"I want her to be happy," said Marshby, with a simple humility afar from
cowardice. "I want her to be safe. I don't see how anybody could be
safe--with me."
"Well," pursued Wilmer, recklessly, "would she be safe with me?"
"I think so," said Marshby, keeping an unblemished dignity. "I have
thought that for a good many years."
"But not happy?"
"No, not happy. She would--We have been together so long."
"Yes, she'd miss you. She'd die of homesickness. Well!" He sat
contemplating Marshby with his professional stare; but really his mind
was opened for the first time to the full reason for Mary's unchanging
love. Marshby stood there so quiet, so oblivious of himself in
comparison with unseen things, so much a man from head to foot, that he
justified the woman's loyal passion as nothing had before. "Shall you
accept the consulate?" Wilmer asked, abruptly.
Brought face to face with fact, Marshby's pose slackened. He drooped
perceptibly. "Probably not," he said. "No, decidedly not."
Wilmer swore under his breath, and sat, brows bent, marvelling at the
change in him. The man's infirmity of will had blighted him. He was so
truly another creature that not even a woman's unreasoning championship
could pull him into shape again.
Mary Brinsley came swiftly down the path, trowel in one hand and her
basket of weeds in the other. Wilmer wondered if she had been glancing
up from some flowery screen and read the story of that altered posture.
She looked sharply anxious, like a mother whose child is threatened.
Jerome shrewdly knew that Marshby's telltale attitude was no unfamiliar
one.
"What have you been saying?" she asked, in laughing challenge, yet with
a note of anxiety underneath.
"I'm painting him in," said Wilmer; but as she came toward him he turned
the canvas dexterously. "No," said he, "no. I've got my idea from this.
To-morrow Marshby's going to sit."
That was all he would say, and Mary put it aside as one of his
pleasantries made to fit the hour. But next day he set up a big canvas
in the barn that served him as workroom, and summoned Marshby from his
books. He came dressed exactly right, in his every-day clothes that had
comfortable wrinkles in them, and easily took his pose. For all his
concern over the inefficiency of his life, as a life, he was entirely
without self-consciousness in his personal habit. Jerome liked that, and
began to like him better as he knew him more. A strange illuminative
process went on in his mind toward the man as Mary saw him, and more and
more he nursed a fretful sympathy with her desire to see Marshby tuned
up to some pitch that should make him livable to himself. It seemed a
cruelty of nature that any man should so scorn his own company and yet
be forced to keep it through an allotted span. In that sitting Marshby
was at first serious and absent-minded. Though his body was obediently
there, the spirit seemed to be busy somewhere else.
"Head up!" cried Jerome at last, brutally. "Heavens, man, don't skulk!"
Marshby straightened under the blow. It hit harder, as Jerome meant it
should, than any verbal rallying. It sent the man back over his own
life to the first stumble in it.
"I want you to look as if you heard drums and fife," Jerome explained,
with one of his quick smiles, that always wiped out former injury.
But the flush was not yet out of Marshby's face, and he answered,
bitterly, "I might run."
"I don't mind your looking as if you'd like to run and knew you
couldn't," said Jerome, dashing in strokes now in a happy certainty.
"Why couldn't I?" asked Marshby, still from that abiding scorn of his
own ways.
"Because you can't, that's all. Partly because you get the habit of
facing the music. I should like--" Wilmer had an unconsidered way of
entertaining his sitters, without much expenditure to himself; he
pursued a fantastic habit of talk to keep their blood moving, and did it
with the eye of the mind unswervingly on his work. "If I were you, I'd
do it. I'd write an essay on the muscular habit of courage. Your coward
is born weak-kneed. He shouldn't spill himself all over the place trying
to put on the spiritual make-up of a hero. He must simply strengthen
his knees. When they'll take him anywhere he requests, without buckling,
he wakes up and finds himself a field-marshal. _Voilà!_"
"It isn't bad," said Marshby, unconsciously straightening. "Go ahead,
Jerome. Turn us all into field-marshals."
"Not all," objected Wilmer, seeming to dash his brush at the canvas with
the large carelessness that promised his best work. "The jobs wouldn't
go round. But I don't feel the worse for it when I see the recruity
stepping out, promotion in his eye."
After the sitting, Wilmer went yawning forward, and with a hand on
Marshby's shoulder, took him to the door.
"Can't let you look at the thing," he said, as Marshby gave one backward
glance. "That's against the code. Till it's done, no eye touches it but
mine and the light of heaven."
