The Blue Ridge

Home

14. His Cut-Back



The man from "out North" was unprepared for the advent of the annual blackberry-blossom storm. Some time during the night the winds had marshaled their heaviest storm-clouds in the sky; by daybreak were driving a slantwise deluge that made the trees writhe, and beat down completely fern and bush. Already the creek could be heard lashing about in attempts to escape punishment. From the makeshift shelter behind, Teetotaler sounded an occasional snorted protest.

Smoking a pipe just inside the open front doorway, the shut-in watched the spectacle with equivocal interest and dismay. In time, however, the fantastic shapes of the cloud battalion, the kaleidoscopic tints in the shrapnel of rain, the poor spirit - or was it wisdom - of the growing things that offered no resistance grew monotonous. He closed both doors and lit the candles.

When the fire cheered up, he set himself, with what skill he could summon, to the manufacture of an omelette which, in view of the energy expended in fluffing and flapping it, ought to have tempted his appetite. But it was sad as the day. It oozed futile tears. He grew disgusted with it as he partook of it.

At last he plumped both elbows upon the table and permitted himself to brood. The fact that his eyes were gazing straight at Sylvia's latest, framed in a purple leather stand, gave license for this lapse from cheer.

Cause enough for a man to brood - looking at Sylvia's picture - the man who was away! Why had he not appreciated her rarity in time to save himself this torture-cure? The only possible excuse he could think of was that from childhood he had grown used to Sylvia. When had he not been leashed by a preference for her, from the little-boyhood days when her fairy-princess fluff of silver hair had always been waving like the banner of a knight just ahead of him; through the college vacations, when he had found her a debutante, with sentiment beginning to make mystery in her violet eyes; after his return from the dissipations and art struggles under the tutelage of French masters, when her fragile loveliness and reserve of manner had roused him to a protectorate not felt in any of his crasser, Latin Quarter affairs?

On that culminative * Varnishing day" at the Academy, when he was paid tribute as "perhaps the most promising of our younger American artists," it had seemed fitting that his triumph should be a portrait of Sylvia as the one whitest lily-of-the-valley, gleaming from a vague, fanciful background of many of the same - not one so elusive, so exotically sweet as she.

His technique had been mentioned as "inspired" - but inspired, as he had acknowledged both to himself and to Sylvia, by his lifetime of looking at her. Their engagement had been the most natural development in the world, approved by the two families and society. That it had developed into a long one had been tacitly understood by every one to be a punishment for his growing self-indulgence with the cup.

Once, in the reaction after a conspicuous social contretemps, he had pointed that marriage might "brace him up." For the first time she had mentioned her jealousy of his habit. Wine was her rival, she acknowledged prettily. Until he had worn out the other love, she dared not trust herself to him. She was content to wait. Time enough to settle down, she had declared, after both had had their fling. So the days and months, even years, had piled upon each other until ---

Parker's elbows straightened along the deal table; his chin continued heavy in his hands; his cheek flattened against the boards in the prostration of his memories.

The shack was stuffy from the fire, thick with tobacco smoke, unpleasantly odorous from spent candles and cookery. One after another the lights went out. The wet logs on the hearth succeeded at last in spitting out the fire. With darkness Calvin Parker fell into an unhappy dose.

Some one laid violent hands upon his shoulders, shook him to an unsteady stand. He muttered resentfully and stared about. He was in his own studio, where he had been the last he remembered. The old-gold walls with their frames of brown-andbronze, the pet Persian rugs, the costly this and that fancied in his travels - all were recognizable.

Then, too, it was Spencer Pope, his closest friend, who had acted as alarm-clock. He mumbled a recognitlon of this fact as he shambled to one of the windows that overlooked the park and threw it up for air. When he faced again toward the huge, beautiful room, he pressed both hands against his temples, which were throbbing.

"What a head!" he murmured, not complainingly, but as one states the infliction of an undeserved ill. "Last night must have been some night - some night!"

Disapproval, dark upon Pope's face, gave color to his tone.

