_Bartlett._--"But I assure you that I am so; and you have seen that I
laughed--that I am wanting in delicacy, and"--
_Constance_, devoutly.--"How can you say that to _us_, when every day,
every hour, every instant of the last month has given us proof of
unimaginable kindness in you!" He eagerly approaches and takes her
hands, which she frankly yields him. "Your patience, your noble
forbearance, which we so sorely tried, has made us all forget that you
are a stranger, and--and--to me it's as if we had always known you"--her
head droops--"as if you were a--an old friend, a--brother"--
_Bartlett_, dropping her hands.--"Oh!" He turns away, and pacing the
length of the room reapproaches her hastily.
_Constance_, with a little cry.--"Mr. Bartlett! Do look! Did you intend
to trample my canvas and colours under foot?" She makes as if to stoop
for them.
_Bartlett_, his manner undergoing a total change as if he had been
suddenly recalled to himself at a critical moment.--"Don't!" He hastily
picks them up, and puts the canvas on the easel and the colours on the
table. With a glance at the canvas: "Ponkwasset doesn't seem to have
been seriously injured by his violent usage. Shall you like to try your
hand at him again to-morrow?"
_Constance._--"Oh, yes. But on one condition."
_Bartlett._--"Yes."
_Constance._--"That you have a little faith in _me_, too."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, Miss Wyatt"--
_Constance._--"I used to have a bad temper, and now that I'm getting
better it seems to be getting worse. Try to believe in me enough to know
that when I do or say some violent thing, I'm ashamed of it; and that
when I wounded you, I really meant to hurt myself; that I-- Oh, you
know, Mr. Bartlett, how much you've borne from us, and how much we owe
you; and if you did anything now to make us think less of your unselfish
goodness, we never could forgive you!" Bartlett remains with bowed head.
"I must go, now." Gaily: "Perhaps to-morrow, when we resume our lessons,
you'll tell me what you meant to-day, when you couldn't explain
yourself."
_Bartlett_, vehemently.--"No, I can never tell you."
_Constance._--"I can't believe that! At any rate, we shall talk the
matter over, and I may say something to help you. You know how one thing
leads to another."
_Bartlett._--"But nothing you can ever say now will lead to what I
wanted to say."
_Constance_, laughing.--"Don't be sure. If you rouse my curiosity, I
shall be a powerful aid to expression. With a woman's wit to help you
out with your meaning, how can you help making it clear?"
_Bartlett._--"Because--because it wants something more than wit in you
to make it clear."
_Constance._--"Well, you shall have sympathy, if sympathy is what you
need. Is it something like sympathy?"
_Bartlett._--"Something like sympathy; but--not--not exactly sympathy."
_Constance_, with another laugh.--"How difficult you make it! I see! You
want compassion."
_Bartlett_, quickly.--"Oh, no! I would sooner have contempt!"
_Constance._--"But that's the one thing you can't have. Try to think of
something else you want, and let me know to-morrow." She nods brightly
to him, and he follows her going with a gaze of hopeless longing. As she
vanishes through the doorway, he lifts his hand to his lips, and
reverently kisses it to her.
_Bartlett_, alone.--"Try to _think_ what I want and let you know! Ah,
my darling, my darling! Your faith in me kills my hope. If you only
dared a little less with me, how much more I might dare with you; and if
you were not so sisterly sweet, how much sweeter you might be! Brother?
Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make
up my sum! You drive me farther than your worst enemy from you with that
fatal word. Brother? I hate brother! If it had been cousin--And kind?
Oh, I would we were
'A little less than kin, and more than kind!'"
IV.
NOT AT ALL LIKE.
I.
BARTLETT _and_ CUMMINGS.
_Bartlett._--"Six weeks since you were here? I shouldn't have thought
that." Bartlett's easel stands before the window, in the hotel parlour;
he has laid a tint upon the canvas, and has retired a few paces for the
effect, his palette and mahl-stick in hand, and his head carried at a
critical angle. Cummings, who has been doing the duty of art-culture by
the picture, regards it with renewed interest. Bartlett resumes his
work: "Pretty good, Cummings?"
_Cummings._--"Capital! The blue of that distance"--
_Bartlett_, with a burlesque sigh.--"Ah, I looked into my heart and
painted for _that_! Well, you find me still here, Cummings, and
apparently more at home than ever. The landlord has devoted this parlour
to the cause of art,--makes the transients use the lower parlour,
now,--and we have this all to ourselves: Miss Wyatt sketches, you know.
