“Let the red dawn surmise
What we shall do,
When this blue starlight dies
And all is through.”
I
There are so many things which are impossible to explain! Why should
certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of
autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile bend my thoughts
wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin
silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o’clock
that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest
where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half
curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: “To
think that this also is a little ward of God!”
When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I looked at him
indifferently until he went into the church. I paid no more attention
to him than I had to any other man who lounged through Washington
Square that morning, and when I shut my window and turned back into
my studio I had forgotten him. Late in the afternoon, the day being
warm, I raised the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air.
A man was standing in the courtyard of the church, and I noticed him
again with as little interest as I had that morning. I looked across
the square to where the fountain was playing and then, with my mind
filled with vague impressions of trees, asphalt drives, and the moving
groups of nursemaids and holiday-makers, I started to walk back to
my easel. As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in
the churchyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly
involuntary movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised
his head and looked at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm.
Whatever it was about the man that repelled me I did not know, but the
impression of a plump white grave-worm was so intense and nauseating
that I must have shown it in my expression, for he turned his puffy
face away with a movement which made me think of a disturbed grub in a
chestnut.
I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose.
After working a while I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had
done as rapidly as possible, and I took up a palette knife and scraped
the colour out again. The flesh tones were sallow and unhealthy, and I
did not understand how I could have painted such sickly colour into a
study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.
I looked at Tessie. She had not changed, and the clear flush of health
dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.
“Is it something I’ve done?” she said.
“No,—I’ve made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me I can’t see
how I came to paint such mud as that into the canvas,” I replied.
“Don’t I pose well?” she insisted.
“Of course, perfectly.”
“Then it’s not my fault?”
“No. It’s my own.”
“I am very sorry,” she said.
I told her she could rest while I applied rag and turpentine to the
plague spot on my canvas, and she went off to smoke a cigarette and
look over the illustrations in the _Courrier Français_.
I did not know whether it was something in the turpentine or a defect
in the canvas, but the more I scrubbed the more that gangrene seemed
to spread. I worked like a beaver to get it out, and yet the disease
appeared to creep from limb to limb of the study before me. Alarmed, I
strove to arrest it, but now the colour on the breast changed and the
whole figure seemed to absorb the infection as a sponge soaks up water.
Vigorously I plied palette-knife, turpentine, and scraper, thinking
all the time what a _séance_ I should hold with Duval who had sold me
the canvas; but soon I noticed that it was not the canvas which was
defective nor yet the colours of Edward. “It must be the turpentine,” I
thought angrily, “or else my eyes have become so blurred and confused
by the afternoon light that I can’t see straight.” I called Tessie, the
model. She came and leaned over my chair blowing rings of smoke into
the air.
“What _have_ you been doing to it?” she exclaimed.
“Nothing,” I growled, “it must be this turpentine!”
“What a horrible colour it is now,” she continued. “Do you think my
flesh resembles green cheese?”
“No, I don’t,” I said angrily; “did you ever know me to paint like that
before?”
“No, indeed!”
“Well, then!”
“It must be the turpentine, or something,” she admitted.
She slipped on a Japanese robe and walked to the window. I scraped and
rubbed until I was tired, and finally picked up my brushes and hurled
them through the canvas with a forcible expression, the tone alone of
which reached Tessie’s ears.
Nevertheless she promptly began: “That’s it! Swear and act silly and
ruin your brushes! You have been three weeks on that study, and now
look! What’s the good of ripping the canvas? What creatures artists
are!”
I felt about as much ashamed as I usually did after such an outbreak,
and I turned the ruined canvas to the wall. Tessie helped me clean my
brushes, and then danced away to dress. From the screen she regaled me
with bits of advice concerning whole or partial loss of temper, until,
thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented sufficiently, she came out to
implore me to button her waist where she could not reach it on the
shoulder.
“Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the window and
talked about that horrid-looking man you saw in the churchyard,” she
announced.
“Yes, he probably bewitched the picture,” I said, yawning. I looked at
my watch.
“It’s after six, I know,” said Tessie, adjusting her hat before the
mirror.
“Yes,” I replied, “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” I leaned out
of the window but recoiled with disgust, for the young man with the
pasty face stood below in the churchyard. Tessie saw my gesture of
disapproval and leaned from the window.
“Is that the man you don’t like?” she whispered.