THE UNBLAZED WAY
Ewing was loath to sleep that night, for in sleep he must leave the
thought of her who, having been only a picture to him, had come suddenly
to life. The magic would have seemed no greater if his own mother had
issued livingly from the canvas. How it had happened he knew not, but
this woman was all at once the living spring of his life. The thought of
her was a golden mist enveloping him. He did not once call it love, but
he thought of the gracious women he had loved in books, and knew she was
all of them in one.
And once he had been almost careless in her presence! How he marveled at
that now, when he knew that henceforth every approach to her would be an
event. He shuddered at the memory of what he had been saved from--that
swift brute impulse to hold her close against his breast. Must he feel
that always--fight it always, to be blasted if he lost? At least in his
own secret world he was free to treasure each memory of her dearness.
And he could make her glad. He could work as man had not worked before.
He could make her a little glad.
He feverishly began a drawing for the _Knickerbocker_ the next morning.
Craig, the art editor, had said that he could use six drawings as good
as the two he was shown, and they had decided on scenes that would give
variety to the series. But that was before a Teevan had come into his
life, and now he had lost a month in the dream of satisfying that patron
critic.
It was good to prove that he could still draw in his own way; he had
suffered so long in that rage of impotence; and he kept to the work
until dusk, making no stop for food, even when the noise of falling
bodies came to mark the luncheon hour.
When Teevan sauntered in at six the two went to dine at a restaurant.
Ewing had no longer dreaded the meeting. He was ready to show Teevan
that there had been no true failure. But Teevan merely listened to the
bare outline of fact as they threaded a way through the evening crowd.
He made no comment, and Ewing thought this might be due to the
difficulty of conversing in a noisy street.
But after ordering dinner with a nice deliberation, Teevan spoke
determinedly of other matters. Ewing ventured a humorous reference to
his despair when he left the school, meaning to compel the inference
that he no longer despaired. Teevan languidly mentioned a violinist he
had heard the evening before.
"--Two Bach numbers, the suite in F minor rather exquisitely done. Bach
wrote tremendously well for the fiddle. Technical skill in the
performer, you ask? Yes, entirely adequate; indeed, he gave rather a
warm reading, really not lacking a certain elevation of style, even a
nobility of utterance. That was quite all of interest, though. The
Dvorak _humoresque_--a thing transcribed from a piano piece and made
sentimental--has one of those effective passages in double notes,
certain to win an encore from the mob; and the twenty-fourth caprice of
Paganini was merely a smart exhibition of harmonic playing--mere squibs
and firecrackers and rockets, the veriest fireworks. Ah, it's small
wonder the world has so few artists when it demands so little." And
Teevan sighed significantly.
Ewing was chilled by this avoidance of himself, though he could not yet
believe it intentional.
"I haven't given up," he declared, by way of reminding Teevan. "You
shall see that I'm stubborn."
Teevan affected to study a group of diners at a neighboring table as he
replied:
"Oh, yes, I gather that you left the school when you found it
difficult."
"But you see----"
"This soup is worth while, really. Soup is surprisingly difficult. Yet
the world believes perfect soups to be plentiful." He sighed again. "It
merely shows the vitality of error."
Ewing felt his woman-given courage leaving him at this attack, or rather
at this lack of attack. He had been prepared to have his friend exhibit
doubt, disbelief, chagrin--anything that would still show an
undiminished esteem. But the intimate note had gone from Teevan's
speech. He talked at large as Ewing had heard him talk to roomfuls of
people.
"Ah, yes, the vitality of error. Give the world a lie about soup or
souls, and you'll not soon worry that lie away. It's clutched with a
bulldog jaw. Say good soup is common--God-fearing Christians echo the
lie. Say Berkeley denies the existence of matter, and men with Berkeley
at hand repeat you. Say Locke denies all knowledge except through the
medium of the senses, and students of Locke pass on the absurdity. Bacon
was by no means the first thinker to proclaim the deficiencies of the
Aristotelian philosophy--a system already in disrepute when he wrote the
'Instauration.' Yet in our crude yearning for concreteness, for specific
idols, we laud him as the father of the inductive philosophy--as if
induction weren't an inevitable process in any mind grown beyond
primitive concepts. Gad! I had a dog once that used induction a dozen
times a day, and he'd never so much as heard of Bacon."
Thus he wandered afield during the dinner, with airs of a bored but
conscientious host, and Ewing fell lower of heart at each of his
periods. He hoped for his chance when the coffee came, but Teevan gave
him no opening. The brandy sufficed for his text. We were not
brandy-drinkers, unhappily enough--"the wholesomest of all spirits, the
distilled essence of cognac grapes, the magic cup of Circe, 'her Orient
liquor in a crystal glass'--and we know as little how to drink a liqueur
brandy as we know how to buy it. We gulp it from these straight glasses,
when it should be taken in sips from a glass small at the top, a glass
first warmed in the palm of the hand. Only so may we capture the
bouquet, that elusive fragrance of the May-vine blossom, that wraith of
spring-perfumes."
