times a little annoying to have two women in his way whom he could not
control as easily as ordinary work-people, he had become so used to the
restraint as not to feel it often, and not to regard it much. Esther
thought he need not distress himself by thinking that he regarded it at
all. Had not Catherine been so anxious to appear as the most docile and
obedient of hand-maids besides being the best-tempered of prairie
creatures, she would long ago have resented his habit of first petting,
then scolding, next ignoring, and again flattering her, as his mood
happened to prompt. He was more respectful with Esther, and kept out of
her way when he was moody, while she made it a rule never to leave her
own place of work unless first invited, but Catherine, who was much by
his side, got used to ill-treatment which she bore with angelic
meekness. When she found herself left forgotten in a corner, or
unanswered when she spoke, or unnoticed when she bade him good-morning,
she consoled herself with reflecting that after every rudeness,
Wharton's regard for her seemed to rise, and he took her more and more
into his confidence with every new brutality.
"Some day he will drag you to the altar by the hair," said Esther; "and
tell you that his happiness requires you to be his wife."
"I wish he would try," said Catherine with a little look of humor; "but
he has one wife already."
"She mysteriously disappeared," replied Esther. "Some day you will find
her skeleton, poor thing!"
"Do you think so?" said Catherine gravely. "How fascinating he is! He
makes me shiver!"
When Catherine begged to have every thing begun again, Wharton
hesitated. Esther's work was not to his taste, but he was not at all
sure that she would do equally well if she tried to imitate his own
manner.
"You know I wanted Miss Dudley to put more religious feeling and force
into her painting," said he, "but you all united and rode me down."
"I will look like a real angel this time," said Catherine. "Now I know
what it is you want."
"I am more than half on her side," went on Wharton. "I am not sure that
she is wrong. It all comes to this: is religion a struggle or a joy? To
me it is a terrible battle, to be won or lost. I like your green dress
with the violets. Whose idea was that?"
"Petrarch's. You know I am Laura. St. Cecilia has the dress which Laura
wore in church when Petrarch first saw her."
"No!" said Wharton, after another pause, and long study of the two
figures. "Decidedly I will not rub you out; but I mean to touch up
Petrarch."
"O! You won't spoil the likeness!"
"Not at all! But if I am going to posterity by your side I want some
expression in my face. Petrarch was a man of troubles."
"You promise not to change the idea?"
"I promise to look at you as long as you look at me," said Wharton
gloomily.
Meanwhile Esther had a talk with Mr. Hazard which left her more in doubt
than ever as to what she had best do. He urged her to begin something
new and to do it in a more strenuous spirit.
"You are learning from Wharton," said he. "Why should you stop at the
very moment when you have most to gain?"
"I am learning nothing but what I knew before," she answered sadly. "He
can teach only grand art and I am fit only for trifles."
"Try one more figure!"
Esther shook her head.
"My Cecilia is a failure," she went on. "Mr. Wharton said it would be,
and he was right. I should do no better next time, unless I took his
design and carried it out exactly as he orders."
"One's first attempt is always an experiment. Try once more!"
"I should only spoil your church. In the middle of your best sermon your
audience would see you look up here and laugh."
"You are challenging compliments."
"What I could do nicely would be to paint squirrels and monkeys playing
on vines round the choir, or daisies and buttercups in a row, with one
tall daisy in each group of five. That is the way for a woman to make
herself useful."
"Be serious!"
"I feel more solemn than Mr. Wharton's great figure of John of Patmos. I
am going home to burn my brushes and break my palette. What is the use
of trying to go forward when one feels iron bars across one's face?"
"Be reasonable, Miss Dudley! If Wharton is willing to teach, why not be
willing to learn? You are not to be the judge. If I think your work
good, have I not a right to call on you for it?"
"Oh, yes! You have a right to call, and I have a right to refuse. I will
paint no more religious subjects. I have not enough soul. My St. Cecilia
looks like a nursery governess playing a waltz for white-cravated saints
to dance by." There was a tone of real mortification in Esther's voice
as she looked once more at the figure on the wall, and felt how weak it
seemed by the side of Wharton's masculine work. Then she suddenly
changed her mind and did just what he asked: "If Mr. Wharton will
consent, I will begin again, and paint it all over."
