_In Which an Artist Finds What All His Life He Has Been Looking For;
and in Which He Speaks of a Little Saint in Red._
It might have been by chance that Delilah Jeliffe driving in her
electric through a broad avenue on the afternoon following the
christening of Constance's baby, met Porter Bigelow, and invited him to
go home with her for a cup of tea.
There were certain things which Delilah wanted of Porter. Perhaps she
wanted more than she would ever get. But to-day she had it in her mind
to find out if he would go with her to the White House garden party.
Colin Quale was little and blond. Because of his genius, his presence
had added distinction to her entrances and exits. But at the coming
function, she knew that she needed more than the prestige of
genius--among the group of distinguished guests who would attend, the
initial impression would mean much. Porter's almost stiff stateliness
would match the gown she was to wear. His position, socially, was
impregnable; he had wealth, and youth, and charm. He would, in other
words, make a perfectly correct background for the picture which she
designed to make of herself.
The old house at Georgetown, to which they came finally, was set back
among certain blossoming shrubs and bushes. A row of tulips flamed on
each side of the walk. Small and formal cedars pointed their spired
heads toward the spring sky.
In the door, as they ascended the steps, appeared Colin Quale.
"Come in," he said, "come in at once. I want you to see what I have
done for you."
He spoke directly to Delilah. It was doubtful if he saw Porter. He
was blind to everything except the fact that his genius had designed
for Delilah Jeliffe a costume which would make her fame and his.
They followed him through the wide hall to the back porch in which he
had set up his easel. There, where a flowering almond bush flung its
branches against a background of green, he had worked out his idea.
A water-color sketch on the easel showed a girl in white--a girl who
might have been a queen or an empress. Her gown partook of the
prevailing mode, but not slavishly. There was distinction in it, and
color here and there, which Colin explained.
"It must be of sheer white, with many flowing flounces, and with faint
pink underneath like the almond bloom. And there must be a bit of
heavenly blue in the hat, and a knot of green at the girdle--and a veil
flung back--you see?--there'll be sky and field and flowers and a white
cloud--all the delicate color and bloom----"
Still explaining, he was at last induced to leave the picture, and have
tea. While Delilah poured, Porter watched the two, interested and
diverted by enthusiasms which seemed to him somewhat puerile for a man
who could do real things in the world of art.
Yet he saw that Delilah took the little man very seriously, that she
hung on his words of advice, and that she was obedient to his demands
upon her.
"She'll marry him some day," he said to himself, and Delilah seemed to
divine his thought, for when at last Colin had rushed back to his
sketch, she settled herself in her low chair, and told Porter of their
first meeting.
"I'll begin at the beginning," she said; "it is almost too funny to be
true, and it could not possibly have happened to any one but me and
Colin.
"It was last summer when I was on the North Shore. Father and I stayed
at a big hotel, but I was crazy to get acquainted with the cottage
colony.
"But somehow I didn't seem to make good--you see that was in my crude
days when I wanted to be a cubist picture instead of a daguerreotype.
I liked to be startling, and thought that to attract attention was to
attract friends--but I found that I did not attract them.
"One night in August there was a big dance on at one of the hotels, and
I wanted a gown which should outshine all the others--the ball was to
be given for the benefit of a local chanty, and all the cottage colony
would attend. I sent an order for a gown to my dressmaker, and she
shipped out a strange and wonderful creation. It was an imported
affair--you know the kind--with a bodice of a string of jet and a wisp
of lace--with a tulle tunic, and a skirt of gold brocade that was so
tight about my feet that it had the effect of Turkish trousers. For my
head she sent a strip of gold gauze which was to be swathed around and
around my hair in a sort of nun's coif, so that only a little knot
could show at the back and practically none in front. It was the last
cry in fashions. It made me look like a dream from the Arabian Nights,
and I liked it."
She laughed, and, in spite of himself, Porter laughed with her.
"I wore it to the dance, and it was there that I met Colin Quale. I
wish I could make you see the scene--the great ballroom, and all the
other women staring at me as I came in--and the men, smiling.
"I was in my element. I thought, in those days, that the test of charm
was to hold the eyes of the multitude. To-day I know that it is to
hold the eyes of the elect, and it is Colin who has taught me.
"I had danced with a dozen other men when he came up to claim me. I
scarcely remembered that I had promised him a dance. When he was
presented to me I had only been aware of a pale little man with
eye-glasses and nervous hands who had stared at me rather too steadily.
"We danced in silence for several minutes and he danced divinely.
"He stopped suddenly. 'Let's get out of here,' he said. 'I want to
talk to you.'
"I looked at him in amazement. 'But I want to dance.'
"'You can always dance,' he said, quietly, 'but you cannot always talk
to me.'
