She found Collin’s place more than Polly said, since Polly viewed it
through adoring eyes and was blind to tiny flaws.
Their approach was anything but conventional. They had raced up from the
station, Polly winning by a nose, hilarious young persons with flushed
faces.
They found the famous Collin, in an artist’s smock of gray chambray,
sweeping off his front steps! Upon seeing them, he called out,
“Cook left last night with a case of champagne—there are all the dishes
to wash ... and the boy left yesterday morning with my two best suits—oh,
ho, art is merely incidental,” continuing his sweeping in vigorous
fashion.
Then he dropped the broom and came down the walk to meet them.
His garden had the air of age and mystery. The famous statue of Aphrodite
attributed to Praxiteles was in a monolith of white marble lined with
brass and surrounded by a small fountain which paid her homage. As soon
as midsummer came, he explained to Thurley, there would be yellow lilies
with heavy sweetness, the clean fragrance of shy heliotrope, creamy,
bending tassels of spiræa forming an aisle up to the white stucco house
with its contrasting dark, wooden trimmings.
But when they entered the hall, Thurley gasped with amused dismay, for
she had seldom seen such conglomeration and disorder. It was true there
were pink marbleized walls, tall lapis lazuli pillars capped with
gold and an emerald malachite cornice with a black baseboard in the
big studio. In addition to the collection of rare eighteenth century
furniture with needlepoint chairs and blue and silver hangings, the
growing plants and endless bird cages filled with twittering English
bullfinches, there were strewn carelessly rare Greek vases and Etruscan
fragments, an ugly easel and modelling stand, spotted canvases carelessly
lying about. On chairs, but more often on the floor, were jars of
brushes, rare lithographs by Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes’ drawings,
Meryon’s etchings and Conder’s painted silks. Half finished portraits and
charcoal outlines of figures were pinned relentlessly on the walls, and a
shaggy Airedale answering the name of Fencer came muzzling the guests in
suspicious welcome and walked without concern on all of the treasures.
The only books the room contained were a well worn Bible and a Human
Anatomy. The curtains were twisted back into hideous shapes, some
fastened with twine, others with artist’s thumb-tacks, and one was thrown
over the cornice in gay disregard.
“You see,” said Collin, “I never should have yielded to Caleb’s plea to
have an artistic studio. By degrees, I have managed to move out some
stuff and send it over to his lodge. He thrives on such things—color
schemes and doing rooms over. But some fine day there will be a bonfire
at Parva Sed Apta and, hoop-la, I’ll build a log cabin with nothing but
glass for the roof and sit in the midst of the débris to paint the most
wonderful pictures of women.”
“Poor women, posing in your log cabin.” Polly pretended to be cross. “Now
we must get this room to rights.”
“Never.” He pushed her aside. “I’ll not allow a thing to be straightened.
The rest of the house is like a bandbox and I spend as little time there
as I can. But here is where I live.”
Fencer lay down to roll over an etching as if emphasizing the statement.
“Here,” corrected Collin, “is where _we_ live.”
“Show Thurley Bliss’s portrait and then we’ll do up the dishes and cook
our dinner—a fine sort of host you are.”
“Cook had been meditating an elopement some time—a gentleman who works
in a roundhouse, I believe, has been carrying the wedding ring in his
pocket for days. The boy always envied my suits—and as he was offered
more wages to go to Bermuda, I presume he thought the suits a bonus for
having endured an artistic atmosphere ... oh, well, I’ll call up the
agency to-morrow and order a fresh supply; they’ll stay a week anyhow and
that takes me through the dinner I’m supposed to give on Wednesday—well,
Thurley, are you much amused?”
They were walking down the hall into his drawing-room, spick and
span by contrast, done in the coolest of grays with long, glimmering
curtains of silver damask, the furniture of polished magnolia wood
with a yellow-topped Italian marble console and many-branched silver
candlesticks. The only ornament in the room was Hobart’s portrait; it
stood on a great easel on a platform, curtains halfway veiling it.
