That his studio should seem bare and uninteresting as he threw open the
door, and tried to kindle a fire in the dusty stove, did not surprise
him. That the sketches and studies in colour should look tame and flat
to the eye that had been fed for two weeks with Maine surf, angry
clouds, and swaying branches, was perhaps only natural. But as the days
went on and he failed to get in train for work a puzzled wonder slowly
grew in him. Why was it that the picture dragged so? He remembered
perfectly the look of the beach, the feel of the cold, hungry water,
the heavy, grey clouds, the primitive, forbidding austerity that a
while ago he had been so confidently eager to put on the canvas. Why
was it that he sat for hours together helplessly staring at it? His
friends supposed him wrapped in his subject, working under a high
pressure, and considerately left him alone; they would have marvelled
greatly had they seen him glowering moodily at the merest study of the
subject he had described so vividly to them, smoking countless packages
of cigarettes, hardly lifting his hand from his chair-arm.
Once he threw down a handful of brushes and started out for a tramp. It
occurred to him that the city sights and smells, the endless hum and
roar, the rapid pace of the crowded streets would tone him up and set
his thoughts in a new line; he was tired of the whistling gales and
tossing trunks and booming surf that haunted his nights and confused
his days. A block away from the studio a flower-woman met him with a
tray of daffodils and late crocuses. A sudden puff of wind blew out her
scant, thin skirt; a tree in the centre of the park they were crossing
bent to it, the branches creaked faintly. The fresh, earthy odour of
the flowers moved him strangely. He bought a bunch, turned, and went
back to the studio, to sit for an hour gazing sightlessly ahead of him.
Suddenly he started up and approached the sketch.
"It wants wind," he muttered, half unconsciously, and fell to work. An
hour passed, two, three--he still painted rapidly. Just as the light
was fading a thunderous knock at the door ushered in the two men he
knew best. He nodded vaguely, and they crossed the room in silence
and looked at the picture. For a few moments no one spoke. Presently
Willard took a brush from his mouth and faced them.
"Well?" he said.
The older man shook his head. "Queer sky!" he answered briefly.
The younger looked questioningly at Willard. "You'll have to get a gait
on you if you hope to beat Morris with that," he said. "What's up,
Willard? Don't you want that prize?"
"Of course I do." His voice sounded dull, even to himself. "You aren't
any too sympathetic, you fellows----" he tried to feel injured.
The older man came nearer. "What's that white thing there? Good Lord,
Will, you're not going to try a figure----"
Willard brushed rapidly over the shadowy outline. "No--that was just a
sketch. The whole thing's just a sort of----"
"The whole thing's just a bluff!" interrupted the younger man,
decidedly. "It's not what you told us about at all--and it's not good,
anyway. It looks as if a tornado had struck it! You said it was to be
late afternoon--it's nearer midnight, as far as I can see! What's that
tree lying around for?"
His tone was abusive, but a genuine concern and surprise was underneath
it. He looked furtively at his older friend behind Willard's back. The
other shook his head expressively.
Willard bit his lip. "I only wanted to try--it won't necessarily stay
that way," he explained. He wished he cared more for what they said. He
wished they did not bore him so unspeakably. More than all, he wished
they would go.
The younger one whistled softly. "Pretty late in the day to be making
up your mind, I should say," he remarked. "When's it going to dry in?
Morris has been working like a horse on his for six weeks. He's coming
on, too--splendid colour!"
Willard lit a cigarette. "Damn Morris!" he said casually. The older man
drew on his glove and turned to go.
"Oh, certainly!" he replied cheerfully. "By all means! No, we can't
stay--we only dropped in. We just thought we'd see how you were
getting along. If I were you, Will, I'd make up my mind about that
intoxicated tree and set it up straight--good-bye!"
They went out cheerfully enough, but he knew they were disappointed
and hurt--they had expected so much from that picture. And he wished
he cared more. He looked at it critically. Of course it was bad, but
how could they tell what he had been doing? It was the plan of months
changed utterly in three hours. The result was ridiculous, but he
needed it no longer--he knew what he wanted now, what he had been
fighting against all these days. He would paint it if he could--and
till he could. The insistent artist-passion to express even bunglingly
something of the unendurable beauty of that strange night was on him,
and before the echo of his guests' departure had died away he was
working as he had never worked before, the old picture lying unnoticed
in the corner where he had thrown it.
