the last remark one had made; but suddenly I found myself
blurting out, “I wonder if you know how extraordinarily paintable your
father is?” and you should have seen the change that came over her. Her
eyes lit up and she looked--well, as I’ve tried to make her look there.
(He glanced up at the sketch.) Yes, she said, _wasn’t_ her father
splendid, and didn’t I think him one of the handsomest men I’d ever
seen?
That rather staggered me, I confess; I couldn’t think her capable of
joking on such a subject, yet it seemed impossible that she should be
speaking seriously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked at
Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile thrown back,
the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow high white forehead. The girl
worshipped him.
She went on to say how glad she was that I saw him as she did. So many
artists admired only regular beauty, the stupid Greek type that was made
to be done in marble; but she’d always fancied from what she’d seen
of my work--she knew everything I’d done, it appeared--that I
looked deeper, cared more for the way in which faces are modelled
by temperament and circumstance; “and of course in that sense,” she
concluded, “my father’s face _is_ beautiful.”
This was even more staggering; but one couldn’t question her divine
sincerity. I’m afraid my one thought was to take advantage of it; and I
let her go on, perceiving that if I wanted to paint Vard all I had to do
was to listen.
She poured out her heart. It was a glorious thing for a girl, she said,
wasn’t it, to be associated with such a life as that? She felt it so
strongly, sometimes, that it oppressed her, made her shy and stupid. She
was so afraid people would expect her to live up to _him_. But that
was absurd, of course; brilliant men so seldom had clever children.
Still--did I know?--she would have been happier, much happier, if he
hadn’t been in public life; if he and she could have hidden themselves
away somewhere, with their books and music, and she could have had it
all to herself: his cleverness, his learning, his immense unbounded
goodness. For no one knew how good he was; no one but herself. Everybody
recognized his cleverness, his brilliant abilities; even his enemies had
to admit his extraordinary intellectual gifts, and hated him the worse,
of course, for the admission; but no one, no one could guess what he
was at home. She had heard of great men who were always giving gala
performances in public, but whose wives and daughters saw only the empty
theatre, with the footlights out and the scenery stacked in the wings;
but with him it was just the other way: wonderful as he was in public,
in society, she sometimes felt he wasn’t doing himself justice--he was
so much more wonderful at home. It was like carrying a guilty secret
about with her: his friends, his admirers, would never forgive her if
they found out that he kept all his best things for _her!_
I don’t quite know what I felt in listening to her. I was chiefly taken
up with leading her on to the point I had in view; but even through my
personal preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact that, though
she talked foolishly, she didn’t talk like a fool. She was not stupid;
she was not obtuse; one felt that her impassive surface was alive
with delicate points of perception; and this fact, coupled with her
crystalline frankness, flung me back on a startled revision of my
impressions of her father. He came out of the test more monstrous than
ever, as an ugly image reflected in clear water is made uglier by the
purity of the medium. Even then I felt a pang at the use to which fate
had put the mountain-pool of Miss Vard’s spirit, and an uneasy sense
that my own reflection there was not one to linger over. It was odd that
I should have scrupled to deceive, on one small point, a girl already
so hugely cheated; perhaps it was the completeness of her delusion that
gave it the sanctity of a religious belief. At any rate, a distinct
sense of discomfort tempered the satisfaction with which, a day or two
later, I heard from her that her father had consented to give me a few
sittings.
I’m afraid my scruples vanished when I got him before my easel. He was
immense, and he was unexplored. From my point of view he’d never
been done before--I was his Cortez. As he talked the wonder grew. His
daughter came with him, and I began to think she was right in saying
that he kept his best for her. It wasn’t that she drew him out, or
guided the conversation; but one had a sense of delicate vigilance,
hardly more perceptible than one of those atmospheric influences that
give the pulses a happier turn. She was a vivifying climate. I had meant
to turn the talk to public affairs, but it slipped toward books and art,
and I was faintly aware of its being kept there without undue pressure.
Before long I saw the value of the diversion. It was easy enough to get
at the political Vard: the other aspect was rarer and more instructive.
His daughter had described him as a scholar. He wasn’t that, of course,
in any intrinsic sense: like most men of his type he had gulped his
knowledge standing, as he had snatched his food from lunch-counters; the
wonder of it lay in his extraordinary power of assimilation. It was
the strangest instance of a mind to which erudition had given force and
fluency without culture; his learning had not educated his perceptions:
it was an implement serving to slash others rather than to polish
himself. I have said that at first sight he was immense; but as I
studied him he began to lessen under my scrutiny. His depth was a false
perspective painted on a wall.
It was there that my difficulty lay: I had prepared too big a canvas
for him. Intellectually his scope was considerable, but it was like
the digital reach of a mediocre pianist--it didn’t make him a great
musician. And morally he wasn’t bad enough; his corruption wasn’t
sufficiently imaginative to be interesting. It was not so much a means
to an end as a kind of virtuosity practised for its own sake, like a
highly-developed skill in cannoning billiard balls. After all, the point
of view is what gives distinction to either vice or virtue: a morality
with ground-glass windows is no duller than a narrow cynicism.
