By the end of July Clayton had found out two things definitely; he was
standing in his little workshop, pulling at his mustache and looking
sometimes at a half-completed sketch, and sometimes at the blue stretch
of water below the cliff. The conclusions were that he certainly should
not become interested in Harriet and Mary, and, secondly, that Mount
Desert made him paint rather than model.
"It's no place," he muttered, "except for color and for a poet. A man
would have to shut himself up in a cellar to escape those glorious
hills and the bay, if he wanted to work at that putty." He cast a
contemptuous glance at a rough bust of his Cousin Della, the only thing
he had attempted. As a solution of his hopeless problem he picked up a
pipe and was hunting for some tobacco, preparatory to a stroll up
Newport, when someone sounded timidly at the show knocker of the front
door.
"Is that you, Miss Marston?" Clayton remarked, in a disappointed tone,
as a middle-aged woman entered.
"The servants were all away," she replied, "and Della thought you might
like some lunch to recuperate you from your labors." This was said a
little maliciously, as she looked about and found nothing noteworthy
going on.
"I was just thinking of knocking off for this morning and taking a
walk. Won't you come? It's such glorious weather and no fog," he added,
parenthetically, as if in justification of his idleness.
"Why do you happen to ask me?" Miss Marston exclaimed, impetuously.
"You have hitherto never paid any more attention to my existence than
if I had been Jane, the woman who usually brings your lunch." She
gasped at her own boldness. This was not coquettishness, and was
evidently unusual.
"Why! I really wish you would come," said the young man, helplessly.
"Then I'll have a chance to know you better."
"Well! I will." She seemed to have taken a desperate step. Miss Jane
Marston, Della's sister-in-law, had always been the superfluous member
of her family. Such unenviable tasks as amusing or teaching the younger
children, sewing, or making up whist sets, had, as is usual with the
odd members in a family, fallen to her share. All this Miss Marston
hated in a slow, rebellious manner. From always having just too little
money to live independently, she had been forced to accept invitations
for long visits in uninteresting places. As a girl and a young woman,
she had shown a delicate, retiring beauty that might have been made
much of, and in spite of gray hair, thirty-five years, and a somewhat
drawn look, arising from her discontent, one might discover sufficient
traces of this fading beauty to idealize her. All this summer she had
watched the wayward young artist with a keen interest in the fresh life
he brought among her flat surroundings. His buoyancy cheered her
habitual depression; his eagerness and love of life made her blood flow
more quickly, out of sympathy; and his intellectual alertness
bewildered and fascinated her. She was still shy at thirty-five, and
really very timid and apologetic for her commonplaceness; but at times
the rebellious bitterness at the bottom of her heart would leap forth
in a brusque or bold speech. She was still capable of affording
surprise.
"Won't I spoil the inspiration?" she ventured, after a long silence.
"Bother the inspiration!" groaned Clayton. "I wish I were a blacksmith,
or a sailor, or something honest. I feel like a hypocrite. I have
started out at a pace that I can't keep up!"
Miss Marston felt complimented by this apparent confidence. If she had
had experience in that kind of nature, she would have understood how
indifferent Clayton was to her personally. He would have made the same
confession to the birds, if they had happened to produce the same
irritation in his mind.
"They all say your work is so brilliant," she said, soothingly.
"Thunder!" he commented. "I wish they would not say anything kind and
pleasant and cheap. At college they praised my verses, and the theatres
stole my music for the Pudding play, and the girls giggled over my
sketches. And now, at twenty-six, I don't know whether I want to
fiddle, or to write an epic, or to model, or to paint. I am a victim of
every artistic impulse."
"I know what you should do," she said, wisely, when they had reached a
shady spot and were cooling themselves.
"Smoke?" queried Clayton, quizzically.
"You ought to marry!"
"That's every woman's great solution, great panacea," he replied,
contemptuously.
"It would steady you and make you work."
"No," he replied, thoughtfully, "not unless she were poor, and in that
case it would be from the frying-pan into the fire!"
"You should work," she went on, more courageously. "And a wife would
give you inspiration and sympathy."