Her mother brings her sewing, and the General his bruises; he hasn't
quite scrambled up, yet, from that little knock-down of his; a man
doesn't, at his time of life, I believe; and we make this our
family-room; and a very queer family we are! Fine old fellow, the
General; he's behaved himself since his accident like a disabled angel,
and hasn't sworn,--well, anything worth speaking of. Yes, here I am. I
suppose it's all right, but for all I know it may be all wrong."
Bartlett sighs in unguarded sincerity. "_I_ don't know what I'm here
for. Nature began shutting up shop a fortnight ago at a pretty lively
rate, and edging loafers to the door, with every sign of impatience; and
yet here I am, hanging round still. I suppose this glimpse of Indian
Summer is some excuse just now; it's a perfect blessing to the landlord,
and he's making hay--rowen crop[1]--while the sun shines; I've been with
him so long now, I take quite an interest in his prosperity, if eight
dollars a week of it _do_ come out of me! What is talked of in
'art-circles' down in Boston, brother Cummings?"
_Cummings._--"Your picture."
_Bartlett_, inattentively, while he comes up to his canvas, and bestows
an infinitesimal portion of paint upon a destitute spot in the
canvas.--"Don't be sarcastic, Cummings."
_Cummings._--"I'm not, I assure you."
_Bartlett_, turning toward him incredulously.--"Do you mean to say that
The First Grey Hair is liked?"
_Cummings._--"I do. There hasn't been any picture so much talked of this
season."
_Bartlett._--"Then it's the shameless slop of the name. I should think
you'd blush for your part in that swindle. But clergymen have _no_
conscience, where they've a chance to do a fellow a kindness, I've
observed." He goes up to Cummings with his brush in his mouth, his
palette on one hand, and his mahl-stick in the other, and contrives to
lay hold of his shoulders with a few disengaged fingers. As Cummings
shrinks a little from his embrace: "Oh, don't be afraid; I shan't get
any paint on you. You need a whole coat of whitewash, though, you
unscrupulous saint!" He returns to his easel. "So The Old Girl--that's
what I shall call the picture--is a success, is she? The admiring public
ought to see the original elm-tree now; she hasn't got a hair, grey or
green, on her head; she's perfectly bald. I say, Cummings, how would it
do for me to paint a pendant, _The Last Grey Hair_? I might look up a
leaf or two on the elm, somewhere: stick it on to the point of twig;
they wouldn't know any better."
_Cummings._--"The leafless elm would make a good picture, whatever you
called it." Bartlett throws back his shaggy head and laughs up at the
ceiling. "The fact is, Bartlett, I've got a little surprise for you."
_Bartlett_, looking at him askance.--"Somebody wanting to chromo The Old
Girl? No, no; it isn't quite so bad as that!"
_Cummings_, in a burst.--"They _did_ want to chromo it. But it's sold.
They've got you two hundred dollars for it." Bartlett lays down his
brush, palette, and mahl-stick, dusts his fingers, puts them in his
pockets, and comes and stands before Cummings, on whom, seated, he bends
a curious look.
_Bartlett._--"And do you mean to tell me, you hardened atheist, that
you don't believe in the doctrine of future punishments? What are they
going to do with _you_ in the next world? And that picture-dealer? And
_me_? Two hun-- It's an outrage! It's--the picture wasn't worth fifty,
by a stretch of the most charitable imagination! Two hundred, d-- Why,
Cummings, I'll paint no end of Old Girls, First and Last Grey
Hairs--I'll flood the market! Two-- Good Lord!" Bartlett goes back to
his easel, and silently resumes his work. After a while: "Who's been
offered up?"
_Cummings._--"What?"
_Bartlett._--"Who's the victim? My patron? The noble and discriminating
and munificent purchaser of The Old Girl?"
_Cummings._--"Oh! Mrs. Bellingham. She's going to send it out to her
daughter in Omaha."
_Bartlett._--"Ah! Mrs. Blake wishes to found an art museum with that
curiosity out there? Sorry for the Omaha-has." Cummings makes a gesture
of impatience. "Well, well; I won't then, old fellow! I'm truly obliged
to you. I accept my good fortune with compunction, but with all the
gratitude imaginable. I say, Cummings!"
_Cummings._--"Well?"
_Bartlett._--"What do you think of my taking to high art,--mountains
twelve hundred feet above the sea, like this portrait of Ponkwasset?"
_Cummings._--"I've always told you that you had only to give yourself
scope,--attempt something worthy of your powers"--
_Bartlett._--"Ah, I thought so. Then you believe that a good big canvas
and a good big subject would be the making of me? Well, I've come round
to that idea myself. I used to think that if there was any greatness in
me, I could get it into a small picture, like Meissonier or Corot. But I
can't. I must have room, like the Yellowstone and Yo-Semite fellows.
