Beaton wasted the rest of the day in the emotions and speculations which
Dryfoos's call inspired. It was not that they continuously occupied him,
but they broke up the train of other thoughts, and spoiled him for work;
a very little spoiled Beaton for work; he required just the right mood
for work. He comprehended perfectly well that Dryfoos had made him that
extraordinary embassy because he wished him to renew his visits, and he
easily imagined the means that had brought him to this pass. From what he
knew of that girl he did not envy her father his meeting with her when he
must tell her his mission had failed. But had it failed? When Beaton came
to ask himself this question, he could only perceive that he and Dryfoos
had failed to find any ground of sympathy, and had parted in the same
dislike with which they had met. But as to any other failure, it was
certainly tacit, and it still rested with him to give it effect. He could
go back to Dryfoos's house, as freely as before, and it was clear that he
was very much desired to come back. But if he went back it was also clear
that he must go back with intentions more explicit than before, and now
he had to ask himself just how much or how little he had meant by going
there. His liking for Christine had certainly not increased, but the
charm, on the other hand, of holding a leopardess in leash had not yet
palled upon him. In his life of inconstancies, it was a pleasure to rest
upon something fixed, and the man who had no control over himself liked
logically enough to feel his control of some one else. The fact cannot
other wise be put in terms, and the attraction which Christine Dryfoos
had for him, apart from this, escapes from all terms, as anything purely
and merely passional must. He had seen from the first that she was a cat,
and so far as youth forecasts such things, he felt that she would be a
shrew. But he had a perverse sense of her beauty, and he knew a sort of
life in which her power to molest him with her temper could be reduced to
the smallest proportions, and even broken to pieces. Then the
consciousness of her money entered. It was evident that the old man had
mentioned his millions in the way of a hint to him of what he might
reasonably expect if he would turn and be his son-in-law. Beaton did not
put it to himself in those words; and in fact his cogitations were not in
words at all. It was the play of cognitions, of sensations, formlessly
tending to the effect which can only be very clumsily interpreted in
language. But when he got to this point in them, Beaton rose to
magnanimity and in a flash of dramatic reverie disposed of a part of
Dryfoos's riches in placing his father and mother, and his brothers and
sisters, beyond all pecuniary anxiety forever. He had no shame, no
scruple in this, for he had been a pensioner upon others ever since a
Syracusan amateur of the arts had detected his talent and given him the
money to go and study abroad. Beaton had always considered the money a
loan, to be repaid out of his future success; but he now never dreamt of
repaying it; as the man was rich, he had even a contempt for the notion
of repaying him; but this did not prevent him from feeling very keenly
the hardships he put his father to in borrowing money from him, though he
never repaid his father, either. In this reverie he saw himself
sacrificed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos, in a kind of admiring
self-pity, and he was melted by the spectacle of the dignity with which
he suffered all the lifelong trials ensuing from his unselfishness. The
fancy that Alma Leighton came bitterly to regret him, contributed to
soothe and flatter him, and he was not sure that Margaret. Vance did not
suffer a like loss in him.
There had been times when, as he believed, that beautiful girl's high
thoughts had tended toward him; there had been looks, gestures, even
words, that had this effect to him, or that seemed to have had it; and
Beaton saw that he might easily construe Mrs. Horn's confidential appeal
to him to get Margaret interested in art again as something by no means
necessarily offensive, even though it had been made to him as to a master
of illusion. If Mrs. Horn had to choose between him and the life of good
works to which her niece was visibly abandoning herself, Beaton could not
doubt which she would choose; the only question was how real the danger
of a life of good works was.
As he thought of these two girls, one so charming and the other so
divine, it became indefinitely difficult to renounce them for Christine
Dryfoos, with her sultry temper and her earthbound ideals. Life had been
so flattering to Beaton hitherto that he could not believe them both
finally indifferent; and if they were not indifferent, perhaps he did not
wish either of them to be very definite. What he really longed for was
their sympathy; for a man who is able to walk round quite ruthlessly on
the feelings of others often has very tender feelings of his own, easily
lacerated, and eagerly responsive to the caresses of compassion. In this
frame Beaton determined to go that afternoon, though it was not Mrs.
Horn's day, and call upon her in the hope of possibly seeing Miss Vance
alone. As he continued in it, he took this for a sign and actually went.
It did not fall out at once as he wished, but he got Mrs. Horn to talking
again about her niece, and Mrs. Horn again regretted that nothing could
be done by the fine arts to reclaim Margaret from good works.
"Is she at home? Will you let me see her?" asked Beaton, with something
of the scientific interest of a physician inquiring for a patient whose
symptoms have been rehearsed to him. He had not asked for her before.
"Yes, certainly," said Mrs. Horn, and she went herself to call Margaret,
and she did not return with her. The girl entered with the gentle grace
peculiar to her; and Beaton, bent as he was on his own consolation, could
not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look. At sight
of her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that they might
be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart. She wore
black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received a
nun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face. "Decidedly,"
thought Beaton, "she is far gone in good works."
But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at
once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt.
He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back
upon possibilities which she ought not to neglect.
"You know very well," she answered, "that I couldn't do anything in that
way worth the time I should waste on it. Don't talk of it, please. I
suppose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but it's no use. I'm
sorry it's no use, she wishes it so much; but I'm not sorry otherwise.
You can find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it; but I
couldn't find anything in it but a barren amusement. Mr. Wetmore is
right; for me, it's like enjoying an opera, or a ball."
"That's one of Wetmore's phrases. He'd sacrifice anything to them."
She put aside the whole subject with a look. "You were not at Mr.
Dryfoos's the other day. Have you seen them, any of them, lately?"
"I haven't been there for some time, no," said Beaton, evasively. But he
thought if he was to get on to anything, he had better be candid. "Mr.
Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He's got a queer notion. He wants
me to paint his son's portrait."