A woman could easily have seen that she was torn in opposite directions
by motives of a very contrary kind, but Mr. Hazard did not speculate on
this subject; he was glad to carry his point, and let the matter rest
there. It was agreed that the next morning Wharton should decide upon
the proper course to be taken, and if he chose to reject her figure, she
should begin it again. Esther and Catherine went home, but Esther was
ill at ease. That her St. Cecilia did not come up to the level of her
ambition was a matter of course, and she was prepared for the
disappointment. Whose first attempt in a new style ever paired with its
conception? She felt that Mr. Hazard would think her wayward and weak.
She could not tell him the real reason of her perplexity. She would have
liked to work on patiently under Wharton's orders without a thought of
herself, but how could she do so when Hazard was day by day coming
nearer and nearer until already their hands almost touched. If she had
not liked him, the question could easily have been settled, but she did
like him, and when she said this to herself she turned scarlet at the
thought that he liked her, and--what should she do?
With a heavy heart she made up her mind that there was but one thing to
be done; she must retreat into her own house and bar the doors. If he
did not see that such an intimacy was sure to make trouble for him, she,
who felt, if she did not see, the gulf that separated them, must teach
him better.
Whether she would have held to this wise and prudent course against his
entreaties and Wharton's commands will never be known, for the question,
which at the moment seemed to her so hard to decide, was already
answered by fates which left her no voice in the matter. The next
morning when the two girls, rather later than usual, reached the south
door of the church where a stern guardian always stood to watch lest
wolves entered under pretense of business, they saw a woman standing on
the steps and gazing at them as they approached from the avenue. In this
they found nothing to surprise them, but as they came face to face with
her they noticed that the stranger's dress and features were peculiar
and uncommon even in New York, the sink of races. Although the weather
was not cold, she wore a fur cap, picturesque but much worn, far from
neat, and matching in dirt as in style a sort of Polish or Hungarian
capote thrown over her shoulders. Her features were strong, coarse and
bloated; her eyes alone were fine. When she suddenly spoke to Esther her
voice was rough, like her features; and though Esther had seen too
little of life to know what depths of degradation such a face and voice
meant, she drew back with some alarm. The woman spoke in French only to
ask whether this was the church of St. John. Replying shortly that it
was, Esther passed in without waiting for another question; but as she
climbed the narrow and rough staircase to her gallery, she said to
Catherine who was close behind:
"Somewhere I have seen that woman's eyes."
"So have I!" answered Catherine, in a tone of suppressed excitement so
unusual that Esther stopped short on the step and turned round.
"Don't you know where?" asked Catherine without waiting to be
questioned.
"Where was it?"
"In my picture! Mr. Wharton gave me her eyes. I am sure that woman is
his wife."
"Catherine, you shall go back to Colorado. You have been reading too
many novels. You are as romantic as a man."
Catherine did not care whether she were romantic or not; she knew the
woman was Wharton's wife.
"Perhaps she means to kill him," she ran on in a blood-curdling tone.
"Wouldn't it be like Mr. Wharton to be stabbed to the heart on the steps
of a church, just as his great work was done? Do you know I think he
would like it. He is dying to be tragic like the Venetians, and have
some one write a poem about him." Then after a moment's pause, she
added, in the same indifferent tone of voice: "All the same, if he's not
there, I mean to go back and look out for him. I'm not going to let that
woman kill him if I can help it!"
A warm dispute arose between the two girls which continued after they
reached their scaffold and found that Wharton was not there. Esther
declared that Catherine should not go back; it was ridiculous and
improper; Mr. Wharton would laugh in her face and think her bold and
impertinent; the woman was probably a beggar who wanted to see Mr.
Hazard; and when all this was of no avail Esther insisted that Catherine
should not go alone. Catherine, on her part, declared that she was not
afraid of the woman, or of any woman, or man either, or of Mr. Wharton,
and that she meant to walk down the avenue and meet him, and tell him
that this person was there. She was on the point of doing what she
threatened when they saw Wharton himself cross the church beneath and
slowly climb the stairs.