Don't you think Miss Wyatt is looking wonderfully improved?"
_Cummings._--"Wonderfully! And how beautiful she is! She looked lovely
that first day, in spite of her ghostliness; but now"--
_Bartlett._--"Yes; a _phantom_ of delight is good enough in its way, but
a _well woman_ is the prettiest, after all. Miss Wyatt sketches, I think
I told you."
_Cummings._--"Yes, you mentioned it."
_Bartlett._--"Of course. Otherwise, I couldn't possibly have thought of
her while I was at work on a great picture like this. She
sketches"-- Bartlett puts his nose almost on the canvas in the process of
bestowing a delicate touch--"she sketches about as badly as any woman I
ever saw, and _that's_ saying a good deal. But she looks uncommonly well
while she's at it. The fact is, Cummings,"--Bartlett retires some feet
from the canvas and squints at it,--"this very picture which you approve
of so highly is--Miss Wyatt's. _I_ couldn't attempt anything of the size
of Ponkwasset! But she allows me to paint at it a little when she's
away." Bartlett steals a look of joy at his friend's vexation, and then
continues seriously: "I've been having a curious time, Cummings." The
other remains silent. "Don't you want to ask me about it?"
_Cummings._--"I don't know that I do."
_Bartlett._--"Why, my dear old fellow, you're hurt! It _was_ a silly
joke, and I honestly ask your pardon." He lays down his brush and
palette and leaves the easel. "Cummings, I don't know what to do. I'm in
a perfect deuce of a state. I'm hit--awfully hard; and I don't know what
to do about it. I wish I had gone at once--the first day. But I had to
stay,--I had to stay." He turns and walks away from Cummings, whose eyes
follow him in pardon and sympathy.
_Cummings._--"Do you really mean it, Bartlett? I didn't dream of such a
thing. I thought you were still brooding over that affair with Miss
Harlan."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, child's-play! A prehistoric illusion! A solar myth!
The thing never was." He rejects the obsolete superstition with a wave
of his left hand. "I'm in love with this girl, and I feel like a sneak
and a brute about it. At the very best it would be preposterous. Who am
I, a poor devil of a painter, the particular pet of Poverty, to think of
a young lady whose family and position could command her the best? But
putting that aside,--putting that insuperable obstacle lightly aside, as
a mere trifle,--the thing remains an atrocity. It's enormously
indelicate to think of loving a woman who would never have looked twice
at me if I hadn't resembled an infernal scoundrel who tried to break her
heart; and I've nothing else to commend me. I've the perfect certainty
that she doesn't and can't care anything for me in myself; and it grinds
me into the dust to realise on what terms she tolerates me. I could
carry it off as a joke at first; but when it became serious, I had to
look it in the face; and that's what it amounts to, and if you know of
any more hopeless and humiliating tangle, _I_ don't." Bartlett, who has
approached his friend during this speech, walks away again; and there is
an interval of silence.
_Cummings_, at last, musingly.--"_You_ in love with Miss Wyatt; I can't
imagine it!"
_Bartlett_, fiercely.--"You can't imagine it? What's the reason you
can't imagine it? Don't be offensive, Cummings!" He stops in his walk
and lowers upon his friend. "Why shouldn't I be in love with Miss
Wyatt?"
_Cummings._--"Oh, nothing. Only you were saying"--
_Bartlett._--"I was saying! Don't tell me what _I_ was saying. Say
something yourself."
_Cummings._--"Really, Bartlett, you can't expect me to stand this sort
of thing. You're preposterous."
_Bartlett._--"I know it! But don't blame me. I beg your pardon. Is it
because of the circumstances that you can't imagine my being in love
with her?"
_Cummings._--"Oh, no; I wasn't thinking of the circumstances; but it
seemed so out of character for you"--
_Bartlett_, impatiently.--"Oh, love's always out of character, just as
it's always out of reason. I admit freely that I'm an ass. And then?"
_Cummings._--"Well, then, I don't believe you have any more reason to be
in despair than you have to be in love. If she tolerates you, as you
say, it _can't_ be because you look like the man who jilted her."
_Bartlett._--"Ah! But if she still loves _him_?"
_Cummings._--"You don't know that. That strikes me as a craze of
jealousy. What makes you think she tolerates you for that reason or
no-reason?"
