I
"It does not look like him," Celia Sathman said, moving aside a
little that the afternoon light might fall more fully upon a portrait
standing unfinished upon the easel; "and yet it is unquestionably the
best picture you ever painted. It interests me, it fascinates me; and
I never had at all that feeling about Ralph himself. And yet," she
added, smiling at her own inconsistency, "it _is_ like him. It is n't
what I call a good likeness, and yet--"
The artist, Tom Claymore, leaned back in his chair and smiled.
"You are right and wrong," he said. "I am a little disappointed that you
don't catch the secret of the picture. I knew Ralph would n't
understand, but I had hopes of you."
A puzzled look came into Celia's face as she continued to study the
canvas. Her companion smoked a cigarette, and watched her with a regard
which was at once fond and a little amused.
The studio was a great room which had originally been devoted to no less
prosaic an occupation than the painting of oil-cloth carpeting, great
splashes of color, which time and dust had softened into a pleasing
dimness, remaining to testify to its former character. It stood down
among the wharves of old Salem, a town where even the new is scarcely to
be distinguished from the old, and Tom had been delighted with its roomy
quiet, the play of light and shadow among the bare beams overhead, and
the ease with which he had been able to make it serve his purpose.
He had done comparatively little toward furnishing it for his summer
occupancy. He had hung a few worn-out seines over the high beams, and
placed here and there his latest acquisitions in the way of bric-à-brac,
while numerous sketches were pinned to the walls with no attempt at
order. On the door he had fastened a zither, of which the strings were
struck by nicely balanced hammers when the door was moved, and in the
still rather barn-like room, he had established himself to teach and to
paint through the summer months.
"I cannot make it out at all," Celia said at last, turning away from
the easel and walking toward Claymore. "It looks older and stronger
than Ralph, as if-- Ah!" she interrupted herself suddenly, a new light
breaking in her face. "Now I see! You have been painting his
possibilities. You are making a portrait of him as he will be."
"As he may be," Claymore corrected her, his words showing that her
conjecture was in truth the key to the riddle. "When I began to paint
Ralph, I was at once struck by the undeveloped state of his face. It
seemed to me like a bud that had n't opened; and I began at once to try
and guess what it would grow into. I did n't at first mean to paint it
so, but the notion mastered me, and now I deliberately give myself up to
the impulse. I don't know whether it's professional, but it is great
fun."
Celia went back and looked at the picture once more, but she soon
returned to stand leaning upon the tall back of the chair in which her
betrothed was sitting.
"It is getting too dark to see it," she remarked; "but your experiment
interests me wonderfully. You say you are painting what his face may be;
why not what his face must be?"
"Because," the artist replied, "I am trying to get in the best of his
possibilities; to paint the noblest there is in him. How can I tell if
he will in life realize it? He may develop his worst side, you know,
instead of his best."
Celia was silent a moment. The darkness seemed to have gathered quickly,
rising clouds cutting off the light of the after-glow which had followed
the sunset with delusive promise. She leaned forward and laid her
finger-tips lightly upon Tom's forehead with a caressing motion.
"You are a clever man," she said. "It is fortunate you are a good one."
"Oh," he returned, almost brusquely, though he took her hand and kissed
it, "I don't know that I can lay claim to any especial virtue. Are you
remembering Hawthorne's story of 'The Prophetic Pictures,' that you
think my goodness particularly fortunate in this connection?"
Instead of replying, she moved across the studio with her graceful, firm
walk, which had won Tom's deep admiration before he knew even her name.
She took up a light old-fashioned silk shawl, yellow with time, and
threw it across her arm.
"I must go home," she remarked, as if no subject were under discussion.
"I am sure I don't know what I was thinking of to stay here so late."
"Oh, there is no time in sleepy old Salem," was his response, "so it
can't be late; but if you will go, I shall be proud to walk up with
you."
He flung away the end of his cigarette, locked the studio, and together
they took their way out of the region of wharves, along the quaint old
dinginess of Essex Street. It is a thoroughfare full of suggestions of
the past, and they both were susceptible to its influences. Here of old
the busy life of Salem flowed in vigorous current, laden with interests
which embraced half the globe; here sailors from strange lands used to
gather, swarthy and bold, pouring into each other's ringed ear talk of
adventure wild and daring; here merchants walked counting their gains on
cargoes brought from the far Orient and islands of which even the names
had hardly grown familiar to the Western World.
Hawthorne has somewhere spoken of the old life of New England as all too
sombre, and declared that our forefathers "wove their web of life with
hardly a single thread of rose-color or gold;" but surely the master was
misled by the dimness gathered from time. Into every old web of tapestry
went many a bright line of scarlet and green and azure, many a woof of
gold that time has tarnished and the dust of years dulled until all is
gray and faded. Along the memory-haunted streets of Salem, from the
first, went, side by side or hand in hand, the happy maiden and her
lover; stepped the bridal train; passed the young wife bearing under her
heart with fearful bliss the sweet secret of a life other than her own;
or the newly made mother bore her first-born son through a glory half
sunlight and half dreams of his golden future. In later days all the
romance of the seas, the teeming life which inspired the tongue of the
prophet's denouncing lyre to break into rhapsodies of poetry, the stir
of adventurous blood, and the boldness of daring adventurers have filled
these old streets with vivid and undying memories.
The artist and his companion were rather silent as they walked, he
studying the lights and shadows with appreciative eye, and she
apparently absorbed in thought. At length she seemed to come in her
reverie to some doubt which she needed his aid to resolve.
"Tom," she asked, rather hesitatingly, "have you noticed any change in
Ralph lately?"
"Change?" repeated Claymore interrogatively, with a quick flash of
interest in his eyes despite the studied calmness of his manner.
"Yes. He has n't been the same since--since--"
"Since when?" the artist inquired, as she hesitated.
"Why, it must be almost ever since we came home and you began to paint
him," Celia returned thoughtfully; "though I confess I have noticed it
only lately. Has n't it struck you?"
Her companion, instead of replying directly, began carefully to examine
the carving on the head of his walking-stick.
"You forget how slightly I knew him before," he said. "What sort of a
change do you mean?"
"He has developed. He seems all at once to be becoming a man."
"He is twenty-eight. It is n't strange that there should be signs of
the man about him, I suppose."
"But he has always seemed so boyish," Celia insisted, with the air of
one who finds it difficult to make herself understood.
"Very likely something has happened to sober him," Tom answered, with an
effort to speak carelessly, which prevented him from noticing that Celia
flushed slightly at his words.
They had reached Miss Sathman's gate, and he held it open for her.
"It was very good of you to come this afternoon," he told her. "When
will you take your next lesson?"
"I can't tell," she replied. "I'll let you know. Won't you come in?"
The invitation was given with a certain faint wistfulness, but he
declined, and lifting his hat, bade her good-night. She turned on the
doorstep and looked after him as his strong, resolute figure passed down
the street, and a sigh escaped her.
"I wonder if Tom will seem to me so reserved and cold after we are
married," was her thought.