"There was nothing in his manner to indicate the preliminaries of a
flirtation. He was perfectly serious and he evidently thought that he
was offering me a privilege. Curiosity made me follow him, and he led
the way down the hall to a secluded reception room where there was a
long mirror, a little table, and a big bunch of old-fashioned roses in
a bowl.
"On our way we passed a row of chairs, where some one had left a wrap
and a scarf. Colin snatched up the scarf--it was a long wide one of
white chiffon. The next morning I returned it to him, and he found the
owner. I am not sure what explanation he made for his theft, but it
was undoubtedly attributed to the eccentricities of genius!
"Well, when, as I said, we reached the little room, he pulled a chair
forward for me, so that I sat directly in front of the mirror.
"I remember that I surveyed myself complacently. To my deluded eyes,
my appearance could not be improved. My head, swathed in its golden
coif, seemed to give the final perfect touch."
She laughed again at the memory, and Porter found himself immensely
amused. She had such a cool way of turning her mental processes inside
out and holding them up for others to see.
"As I sat there, stealing glances at myself, I became conscious that my
little blond man was studying me. Other men had looked at me, but
never with such a cold, calculating gaze--and when he spoke to me, I
nearly jumped out of my shoes--his voice was crisp, incisive.
"'Take it off,' he said, and touched the gauze that tied up my head.
"I gasped. Then I drew myself up in an attempt at haughtiness. But he
wasn't impressed a bit.
"'I suppose you know that I am an artist, Miss Jeliffe,' he said, 'and
from the moment you came into the room, I haven't had a bit of peace.
You're spoiling your type--and it affects me as a chromo would, or a
crude crayon portrait, or any other dreadful thing.'
"Do you know how it feels to be called a 'dreadful thing' by a man like
that? Well, it simply made me shrivel up and have shivers down my
spine.
"'But why?' I stammered.
"'Women like you,' he said, 'belong to the stately, the aristocratic
type. You can be a _grande dame_ or a duchess--and you are making of
yourself--what? A soubrette, with your tango skirt and your strapped
slippers, and your hideous head-dress--take it off.'
"'But I can't take it off,' I said, almost tearfully; 'my hair
underneath is--awful.'
"'It doesn't make any difference about your hair underneath--it can't
be worse than it is,' he roared. 'I want to see your coloring--take it
off.'
"And I took it off. My hair was perfectly flat, and as I caught a
glimpse of myself in the mirror, I wanted to laugh, to shriek. But
Colin Quale was as solemn as an owl. 'Ah,' he said, 'I knew you had a
lot of it!'
"He caught up the scarf which he had borrowed and flung it over my
shoulders. He gave a flick of his fingers against my forehead and
pulled down a few hairs and parted them. He whisked a little table in
front of me, and thrust the bunch of roses into my arms.
"'Now look at yourself,' he commanded.
"I looked and looked again. I had never dreamed that I could be like
that. The scarf and the table hid every bit of that Paris gown, and
showed just a bit of white throat. My plain parted hair and the
roses--I looked," and now Delilah was blushing faintly, "I looked as I
had always wanted to look--like the lovely ladies in the old English
portraits.
"'Do you like it?' Colin asked.
"He knew that I liked it from my eyes, and for the first time since I
had met him, he laughed.
"'All my life,' he said, 'I have been looking for just such a woman as
you. A woman to make over--to develop. We must be friends, Miss
Jeliffe. You must let me know where I can see you again.'
"Well, I didn't dance any more that night. I wrapped the scarf about
my head, and went back to my hotel. Colin Quale went with me. All the
way he talked about the sacredness of beauty. He opened my eyes. I
began to see that loveliness should be suggested rather than
emphasized. And I have told you this because I want you to understand
about Colin. He isn't in love with me. I rather fancy that back home
in Amesbury or Newburyport, or whatever town it is that he hails from,
there's somebody whom he'll find to marry. To him I am a statue to be
molded. I am clay, marble, a tube of paint, a canvas ready for his
brush. It was the same way with this old house. He wanted a setting
for me, and he couldn't rest until he had found it. He has not only
changed my atmosphere, he has changed my manner--I was going to say my
morals--he brings to me portraits of Romney ladies and Gainsborough
ladies--until I seem positively to swim in a sea of stateliness. And
what I said just now about manners and morals is true. A woman lives
up to the clothes she wears. If you think this change is on the
surface, it isn't. I couldn't talk slang in a Gainsborough hat, and be
in keeping, so I don't talk slang; and a perfect lady in a moleskin
mantle must have morals to match; so in my little mantle I cannot tell
a lie."
To see her with lowered lashes, telling it, was the funniest thing in
the world, and Porter shouted. Then her lashes were, for a moment,
raised, and the old Delilah peeped out, shrewd, impish.
