The outcasts of poker flat 6 страница
«But she does,» said Mrs. Vervain.
Thursdale stood perplexed. He had seen, on the previous day, no trace of jealousy or resentment in his betrothed: he could still hear the candid ring of the girl's praise of Mrs. Vervain. If she were such an abyss of insincerity as to dissemble distrust under such frankness, she must at least be more subtle than to bring her doubts to her rival for solution. The situation seemed one through which one could no longer move in a penumbra, and he let in a burst of light with the direct query: «Won't you explain what you mean?»
Mrs. Vervain sat silent, not provokingly, as though to prolong his distress, but as if, in the attenuated phraseology he had taught her, it was difficult to find words robust enough to meet his challenge. It was the first time he had ever asked her to explain anything; and she had lived so long in dread of offering elucidations which were not wanted, that she seemed unable to produce one on the spot.
At last she said slowly: «She came to find out if you were really free.»
Thursdale coloured again. «Free?» he stammered, with a sense of physical disgust at contact with such crass-ness.
«Yes-if I had quite done with you.» She smiled in recovered security. «It seems she likes clear outlines; she has a passion for definitions.»
„Yes-well?» he said, wincing at the echo of his own subtlety.
«Well-ami when I told her that you had never belonged to me, she wanted me to define my status-to know exactly where I had stood all along.»
Thursdale sat gazing at her intently; his hand was not yet on the clue. «And even when you had told her that-»
«Even when I had told her that I had had no status-that I had never stood anywhere, in any sense she meant,» said Mrs. Vervain, slowly-«even then she wasn't satisfied, it seems.»
He uttered an uneasy exclamation. «She didn't believe you, you mean?»
«I mean that she did believe me: too thoroughly.»
«Well, then-in God's name, what did she want?»
«Something more-those were the words she used.»
«Something more? Between-between you and me? Is it a conundrum?» He laughed awkwardly.
«Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer forbidden to contemplate the relation of the sexes.»
«So it seems!» he commented. «But since, in this case, there wasn't any-» he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze.
«That's just it. The unpardonable offence has been-in our not offending.»
He flung himself down despairingly. «I give it up!-What did you tell her?» he burst out with sudden crude-ness.
«The exact truth. If I had only known,» she broke off with a beseeching tenderness, «won't you believe that I would still have lied for you?»
«Lied for me? Why on earth should you have liedior either of us?»
«To save you-to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden you from myself all these years!» She stood upwitli a sudden tragic import in her movement. «You believe me capable of that, don't you? If I had only guessed-but 1 have never known a girl like her; she had the truth out of me with a spring.»
«The truth that you and 1 had never-»
«Had never-never in all these years! Oh, she knew why-she measured us both in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having haggled with you-her words pelted me like hail. "He just took what he wanted-sifted and sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold and left a heap of cinders. And you let him-you let yourself be cut in bits"-she mixed her metaphors a little-"be cut in bits, and used or discarded, while all the while every drop of blood in you belonged to him! But he's Shylock-he's Shylock-and you have bled to death of the pound of flesh he has cut off you." But she despises me the most, you know-far the most-» Mrs. Vervain ended.
The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the kind of intimacy on which, at any moment, a visitor might intrude without perceptibily lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a grand opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private music-room.
Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between them, but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of reticence and ambiguity had fallen.
His first words were characteristic: «She does despise me, then?» he exclaimed.
«She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the heart.»
He was excessively pale. «Please tell me exactly what she said of me.»
«She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that while she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been opened to the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she expressed an unwillingness to be taken with reservations-she thinks you would have loved her better if you had loved some one else first. The point of view is original-she insists on a man with a past!»
«Oh, a past-if she's serious-I could rake up a past!» he said with a laugh.
«So I suggested: but she has her eyes on this particular portion of it. She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you had done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered into telling her.»
Thursdale drew a difficult breath. «I never supposed-your revenge is complete,» he said slowly.
He heard a little gasp in her throat. «My revenge? When I sent for you to warn you-to save you from being surprised as I was surprised?»
«You're very good-but it's rather late to talk of saving me.» He held out his hand in the mechanical gesture of leave-taking.
«How you must care!-for I never saw you so dull,» was her answer. «Don't you see that it's not too late for me to help you?» And as he continued to stare, she brought out sublimely: «Take the rest-in imagination! Let it at least be of that much use to you. Tell her I lied to her-she's too ready to believe it! And so, after all, in a sense, I sha'n't have been wasted.»
His stare hung on her, widening to a kind of wonder. She gave the look back brightly, unblushingly, as though the expedient were too simple to need oblique approaches. It was extraordinary how a few words had swept them from an atmosphere of the most complex dissimulations to this contact of naked souls.