The two girls, dismissing their alarm as easily as they had taken it up,
turned to their own affairs again. In a few minutes Wharton appeared on
the scaffolding and went to his regular work-place. After a time they
saw him coming to their corner. He looked paler than usual and more
abstracted, and, what was unusual, he carried a brush in his hand, as
though he had broken off his work without thinking what he was doing. He
hardly noticed them, but sat down, holding the brush with both hands,
though it was wet. For some time he looked at the Cecilia without a
word; then he began abruptly:
"You're quite right! It's not good! It's not handled in a large way or
in keeping with the work round it. You might do it again much better.
But it is you and it is she! I would leave it. I will leave it! If
necessary I could in a few days paint it all over and make it harmonize,
but I should spoil it. I can draw better and paint better, but I can't
make a young girl from Colorado as pure and fresh as that. To me
religion is passion. To reach Heaven, you must go through hell, and
carry its marks on your face and figure. I can't paint innocence without
suggesting sin, but you can, and the church likes it. Put your own
sanctity on the wall beside my martyrdom!"
Esther thought it would be civil on her part to say something at this
point, but Wharton's remarks seemed to be made to no one in particular,
and she was not quite certain that they were meant for her in spite of
the words. He did not look at her. She was used to his peculiar moods
and soliloquies, and had learned to be silent at such times. She sat
silent now, but Catherine, who took greater liberties with him, was
bolder.
"Why can't you paint innocence?" she asked.
"I am going to tell you," he replied, with more quickness of manner. "It
is to be the subject of my last lecture. Ladies, school must close
to-day."
Esther and Catherine glanced at each other. "You are going to send us
away?" asked Catherine in a tone of surprise.
"You must go for the present," answered Wharton. "I mean to tell you the
reason, and then you will see why I can't paint innocence as you can. As
a lecture on art, my life is worth hearing, but don't interrupt the
story or you will lose it. Begin by keeping in your mind that twenty
years ago I was a ragged boy in the streets of Cincinnati. The drawing
master in a public school to which I went, said I had a natural talent
for drawing, and taught me all he knew. Then a little purse was made up
for me and I was sent to Paris. Not yet twenty years old, I found myself
dropped into that great sewer of a city, a shy, ill-clothed, ill-fed,
ill-educated boy, knowing no more of the world above me than a fish
knows of the birds. For two years I knocked about in a studio till my
money was used up, and then I knew enough to be able to earn a few
francs to keep me alive. Then I went down to Italy and of course got a
fever. I came back at last to Paris, half-fed, dyspeptic and morbid. I
had visions, and the worst vision of my life I am going to tell you.
"It was after I had been some years at work and had got already a little
reputation among Americans, that I was at my worst. Nothing seemed real.
What earned me my first success was an attempt I made to paint the
strange figures and fancies which possessed me. I studied nothing but
the most extravagant subjects. For a time nothing would satisfy me but
to draw from models at moments of intense suffering and at the instant
of death. Models of that kind do not offer themselves and are not to be
bought. I made friends with the surgeons and got myself admitted to one
of the great hospitals. I happened to be there one day when a woman was
brought in suffering from an overdose of arsenic. This was the kind of
subject I wanted. She was fierce, splendid, a priestess of the oracle!
Tortured by agony and clinging to it as though it were a delight! The
next day I came back to look for her: she was then exhausted and half
dead. She was a superb model, and I took an interest in her. When she
grew better I talked with her and found that she was a sort of Parisian
Pole with a strange history. She had been living as an actress at one of
the small theaters, and had attempted suicide in sheer disgust with
life. I had played with the same idea for years. We had both struggled
with the world and hated it. Her imagination was more morbid than my
own, and in her quieter moments, when her affections were roused, she
was wonderfully tender and devoted. When she left the hospital she put
herself under my protection. I believe she loved me, and no one had ever
loved me before. I know she took possession of me, body and soul. I
married her. I would just as willingly have jumped into the Seine with
her if she had preferred it. For three months we lived together while I
finished the picture which I called the Priestess of Delphi, painted
from my drawings of her in her agony. The picture made a great noise in
Paris, and brought me some new friends, among the rest one who, I think,
really saved me from Charenton. Hazard called at my studio just as my
troubles were beginning to tear me to pieces. My wife had the temper of
a fury, and all the vices of Paris. Excitement was her passion; she
could not stand the quiet of an artist's life; yet her Bohemian
instincts came over her only in waves, and when they left her in peace
she still had splendid qualities that held me to her. Hazard came in
upon us one day in the middle of a terrible scene when she was
threatening again to take her own life, and trying, or pretending to try
to take mine. When he came in, she disappeared. The next I heard of her,
she was back on the stage--lost! I was worn out; my nervous system was
all gone. Then Hazard came to my help and took me off with him to the
south of Europe. Our first stage was to Avignon and Vaucluse, and there
I found how curiously my experience had affected my art. I had learned
to adore purity and repose, but I could never get hold of my ideal.
