BEFORE A PORTRAIT BY SARGENT
Wayne Craighill’s education had been planned by his father on broad
lines. The Craighills had of old been Presbyterians, but Colonel
Craighill was no bigot; therefore, in keeping with his generous
attitude in such matters, Wayne was sent to a preparatory school in
Vermont conducted under Episcopalian auspices. Moreover, the head of
St. John’s was a personal friend, whom Colonel Craighill knew well.
Nothing could be better for the boy than a few years spent under the
eye of the famous master. The transition from the Presbyterianism
in which he was born to the High Church school was abrupt. The very
vocabulary of worship was different; the choral services in the
beautiful chapel appealed to his emotional nature, and he found a
quiet joy in his own participation in the singing when he attained
in due course to a place in the orderly offices of the choir. From
the preparatory school Wayne went to the Institute of Technology. His
mother had pleaded for the law; but Colonel Craighill pointed out the
superiority of scientific education in a day when science guarded so
many of the approaches to success. And Wayne, born among the iron
hills, was persuaded that his best course lay in fitting himself for
a career in keeping with the greatest interests of his native state,
and so his father prevailed, and Wayne had, not without much stress
and resistance of spirit, taken his degree in science. Certain aspects
of mining, and of the chemistry of the forge had appealed to him, but
rather to his strong imagination than to any practical use he saw in
his knowledge. He had spent a summer in a large colliery, obedient
to his father’s wish that the young man should apply and test theory
before he had a chance to forget the teaching of the schools; and Wayne
had entered into this with relish. But while he had taken into his own
strong hands every tool used in mine labour, and fed boiler furnaces
and sat by the scales in weigh houses, he had shared also the social
life of the world of coal. He had spent his evenings in the saloons
of the mine village, talking and drinking with the miners in a spirit
of democracy that won their affections. His violence when drunk had
first manifested itself at this period. He was so big and powerful that
the fierce reinforcement of his natural strength by drink made him a
terror. He had once run wild through the long black lane of a mine,
driving an electric motor and train of wallowing mine cars, captured
after a fight from their lawful conductors, smashing finally a line of
coal pillars with a force that might have shaken the huge cave down
upon him.
So far as his own aptitude and taste were concerned his education went
for naught. The Homeric, picturesque side of industrial Pennsylvania
appealed to him. The wresting of the enormous latent power from the
hills; the sky lighted by the glow of multitudinous ovens and furnaces;
the roar and shriek of machinery; the grimy toilers at their moulding
and tempering--these and like phenomena touched his imagination, and
he cared little for their practical side while they were so much more
captivating as panorama than as trade. We need not deal in unprofitable
speculations as to what a different education might have made of Wayne
Craighill; for an intelligent appreciation of books and pictures and
a love of music are too easily confused with genius. Let it suffice
that some playful god had injected into his blood a drop of the divine
essence, enough merely to visit upon him the fleeting moods of the
dreamer and the restless longings of those who seek the light that
never was.
His nature was compounded of many elements of good and evil. Taste,
delicacy, fine feeling, he had in abundance; he was sensitive to
the appeal of beautiful things. In fits of solitude and industry he
would read voraciously; many subjects awakened his curiosity. But
his passions were strong and deep, and they had their way with him.
Again, his restraint and measure were surprising. Wingfield, who knew
him best of all, was amazed at times by the sobriety and wisdom of
Wayne’s judgments. We have said that he was the child of his city; more
than this, he not unfitly expressed its genius, its confused aims,
its weaknesses and its aspirations. The iron of the hills was in his
blood; and iron, let us remember, has the merit as well as the defects
of its qualities!
Joe drove Wayne to the Modern Art Institute in the machine. He went
early to have a glimpse of several recent additions to the collection
before the meeting of the orchestra committee, and later he was to go
to his sister’s.
The peace of the quiet gallery enfolded him gratefully. He paid his
respects to old favourites, saving a half-hour for the new arrivals.
Dick Wingfield’s mother, convoying two girls, was among the other
visitors. He had reached a point at which, half-unconsciously, he gave
the women he knew an opportunity to cut him if they wished. The two
girls became rather obviously intent upon the upper line of canvasses
as he passed them. They were the daughters of his father’s neighbours;
they had known him all their lives, and yet they deliberately turned
their backs upon him. He had paused, a little resentful, a little
ashamed, in a farther corner, when Mrs. Wingfield drew near and spoke
to him. She had been one of his mother’s intimate friends and she
touched him gently on the arm.
“I am glad to see you, Wayne. We very rarely meet any more. I wish you
would come to see me.”
She was so gentle, the meaning of her kindness struck so deep that he
flushed as he took her hand.
“I have never lost faith in you, Wayne.”
“Thank you; you’re the only one, then, Mrs. Wingfield. You and Dick are
about all I have left.”
“Who is this woman your father is marrying?” she demanded with sudden
asperity.
“A lady, of course. What would you expect of my father?”
“I would expect him to be like all the other old fools,” she declared.
“A woman like your mother, Wayne Craighill, can have no successor.”
She still clasped his hand lightly, and he bent over her with
deferential courtesy.