"He wants me to change my name. No, don't misunderstand me--not my
last one. But the first. He says that Delilah smacks of the
adventuress. I don't think he is quite sure of the Bible story, but he
gets his impressions from grand opera--and he knows that the Delilah of
the Samson story wasn't nice--not in a lady-like sense. My middle name
is Anne. He likes that better."
"Lady Anne? You'll look the part in that garden party frock he is
designing for you."
And now she had reached the question toward which she had been working.
"Shall you go?"
He shook his head. "I doubt it. It isn't a function from which one
will be missed. And the Ballards won't be there. Mary is going over
to New York with Constance for a few days before the sailing. I'm to
join them on the final day."
"And you won't go to the garden party without Mary?"
He found himself moved, suddenly, to speak out to her.
"She wouldn't go if she were here--not with me."
"Contrary Mary?" she drawled the words, giving them piquant suggestion.
"It isn't contrariness. Her independence is characteristic. She won't
let me do things because she wants to do them by herself. But some day
she'll let me do them."
He said it grimly, and Delilah flashed a glance at him, then said
carefully, "It would be a pity if she should fancy--Roger Poole."
"She won't."
"You can't tell--pity leads to the softer feeling, you know."
"Why should she pity him?"
"There's his past."
"His past? Roger Poole's? What do you know of it, Delilah?"
As he leaned forward to ask the eager question, he knew that by all the
rules of the game he should not be discussing Mary with any one. But
he told himself hotly that it was for Mary's good. If things had been
hidden, they should be revealed--the sooner the better.
Delilah gave him the details dramatically.
"Then his wife is dead?"
"Yes. But before that the scandal lost him his church. Nobody seems
to know much of it all, I fancy. Mary only gave me the outline."
"And she knows?"
"Yes. Roger told her."
"The chances are that there's--another side."
He knew that it was a small thing to say. He would not have said it to
any one but Delilah. She would not think him small. To her all things
would be fair for a lover.
Before he went, that afternoon, he had promised to go with Delilah to
the White House garden party.
Hence a week later there floated within the vision of the celebrities
and society folk, gathered together on the spacious lawn of the
executive mansion, a lovely lady in faint rose-white, with a touch of
heavenly blue in her wide hat, from which floated a veil which half hid
her down-drooped eyes.
People began at once to ask, "Who is she?"
When it was discovered that her name was Jeliffe, and that she was not
a distinguished personage, it did not matter greatly. There was about
her an air of distinction--a certain quiet atmosphere of withdrawal
from the common herd which had nothing in it of haughtiness, but which
seemed to set her apart.
Porter, following in her wake as she swept across the green, thought of
the girl in leopard skins, whose unconventionality had shocked him.
Surely in this woman was developed a sense of herself as the center of
a picture which was almost uncanny. He found himself contrasting
Mary's simplicity and lack of pose.
Mary's presence here to-day would have meant much to a few people who
knew and loved her; it would have meant nothing to the crowd who stared
at Delilah Jeliffe.
Colin Quale was there to enjoy the full triumph of the transformation.
He hovered at a little distance from Delilah, worshiping her for the
genius which met and matched his own.
"I shall paint her in that," he said to Porter. "It will be my
masterpiece. And if you could have seen her on the night I met her----"
"She told me." Porter was smiling.
"It was like one of the old masters daubed by a novice, or like a room
whitewashed over rare carvings--everything was hidden which should have
been shown, and everything was shown which should have been hidden. It
was monstrous.
"There are few women," he went on, "whom I could make over as I have
made her over. They have not the adaptability--the temperament. There
was one whom I could have transformed. But I was not allowed. She was
little and blonde and the wife of a clergyman; she looked like a
saint---and she should have worn straight things of clear green or red,
or blue. But she wore black. I've sometimes wondered if she was such
a saint as she looked. There was a divorce afterward, I believe, and
another man. And she died."
Porter, listening idly, came back. "What type was she?"
"Fra Angelico--to perfection. I should have liked to dress her."
"Did you ever tell her that you wanted to do it?"
"Yes. And she listened. It was then that I gained my impression--that
she was not a saint. One night there was a little entertainment at the
parish house and I had my way. I made of her an angel, in a red robe
with a golden lyre--and I painted her afterward. She used to come to
my studio, but I'm not sure that Poole liked it."
"Poole?" Porter was tense.
"Her husband. He could not make her happy."
"Was she--the one in fault?"
Colin shrugged. "There are always two stories. As I have said, she
looked like a saint."
"I should like to see--the picture." Porter tried to speak lightly.
"May I come up some day to your rooms?"
Colin's face beamed.
"I'm getting into new quarters. I shall want your opinion--call me up
before you come."
It was Colin who went home with Delilah in Porter's car. Porter
pleaded important business, and walked for an hour around the Speedway,
his brain in a whirl.
Then Mary knew--Mary _knew_--and it had made no difference in her
thought of Roger Poole!