On the afternoon of the same day Celia came into the studio with her
face clouded. She received her lover's greetings in an absent-minded
fashion, and almost before the musical tinkle of the zither on the door
which admitted her had died away, she asked abruptly:--
"What in the world have you been doing to Ralph?"
"I? Nothing but painting him. Why?"
"Because he came down here this morning in a perfectly heavenly
frame of mind. He has been in Boston to see about some repairs on his
tenement-houses at the North End that I've been teasing him to make
ever since the first of my being there last winter; and he came in
this morning to say he thought I was right, and he was going to take
hold and do what I wanted."
"Well?" questioned Tom, as she broke off with a gesture of impatience.
"And after he 'd been down here for his sitting, he came back so cross
and strange; and said he'd reconsidered, and he did n't see why he
should bother his head about the worthless wretches in the slums. I
can't see what came over him."
"But why should you hold me responsible for your cousin's vagaries?"
"Oh, of course you are not," Celia replied, with a trace of petulance in
her tone; "but I am so dreadfully disappointed. Ralph has always put the
whole thing off before, and now I thought he had really waked up."
"Probably," Claymore suggested, "it is some new phase of his ill-starred
love affair."
Miss Sathman flushed to her temples.
"I do not know why you choose to say that," she answered stiffly. "He
never speaks to me of that now. He is too thoroughly a gentleman."
"What!" Tom burst out, in genuine amazement. "Good heavens! It was n't
you?"
Celia looked at him in evident bewilderment.
"Did n't you know?" she asked. "Ralph has been in love with me ever
since we were in pinafores. I did n't speak of it because it did n't
seem fair to him; but I supposed, of course, that was what you meant
when you spoke. I even thought you might be jealous the least bit."
Claymore turned away and walked down the studio on pretense of arranging
a screen. He felt as if he had stabbed a rival in the back. Whether by
his brush he had really an influence over Thatcher, or the changes in
his sitter were merely coincidences, he had at least been trying to
affect the young man, and since he now knew Ralph as the lover of Celia,
his actions all at once took on a different character, and the second
portrait seemed like a covert attack.
"Ralph is so amazingly outspoken," Celia continued, advancing toward the
easel and laying her hand on the cloth which hung before her cousin's
portrait, "that I wonder he has not told you. He is very fond of you,
though, he naively says, he ought not to be."
As she spoke, she lifted the curtain which hid the later portrait of
Ralph. She uttered an exclamation which made Claymore, whose back had
been turned, spring hastily toward her, too late to prevent her seeing
the picture.
"Tom," she cried, "what have you done to Ralph?"
The tone pierced Claymore to the quick. The words were almost those
which Celia had used before, but now reproach, grief, and a depth of
feeling which it seemed to Tom must come from a regard keener than
either gave them a new intensity of meaning. The tears sprang to Miss
Sathman's eyes as she looked from the canvas to her lover.
"Oh, Tom," she said, "how could you change it so? Ralph does not look
like that."
"No," Claymore answered, his embarrassment giving to his voice a certain
severity. "This is the reverse of the other picture. This is the evil
possibility of his face."
He recovered his composure. Despite his coldness of demeanor, there was
a vein of intense jealousy in the painter's nature, which tingled at
the tone in which his betrothed spoke of her cousin. He had more than
once said to himself that, despite the fact that Celia might be more
demonstrative than he, his love for her was far stronger than hers for
him. Now there came to him the conviction, quick and unreasonable, that
although she might not be aware of it, her deepest affection was really
given to Ralph Thatcher.
"Why did you paint it, Tom?" Celia pursued. "It is wicked. It really
does not in the least resemble Ralph. I suppose you could take any face
and distort it into wickedness. Where is the other picture?"
Without a word Tom brought the first portrait and set it beside the
second. Celia regarded the two canvases in silence a moment. Her color
deepened, and her throat swelled. Then she turned upon Claymore with
eyes that flashed, despite the tears which sprang into them.
"You are wicked and cruel!" she said bitterly. "I hate you for doing
it."
Tom turned pale, and then laughed unmirthfully.
"You take it very much to heart," he remarked.
The tears welled more hotly in her eyes. She tried in vain to check
them, and then with a sob she turned and walked quickly from the studio,
the zither tinkling, as the door closed after her, with a gay frivolity
that jarred sharply on Tom Claymore's nerves.
V
It was nearly a fortnight before Tom saw Celia again. For a day or two
he kept away from her, waiting for some sign that her mood had softened
and that she regretted her words. Then he could endure suspense no
longer and called at the house, to discover that she had gone to the
mountains for a brief visit. He remembered that he had been told of this
journey, and he reflected that Celia might have expected him to come and
bid her good-by. His mental attitude toward her had been much the same
as if there had been some actual quarrel, and now he said to himself
that, after all, there had been nothing in their last interview to
justify this feeling. He alternately reproached himself and blamed her,
and continually the condition of things became more intolerable to him.