Marshby had no curiosity. He smiled, and thereafter let the picture
alone, even to the extent of interested speculation. Mary had
scrupulously absented herself from that first sitting; but after it was
over and Marshby had gone home, Wilmer found her in the garden, under an
apple-tree, shelling pease. He lay down on the ground, at a little
distance, and watched her. He noted the quick, capable turn of her
wrist and the dexterous motion of the brown hands as they snapped out
the pease, and he thought how eminently sweet and comfortable it would
be to take this bit of his youth back to France with him, or even to
give up France and grow old with her at home.
"Mary," said he, "I sha'n't paint any picture of you this summer."
Mary laughed, and brushed back a yellow lock with the back of her hand.
"No," said she, "I suppose not. Aunt Celia spoke of it yesterday. She
told me the reason."
"What is Aunt Celia's most excellent theory?"
"She said I'm not so likely as I used to be."
"No," said Jerome, not answering her smile in the community of mirth
they always had over Aunt Celia's simple speech. He rolled over on the
grass and began to make a dandelion curl. "No, that's not it. You're a
good deal likelier than you used to be. You're all possibilities now. I
could make a Madonna out of you, quick as a wink. No, it's because I've
decided to paint Marshby instead."
Mary's hands stilled themselves, and she looked at him anxiously. "Why
are you doing that?" she asked.
"Don't you want the picture?"
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Give it to you, I guess. For a wedding-present, Mary."
"You mustn't say those things," said Mary, gravely. She went on working,
but her face was serious.
"It's queer, isn't it," remarked Wilmer, after a pause, "this notion
you've got that Marshby's the only one that could possibly do? I began
asking you first."
"Please!" said Mary. Her eyes were full of tears. That was rare for her,
and Wilmer saw it meant a shaken poise. She was less certain to-day of
her own fate. It made her more responsively tender toward his. He sat up
and looked at her.
"No," he said. "No. I won't ask you again. I never meant to. Only I have
to speak of it once in a while. We should have such a tremendously good
time together."
"We have a tremendously good time now," said Mary, the smile coming
while she again put up the back of her hand and brushed her eyes. "When
you're good."
"When I help all the other little boys at the table, and don't look at
the nice heart-shaped cake I want myself? It's frosted, and got little
pink things all over the top. There! don't drop the corners of your
mouth. If I were asked what kind of a world I'd like to live in, I'd say
one where the corners of Mary's mouth keep quirked up all the time.
Let's talk about Marshby's picture. It's going to be your Marshby."
"What do you mean?"
"Not Marshby's Marshby--yours."
"You're not going to play some dreadful joke on him?" Her eyes were
blazing under knotted brows.
"Mary!" Wilmer spoke gently, and though the tone recalled her, she could
not forbear at once, in her hurt pride and loyalty.
"You're not going to put him into any masquerade?--to make him anything
but what he is?"
"Mary, don't you think that's a little hard on an old chum?"
"I can't help it." Her cheeks were hot, though now it was with shame.
"Yes, I am mean, jealous, envious. I see you with everything at your
feet--"
"Not quite everything," said Jerome. "I know it makes you hate me."
"No! no!" The real woman had awakened in her, and she turned to him in a
whole-hearted honesty. "Only, they say you do such wizard things when
you paint. I never saw any of your pictures, you know, except the ones
you did of me. And they're not _me_. They're lovely--angels with women's
clothes on. Aunt Celia says if I looked like that I'd carry all before
me. But, you see, you've always been--partial to me."
"And you think I'm not partial to Marshby?"
"It isn't that. It's only that they say you look inside people and drag
out what is there. And inside him--oh, you'd see his hatred of himself!"
The tears were rolling unregarded down her face.
"This is dreadful," said Wilmer, chiefly to himself. "Dreadful."
"There!" said Mary, drearily, emptying the pods from her apron into the
basket at her side. "I suppose I've done it now. I've spoiled the
picture."
"No," returned Jerome, thoughtfully, "you haven't spoiled the picture.
Really I began it with a very definite conception of what I was going to
do. It will be done in that way or not at all."
"You're very kind," said Mary, humbly. "I didn't mean to act like
this."
"No,"--he spoke out of a maze of reflection, not looking at her. "You
have an idea he's under the microscope with me. It makes you nervous."
She nodded, and then caught herself up.
"There's nothing you mightn't see," she said, proudly, ignoring her
previous outburst. "You or anybody else, even with a microscope."
"No, of course not. Only you'd say microscopes aren't fair. Well,
perhaps they're not. And portrait-painting is a very simple matter. It's
not the black art. But if I go on with this, you are to let me do it in
my own way. You're not to look at it."
"Not even when you're not at work?"
"Not once, morning, noon, or night, till I invite you to. You were
always a good fellow, Mary. You'll keep your word."
"No, I won't look at it," said Mary.