Thurley’s heart began an annoying pit-a-pat as she sought the correct
light in which to view it. Polly and Collin each taking a curtain threw
them back together and for a long instant Thurley was silent as she
looked with eyes, as betraying of her love as Polly’s had been, at the
wonderful face of a man. It was a man who had recently left happy youth
behind because he had discovered it to be disillusioning and had taken
up manhood with no disgruntled attitude of resentment nor aggressive
determination to win by trickery but with ideals—ideals impossible to
defeat but hidden so safely from the world at large that they were
incapable of practical expression. The lips smiled of love and sighed for
regret and prayed for all the universe—there was that much painted into
the picture. The eyes were shining, gray eyes showing the art of putting
a bad ending to the purpose of becoming a good and fresh beginning. He
was one who would try to practise some ancient but forgotten unity of the
human race. As Thurley stared at the strange face with its rare smile of
understanding, she recalled the Scotch legend of the Wells of Peace which
an old circus clown had told her of years ago.
The Wells of Peace, so the clown had said, were Love, Beauty, Dreams,
Endurance, Compassion, Rest, Love Fulfilled! All the “little people” of
the hills and forest, even the peewits who had been baseborn children,
were searching endlessly for the Wells of Peace—for he who found them and
drank of the water could wish for anything in the world and it would be
his!
“Kiss her, Collin; that will make her speak! Are you turning into a
statue, Thurley?”
Thurley stirred at the sound of Polly’s voice.
Collin was holding back the curtain and laughing at her. “Never knew I
could hold a pose so long,” he said as he dropped it. “Why, Thurley, are
you so susceptible to an old brigand like Bliss? Fancy him, now, walking
down Piccadilly and humming,
“‘I’m going back to Lunnon,
“‘To tea and long frock coats’
—and a bevy of peeresses trailing afterwards!”
Thurley let the actress in her shield the woman. She made laughable
comments about the portrait, vowing that the color scheme of the room had
given her new ideas for costumes, going through the rest of Parva Sed
Apta with a careless demeanor.
The dining-room should have been a charming spot with its green English
Chintz, dead white walls and red and gold furniture, but it was heaped
with soiled dishes and curious cooking utensils piled high with
“concoctions.”
“I had a fearful appetite the moment cook left,” Collin explained, “so I
thought I’d try my luck.... They all tasted queer—like mixtures of carpet
tacks and modelling clay. The way I explain it is the excess paprika and
I had been modelling and neglected to wash my hands.”
“Oh, good,” Polly interrupted. “Show us what you were doing,” making him
return to the studio to rescue the clay model of a bird with a newly
broken wing.
“Splendid,” Polly declared. “There is a force—a stirring—_il y a quelque
chose_,” turning to Thurley for approval.
“It hurts to look at it, poor little thing! It must have been from a gun
and not an accident.”
Collin actually blushed. “You really feel that, too?”
“Of course—see how the wing drags—oh, why not model it complete?”
Polly gave a triumphant whistle. “Always told him so. I wish now that
he’s oodles of money, he’d stop painting fat dowagers and silly men in
broadcloth and model—model what he dreams.”
Collin wrapped the bird in the moist cloth. “You are partial. I cannot
model—nor can I tear myself away from color. I dream color, woo it, I
could eat it—now, maybe that was the trouble with the cooking! I was
trying to put taupe shadows in the picture of the Hooker children ...
anyway, Thurley, I worked as ‘ghost’ for the great Constantin and, after
seeing his modelling, I never even fancied I could do likewise. It is
merely remembering my days with him when I take up the clay, sentimental
tribute—artistic fashion of drinking a toast. He had but one rule: ‘When
you can model a human hand as large as the top of your thumb, you can
model anything,’ he told us.... One day, when I tried, he said in his
carping old fashion, ‘Hein, what is that, Hedley? A hand? So! I would
mark it assaulted toad!’ And I never tried modelling again.”
He seemed anxious to dismiss the subject and show them his last portrait.
As he talked in his sweet, light voice, Thurley watched the childlike,
tyrannical way in which he waited for praise and believed all they said
of his work. He was seemingly unconscious of Polly’s hungry heart—and
empty purse—and as Thurley studied him she realized that Collin possessed
a great virtue—and a great fault.