"I have had too much of the last already," he sighed. "And it's better
not to have it all of one sort. After awhile a woman doesn't produce
pleasant or profitable reactions in my soul. Yes, I know," he added, as
he noticed her look of wonderment, "I am selfish and supremely
egotistical. Every artist is; his only lookout, however, should be that
his surroundings don't become stale. Or, if you prefer to put it more
humanely, an artist isn't fit to marry; it's criminal for him to marry
and break a woman's heart."
After this heroic confession he paused to smoke. "Besides, no woman
whom I ever knew really understands art and the ends which the artist
is after. She has the temperament, a superficial appreciation and
interest, but she hasn't the stimulus of insight. She's got the nerves,
but not the head."
"But you just said that you had had too much sympathy and
molly-coddling."
"Did I? Well, I was wrong. I need a lot, and I don't care how idiotic.
It makes me courageous to have even a child approve. I suppose that
shows how closely we human animals are linked together. We have got to
have the consent of the world, or at any rate a small part of it, to
believe ourselves sane. So I need the chorus of patrons, admiring
friends, kind women, etc., while I play the Protagonist, to tell me
that I am all right, to go ahead. Do you suppose any one woman would be
enough? What a great posture for an arm!" His sudden exclamation was
called out by the attitude that Miss Marston had unconsciously assumed
in the eagerness of her interest. She had thrown her hand over a ledge
above them, and was leaning lightly upon it. The loose muslin sleeve
had fallen back, revealing a pretty, delicately rounded arm, not to be
suspected from her slight figure. Clayton quickly squirmed a little
nearer, and touching the arm with an artist's instinct, brought out
still more the fresh white flesh and the delicate veining.
"Don't move. That would be superb in marble!" Miss Marston blushed
painfully.
"How strange you are," she murmured, as she rose. "You just said that
you had given up modelling, or I would let you model my arm in order to
give you something to do. You should try to stick to something."
"Don't be trite," laughed Clayton, "and don't make me consistent. You
will keep yourself breathless if you try that!"
"I know what you need," she said, persistently unmindful of his
admonition. "You need the spur. It doesn't make so much difference
_what_ you do--you're clever enough."
"'Truth from the mouths of babes----'"
"I am not a babe." She replied to his mocking, literally. "Even if I am
stupid and commonplace, I may have intuitions like other women."
"Which lead you to think that it's all chance whether Raphael paints or
plays on the piano. Well, I don't know that you are so absurd. That's
my theory: an artist is a fund of concentrated, undistributed energy
that has any number of possible outlets, but selects one. Most of us
are artists, but we take so many outlets that the hogshead becomes
empty by leaking. Which shall it be? Shall we toss up a penny?"
"Painting," said Miss Marston, decisively. "You must stick to that."
"How did you arrive at that conclusion--have you observed my work?"
"No! I'll let you know some time, but now you must go to work. Come!"
She rose, as if to go down to the lodge that instant. Clayton, without
feeling the absurdity of the comedy, rose docilely and followed her
down the path for some distance. He seemed completely dominated by the
sudden enthusiasm and will that chance had flung him.
"There's no such blessed hurry," he remarked at last, when the first
excitement had evanesced. "The light will be too bad for work by the
time we reach Bar Harbor. Let's rest here in this dark nook, and talk
it all over."
Clayton was always abnormally eager to talk over anything. Much of his
artistic energy had trickled away in elusive snatches of talk. "Come,"
he exclaimed, enthusiastically, "I have it. I will begin a great
work--a modern Magdalen or something of that sort. We can use you in
just that posture, kneeling before a rock with outstretched hands, and
head turned away. We will make everything of the hands and arms!"
Miss Marston blushed her slow, unaccustomed blush. At first sight it
pleased her to think that she had become so much a part of this
interesting young man's plans, but in a moment she laughed calmly at
the frank desire he expressed to leave out her face, and the
characteristic indifference he had shown in suggesting negligently such
a subject.
"All right. I am willing to be of any service. But you will have to
make use of the early hours. I teach the children at nine."
"Splendid!" he replied, as the vista of a new era of righteousness
dawned upon him. "We shall have the fresh morning light, and the cool
and the beauty of the day. And I shall have plenty of time to loaf,
too."
"No, you mustn't loaf. You will find me a hard task-mistress!"