Captain Harris had been, like Rodman, one of the men who make up the
world's flotsam and jetsam. He, too, had meddled in the affairs of
that unstable belt which lies just above and below the "line." South
and Central American politics and methods were familiar to him. He had
not attained the command of the tramp freighter _Albatross_ without
learning one decisive lesson, that of eliminating curiosity from his
plan of living. He argued that his passenger was an _insurrecto_, and,
once seized in Puerto Frio, could hardly hope to shield himself behind
American citizenship. There had been many men in Puerto Frio when the
captain sailed who would have paid well for passage to any port beyond
the frontier, but to have taken them might have brought complications.
He had been able at some risk to slip two men at most to his vessel
under the curtain of night, and to clear without interference. He had
chosen the man who was his friend, Dr. Cornish, and the man who was
his countryman and helpless. Of course, all the premises upon which
both Rodman and this sea-going man acted were false premises. Had he
been left, Saxon would have been in no danger. He had none the less
been shanghaied for a voyage of great length, and he had been
shanghaied out of sincere kindness.
It had not occurred to either the captain or the physician that the
situation could outlast the voyage. The man had a fractured skull, and
he might die, or he might recover; but one or the other he must do,
and that presumably before the completion of the trip across the
Atlantic. That he should remain in a comatose state for days proved
mildly surprising and interesting to the physician, but that at the
end of this time he should suffer a long attack of brain fever was an
unexpected development. Saxon knew nothing of his journeying, and his
only conversation was that of delirium. He owed his life to the skill
and vigilance of the doctor, who had seen and treated human ills under
many crude conditions, and who devoted himself with absorption to the
case. Neither the physician nor the captain knew that the man had
once been called Robert Saxon. There was nothing to identify him. He
had come aboard in the riding clothes borrowed from the lockers of the
_Phyllis_, and his pockets held only a rusty key, some American gold
and a little South American silver. Without name or consciousness or
baggage, he was slowly crossing the Atlantic.
Other clothing was provided, and into the newer pockets Captain Harris
and Dr. Cornish scrupulously transferred these articles. That Carter,
if he recovered, could reimburse the skipper was never questioned. If
he died, the care given him would be charged to the account of
humanity, together with other services this rough man had rendered in
his diversified career.
Meanwhile, on the steamer _Orinoco_, the girl was finding her clear,
unflinching courage subjected to the longest, fiercest siege of
suspense, and Steele tried in every possible manner to comfort the
afflicted girl in this time of her trial and to alleviate matters with
optimistic suggestions. M. Herve was in great distress over having
been the unwitting cause of fears which he hoped the future would
clear away. His aloofness had ended, and, like Steele, he attached
himself to her personal following, and sought with a hundred polite
attentions to mitigate what he regarded as suffering of his
authorship. Duska's impulse had been to leave the vessel at the first
American port, but Steele had dissuaded her. His plan was to wire to
Kentucky at the earliest possible moment, and learn whether there had
been any message from Saxon. Failing in that, he advocated going on to
New York. If by any chance Saxon had come back to the States; if, for
example, he had recovered _en voyage_ and been transferred, as was not
impossible, to a west-bound vessel, his agent in New York might have
some tidings.
Herve cursed himself for his failure to learn, in the confused
half-hour at the Puerto Frio tavern, the name of the vessel that had
taken Saxon on board, or at least the name of the fellow refugee who
had befriended him.
When the ship came abreast of the fanglike skyline of Manhattan
Island, and was shouldered against its pier at Brooklyn by swarming
tugs, the girl, although outwardly calm, was not far from inward
despair.
Steele's first step was the effort to learn what steamer it might have
been that left Puerto Frio for Venezuela and thence for France. But,
in the promiscuous fleets of rusty-hulled tramps that beat their way
about the world, following a system hardly more fixed than the course
of a night-hawk cab about a city's streets, the effort met only
failure.
The girl would not consent to an interval of rest after her
sea-voyage, but insisted on accompanying Steele at once to the
establishment of the art dealer who had the handling of Saxon's
pictures.
The dealer had seen Mr. Saxon some time before as the artist passed
through New York, but since that time had received no word. He had
held a successful exhibition, and had written several letters to the
Kentucky address furnished him, but to none of them had there been a
reply. The dealer was enthusiastic over the art of the painter, and
showed the visitors a number of clippings and reviews that were rather
adulation than criticism.
The girl glanced at them impatiently. The work was great, and she was
proud of its praise, but just now she was feeling that it really meant
nothing at all to her in comparison with the painter himself. To her,
he would have been quite as important, she realized, had no critic
praised him; had his brush never forced a compliment from the world.
Her brow gathered in perplexity over one paragraph that met her eye.