The virtue was expressed by his brilliant, joyous eyes which told her
his was the sixth sense—the ability to look at his subject and say, “Ah,
I won’t paint in the heartbreak, it would be too cruel! Just pleasant
shadows,” or “Shall I show the greed which made you play the cad? I
think I shall—it needs to be exploited even if you did buy off the
press,” or “There is a promise of good things and you shall have them
painted clearly so that when you look at yourself you will feel the
need of living up to that promise—a sort of jacking-up, old man—with
your slightly weak mouth but glorious forehead,” or “You are young
and beautiful and you’ve the world before you, but I shall find that
gray-gold seriousness of your woman’s soul and make it illumine your
face; then you won’t go getting too light of heart and careless of
tongue—as you might with the flurry of dimples!” So the world had come
to speak of a Hedley portrait as something to be almost fearful of—it
was so real—and yet, with this ability, Thurley admitted as the day
wore on with their playing at housekeeping or romping in the garden,
drinking black coffee while Collin and Polly played guitar and ukelele
duets, Collin remained a child. Whether this was purposely achieved or a
strange whim of Mother Nature was yet to be proved. But a child he was,
whimsical, lovable, worth while but unstable—and he skillfully shut away
the duties of maturity by this very fact. Collin shirked responsibility!
So did Ernestine, but in a cynical, combative fashion. Collin did it with
studied innocence! As the child has imagination as its greatest charm and
asset, so did Collin claim it for his own, at the same time retaining
that opinion of women which the child possesses: A woman has but two
possibilities—tyrant or slave, therefore she can never be his equal.
The child regards his nurse or mother as a guardian angel or an unfair
oppressor of rights, and so Collin chose to regard women—staying aloof
from entangling romance!
He called Polly his pal, said with admiration that she had never passed
out of that flapper period when every woman wishes she had been born a
boy, therefore, Polly was a delight to know! He helped her when she least
suspected it, liked and admired her, but he kept that armor of childish
irresponsibility about his famous, selfish self and no matter how keenly
he might gaze into the souls of those he painted, his own soul was
wrapped in nursery eiderdown and labelled, “Unwrap me and you destroy
genius!” Polly, like all women who love but once, understood and was
content with crumbs.
“I shall go abroad when Ernestine does,” Thurley heard him saying when
she had lured Fencer into the garden to play retrieve.
“I’m so glad—do get rested, you will be rushed with orders next winter,”
Polly answered. Thurley knew just the look in those stabbed brown eyes!
“What will you do, pal mine?”
“Be tremendously busy, my opera scores, naturally, and for a pot-boiler
I’ve hired out as proofreader during the regulars’ vacations. I’m to have
a famous summer.” She picked up the ukelele and began strumming.
“I’ll find you the prettiest mantilla in Spain,” he promised, “but don’t
worry if you have no letters—I can’t write letters any more than a woman
can understand banking. But you’ll write to me, won’t you, Polly?”
“Of course—we’ll all write,” she answered bravely.
Thurley paused, unmindful of Fencer’s bark, and pondered on many things,
the portrait of the real Bliss Hobart, the man who was worth winning, as
she thought with new logic, on Miss Clergy’s vow which cheapened any love
no matter how many Lissas might argue to the contrary—unrequited love
such as Polly’s—on Caleb, smug and amusing and much in need of Ernestine
Christian’s heart, on Ernestine, busy with scales and cigarettes and
pessimistic utterances, on Sam Sparling, who had told her during one of
their happy talks, “Be a woman first, my child,” on November, with the
prospect of the début ... well, had Dan married Lorraine and was it true
that a man was nothing short of a hero who married a brilliant woman?
What a world it was and wouldn’t it be a relief to have had Ali Baba say
it all for her with his usual: “Land sakes and Mrs. Davis, but some
folks are going to be mighty nervous when it comes Judgment Day!”