_Bartlett._--"What makes me think it? From the very first she
interpreted _me_ by what she knew of _him_. She expected me to be this
and not to be that; to have one habit and not another; and I could see
that every time the fact was different, it was a miserable
disappointment to her, a sort of shock. Every little difference between
me and that other rascal gave her a start; and whenever I looked up I
found her wistful eyes on me as if they were trying to puzzle me out;
they used to follow me round the room like the eyes of a family
portrait. You wouldn't have liked it yourself, Cummings. For the first
three weeks I simply existed on false pretences,--involuntary false
pretences, at that. I wanted to explode; I wanted to roar out. If you
think I'm at all like that abandoned scoundrel of yours in anything but
looks, I'm _not_! But I was bound by everything that was decent, to hold
my tongue, and let my soul be rasped out of me in silence and apparent
unconsciousness. That was _your_ fault. If you hadn't told me all about
the thing, I could have done something outrageous and stopped it. But I
was tied hand and foot by what I knew. I had to let it go on."
_Cummings._--"I'm very sorry, Bartlett, but"--
_Bartlett._--"Oh, I dare say you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't
had a wild ass of the desert to deal with. Well, the old people got used
to some little individuality in me, by-and-by, and beyond a suppressed
whoop or two from the mother when I came suddenly into the room, they
didn't do anything to annoy me directly. But they were anxious every
minute for the effect on _her_; and it worried me as much to have _them_
watching _her_ as to have _her_ watching _me_. Of course I knew that she
talked this confounded resemblance over with her mother every time I
left them, and avoided talking it over with the father."
_Cummings._--"But you say the trouble's over now."
_Bartlett._--"Oh--_over_! No, it isn't over. When she's with me a while
she comes to see that I am not a mere _doppelgänger_. She respites me to
that extent. But I have still some small rags of self-esteem dangling
about me; and now suppose I should presume to set up for somebody on my
own account; the first hint of my caring for her as I do, if she could
conceive of anything so atrocious, would tear open all the old sorrows.
Ah! I can't think of it. Besides, I tell you, it isn't all over. It's
only not so bad as it was. She's subject to relapses, when it's much
worse than ever. Why"--Bartlett stands facing his friend, with a
half-whimsical, half-desperate smile, as if about to illustrate his
point, when Constance and her mother enter the parlour.
[Footnote 1: Aftermath.]
II.
CONSTANCE, MRS. WYATT, BARTLETT, _and_ CUMMINGS.
_Constance_, with a quick violent arrest.--"Ah! Oh!"
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Constance, Constance, darling! What's the matter?"
_Constance._--"Oh, nothing--nothing." She laughs, nervously. "I thought
there was nobody--here; and it--startled me. How do you do, Mr.
Cummings?" She goes quickly up to that gentleman, and gives him her
hand. "Don't you think it wonderful to find such a day as this, up here,
at this time of year?" She struggles to control the panting breath in
which she speaks.
_Cummings._--"Yes, I supposed I had come quite too late for anything of
the sort. You must make haste with your Ponkwasset, Miss Wyatt, or
you'll have to paint him with his winter cap on."
_Constance._--"Ah, yes! My picture. Mr. Bartlett has been telling you."
Her eyes have already wandered away from Cummings, and they now dwell,
with a furtive light of reparation and imploring upon Bartlett's
disheartened patience: "Good _morning_." It is a delicately tentative
salutation, in a low voice, still fluttered by her nervous agitation.
_Bartlett_, in dull despair: "_Good_ morning."
_Constance._--"How is the light on the mountain this morning?" She
drifts deprecatingly up to the picture, near which Bartlett has stolidly
kept his place.
_Bartlett_, in apathetic inattention.--"Oh, very well, very well indeed,
thank you."
_Constance_, after a hesitating glance at him.--"Did you like what I had
done on it yesterday?"
_Bartlett_, very much as before.--"Oh, yes; why not?"
_Constance_, with a meek subtlety.--"I was afraid I had vexed you--by
it." She bends an appealing glance upon him, to which Bartlett remains
impervious, and she drops her eyes with a faint sigh. Then she lifts
them again: "I was afraid I had--made the distance too blue."
_Bartlett._--"Oh, no; not at all."
_Constance._--"Do you think I had better try to finish it?"
_Bartlett._--"Oh, certainly. Why not? If it amuses you!"
_Constance_, perplexedly.--"Of course." Then with a sad significance:
"But I know I am trying your patience too far. You have been so kind, so
good, I can't forgive myself for annoying you."
_Bartlett._--"It doesn't annoy me. I'm very glad to be useful to you."
_Constance_, demurely.--"I didn't mean painting; I meant--screaming."