His temper was not improved when Ralph, at one of the sittings, which
continued steadily, mentioned in a tone which seemed to the artist's
jealous fancy rather boasting, that he had received a letter from his
cousin. Tom frowned fiercely, and painted on without comment.
Claymore was working steadily on the second portrait, which was rapidly
approaching completion. He said to himself that if his theory was
right, and the reflection of his worst traits before a man's eye could
influence the original to evil, he would be avenged upon Ralph for
robbing him of Celia, since this portrait of Thatcher was to have a
place in the young man's home. He also reflected that in no way else
could he so surely wean Celia from an affection for her cousin, as by
bringing out Ralph's worst side. He despised himself for what he was
doing, but as men sullenly yield to a temptation against which all their
best instincts fight, he still went on with his work.
He naturally watched closely to see what effect the portrait was already
having on his sitter. Whether from its influence or from other causes,
Ralph had grown morose and ungracious after Celia's departure, and Tom
was certainly not mistaken in feeling that he was in the worst possible
frame of mind. Even the fact that his cousin had written to him did
little to change his mood, a fact that Tom, sore and hurt at being left
without letters, noted with inward anger.
The two men were daily approaching that point where it was probable that
they would come into open conflict. Ralph began to devise excuses for
avoiding the sittings, a fact that especially irritated the artist, who
was anxious to complete the work. The whole nature of their relations
toward each other had undergone a change, and all frankness and
friendliness seemed to have gone out of it. Sometimes Claymore felt
responsible for this, and at others he laughed at the idea that he had
in any way helped to alter Ralph. He was uneasy and unhappy, and when a
couple of weeks had gone by without a word from Celia, he resolved that
he would follow her to the mountains, and at least put an end to the
suspense which was becoming intolerable.
He sent word to Thatcher that he was going out of town for a few days,
packed his valise, and went down to his studio to put things to rights
for his absence. He arranged the two or three matters that needed
attention, looked at his watch, and found that he had something over
an hour before train time. He started toward the door of the studio,
hesitated, and then turned back to stand in front of the easel and
regard the nearly completed portrait of Ralph Thatcher.
It was a handsome face that looked out at him, and one full of
character; but in the full lips was an expression of sensuality almost
painful, and the eyes were selfish and cruel. The artist's first feeling
was one of gratified vanity at the cleverness with which his work had
been done. He had preserved the likeness, and scarcely increased the
apparent age of his sitter, while he had carried forward into repulsive
fullness the worst possibilities of which he could find trace in the
countenance of the original. As he looked, a cruel sense of triumph grew
in Claymore's mind. He felt that this portrait was the sure instrument
of his revenge against the man who had robbed him of the love of his
betrothed. He considered his coming interview with Celia, and so
completely was he possessed of the belief that he had lost her, that
he looked forward to the meeting as to a farewell.
At the thought a sudden pulse of emotion thrilled him. He saw Celia's
beautiful, high-bred face before him, and there came into his mind a
sense of shame, as if he were already before her and could not meet her
eyes. The sting of the deepest humiliation a high-minded man can know,
that of standing condemned and degraded in his own sight, pierced his
very soul.
"It is myself and not Ralph that I have been harming," ran his thought.
"It has never occurred to me that, even if I was dragging him down, I
had flung myself into the slime to do it. Good heavens! Is this the sort
of man I am? Am I such a sneak as to lurk in the dark and take advantage
of the confidence he shows by putting himself into my hands! Celia is
right; she could not be herself and not prefer him to the blackguard I
have proved myself."
However fanciful his theory in regard to the effect of the portrait upon
Thatcher might be, Tom was too honest to disguise from himself that
his will and intention had been to do the other harm, and to do it,
moreover, in an underhanded fashion. Instead of open, manly attack upon
his rival, he had insidiously endeavored to work him injury against
which Ralph could not defend himself.
"The only thing I have really accomplished," groaned poor Tom to
himself, "is to prove what a contemptible cur I am."
He took from his pocket his knife, opened it, and approached the
canvas. Then that strong personal connection between the artist and
his work which makes its defense almost identical with the instinct
of self-preservation, made him pause. For an instant he wavered, moved
to preserve the canvas, although he hid it away; then with desperate
resolution, and a fierceness not unlike a sacred fury, he cut the canvas
into strips. So great was the excitement of his mood and act that he
panted as he finished by wrenching the shreds of canvas from the
stretcher.
Then he smiled at the extravagance of his feelings, set the empty
stretcher against the wall, and once more brought to light the original
portrait.
"There," he said to himself, as he set the picture on the easel, "I can
at least go to her with a decently clean conscience, if I am a fool."