* * * * *
At that identical moment in Birge’s Corners, Dan and Lorraine were
driving through the Boston Valley hills. It had been a hateful Sunday,
to Dan’s mind; service in the morning and himself dancing attendance on
the minister’s daughter when all the time he longed to bolt from the
church to escape the nasal tones of Milly Crawford, the new soloist
from Pike. He wanted to sit on the step of the box-car wagon in sulky
retrospect. But instead, he meekly followed Lorraine into the parsonage
and ate the dinner she had carefully prepared, smoking on the porch
while Lorraine “did up the work,” and now they had driven the best part
of the afternoon, returning for the monotonous evening service, the
cold meat and jelly tea and the customary Sunday night courtship on the
vine-covered porch.
“Dan,” said Lorraine timidly, one hand reaching over to feel the
solitaire on the other;—it gave her courage;—“is the new house getting on
all right?”
He turned to look at her; she was such a frail, pretty thing in her silk
dress—three summers old and homemade at that—her eyes were raised to his
as if she were a good heathen looking at a shrine to ask the granting of
a boon.
“Yes,” he said with dangerous gentleness. “Why?”
She dropped her head. “I was just wondering—”
Dan smiled; the savage, buoyant Dan had vanished. Fine, hard lines were
about his mouth and his eyes were staring, non-expressive. Every one in
the Corners knew what Lorraine had “put up with” since Thurley Precore
had given him the mitten and he had engaged himself for spite—the weeks
when Dan drank, Lorraine forgiving and praying over him, the times when
he deliberately ogled other girls—not the nice girls, either—those women
with hard, bold eyes who always live at the outskirts of any small town,
coming in Saturday nights to prance along the streets arm in arm, making
every one clear out of their way, who laugh loudly and make humorous
comments when they pass travelling men. Dan had not only talked with
these persons—he had taken them driving in his car.
Still Lorraine had refused to believe the reports. She had wept her tears
and said her prayers in the solitude of her room with only the hope
chest as confidant. Then the minister talked to Dan—with the result that
Lorraine, with unheralded defiance, came into the room during the scene
and told her father she was Dan’s bespoken wife; she would always be
willing to “bear with him.”
“Seems as if there’s nothing he can do to get rid of her except hang
himself,” was the village verdict.
“’Course he’s sweet on Thurley—and whatever is she doing all this time? I
guess Miss Clergy has spent enough money to teach her how to sing,” would
be the answer.
Almost indifferently Dan had resigned himself to his fate and the new
house began to near completion.
“I hope he won’t break out wild after they’re married,” Ali Baba said.
“A Birge never married no woman with spirit; they all die and leave a
son,” Hopeful used to answer.
“Well, Thurley knew her mind, no matter if it was right or wrong,” would
be Betsey’s consolation.
“Would you like to be married this fall?” Dan finally asked Lorraine on
this Sunday afternoon.
“It’s a little soon, but I guess I could be ready,” she fibbed according
to feminine custom.
“Well, I suppose we may as well! Say when.”
Lorraine’s cheeks were crimson with excitement. “November?”
His face clouded. November was a semi-sacred month, Thurley’s birth
month—but then, was not all the village sacred because Thurley had lived
there? Where could he turn without a haunting memory, what person could
he pass without recalling some incident in their life together?
“All right—about the fifteenth; I’ll be ready to get away then. We’ll go
to New York for a couple of weeks. Would you like that?”
Lorraine nodded. They were both thinking the same thing: suppose fate
should cause them to meet Thurley Precore?
When Dan left her that night, kissing her dutifully and saying some
polite thing about being a lucky fellow, Lorraine went upstairs to the
little hope chest and began counting over her woman’s trifles.
“Poor Thurley,” she said out loud, “he’s mine now ... and he will learn
to care.”
Dan returned to the Hotel Button and went up to his rooms. He sat at his
desk, scribbling on a bit of paper. Then he took a fresh sheet and wrote:
“Dear Thurley”—but nothing else suggested itself.
“She wouldn’t give a hoot, you poor fool,” he told himself.
Finally he tore the paper up and whistling with utmost cheeriness tramped
about the room and tried to take an interest in planning the decorations
of the twenty-thousand-dollar house. It was Thurley’s house no matter
what all the ministers and marriage licenses might try to prove to the
contrary.