Ewing was still unjustified when the waiter helped them on with their
coats, and then he was dismayed to observe that Teevan apparently meant
to leave him. The little man held out his hand with "So glad to have had
your company--another time--I shall see you again, I hope."
"Please come back with me. I'd like to talk to you--to ask your advice."
He felt himself an outcast.
Teevan's response, a surprised but coldly polite assent, did not lighten
his dejection as they walked back to the studio in silence.
But once there the little man no longer avoided talk of his young
friend's fiasco. He let it be seen that another illusion, one fondly
cherished, he need not say, had been shattered. He gave the impression
that he had talked of other things to forget this--an inadequate device,
he let it be inferred.
Ewing confessed his own despondency of the night before, but told how a
woman had given him new courage.
"Not the least injury they do us," remarked Teevan of women, somewhat
snappishly, "is to wheedle us into taking our failures lightly." That
were especially baneful to the artist, it seemed; by his very
temperament was he exposed to their blandishing sophistries. The artist
cult should be a priesthood, aloof, austere, celibate--deaf to the woman
cries of "Never mind!" and "Courage!" and "Another day!" All very well
that, but they shut their pretty eyes to real failures, or, at most,
survey them with a tender air of belittlement that leaves the defeated
one blind to their significance. Speaking largely, the society of women
should be shunned by earnest men intent on achievement.
Ewing began to feel that possibly he had taken heart too readily. He was
willing to believe this if it would restore him to the little man's
esteem. He pointed timidly to the drawing he had begun that morning,
eager for the word of praise he believed it to merit.
"Oh, _that_!" Teevan drawled the words, with lifted brows; then went on
to speak of Jean Francois Millet, unprosperous villager of Barbizon. He
tried--unsuccessfully--to recall an instance when that painter had
debased his art. Not once had he made a cheap picture for a magazine. He
had never put his Muse to the streets. Millet was not pigeon-livered.
Ewing leaned forward in his chair, his head between his hands. He saw
that the mere sale of drawings would be a savorless success, if it
bereft him of this plain-speaking but just friend. More, it would leave
him small in the eyes of a woman who was now even more than Teevan. He
got up doggedly, seized the drawing and began to break the tough bristol
board, getting it into four pieces at length and flinging these into the
grate. He was unable to resist a secret fond look at the lines he had
made with such loving care. Teevan's eyes glistened now, and he held out
a hand to Ewing.
"Ah--you give me hope. Bravo!"
"Then you do believe in me; you think I have it in me?"
"Power? Yes; I've seen that. I judge men rather accurately. But I saw
that you'd be tempted to rest. The more power, the greater the
temptation. It's not so hard to fast in a desert--the less gifted man is
less tempted. But to fast with plenty at hand for the reaching, and fair
women to counsel content--to refuse apples and flagons, waiting for the
ultimate jewel--that takes a _man_. It demands one--there's a certain
street saying--who can 'stand the gaff.'"
"And you really think I can stand it? I feel more than ever that I want
to succeed."
Teevan beamed on him almost affectionately. "I almost suspect----"
"You shall see that I can," Ewing broke in, but what he thought was,
"_She_ will see it."
"It's a matter of endurance," resumed Teevan genially. "Genius is no
endowment of supreme gifts. Every man of us has something latent that
would set him apart. Genius is only the capacity for expressing
that--that phase of yourself which differentiates you from all other
selves. Of course only a few succeed. Most of us succumb to the general
pressure to be alike. Yet--I almost believe in you."
Ewing regarded him with glad eyes, touched by this stanch yet discerning
adherence.
Returning home that night Teevan, in his library, took down a Bible and
searched for a passage he only half recalled. He found it at last, one
wherein the God of Israel thunders, not without humor, against the foes
of His chosen tribe.
"I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies;
and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee as
fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth." He
chuckled delightedly as he read it, and wiped tears of mirth from his
eyes.
So it befell that Ewing forsook the beaten road of minor achievement
that winter, and labored toward the far, high peaks. In his own phrase,
the trail was rough and blind. Preceding climbers had not been
thoughtful to "blaze" it. But he grudged no effort while he had the
little man's applause. And this was not lacking, though it was discreet
applause, promoting no slothful content.
It was Ewing who suggested that he paint under the criticism of
Sydenham. The little man looked at him in doubt, seeming to suspect a
jesting insincerity, then burst into hearty, hand-clapping laughter,
crying, "Splendid! An inspiration, indeed! On my word, I hadn't thought
of anything half so brilliant."
And Ewing began to paint; to paint like Sydenham, if he might--cloud
studies, bits of street perspective, stretches of river, a realistic
view of the roofs from his window, with their water butts, chimney pots,
and clothes lines. Baldwin looked in once, and carried a word below to
the men who sold things: the word "Awful!" He also ventured a friendly
remonstrance to Ewing. "If you're going to paint, for God's sake go to
some man who knows how!"