"Why, on the eve of the most Important day in your career, couldn't you have let the trouble-stuff alone? You're in fine fettle, aren't you, to show your winter's work to the world this afternoon? Of course your personal appearance and habits won't influence the experts and critics, but it will the fashionables, from whom your future commissions must come. You look like a poster of 'A Night Out.' For Sylvia's sake, you might have held in until your exhibition tea was over."

Parker tried a jaunty air, only to realize Its failure.

"Had every intention of doing so," he defended. "Forgot my lunch in the varnishing of those two last portraits until too late to get It served here. Taxied down to the Van Vliet for a bite. Only had two or three to rest up on and a lone little bottle with my smelts and tartar. Pd hav§ been all right if a bunch of those velvet-coats and croppedhair 'partners' hadn't dropped in. They're always so overpoweringly cordial with a chap who has cash enough in pocket to pay the checks. I was billed to take Sylvia to the opera and had to dress, so I guess I must have been pretty late getting back uptown."

"You were." Pope nodded with grim effect. "At nine o'clock last night she telephoned for me."

"For you - why for you, Spence?"

"A queen wants some courtier dangling around the throne steps. Sylvia asked me to fill in - to take your place, as It were." )

A smile was on the deputy collector's good-looking face, a rather strange smile, partly of self-depreciation and partly of - could it be triumph? Parker noticed it and paused a moment to ponder, then promptly gave it up. Let good old Spence smile, if he could; how did It matter just what he was smiling at?

"Went alone to the Winter Palace and afterward to supper at Fred's. Don't remember much after that. Since the morning-after face of that clock says It's noon, I must have got home somewhere in the late earlies."

Pope continued to smile that strange smile of his.

"And by the early lates - to be exact, by three o'clock this afternoon," he said, "you have to be in form to receive the super-ultras of the art set and their self-tagged devotees I"

At this Parker managed mirth-sounds of some buoyancy.

"Don't look so sour about It, friend mentor. The four portraits are varnished, I tell you - finished to the last hair of the last eyebrow."

"But, Gal, if you could see yourself! You look like "

Parker waved a soothing hand. "My boy, do you think Mrs. Mllllonbucks Pembroke Is going to hold my looks against me when she sees herself In oils of my spreading, admired by all her crowd? Or Captain Mayflower Hannah, or old Mortgageon-the-World Flint, or my own lUy-of-the-valley lady?"

''Don't class Sylvia with your other sitters," Pope objected. "Sometimes, Cal, you seem positively odious in your cast-Iron assurance that nothing you do can affect her good opinion."

"Of course I'm no fit object for a fiancee's eyes just now, Spence, but by that third early-late I'll be - well, an expurgated edition. Just ten minutes under the shower, a once-over shave, a jolt of rye,

my breakfast, and a pipe While I set about

working the miracle, won't you give down-stairs a ring for a grape-fruit, sans sugar; a pot of black coffee; three two-minute eggs and a flock of unbuttered toast? That's a good fellow."

Parker started for the annex to the studio proper that held his living quarters. At the door he paused and interrupted his friend's grudging manipulation of the telephone.

"Strange," he remarked, "that I should be wearing this smock! I've often got up fully dressed, but never before in a smock. Wonder why In Sam Hill "

"That's all - and hurry It, please."

He heard the finish of Pope's order before turning on the water. On turning it off he heard the finish of what evidently had been a second call upon the wire.

"The sooner the better for both him and you. But I want you to see him at his worst - you ought to know why. Yes, I'll wait. Until seeing you, then."

He did not understand until later. Even then he did not quite see why Spencer, his friend, had taken the initiative and should wish his fiancee to see him "at his worst."

When he presently emerged into the studio he felt somewhat better, and the critical deputy expressed himself as amazed by the transformation. Then, too, Sylvia looked exceptionally beautiful as she swept in, earlier than he could have hoped, but dressed for the exhibition tea. Small, fragile of figure, yet aglow with health, dainty as dawn in her blush-rose crepe, she divided her greetings, her inquiries, her wavery smiles between the two men.