“I hope he is marrying a good woman for your sake--and Fanny’s.”
“Father wouldn’t marry any other kind; you may be sure of that,”
laughed Wayne.
“I don’t know anything of the kind. I have waited a good many years
to see your father do something outrageous and now I’m going to be
satisfied. Who is this person, anyhow?”
“I positively decline to hear my future stepmother spoken of as a
person!”
“I dare say the word flatters her. I’m telling all your mother’s old
friends that we’ve got to cut the woman on principle.”
“The town will sit at her feet. You will yourself call upon her the day
of her arrival.”
“Not unless I’m insane, Wayne Craighill! The newspapers everywhere
are making us out the wickedest city in the world, and between stock
gambling and poker and divorces and worse we’re undoubtedly going to
the bad. It’s time for us old settlers to assert ourselves. This woman
your father is going to marry _may_ be perfectly respectable, but I
decline to know her.”
With this declaration Mrs. Wingfield rejoined her charges who hovered
discreetly in a far corner in the belief that she was lecturing Wayne
Craighill upon his sins. Wayne had been touched by her kindness in
speaking to him when other women in her own circle were cutting him;
and the encounter left him brooding upon his father’s marriage.
He wondered whether his mother’s friends would really show any
resentment at the coming of his father’s new wife. He had watched such
cases before and was skeptical. His father was a man of far-reaching
business interests, and while there were women like Mrs. Wingfield
who were courageous enough themselves to support a sentiment, their
husbands would counsel caution and advise against incurring the
ill-will of a man of Colonel Craighill’s wealth and influence. He had
the gallery to himself for a few minutes and sat down before one of the
more important new portraits that he had particularly wished to see. He
could not fix his mind upon it, but sat staring at the canvas.
A young woman had entered the hall and was moving slowly along the line
studying the pictures with the greatest intentness. She was without hat
or coat and carried in her hand a tablet and pencil. She quite obscured
now the portrait at which he had been staring vacantly; it seemed, for
an instant, before his eyes accommodated themselves to the intrusion
of her interposed figure, that she had slipped into the canvas itself.
The lady of the portrait, in her sumptuous evening toilet, was not,
however, long to be confused with this girl in her plain cloth skirt
and simple shirt-waist. She was studying the portrait critically, her
head tilting now to one side, now to another, as she surveyed the great
artist’s work. Her movements were swift and eager, and she made, he
thought, an obeisance of reverence before the lady’s portrait; but she
remained crouched upon one knee and upon the other held her tablet
and sketched rapidly with her pencil. He had at first thought her an
attachée of the gallery, but now he surmised that she was a student
of the art school, rendering homage before a picture whose charm and
technical perfection commanded her admiration. It was a worthy object
for anyone’s homage, Wayne knew, as he surveyed it over the girl’s dark
head. He sat very quiet, fearing that he might disturb her, glancing
from the richly clad lady in the frame to her kneeling figure. Her
shirt-waist was plain and of cheap material; the skirt disclosed a
coarse shoe that had clearly been bought for service. Poor girls with
ambitions in the arts did not appeal to him abstractly; there was never
any chance of their getting anywhere. But he was, it cannot be denied,
a man who rarely missed an opportunity where women are concerned. His
adventures had been many and discreditable. He had tried his powers
often and had the conceit of his successes. He was already seeking some
excuse for addressing her.
Suddenly she rose, with a little hopeless sigh, crumpling the sketch in
her fingers.
“Sargent didn’t do it either, the first time,” remarked Wayne.
“No,” she replied, her eyes wistfully upon the picture, “I suppose he
didn’t.”
She did not look at him; but he was studying her face, which was
still rounded in girlish lines. She was wonderfully fair, of the
type distinguished by close texture of skin and faintest colour
beneath,--the merest hint of colour, subdued, half-revealed, vague,
like the pink shadow in white roses. Her eyes at once arrested and held
his attention. They were blue--the indefinable blue of sun-flooded
mid-sea--and her dark head had not prepared him for this. She looked
at him gravely once, but, with the portrait still in her eyes, only
half seeing him. The dejection of the young aspirant who gazes upon
an achievement he feels to be immeasurably beyond his own powers
was written upon her face. Wayne had expected that she would show
embarrassment when he revealed himself, but her indifference piqued
him. Here, clearly, was no subject for easy conquest. She seemed
sincerely interested in the beautiful painting before which they stood,
and perhaps, after all, she was not the usual paint-smearing trifler,
but a serious student. She spoke further of the portrait, and he had
now a half-amused sense that she was speaking to herself rather than
to him. He was, in a way, a lay figure, to be suffered for a moment as
though he were as wooden as the bench from which he had risen.
“I was trying to copy the hand--the fifth time to-day--and I simply
can’t do it. As it rests on the arm of the chair--there--it is
perfectly natural; but I can’t get it; I simply can’t.”
She uncrumpled her sketch and glanced at it again; then with fresh
disdain she shut her hand upon it. Her pencil dropped and he picked it
up. The point was broken. She put out her hand for it but he looked at
it ruefully.
“If you can wait a moment I will sharpen it for you.”
“No, thank you. I must get my things and go.”