Ewing referred to Teevan's conviction that Sydenham was the ideal master
for him, and to the attested fact that Teevan knew painting and
painters.
"Then I don't understand Teevan," was Baldwin's puzzled response.
"But I'm coming on--Teevan says so."
Baldwin ventured another look at the canvas in hand and fled below.
Teevan was watchful and permitted few chances for meddling of this sort.
He contrived to be with Ewing most of the time when Sydenham was not.
And Ewing never tired of Sydenham. If they walked the streets together
the old man would direct his eye to some unnoticed felicity of color on
the walls that shut them in, to bits of enchanting perspective, to
subtle plays of light and shade in unpromising spots. Or if they sat
alone at night the painter told of color in the world beyond the sea;
how from the top of Mont Blanc the stars are seen at midday, points of
vivid light in a dark blue-violet field; of the purple nights of the
desert, the stars but an arrowshot above; of the cold, pale silvers of
dawn in the desert, and the heated gold and scarlet of evening; of the
impossible blue of the bay of Naples. His face glowed to such
youthfulness at these times that Ewing would forget his futile years
until the sigh came.
"But I've always seen too much. Only the fountain of Juventius could
have given me time enough. I'm like the lad in the school-reader tale
who reached into the jar of nuts and tried to withdraw his hand
full--and lost them all."
Between Ewing and Teevan there was even a new bond. Ewing discovered
that money inevitably left one's pocket in New York, even if it vanished
under auspices less violent and less obscure than Ben had so gloomily
feared. The steady dribble was quite as effective. When he awoke to this
great fiscal truth he saw that some condescension of effort would be
required. He must sell enough drawings to sustain him modestly. He
broached this regrettable necessity to Teevan, wishing the little man to
understand that, in making a few things for money, he was guilty of no
treachery to the Teevan ideal. But Teevan, much to his embarrassment,
had extended the full hand of bestowal.
He was hurt when Ewing demurred; then annoyed that so petty an obstacle
should retard a progress so splendid. He never dared to suspect a
decadence in the resolution of his young friend.
Ewing was cut by his distress, stung by his doubt, and persuaded by his
logic. He accepted Teevan's money, though not without instinctive
misgiving. There were moments when he traitorously wondered if it might
not be better for him to lack a friend with ideals so rigid. And more
than once he suffered the disquieting suspicion of some unreality in and
through it all--his intimacy with Teevan, and his desertion of a trail
whose beginnings, at least, he knew. There was sometimes a faint ring of
artificiality in the whole situation. Yet Teevan's heartiness and his
certainty--the felicitous certainty of a star in its course--always
dispelled this vague unquiet, and at last it brought Ewing a new
pleasure to remember that an actual, material obligation--one increasing
at measured intervals--now existed between them.
He had never spoken openly to Mrs. Laithe of his intimacy with Teevan.
The little man had conveyed his wish of this by indirect speech. He
would have liked to tell her of the solace and substantial benefits of
their comradeship, to dwell upon the shining merits of this whole-souled
but modest benefactor--for Teevan caused his charge to infer that a
shame of doing good openly inspired his hints--but he had, perforce, to
let the praise die unspoken.
Nor did he speak often of Mrs. Laithe to Teevan, for the little man was
not only bitter as to woman's influence on the life artistic, but
inclined to hold the sex lightly, it seemed, in a much wider aspect. And
he spoke, Ewing was sure, out of a ripe experience. He had no difficulty
in detecting, under the little man's self-depreciating talk, that Teevan
had ever been a power among women, and was not even yet invincibly
averse to gallant adventure; not yet a man to be resisted. He was far
from bluntly confessing this, but sometimes, when the brandy was low in
the decanter, he would tacitly admit a romantic past; romantic, perhaps,
to the point of turbulence. And once, when there was no brandy left, he
spoke of specific affairs, particularly of one the breaking off of which
was giving him the devil's own worry.
"Gad! She's bent on sacrificing everything for me!"
Ewing innocently murmured words about marriage as an honorable estate.
"Marriage!" said Teevan, and Ewing blushed, noting his tone and the lift
of his brows.
"Poor, silly, romantic fools!" sighed Teevan. "One would find it
difficult to say what they see in me, I fancy."
Ewing murmured polite protestations. But less than ever did he feel
moved to speak of Mrs. Laithe to the little man. It did not seem
fitting. "Don Juan" had been among the verse with which the lake cabin
was supplied.
Not even when Mrs. Laithe was taken off to Florida by her father did he
speak her name, though he was filled with her good-by to him. There had
seemed to be so much between them, and yet so little of it that could
come to words. But he carried for long the last look of her eyes, and he
set to his work with a new resolve. There was incentive enough. Teevan
never let him forget that he required signs and miracles, like the
doubting ones of old. And she--she knew he would perform them.