Humility overtook Parker that he should be allowed to look at anything so fresh and fragrant after the chaotic depths of last night. Sylvia always seemed the more desirable after a debauch with his "other love." He longed to kiss the lips that were so tolerant of his fault, but, with Pope present, touched only her finger-tips. That, he felt, was much more than he deserved.

Sylvia was seldom demonstrative, having been reared to the Idea that it was enough for her to be\ but an exclamation of relief escaped her at his appearance.

"You don't look half as bad as Spence - that is, as I expected - not half!"

Her reproachful glance at their "mutual friend" renewed Parker's uneasiness over the telephonic fragment he had overheard.

"He's braced up wonderfully In the last hour, as you would appreciate had you arrived when I did," Pope declared. "If you and I are up to police duty, I guess the tea can be pulled off. I've just called up the florist, the caterer, and the musicians - it seems that Cal neglected none of the preliminaries. Everything and body Is on the way."

"I'm so relieved! You gave me something of a shock, Spence, and I do dislike to hurry." She settled in a wing-chair at one side the fireplace, her face lighting exquisitely beneath the large black velvet hat she wore. She lifted her purplish eyes to Parker's.

"Cal," she said quietly, "you know I never have wished to Interfere with what should be your own affair, but Spencer thinks you are getting more or less hopeless on the liquor question. You kept me waiting last night without a word of explanation, and all the telephone booths in New York at your service. If It hadn't been for Spence, I'd have "

"I'm sorry, dear - I'll find some way to make it up to you," Parker interrupted. "But even Spencer Pope hasn't any right to call a man hopeless who does his work before he plays. When you see the way I glorified the Pembroke battle-ax yesterday, you'll understand that I was working at high tension - that in a way I had earned a reaction. And an effect of transparency which I got Into the lily leaves came from last-minute inspiration. You can't work like that and plod like a dray-horse afterward. Don't scold me for falling until you have seen the height from which I fell. Suppose we have a preview of the portraits before the rest arrive?"

She glanced from lover to friend, her unwonted effort at severity already weakened.

Pope, seeing this, arose impatiently and strode to the window. From a stand there he turned, frowning, to Inspect the "defence."

Assuming a briskness which physically, at least, he did not feel, Parker sauntered over to the cord which controlled the purple silk sheet before "The Lady of Lilies," already famed as his masterpiece. He drew upon It tenderly, yet with confidence, for, best of anything he had done, he loved this conception of the woman he loved. He did not look at the canvas In Its wide, flat frame of green goldleaf. His eyes glanced hopefully at Pope's stern face, then settled upon Sylvia's to await the reward of her appreciation of what he hoped was a master-touch.

As the curtain clumped on one side the frame he heard his friends' commingled stutter of amaze, saw the girl's jewel-glittering hand clutch the arm of the wing-chair, lift her to her feet, give her a forward Impulse. He had expected her to be surprised and pleased, but this emotion- her gasp of astonishment, the sudden flush that stained her pure coloring, her trembling, as if she were about to swoon

She stopped half-way across the floor space, a look of horror stiffening her face. One hand wavered upward and covered her features, the other pointed forward. Half the sob of a child, half the wail of a woman, her accusation lifted.

"What - what have you done?"

"What have I done?"

"You've done it, all right!" Was it triumph that sounded In Pope's voice as he hurried to the girl and half-carried her back to her chair?

Her face sank Into both hands. She began to sob.

Fear, unidentified but cruel, clutched at Parker's heart. He strode into the center of the room and turned to face his masterpiece. One glance sent him reeling backward, as he never had reeled when in his cups.

Whence had come this bhght upon his gentle fantasy?