He needed no models, he did not use his studies. Was it not printed
on his brain, was it not etched into his heart, that weird vision of
the storm, with the floating fairy creature that hardly touched the
earth? Was there a lovely curve in all her melting postures, which
slipped like water circles into new shapes, that he did not know? That
haunting, elf-like look, that ineffably exquisite _abandon_, had he
not studied it greedily then in the wood, and later, in his restless
dreams? The trees were sentient, the bushes put out clasping fingers to
detain him, the wind shrieked out its angry soul at him; and she, the
white wonder with her floating wisps of stinging hair, had joined with
them to mock at him, the startled witness of that mad revel of all the
elements. He knew all this--he was drunk with it: could he paint it? Or
would people see only a strange-eyed girl dancing in a wood?
He did not know how many days he had been at work on it; he ate what
the cleaning-woman brought him; his face was bristled with a stubby
growth; the cigarette boxes strewed the floor. Men appeared at the
door, and he urged them peevishly to go away; people brought messages,
and he said he was not in town, and returned the notes unread. In the
morning he smiled and breathed hard and patted the easel; at night he
bit his nails and cursed himself for a colour-blind fool.
There was a white birch, strained and bent in the wind, that troubled
him still, and as he was giving it the last touches, in the cold,
strong afternoon light, the door burst open.
"Look here, the thing closes at six! Are you crazy?" they called to
him, exasperatedly. "Aren't you going to send it?"
"That's all right, that's all right," he muttered vaguely, "shut up,
can't you?"
They stood over behind him, and there was a stillness in the room. He
laid down his palette carefully and turned to them, a worried look on
his drawn, bristled face.
"That's meant to be the ocean beyond the cliff there," he said, an
almost childlike fear in his eyes, "did--did you know it?"
The older man drew in a long breath.
"Lord, yes! I hear it!" he returned, "do you think we're deaf?"
The younger one squinted at various distances, muttering to himself.
"Dryad? Undine? No, she frightens you, but she's sweet! George! He's
painted the wind! He's actually drawn a wind! My, but it's stunning!
My!"
Willard sank into a chair. He was flushed and his legs shook. He patted
the terrier unsteadily and talked to her. "Well, then! Well, then! So
she was, iss, so she was!"
The older man snapped his watch. "Five-thirty," he said. "Put something
'round it, and whistle a cab--we'll have to hurry!"
Willard fingered some dead crocuses on the stand beside him. "Look out,
you fool, it's wet!" he growled. The older man patted his shoulder.
"All right, boy, all right!" he said soothingly. "It's all done,
now--never mind!"
They shouldered it out of the door while he pulled the terrier's ears.
"Where you going?" they called.
"Turkish bath. Restaurant. Vaudeville," he answered, and they nodded.
"All alone?"
"Yes, thanks. Drop in to-morrow!"
"----And drive like thunder!" he heard them through the open window.
A week later he was walking up Broadway between them, sniffing the
fresh, sweet air comfortably, the terrier at his heels. At intervals
they read him bits from the enthusiastic comments of the critics.
"Mr. Willard, whose 'Windflower' distanced all competitors and won
the Minot prize by a unanimous verdict of the judges, has displayed,
aside from his thorough master of technic, a breadth of atmosphere, an
imaginative range rarely if ever equalled by an American. Nothing but
the work itself, so manifestly idealistic in subject and treatment,
could convince us that it is not a study from life, so keen, so
haunting is the impression produced by the remarkable figure of the
Spirit of the Gale, who seems to sink before our eyes on the falling
trunk, literally riding the storm. In direct contrast to this abandon
of the figure is the admirable reticence of the background which is
keyed so low----"
Willard stopped abruptly before the window of a large art
establishment where a photograph of the picture was already displayed.
"I want one of those," he said, "and I'm going out into the country for
a bit before I sail, I think."
"Oh, back there?" they asked, comprehensively.
"Yes, back there!"