"The most notable piece of work that has yet come from this remarkable
palette," said the critic, "is a canvas entitled, 'Portrait of a
lady.' In this, Mr. Saxon has done something more than approximate the
genius of Frederick Marston. He has seemed to carry it a point
forward, and one is led to believe that such an effort may be the door
through which the artist shall issue from the distinction of being
'Marston's first disciple' into a larger distinction more absolutely
his own." There was more, but the feature which caught her eye was the
fact stated that, "A gentleman bought this picture for his private
collection, refusing to give his name."
"What does it mean?" demanded Duska, handing the clipping to Steele.
"That picture and the landscape from the Knob were not for sale."
The dealer was puzzled.
"Mr. Saxon," he explained, "directed that from this assignment two
pictures were to be reserved. They were designated by marks on the
back of the cases and the canvases. Neither the portrait nor the
landscape was so marked."
"He must have made a mistake, in the hurry of packing," exclaimed the
girl, in deep distress. "He must have marked them wrong!"
"Who bought them?" demanded Steele.
The dealer shook his head.
"It was a gentleman, evidently an Englishman, though he said he lived
in Paris. He declined to give his name, and paid cash. He took the
pictures with him in a cab to his hotel. He did not even state where
he was stopping." The dealer paused, then added: "He explained to me
that he collected for the love of pictures, and that he found the
notoriety attaching to the purchase of famous paintings extremely
distasteful."
"Have you ever seen this gentleman before?" urged Steele.
"Yes," the art agent answered reflectively, "he has from time to time
picked up several of Mr. Saxon's pictures, and his conversation
indicated that he was equally familiar with the work of Marston
himself. He said he knew the Paris agent of Mr. Saxon quite well, and
it is possible that through that source you might be able to locate
him. I am very sorry the mistake occurred, and, while I am positive
that you will find the letters 'N. F. S.' (not for sale) on the two
pictures I have held, I shall do all in my power to trace the lost
ones."
In one of the packing rooms, the suspicions of Duska were
corroborated. Two canvases were found about the same shape and size as
the two that had been bought by the foreign art-lover. Palpably,
Saxon, in his hurry of boxing, had wrongly labeled them.
In the flood of her despair, the girl found room for a new pang. It
was not only because these pictures were the fulfillment of Saxon's
most mature genius that their loss became a little tragedy; not even
merely because in them she felt that she had in a measure triumphed
over Marston's hold on the man she loved, but because by every
association that was important to her and to him they were canonized.
That evening, Steele made his announcement. He was going to Havre and
Paris. If anything could be learned at that end, he would find it out,
and while there he would trace the pictures.
"You see," he assured her, with a cheery confidence he by no means
felt, "it's really much simpler than it looks. He was hurt, and he did
not recover at once. By the time he reaches France, the sea-voyage
will have restored him, and he will cable. Those tramp steamers are
slow, and he hasn't yet had time. If he takes a little longer to get
well, I'll be there to look after him, and bring him home."
The girl shook her head.
"You haven't thought about the main thing," she said quickly, leaning
forward and resting her fingers lightly on his arm, "or perhaps you
thought of it, George dear, and were too kind to speak of it. After
this, he may wake up--he may wake up the other man. I must go to him
myself. I must be with him." Her voice became eager and vibrant: "I
want to be the first living being he will greet."
Steele found a thousand objections rising up for utterance, but, as he
looked at the steady blue of her eyes, he left them all unsaid. She
had gone to South America, of course she would go to France.
* * * * *
It would be imaginative flattery to call the lodgings of Alfred St.
John and his daughter commodious, even with the added comforts that
the late years had brought to the alleviation of their barrenness. The
windows still looked out over the dismal roofs of the _Quartier Latin_
and the frowning gray chimney pots where the sparrows quarreled.
St. John might have moved to more commodious quarters, for the days
were no longer as pinched as had been those of the past, yet he
remained in the house where he had lived before his own ambition died.
His stock-in-trade was his agency in handling the paintings of
Frederick Marston, the half-mad painter who, since he had left Paris
shortly after his marriage, had not returned to his ancient haunts,
or had any parcel in the life of the art world that idolized him,
except as he was represented by this ambassador.
St. John sold the pictures that the painter, traveling about,
presumably concealing himself under assumed names, sent back to the
waiting market and the eager critics.
And St. John knew that, inasmuch as he had been poor, in the
half-starved, hungry way of being poor, now his commissions clothed
him and paid for his claret, and, above all, made it possible for him
to indulge the one soul he loved with the simple comforts that
softened her suffering.
The daughter of St. John required some small luxuries which it
delighted the Englishman to give her. He had been proud when she
married Frederick Marston, he had been distressed when the marriage
proved a thing of bitterness, and during the past years he had watched
her grow thin, and had feared at first, and known later, that she had
fallen prey to the tubercular troubles which had caused her mother's
death.
St. John had been a petty sort, and had not withstood the whisperings
of dishonest motives. Paradoxically his admiration for Frederick
Marston was, seemingly at least, wholly sincere.