His daughter’s presence--she always came with him--gave unintentional
emphasis to these conclusions; for where she was richest he was naked.
She had a deep-rooted delicacy that drew color and perfume from the very
centre of her being: his sentiments, good or bad, were as detachable
as his cuffs. Thus her nearness, planned, as I guessed, with the tender
intention of displaying, elucidating him, of making him accessible in
detail to my dazzled perceptions--this pious design in fact defeated
itself. She made him appear at his best, but she cheapened that best by
her proximity. For the man was vulgar to the core; vulgar in spite of
his force and magnitude; thin, hollow, spectacular; a lath-and-plaster
bogey--
Did she suspect it? I think not--then. He was wrapped in her impervious
faith... The papers? Oh, their charges were set down to political
rivalry; and the only people she saw were his hangers-on, or the
fashionable set who had taken him up for their amusement. Besides,
she would never have found out in that way: at a direct accusation her
resentment would have flamed up and smothered her judgment. If the
truth came to her, it would come through knowing intimately some
one--different; through--how shall I put it?--an imperceptible shifting
of her centre of gravity. My besetting fear was that I couldn’t count on
her obtuseness. She wasn’t what is called clever; she left that to
him; but she was exquisitely good; and now and then she had intuitive
felicities that frightened me. Do I make you see her? We fellows can
explain better with the brush; I don’t know how to mix my words or lay
them on. She wasn’t clever; but her heart thought--that’s all I can
say...
If she’d been stupid it would have been easy enough: I could have
painted him as he was. Could have? I did--brushed the face in one day
from memory; it was the very man! I painted it out before she came:
I couldn’t bear to have her see it. I had the feeling that I held her
faith in him in my hands, carrying it like a brittle object through a
jostling mob; a hair’s-breadth swerve and it was in splinters.
When she wasn’t there I tried to reason myself out of these subtleties.
My business was to paint Vard as he was--if his daughter didn’t mind his
looks, why should I? The opportunity was magnificent--I knew that by
the way his face had leapt out of the canvas at my first touch. It would
have been a big thing. Before every sitting I swore to myself I’d do it;
then she came, and sat near him, and I--didn’t.
I knew that before long she’d notice I was shirking the face. Vard
himself took little interest in the portrait, but she watched me
closely, and one day when the sitting was over she stayed behind and
asked me when I meant to begin what she called “the likeness.” I guessed
from her tone that the embarrassment was all on my side, or that if she
felt any it was at having to touch a vulnerable point in my pride. Thus
far the only doubt that troubled her was a distrust of my ability. Well,
I put her off with any rot you please: told her she must trust me, must
let me wait for the inspiration; that some day the face would come;
I should see it suddenly--feel it under my brush... The poor child
believed me: you can make a woman believe almost anything she doesn’t
quite understand. She was abashed at her philistinism, and begged me not
to tell her father--he would make such fun of her!
After that--well, the sittings went on. Not many, of course; Vard was
too busy to give me much time. Still, I could have done him ten times
over. Never had I found my formula with such ease, such assurance; there
were no hesitations, no obstructions--the face was _there_, waiting for
me; at times it almost shaped itself on the canvas. Unfortunately Miss
Vard was there too ...
All this time the papers were busy with the viaduct scandal. The outcry
was getting louder. You remember the circumstances? One of Vard’s
associates--Bardwell, wasn’t it?--threatened disclosures. The rival
machine got hold of him, the Independents took him to their bosom, and
the press shrieked for an investigation. It was not the first storm Vard
had weathered, and his face wore just the right shade of cool vigilance;
he wasn’t the man to fall into the mistake of appearing too easy. His
demeanor would have been superb if it had been inspired by a sense of
his own strength; but it struck me rather as based on contempt for
his antagonists. Success is an inverted telescope through which one’s
enemies are apt to look too small and too remote. As for Miss Vard,
her serenity was undiminished; but I half-detected a defiance in her
unruffled sweetness, and during the last sittings I had the factitious
vivacity of a hostess who hears her best china crashing.
One day it _did_ crash: the head-lines of the morning papers shouted the
catastrophe at me:--“The Monster forced to disgorge--Warrant out against
Vard--Bardwell the Boss’s Boomerang”--you know the kind of thing.
When I had read the papers I threw them down and went out. As it
happened, Vard was to have given me a sitting that morning; but there
would have been a certain irony in waiting for him. I wished I had
finished the picture--I wished I’d never thought of painting it. I
wanted to shake off the whole business, to put it out of my mind, if I
could: I had the feeling--I don’t know if I can describe it--that there
was a kind of disloyalty to the poor girl in my even acknowledging
to myself that I knew what all the papers were howling from the
housetops....
I had walked for an hour when it suddenly occurred to me that Miss Vard
might, after all, come to the studio at the appointed hour. Why should
she? I could conceive of no reason; but the mere thought of what, if
she _did_ come, my absence would imply to her, sent me bolting back to
Twelfth Street. It was a presentiment, if you like, for she was there.
As she rose to meet me a newspaper slipped from her hand: I’d been fool
enough, when I went out, to leave the damned things lying all over the
place.