Fifty times I tried to draw Laura as I wanted to realize her and every
time I failed. I knew the secret of Petrarch and I could not tell it. My
wife came between me and my thought. All life took form in my hands as a
passion. If I could learn again to paint a child, or any thing that had
not the world in its eyes, I should be at peace at last."
As he paused here, and seemed again to be musing over St. Cecilia,
Esther's curiosity made her put in a word,
"And your wife?"--she asked.
"My wife?" he repeated in his abstracted tone, "I never saw her again
till this morning when I met her on the steps of the church."
"Then it was your wife?" cried Catherine.
"You saw her?" he asked with a touch of bitterness. "I won't ask what
you thought of her."
"I knew her by her eyes," cried Catherine. "I thought she meant to shoot
you, and when you came in I was just going to warn you. Now you see,
Esther, I was right."
Wharton leaned over and took Catherine's hand. "Thank you," said he. "I
believe you are my good angel. But you remind me of what I came to say.
The woman is quite capable of that or of any other scandal, and of
course Hazard's church must not be exposed to such a risk. I shall come
here no longer for the present, neither must you. I am bound to take
care of my friends."
"But you!" said Esther. "What are you going to do?"
"I? Nothing! What can I do?"
"Do you mean," said Catherine, with a comical fierceness in her voice as
though she wanted herself to take the French actress in hand, "do you
mean to let that woman worry you how she likes?"
"The fault was mine," replied Wharton. "I gave her my life. After all
she is my wife and I can't help it. I have promised to meet her this
afternoon at my studio."
Even to these two girls there was something so helpless in Wharton's
ideas of life that they protested against his conduct. Catherine was
speechless with inability to understand what he meant. Esther boldly
interfered.
"You must do nothing without advice," said she. "Wait till Mr. Hazard
comes and consult him. If you can't see him, promise me to go to my
uncle, Mr. Murray, and let him take charge of this woman. You will ruin
your whole life if you let her into it again."
"It is ruined already," answered Wharton gloomily. "I had that one
chance of happiness and I can never have another."
Nevertheless he promised to wait for Hazard, and the two girls
obediently bade him good-by. Catherine's eyes were full of tears as he
held her hand and begged her pardon for his rudeness. A little romance
was passing out of her life. She went down the stairs after Esther
without a word. As they left the church they saw the woman on the
pavement outside, still walking up and down; Catherine passed her with a
glance of repulsion and defiance that made the woman turn and watch her
till they disappeared down the avenue.
An hour afterwards a quick step hurried up the stair, and Hazard,
evidently much disturbed, appeared on the scaffolding. He found Wharton
where the two girls had left him, sitting alone before St. Cecilia, the
broken brush still in his hands, and his left hand red with the wet
paint. His face was paler than ever, and over the left temple was a
large red spot, as though he had been pressing his hands to his
forehead. Hazard looked for a moment at the white face, contrasting
painfully with its ghastly spot of intense red, and then spoke with
assumed indifference:
"So she has turned up again!"
Wharton returned his look with a weak smile which made his face still
more horrible, and slowly answered:
"I have worse news than that!"
"More bad news!" said Hazard.
"Tell me what you think," continued Wharton in the same dreamy tone.
"You see that Cecilia there?"
Hazard glanced at the figure and back to Wharton without speaking.
Presently Wharton added with a smile of inexpressible content:
"Well! I love her."