Thereafter she stayed away from the barn, not only when he was painting,
but at other times, and Wilmer missed her. He worked very fast, and made
his plans for sailing, and Aunt Celia loudly bemoaned his stinginess in
cutting short the summer. One day, after breakfast, he sought out Mary
again in the garden. She was snipping Coreopsis for the dinner table,
but she did it absently, and Jerome noted the heaviness of her eyes.
"What's the trouble?" he asked, abruptly, and she was shaken out of her
late constraint. She looked up at him with a piteous smile.
"Nothing much," she said. "It doesn't matter. I suppose it's fate. He
has written his letter."
"Marshby?"
"You knew he got his appointment?"
"No; I saw something had him by the heels, but he's been still as a
fish."
"It came three days ago. He has decided not to take it. And it will
break his heart."
"It will break your heart," Wilmer opened his lips to say; but he dared
not jostle her mood of unconsidered frankness.
"I suppose I expected it," she went on. "I did expect it. Yet he's been
so different lately, it gave me a kind of hope."
Jerome started. "How has he been different?" he asked.
"More confident, less doubtful of himself. It's not anything he has
said. It's in his speech, his walk. He even carries his head
differently, as if he had a right to. Well, we talked half the night
last night, and he went home to write the letter. He promised me not to
mail it till he'd seen me once more; but nothing will make any
difference."
"You won't beseech him?"
"No. He is a man. He must decide."
"You won't tell him what depends on it!"
"Nothing depends on it," said Mary, calmly. "Nothing except his own
happiness. I shall find mine in letting him accept his life according to
his own free will."
There was something majestic in her mental attitude. Wilmer felt how
noble her maturity was to be, and told himself, with a thrill of pride,
that he had done well to love her.
"Marshby is coming," he said. "I want to show you both the picture."
Mary shook her head. "Not this morning," she told him, and he could see
how meagre canvas and paint must seem to her after her vision of the
body of life. But he took her hand.
"Come," he said, gently; "you must."
Still holding her flowers, she went with him, though her mind abode with
her lost cause. Marshby halted when he saw them coming, and Jerome had
time to look at him. The man held himself wilfully erect, but his face
betrayed him. It was haggard, smitten. He had not only met defeat; he
had accepted it. Jerome nodded to him and went on before them to the
barn. The picture stood there in a favoring light. Mary caught her
breath sharply, and then all three were silent. Jerome stood there
forgetful of them, his eyes on his completed work, and for the moment he
had in it the triumph of one who sees intention, brought to fruitage
under perfect auspices. It meant more to him, that recognition, than any
glowing moment of his youth. The scroll of his life unrolled before him,
and he saw his past, as other men acclaimed it, running into the future
ready for his hand to make. A great illumination touched the days to
come. Brilliant in promise, they were yet barren of hope. For as surely
as he had been able to set this seal on Mary's present, he saw how the
thing itself would separate them. He had painted her ideal of Marshby;
but whenever in the future she should nurse the man through the mental
sickness bound always to delay his march, she would remember this moment
with a pang, as something Jerome had dowered him with, not something he
had attained unaided. Marshby faced them from the canvas, erect,
undaunted, a soldier fronting the dawn, expectant of battle, yet with no
dread of its event. He was not in any sense alien to himself. He
dominated, not by crude force, but through the sustained inward strength
of him. It was not youth Jerome had given him. There was maturity in the
face. It had its lines--the lines that are the scars of battle; but
somehow not one suggested, even to the doubtful mind, a battle lost.
Jerome turned from the picture to the man himself, and had his own
surprise. Marshby was transfigured. He breathed humility and hope. He
stirred at Wilmer's motion.
"Am I"--he glowed--"could I have looked like that?" Then in the
poignancy of the moment he saw how disloyal to the moment it was even to
hint at what should have been, without snapping the link now into the
welding present. He straightened himself and spoke brusquely, but to
Mary:
"I'll go back and write that letter. Here is the one I wrote last
night."
He took it from his pocket, tore it in two, and gave it to her. Then he
turned away and walked with the soldier's step home. Jerome could not
look at her. He began moving back the picture.
"There!" he said, "it's finished. Better make up your mind where you'll
have it put. I shall be picking up my traps this morning."
Then Mary gave him his other surprise. Her hands were on his shoulders.
Her eyes, full of the welling gratitude that is one kind of love, spoke
like her lips.
"Oh!" said she, "do you think I don't know what you've done? I couldn't
take it from anybody else. I couldn't let him take it. It's like
standing beside him in battle; like lending him your horse, your sword.
It's being a comrade. It's helping him fight. And he _will_ fight.
That's the glory of it!"