She lifts her eyes to Bartlett's face, with a pathetic, inquiring
attempt at lightness, the slightest imaginable experimental archness in
her self-reproach, which dies out as Bartlett frowns and bites the
corner of his moustache in unresponsive silence. "I ought to be well
enough now to stop it: I'm quite well enough to be ashamed of it." She
breaks off a miserable little laugh.
_Bartlett_, with cold indifference.--"There's no reason why you should
stop it--if it amuses you." She looks at him in surprise at this
rudeness. "Do you wish to try your hand at Ponkwasset this morning?"
_Constance_, with a flash of resentment.--"No; thanks." Then with a
lapse into her morbid self-abasement: "I shall not touch it again.
Mamma!"
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Yes, Constance." Mrs. Wyatt and Cummings, both intent on
Bartlett and Constance, have been heroically feigning a polite interest
in each other, from which pretence they now eagerly release themselves.
_Constance._--"Oh--nothing. I can get it of Mary. I won't trouble you."
She goes toward the door.
_Mrs. Wyatt._--"Mary isn't up from her breakfast yet. If you want
anything, let me go with you, dear." She turns to follow Constance.
"Good morning, Mr. Cummings; we shall see you at dinner. Good
morning,"--with an inquiring glance at Bartlett. Constance slightly
inclines towards the two gentlemen without looking at them, in going out
with her mother; and Cummings moves away to the piano, and affects to
examine the sheet-music scattered over it. Bartlett remains in his place
near the easel.
III.
BARTLETT _and_ CUMMINGS.
_Bartlett_, harshly, after a certain silence which his friend is
apparently resolved not to break.--"Sail in, Cummings!"
_Cummings._--"Oh, I've got nothing to say."
_Bartlett._--"Yes, you have. You think I'm a greater fool and a greater
brute than you ever supposed in your most sanguine moments. Well, I am!
What then?"
_Cummings_, turning about from the music at which he has been pretending
to look, and facing Bartlett, with a slight shrug.--"If you choose to
characterise your own behaviour in that way, I shall not dispute you at
any rate."
_Bartlett._--"Go on!"
_Cummings._--"Go on? You saw yourself, I suppose, how she hung upon
every syllable you spoke, every look, every gesture?"
_Bartlett._--"Yes, I saw it."
_Cummings._--"You saw how completely crushed she was by your tone and
manner. You're not blind. Upon my word, Bartlett, if I didn't know what
a good, kind-hearted fellow you are, I should say you were the greatest
ruffian alive."
_Bartlett_, with a groan.--"Go on! That's something like."
_Cummings._--"I couldn't hear what was going on--I'll own I tried--but I
could see; and to see the delicate _amende_ she was trying to offer you,
in such a way that it should not seem an amende,--a perfect study of a
woman's gracious, unconscious art,--and then to see your sour refusal of
it all, it made me sick."
_Bartlett_, with a desperate clutch at his face, like a man oppressed
with some stifling vapour.--"Yes, yes! I saw it all, too! And if it had
been for _me_, I would have given anything for such happiness. Oh,
gracious powers! How dear she is! I would rather have suffered any
anguish than give her pain, and yet I gave her pain! I knew how it
entered her heart: I felt it in my own. But what could I do? If I am to
be myself, if I am not to steal the tenderness meant for another man,
the _love_ she shows to me because I'm like somebody else, I _must_ play
the brute. But have a little mercy on me. At least, I'm a _baited_
brute. I don't know which way to turn, I don't know what to do. She's so
dear to me,--so dear in every tone of her voice, every look of her eyes,
every aspiration or desire of her transparent soul, that it seems to me
my whole being is nothing but a thought of her. I loved her
helplessness, her pallor, her sorrow; judge how I adore her return to
something like life! Oh, you blame me! You simplify this infernal
perplexity of mine and label it brutality, and scold me for it. Great
heaven! And yet you saw, you heard how she entered this room. In that
instant the old illusion was back on her, and _I_ was nothing. All that
I had been striving and longing to be to her, and hoping and despairing
to seem, was swept out of existence; I was reduced to a body without a
soul, to a shadow, a counterfeit! You think I resented it? Poor girl, I
_pitied_ her so; and my own heart all the time like lead in my
breast,--a dull lump of ache! I swear, I wonder I don't go mad. I
suppose--why, I suppose I _am_ insane. No man in his senses was ever
bedevilled by such a maniacal hallucination. Look here, Cummings: tell
me that this damnable coil isn't simply a matter of my own fancy. It'll
be some little relief to know that it's _real_."
_Cummings._--"It's real enough, my dear fellow. And it _is_ a
trial,--more than I could have believed such a fantastic thing could
be."
_Bartlett._--"Trial? Ordeal by fire! Torment! I can't stand it any
longer."