_Chapter VI_
Esther's regrets on quitting her work at the church lasted not so long
as Catherine's, though they were more serious. She had already begun to
feel alarmed about her father's condition, and nothing but his positive
order had induced her to leave him even for a few hours every day. She
had seen that his strength steadily failed; he suffered paroxysms of
pain; he lost consciousness more than once; and although he insisted to
the last on acting as though he were well, his weakness increased until
he could no longer sit out a game of whist, but was forced to lie on the
sofa in his library where he liked to see every visitor who came to the
house. He required that every thing about him should go on as usual, and
not only made Esther go regularly to her work, but took keen interest in
hearing from her and Catherine all that was said and done at the church.
He delighted in laughing at Catherine about her romantic relations with
Wharton, but he made no jokes about Mr. Hazard. He thought from the
first that this intimacy might be a serious matter for Esther, but he
would not again interfere in her affairs, and feared making things worse
by noticing them. He watched Hazard sharply, until Esther had the
uncomfortable sense of feeling that her father's eyes were never far
away from the clergyman when he came to the house. She knew, or fancied
she knew, every thought in her father's mind, and his silence
embarrassed her more than criticism could have done. She asked herself
in vain why her father, disliking the clergy as she knew he did, should
suddenly admit a clergyman into his intimacy. In truth, Mr. Dudley
looked on himself as no longer having a right to speak; his feelings and
prejudices were to be kept out of her life; but he could watch, and the
longer he watched, the more intense his interest became.
When Esther and Catherine returned from the church with their account of
Wharton's wife, their first act was to tell the story to Mr. Dudley, who
lay on his sofa and listened with keen interest.
"I suppose you meant to come back for my revolver," said he to
Catherine, whose little explosions of courage always amused him. "I
think I could almost have crawled round to see you take a shot at your
French friend as she started for you."
"Oh, no!" said Catherine modestly. "I would have given the revolver to
Mr. Wharton."
"Don't do it, Catherine! Wharton could not hit the church door with it.
Suppose he had shot you instead of the other woman!"
"Of course!" said Catherine reflectively. "He wouldn't know how to use a
revolver, would he? I suppose I ought to teach him."
"Better not!" said Mr. Dudley. "Keep him under. You may have to talk
with him one of these days, after you have settled your little
misunderstanding with his wife."
Catherine took chaff with such gravity that even Mr. Dudley could not
always make out whether she was in jest or earnest. She had a quaint,
serious way of accepting any sort of challenge and going it better, as
Strong expressed it, which left her assailants wholly in the dark. Mr.
Dudley wanted to stop any romantic nonsense between her and Wharton, but
could never quite make out whether she cared for him or not. Esther
thought not.
That evening they all hoped that Hazard would come in to tell them what
other scenes had occurred, and, under this little excitement, Mr. Dudley
felt strong enough to appear like himself, although he dared not rise
from his sofa. At about eight o'clock they were gratified. Mr. Hazard
appeared, and was received with such cordiality and intimacy as went far
to make him feel himself a member of the family.
"Thank you," said Mr. Dudley. "We have done nothing but run to the
watch-tower to see if you were coming. Tell us quickly the ghastly news.
We are prepared for the worst."
"If you read Turgenieff," replied Hazard, "you can imagine the kind of
experience we have had. I feel as though I had stolen a chapter from one
of his stories."
"No matter! Spoil it promptly! We never read any thing."
"May I have first a cup of tea, Miss Dudley? Thank you! That woman has
left a taste on my palate that all the tea in China will never wash off.
Where shall I begin?"
"Where we left off," said Esther. "We left Mr. Wharton in the church at
eleven o'clock, and the woman marching up and down outside."
"At noon I found her there, and knew her at once, though it is ten years
since I last saw her. She is a person whom one does not forget. I asked
her what she wanted. It seemed that Wharton, in his confusion, had told
her to come to his studio without saying where it was; and she was
waiting for him to come out again. I gave her the address and sent her
away. Then I went up to Wharton whom I found in a strange state of mind;
he seemed dazed and showed no interest in the affair. He would not talk
of his wife at all until I forced him. At length, after a struggle, as
he said that Miss Dudley had told him to go to her uncle, Mr. Murray, I
got him into a carriage and we drove to Mr. Murray's office. The upshot
was that Mr. Murray and I took the matter into our hands and decided to
meet the woman ourselves in his company. At the hour fixed, we went, all
three of us, to the studio.