In this hero-worship for the painter, who had failed as a husband to
make his daughter happy, there was no disloyalty for the daughter. He
knew that Marston had given all but the love he had not been able to
give and that he had simulated this until her own insight pierced the
deception, refusing compassion where she demanded love.
The men who rendered unto Marston their enthusiastic admiration were
men of a cult, and tinged with a sort of cult fanaticism. St. John, as
father-in-law, agent and correspondent, was enabled to pose along the
Boulevard St. Michel as something of a high priest, and in this small
vanity he gloried. So, when the questioners of the cafes bombarded him
with inquiries as to when Marston would tire of his pose of hermit and
return to Paris, the British father-in-law would throw out his shallow
chest, and allow an enigmatical smile to play in his pale eyes, and a
faint uplift to come to the corners of his thin lips, but he never
told.
"I have a letter here," he would say, tapping the pocket of his coat.
"The master is well, and says that he feels his art to be broadening."
Between the man and his daughter, the subject of the painter was never
mentioned. After her return from England, where she had spent the
first year after Marston dropped out of her life, she had exacted from
her father a promise that his name should not be spoken between them,
and the one law St. John never transgressed was that of devotion to
her.
Her life was spent in the lodgings, to which St. John clung because
they were in the building where Marston had painted. She never
suggested a removal to more commodious quarters. Possibly, into her
pallid life had crept a sentimental fondness for the place for the
same reason. Her weakness was growing into feebleness. Less, each day,
she felt like going down the steep flights of stairs for a walk in the
Boulevard of St. Michael, and climbing them again on her return. More
heavily each day, she leaned on his supporting arm. All these things
St. John noted, and day by day the traces of sandy red in his mustache
and beard faded more and more into gray, and the furrow between his
pale blue eyes deepened more perceptibly.
St. John had gone one afternoon to a neighboring _atelier_, and the
girl, wandering into his room, saw a portrait standing on the easel
which St. John had formerly used for his own canvases. Most of the
pictures that came here were Marston's. This one, like the rest, was
unsigned. She sank into the deeply cushioned chair that St. John kept
for her in his own apartment, and gazed fixedly at the portrait.
It was a picture of a woman, and the woman in the chair smiled at the
woman on the canvas.
"You are very beautiful--my successor!" she murmured. For a time, she
studied the warm, vivid tones of the painted features, then, with the
same smile, devoid of bitterness, she went on talking to the other
face.
"I know you are my successor," she said, "because the enthusiasm
painted into your face is not the enthusiasm of art alone--nor," she
added slowly, "is it pity!"
Then, she noticed that one corner of the canvas caught the light with
the shimmer of wet paint. It was the corner where ordinarily an artist
affixes his name. She rose and went to the heavy studio-easel, and
looked again with her eyes close to the stretchers. The paint was
evidently freshly applied to that corner of the canvas. To her peering
gaze, it almost seemed that through the new coating of the background
she could catch a faint underlying line of red, as though it had been
a stroke in the letter of a name. Then, she noticed her father's
palette lying on a chair near the easel, and the brushes were damp.
The lake and Van Dyke brown and neutral-tint that had been squeezed
from their tubes were mixed into a rich tone on the palette, which
matched the background of the portrait. Sinking back in the chair,
fatigued even by such a slight exertion, she heard her father's
returning tread on the stairs.
From the door, he saw her eyes on the picture, but true to his promise
he remained silent, though, as he caught her gaze on the palette, his
own eyes took on something of anxiety and foreboding.
"Does he sign his pictures now?" she asked abruptly.
"No. Why?"
"It looked--almost," she said wearily, "as though the signature had
been painted out there at the corner."
For an instant, St. John eyed his daughter with keen intentness.
"The canvas was scraped in shipping," he said, at last. "I touched up
the spot where the paint was rubbed."
For a time, both were silent. The father saw that two hectic spots
glowed on the girl's bloodless cheeks, and that her eyes, fixed on the
picture, wore a deeply wistful longing.
He, too, knew that this picture was a declaration of love, that in her
silence she was torturing herself with the thought that these other
eyes had stirred the heart that had remained closed to her. He did not
want to admit to her that this was not a genuine Marston; yet, he
faltered a moment, and resolved that he could not, even for so
necessary a deception, let her suffer.
"That portrait, my child," he confessed slowly, "was not painted
by--by him. It's by another artist, a lesser man, named Saxon."
Into the deep-set eyes surged a look of incredulous, but vast, relief.
The frail shoulders drew back from their shallow-chested sag, and the
thin lips smiled.
"Doesn't he sign his pictures, either?" she demanded, finally.
For an instant, St. John hesitated awkwardly for an explanation.
"Yes," he said at last, a little lamely. "This canvas was cut down for
framing, and the signature was thrown so close to the edge that the
frame conceals the name." He paused, then added, quietly: "I have kept
my promise of silence, but now--do you want to hear of _him_?"
She looked up--then shook her head, resolutely.
"No," she said.