Each leaf and lily of the background, which had been but shadows of suggestion, stood forth in offensive detail, wilted and partially decayed. Each feature of the central flower-face had been mutilated until all sweetness of expression was gone - forehead and nose lengthened, eyes bleared with a look of craft, lips curled with superciliousness, chin weakened. The silver hair, that had shimmered like pale sunlight, now suggested iibrilated ice. Frost had browned and shrunk the sheaf of green-leaf satin from which her shoulders rose. The virgin busts, Into which such a feeling of reverence had been painted, were flattened into an unlovely thinness. Through the illusion gathered modestly over the heart, a jagged, ugly spot could be discerned, in its center a gnawing worm.

The picture remained a portrait, but one ravished by brutal brushes into a powerful caricature.

From the chair into which he had collapsed, Parker studied the details of this travesty on the most exquisite woman he knew. When able, he glanced around at Sylvia and Pope.

The girl lifted her face and returned his look, her lips opening, as If to speak, but uttering no sound. The man looked disgusted, yet alert - looked to be thinking hard.

"As you know, I was out all last night," said Parker In a lagging voice. "Some one must have broken in.

"You have an enemy - perhaps a rival artist?" faltered Sylvia.

Parker did not answer. A new perception stopped him. His eyes had followed the deputy's to where the smock which he had awakened wearing lay huddled on the floor of his dressing-room. Upon a tabourette In a far corner his palette lay. He remembered having cleaned it yesterday afternoon. He sprang across the room to examine it. It was covered with paint, in daubs and small coils. The tubes nearby showed to have been emptied with a twist that was peculiarly his own.

With hands shaking from what might have been either memory or prescience, he exposed the remaining three portraits of the collection selected for private exhibit that afternoon. All had been maltreated by the brutal brush. That of the wealthy Mrs. Pembroke, who had wished posterity to remember her comparative slenderness of fifteen years agone, now showed the triple chins of to-day, had lost all figure-lines in balloonlike inflations. Horns distinguished the brow of Captain Hannah, and lust drew back his lips, both indelicate tributes to his wide-known reversion from the Puritanism of the ancestors he boasted. Flint, Wall Street magnate, had been remade by a few strokes into a specimen of the chosen, whose blood he denied the more indignantly because it really flowed in his veins.

Diabolically was exaggerated every weak point of those who had paid so high a price that the benefit of all doubts of them might be perpetuated in oils!

The artist reached his own verdict, stupefying, but positive. He spoke the culminative catastrophe.

"I must - have done it - myself.''

With the quiet of desperation he faced the two he considered his closest and dearest friends. He forced himself to draw up words from the well of bitterness within him.

*T don't remember anything about it, so I must have been very drunk. To you, Sylvia, I don't know what to say, except that it was my other self that has sinned against you in ruining the portrait you sat for so patiently. I am sorry and ashamed to the last fiber of my worthless self. I will pay the price as best I can - will do whatever you say."

She answered his despair with despair of her own.

"But nothing you can ever pay will save my lovely picture - save you and me to-day!"

*T didn't know," remarked Pope, "that cartooning was In your line."

"Only when drunk," acknowledged the recreant gloomily. *Tt was my first offering to art - got me expelled from Yale. The Jester printed some sketches of the faculty which I had made when on a spree. Caution has managed my subconsciousness since, until to-day "

"Yes, to-day," Pope Interrupted, taking out his watch.

"What can we do about to-day?" mourned Sylvia.

Parker heard the tones of subdued discussion with which the deputy talked to his fiancee from the consultation Into which he had drawn her; heard fragments of their plan to declare him suddenly 111, to "call off" the tea as best they might; heard Sylvia pleading against something which Spence had urged. He did not wish to know until they were ready to tell him. He did not care much what they decided. He had promised to abide by their decision, whatever it was, no matter which of them had originated it, and he would.

''And this was It!"

The exile in the cabin on Fallaway Rim spoke aloud for company. Lifting the shoulders that remained broad-built despite misuse of himself, he peered through the gloom. He fancied, rather than saw the photographic eyes of Sylvia Brainard bent with pitying encouragement upon him.

"God help me!" he groaned.

And, for the rest of that day, he thirsted no more.