It was not in Thursdale to expand with the pressure of fate; but something in him cracked with it, and the riftlet in new light. He went up to his friend and took her hand.
«You would do it-you would do it!»
She looked at him, smiling, but her hand shook.
«Good-bye,» he said, kissing it.
«Good-bye? You are going-?»
«To get my letter.»
«Your letter? The letter won't matter, if you will only do what I ask.»
He returned her gaze. «I might, I suppose, without being out of character. Only, don't you see that if your plan helped me it could only harm her?»
«Harm her?»
«To sacrifice you wouldn't make me different. I shall go on being what I have always been-sifting and sorting, as she calls it. Do you want my punishment to fall on her?»
She looked at him long and deeply. «Ah, if I had to choose between you-!»
«You would let her take her chance? But I can't, you see. I must take my punishment alone.»
She drew her hand away, sighing. «Oh, there will be no punishment for either of you.»
«For either of us? There will be the reading of her letter for me.»
She shook her head with a slight laugh. «There will be no letter.»
Thursdale faced about from the threshold with fresh life in his look. «No letter? You don't mean-» «I mean that she's been with you since I saw her- she's seen you and heard your voice. If there is a letter, she has recalled it-from the first station, by telegraph.» He turned back to the door, forcing an answer to her smile. «But in the meanwhile I shall have read it,» he said. The door closed on him, and she hid her eyes from the dreadful emptiness of the room.
O.Henry
MASTERS OF ARTS
| A |
two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned. The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed, and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events.
President Losada-many called him Dictator-was a man whose genius would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo-Saxons, had not that genius been intermixed with other traits that were petty and subversive. He had some of the lofty patriotism of Washington (the man he most admired), the force of Napoleon, and much of the wisdom of the sages. These characteristics might have justified him in the assumption of the title of «The Illustrious Liberator,» had they not been accompanied by a stupendous and amazing vanity that kept him in the less worthy ranks of the dictators.
Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it nearly free from the shackles of ignorance and sloth and the vermin that fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of nations. He established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges, railroads and palaces, and bestowed generous subsidiesupon the arts and sciences. He was the absolute despot and the idol of his people. The wealth of the country poured into his hands. Other presidents had been rapacious without reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but his people had their share of the benefits.
The joint in his armour was his insatiate passion for monuments and tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness. In the walls of every public edifice, tablets were fixed reciting his splendour and the gratitude of his subjects. His statuettes and portraits were scattered throughout the land in every house and hut. One of the sycophants in his court painted him as St. John, with a halo and a train of attendants in full uniform. Losada saw nothing incongruous in this picture, and had it hung in a church in the capital. He ordered from a French sculptor a marble group including himself with Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and one or two others whom he deemed worthy of the honour.
He ransacked Europe for decorations, employing policy, money and intrigue to cajole the orders he coveted from kings and rulers. On state occasions his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with crosses, stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. It was said that the man who could contrive for him a new decoration, or invent some new method of extolling his greatness, might plunge a hand deep into the treasury.
This was the man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle buccaneer had observed the rain of favours that fell upon those who ministered to the president's vanities, and he did not deem it his duty to hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid fortune.
In a few weeks the new consul arrived, releasing Keogh from his temporary duties. He was a young manfresh from college, who lived for botany alone. The consulate at Coralio gave him the opportunity to study tropical flora. He wore smoked glasses, and carried a green umbrella. He filled the cool, back porch of the consulate with plants and specimens so that space for a bottle and chair was not to be found. Keogh gazed on him sadly, but without rancour, and began to pack his gripsack. For his new plot against stagnation along the Spanish Main required of him a voyage overseas.
Soon came the Karlsefin again-she of the trampish habits-gleaning a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip.
«Yes, I'm going' to New York,» he explained to the group of his countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. «But I'll be back before you miss me. I've undertaken the art education of this piebald country, and I'm not the man to desert it while it's in the early throes of tintypes.»
With this mysterious declaration of his intentions Keogh boarded the Karlsefin.
Ten days later, shivering, with the collar of his thin coat turned high, he burst into the studio of Carolus White at the top of a tall building in Tenth Street, New York City.
Carolus White was smoking a cigarette and frying sausages over an oil stove. He was only twenty-three, and had noble theories about art.
«Billy Keogh!» exclaimed White, extending the hand that was not busy with the frying pan. «From what part of the uncivilized world, I wonder!»
«Hello, Carry,» said Keogh, dragging forward a stool, and holding his fingers close to the stove. «I'm glad I found you so soon. I've been looking for you all day in the directories and art galleries. The free-lunch man on the corner told me where you were, quick. I was sure you'd be painting pictures yet.»
Keogh glanced about the studio with the shrewd eye of a connoisseur in business.