“But to leave the gallery with a spoiled sketch and a broken point to
your pencil would be most unfortunate. If you will hold the paper to
catch the shavings I’ll sharpen it in a jiffy. Then you can go away
armed for another day’s attack. To retreat now, discouraged, with a
pointless pencil would never do in the world.”
He laughed his pleasure in the encounter. She carried her dark head
a little high; and now that he looked directly into her eyes there
hovered in them the faintest hint of gray that further strengthened the
suggestion of the sea.
“I am not the least superstitious,” she said.
“But I am! As a friend of art I could not think of allowing you to
leave with a broken pencil. Something would undoubtedly happen to you
on the way home.”
He had caught her attention; his manner was half mocking, half serious;
and he drew out his knife to prolong the interview. Flattery spoke in
his words and manner: Wayne Craighill was not ignorant of the way of a
man with a maid. The girl held the paper while he sharpened the pencil
deliberately, and she took careful note of him and his belongings.
“We must be very careful not to drop the shavings. The curator would
make a terrible row about it. Now that we seem to be alone, with a
knife in our possession, we might cut this portrait out of its frame
and you could take it home to study at your leisure. Rolled up, you
could carry it right out of the front door, and the newspapers would
have a seven days’ wonder, the stolen Sargent! There! Not a bad job if
I do say it myself.”
He handed her the pencil and took from her the paper with its shavings
and lead dust.
“Now, it’s only fair that I should have your sketch for my trouble!
I shall keep it as a slight souvenir--of the beginning--of our
acquaintance----”
He was folding it carefully to hold the litter, and he glanced up to
find that she had flushed angrily.
“Give it to me, please.”
“But really----”
“Give it to me!”
“I beg your pardon.”
She held out her hand and he placed the little packet in her palm. It
was, he saw, a hand that had known labour. It was a long hand and a
hand of strength, and as he was mindful of such matters, it impressed
itself upon his memory.
“Thank you,” she said, and turned away.
“I am sorry I made you angry. I did not mean to do that. I come here
quite often. I hope I shall see you again. Some day you will catch the
trick of the lady’s hand. I’m sure of that.”
His tone was kind, his manner ingratiating; the meeting was altogether
to his liking--from such a beginning he had often gone far. This girl
bore the marks of cultivation; it was in her voice, her manner, the
poise of her splendid head. She was poor--that was evident--but this
was no barrier; her poverty presented, in fact, an avenue of access.
It had been his experience that the bold approach was the surest. She
was already moving away, carrying her head high, the anger still in her
face, and he followed her.
“Please don’t be too hard on me,” he begged; and she stopped and looked
at him, looked at him with frank curiosity that turned, as their eyes
met, to a scorn not less frank.
“I don’t care for your acquaintance, Mr. Wayne Craighill,” she said
with all composure, and walked hurriedly from the room.
He was fully sensible of the contempt with which she had spoken his
name, a name that was odious to clean women in this city of his
birth. He mused upon this fact as he started toward the door through
which she had vanished; he was a notorious character whom people
of all classes knew by sight and reputation. She had, he imagined,
suffered him to speak to her only that she might see for herself
how contemptible man might become. The girl’s scorn emphasized his
degradation. She was unknown and poor, but he had sunk so low that even
poverty and obscurity shrank from him. Those simpering young things who
had cut him a little while before, those bread and butter misses who
reflected merely the meticulous virtue of their own social order, did
not matter. But this young woman with her labour-roughened hands had
widened the gulf between him and decency with a glance, a turn of the
head, a word. Her words continued to mock him as he left the gallery
and descended the stairway to the orchestra board’s room below. He kept
wondering what musical instrument her voice suggested and the thought
of her was so enthralling that he passed the committee room and did not
come to himself until a guard touched his cap and pointed him to the
door.
He and Wingfield were the only members of the board who appeared
to-day, as frequently happened. Wayne sat down at a window to discuss
the programmes that had been submitted by the orchestra director, which
Wingfield now proceeded to tear to pieces.
“That Dutchman’s idea of popular music is certainly exquisite. We’re
not going to appeal to the primitive tastes of our dear fellow-citizens
by larding a Wagnerian programme with the Blue Danube waltz and the
Bon-Ton two-step. And Mendelssohn’s Spring Song as a harp solo is too
stale. We’re going to keep on shoving symphonies into the people of our
dear city this winter as you shovel coal into a furnace. Well, what
now?”
Wayne’s glance, straying to the street through the window by which they
sat, had fallen upon the girl whom he had left in the gallery a moment
before. She had emerged from the main entrance of the building and was
moving off briskly. But what had drawn an exclamation from Craighill
was the appearance upon the scene of a man who seemed to have been
waiting and who now followed the girl at a discreet distance. It was,
beyond question, Joe, Wayne’s chauffeur, whom he had dismissed for the
day an hour before.
Wingfield, following Wayne’s glance, saw only the girl, now passing
rapidly out of sight.
“Who’s your Diana, Wayne? She has the stride of a goddess and carries
her head as though she had just brushed the rest of the deities off
Olympus.”
“I don’t know her,” said Craighill, and changed the subject.