«Yes, you can do it,» he declared, with many gentle nods of his head. «That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and band-wagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call that, Carry-scene from Coney Island, ain't it?»
«That,» said White, «I had intended to call "The Translation of Elijah," but you may be nearer right than 1 am.»
«Name doesn't matter,» said Keogh, largely; «it's the frame and the varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a minute what I want. I've come on a little voyage of two thousand miles to take you in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as the scheme showed itself to me. How would you like to go back with me and paint a picture? Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand dollars for the job.»
«Cereal food or hair-tonic posters?» asked White.
«It isn't an ad.»
«What kind of a picture is it to be?»
«It's a long story,» said Keogh.
«Go ahead with it. If you don't mind, while you talk I'll just keep my eye on these sausages. Let 'em get one shade deeper than a Vandyke brown and you spoil 'em.»
Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative professional labors. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the lineaments of the president, and secure a share of the pesos that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.
Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been paid more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of the trip, and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme before White, whom he had known in the West before one declared for Art and the other became a Bedouin.
Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigor of the bare studio for a snug corner of a cafe. There they sat far into the night, with old envelopes and Ke-ogh's stub of blue pencil between them.
At twelve o'clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wallpaper.
«I'll go you, Billy,» he said, in the quiet tones of decision. «I've got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I'll take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in Italy. I'll begin to pack to-morrow.»
«You'll begin in ten minutes,» said Keogh. «It's tomorrow now. The Karlsefln starts back at four p.m. Come on to your painting shop, and I'll help you.»
For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria. Then only does the town possess life. From November to March it is practically the seat of government. The president with his official family sojourns there; and society follows him. The pleasure-loving people make the season one long holiday of amusement and rejoicing. Fiestas, balls, games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come clown to peddle their handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp, show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight.
When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip of the Karlsefin, the gay winter season was well begun. As they stepped upon the beach they could hear the band playing in the plaza. The village maidens, with fireflies already fixed in their dark locks, were gliding, barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies in white linen, swinging their canes, were beginning their seductive strolls. The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure-the man-made sense of existence.
The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White's fame as a painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep before the public.
He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. The two were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw hats, and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few caballeros in Coralio-even the gorgeously uniformed officers of the Anchurian army-were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of demeanour as Keogh and his friend, the great American painter, Senor White.
White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the mountain and sea views. The native
population formed at his rear in a vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity His role was that of friend to the great artist, a man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera.
«For branding the man who owns it,» said he, «a genteel dilettante with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain't in it with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in "Bradstreet." You notice these old millionaire boys-soon as they get through taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a title or a four-carat scarf-pin.» So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the shrinking senoritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher regions of art.
Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The president desired that Senor White come to the Casa Morena for an informal interview.
Keogh gripped his pipe tightly between his teeth. «Not a cent less than ten thousand,» he said to the artist-«re-member the price. And in gold or its equivalent-don't let him stick you with this bargain-counter stuff they call money here.»
«Perhaps it isn't that he wants,» said White.
«Get out!» said Keogh, with splendid confidence. «I know what he wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country. Off you go.»
The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down, puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and wailt'd. In an hour the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White, and vanished. The artisi dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.
«Landed,» exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation. «Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I'll tell you all about it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He's a dictator clear down to his finger-ends. He's a kind of combination of Julius Caesar, Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim-that's his way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint. He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn't move an eyelash. He just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, «Whatever you say.' I am to go back to-morrow and discuss with him the details of the picture.»
Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his downcast countenance.
«I'm failing, Carry,» he said, sorrowfully. «I'm not fit to handle these man's-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought I had sized up that brown man's limit to within two cents. He'd have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say-Car-ry-you'll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won't you, if he makes a break like that again?»
The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low hill in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge of Coralio. The next day the president's carriage came again for the art-•st Keogh went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his «picture box» were now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel White was sitting in a steamer-chair on the balcony.
«Well,» said Keogh, «did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of a chromo he wants?»
White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times. Then he stopped, and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright with a kind of angry amusement.
«Look here, Billy,» he said, somewhat roughly, «when you first came to me in my studio and mentioned a picture, I thought you wanted a Smashed Oats or a Hair Tonic poster painted on a range of mountains or the side of a continent. Well, either of those jobs would have been Art in its highest form compared to the one you've steered me against. I can't paint that picture, Billy. You've got to let me out. Let me try to tell you what that barbarian wants. He had it all planned out and even a sketch made of his idea. The old boy doesn't draw badly at all. But, ye goddesses of Art! listen to the monstrosity he expects me to paint. He wants himself in the centre of the canvas, of course. He is to be painted as Jupiter sitting on Olympus, with the clouds at his feet. At one side of him stands George Washington, in full regimentals, with his hand on the president's shoulder. An angel with outstretched wings hovers overhead, and is placing a laurel wreath on the president's head, crowning him-Queen of the May, I suppose. In the background is to be cannon, more angels and soldiers. The man who would paint that picture would have to have the soul of a dog, and would deserve to go down into oblivion without even a tin can tied to his tail to sound his memory.»
Little beads of moisture crept out all over Billy Ke-ogh's brow. The stub of his blue pencil had not figured out a contingency like this. The machinery of his plan had run with flattering smoothness until now. He dragged another chair upon the balcony, and got White back to his seat. He lit his pipe with apparent calm.
«Now, sonny,» he said, with gentle grimness, «you and me will have an Art to Art talk. You've got your art and I've got mine. Yours is the real Pierian stuff that turns up its nose at bock-beer signs and oleographs of the Old Mill. Mine's the art of Business. This was my scheme, and it worked out like two-and-two. Paint that president man as Old King Cole, or Venus, or a landscape, or a fresco, or a bunch of lilies, or anything he thinks he looks like. But get the paint on the canvas and collect the spoils. You wouldn't throw me down, Carry, at this stage of the game. Think of that ten thousand.»
«I can't help thinking of it,» said White, «and that's what hurts. I'm tempted to throw every ideal I ever had down in the mire, and steep my soul in infamy by painting that picture. That five thousand meant three years of foreign study to me, and I'd almost sell my soul for that.»
«Now it ain't as bad as that,» said Keogh, soothingly. «It's a business proposition. It's so much paint and time against money. I don't fall in with your idea that that picture would so everlastingly jolt the art side of the question. George Washington was all right, you know, and nobody could say a word against the angel. I don't think so bad of that group. If you was to give Jupiter a pair of epaulets and a sword, and kind of work the clouds around to look like a blackberry patch, it wouldn't make such a bad battle scene. Why, if we hadn't already settled on the price, he ought to pay an extra thousand for Washington, and the angel ought to raise it five hundred.»
«You don't understand, Billy,» said White, with an uneasy laugh. «Some of us fellows who try to paint have big notions about Art. I wanted to paint a picture some ay thfll People would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. 1 wanted it to creep into them like a bar of niusic and mushroom there like a soft bullet. And 1 wanted 'em to go away and ask, "What else has he done?» And I didn't want 'em to find a thing; not a portrait nor a magazine cover nor an illustration nor a drawing of a girl-nothing but the picture. That's why I've lived on fried sausages, and tried to keep true to myself. I persuaded myself to do this portrait for the chance it might give me to study abroad. But this howling, screaming caricature! Good Lord! can't you see how it is?»
«Sure,» said Keogh, as tenderly as he would have spoken to a child, and he laid a long forefinger on White's knee. «I see. It's bad to have your art all slugged up like that. I know. You wanted to paint a big thing like the panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. But let me kalsomine you a little mental sketch to consider. Up to date we're out $385.50 on this scheme. Our capital took every cent both of us could raise. We've got about enough left to get back to New York on. I need my share of that ten thousand. I want to work a copper deal in Idaho, and make a hundred thousand. That's the business end of the thing. Come down off your art perch, Carry, and let's land that hatful of dollars.»
«Billy,» said White, with an effort, «I'll try. I won't say I'll do it, but I'll try. I'll go at it, and put it through if I can.» «That's business,» said Keogh, heartily. «Good boy Now, here's another thing-rush that picture-crowd i through as quick as you can. Get a couple of boys to hell you mix the paint if necessary. I've picked up some point ers around town. The people here are beginning to get sick of Mr. President. They say he's been too free with concessions; and they accuse him of trying to make ; dicker with England to sell out the country. We want that picture done and paid for before there's any row.»
In the great patio of Casa Morena, the president caused to be stretched a huge canvas. Under this White set up his temporary studio. For two hours each day the great man sat to him.
White worked faithfully. But, as the work progressed, he had seasons of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and sardonic gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general, soothed, coaxed, argued-kept him at the picture.
At the end of a month White announced that the picture was completed-Jupiter, Washington, angels, clouds, cannon and all. His face was pale and his mouth drawn straight when he told Keogh. He said the president was much pleased with it. It was to be hung in the National Gallery of Statesmen and Heroes. The artist had been requested to return to Casa Morena on the following day to receive payment. At the appointed time he left the hotel, silent under his friend's joyful talk of their success.
An hour later he walked into the room where Keogh was waiting, threw his hat on the floor, and sat upon the table.
«Billy,» he said, in strained and laboring tones, «I've a little money out West in a small business that my brother is running. It's what I've been living on while I've been studying art. I'll draw out my share and pay you back what you've lost on this scheme.»