PAINTER AND PICTUREL
Scotty Baker dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred the mixture carefully, glancing the while smilingly at his wife and daughter.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed; "it seems good to be back here again."
Mrs. Baker was deep in a letter she had just opened, but Florence returned the smile companionably.
"And it seems mighty good to have you back, daddy," she replied. "Just think of our being alone, a pair of poor defenceless women, three whole months without a man about the house! If you ever dare do it again you're liable to find one in your place when you return. Isn't he, mamma?"
Her mother looked up reproachfully. "For shame, Florence!" she cried.
But Scotty only observed his daughter quizzically. "I did—almost, this time, didn't I?" he bantered. "By the way, who is this wonderful being, this Sidwell, I've heard so much about the last few hours?" He was as obtuse as a post to his wife's meaning look. "Tell me about him, won't you?"
Florence laughed a bit unnaturally. It seemed her words had a way of returning like a boomerang.
"He's a writer," she explained laconically.
"A writer?" Scotty paused, a teaspoonful of coffee between the cup and his mouth. "A real one?"
The smile left the girl's face. "His family is one of the oldest in the city," she explained coldly. "His work sells by the thousand. You can judge for yourself."
Scotty sipped his coffee impassively, but behind the big glasses the twinkle left his eyes.
"The inference you suggest would have been more obvious if you hadn't made the first remark," he said a little sharply. "I've noticed the matter of good family has quite an influence in this world."
The subject was dropped, but nevertheless it left its aftermath. Easy-going Scotty did not often say an unpleasant thing, and for that very reason Florence knew that when he did it had an especial significance.
"By the way," he observed after a moment, "we ought to celebrate to-day in some manner. I rather expected to find a band at the station to welcome me yesterday upon my return, but I didn't, and I fear there's been no public demonstration arranged. What do you say to our packing up our dinner, taking the elevated, and spending the day in the country? What say you, Mollie?"
His wife looked at her daughter helplessly. "Just as Florence says. I'm willing," she replied.
"What speaks the oracle?" smiled Scotty. "Shall we or shall we not? Personally, I feel a desire for cooling springs, to step on a good-sized plat of green without having a watchful bluecoat loom in the distance."
Florence fingered the linen of the tablecloth with genuine discomfort. "You two can go. I'll help you get ready," she ventured at last. "I'm sorry, but I promised Mr. Sidwell last night I'd visit the art gallery with him this afternoon. He says they've some new canvases hung lately, one of them by a particular friend of his. He's such a student of art, and I know so little about it that I hate to miss going."
Again the smile left Scotty's eyes. "Can't you write a note explaining, and postpone the visit until some other time?" It took quite an effort for this undemonstrative Englishman to make the request.
The girl glanced out the window with a look her father understood very well. "I hardly think so," she said. "He's going away for the Summer soon, and his time is limited."
Scotty said no more, and soon after he left the table and went into the library. Florence sat for a moment abstractedly; then with her old impulsive manner she followed him.
"Daddy," the girl's arms clasped around his neck, her cheek pressed against his, "I'm awful sorry I can't go with you to-day. I'd like to, really."
But for one of the very few times that Florence could remember her father did not respond. Instead, he removed her arms rather coldly.
"Oh, that's all right," he said; "I hope you'll have a good time." And picking up the morning paper he lit a cigar and moved toward the shady veranda.
Watching him, the girl had a desire to follow, to prevent his leaving her in that way. But she hesitated and the moment passed.
Yet, although a cloud shadowed Florence Baker's morning, by afternoon it had departed. Sidwell's carriage came promptly, creating something of a stir behind the drawn shades of the adjoining residences—for the Bakers were not located in a fashionable quarter. Sidwell himself, immaculate, smiling, greeted her with the deference which became him well, and in itself conveyed a delicate compliment. Neither made any reference to the incident of the night before. His manner gave no hint of the constraint which under the circumstances might have been expected. A few months before, the girl would have thought he had taken her request literally, and had forgotten; but now she knew better. In this fascinating new life one could pass pleasantries with one's dearest enemy and still smile. In the old life, under similar circumstances, there would have been gun-play, and probably later a funeral; but here—they knew better how to live. Already, in the few social events she had attended, she had seen them juggle with emotions as a conjurer with knives—to emerge unhurt, unruffled. To be sure, she could not herself do it—yet; but she understood, and admired.
Out of doors the sun was uncomfortably hot, but within the high walled gallery it was cool and pleasant. Florence had been there before, but earlier in the season, and many other visitors were present. To-day she and Sidwell were practically alone, and she faced him with a little receptive gesture.
"You're always getting me to talk," she said. "To-day I'm going to exchange places. Don't expect me to do anything but listen."
Sidwell smiled. "Won't you even condescend to suggest channels in which my discourse may flow?" he bantered.
The girl hesitated. "Perhaps," she ventured, "if I find it necessary."
For an hour they wandered about, moving slowly, and pausing often to rest. Sidwell talked well, but somewhat impersonally. At last, in an out-of-the-way corner, they came to the modest canvas of his friend, and they sat down before it. The picture was unnamed and unsigned. Without being extraordinary as a work of art, its subject lent its chief claim to distinction. Interested because her companion seemed interested, Florence looked at it steadily. At first there appeared to her nothing but a mountain, steep and rugged, and a weary man who, climbing it, had lain down to rest. Far down at the mountain's base she saw where the figure had begun its ascent. The way was easy there, and the trail, through the abundant grasses crushed underfoot, was of one who had moved rapidly. Gradually, with the upward incline, obstacles had increased, and the footprints drew nearer together. Still higher, from a straight line the trail had become tortuous and irregular. Here the climber had passed around a thicket of trees; there a great boulder had stood in the path; but, ever indomitable, the way had been steadily upward toward some point the climber had in view. Steeper and steeper the way had grown. The prints on the rocky mountain-side, from being those of feet only, merged into those made by hands. The man had begun to crawl, making his way inch by inch. Fragments of his torn clothing hung on the points of rocks. Dim brown lines showed the path his body had taken, as he sometimes slipped back. Breaks in the scant vegetation told where his fingers had clutched desperately to halt his descent. Yet each time the reverse had been but temporary; he had returned, and mounted higher and higher. But at last there had come the end. He had reached his present place in the picture. By gripping tightly he could hold his own, but to advance was impossible. Straight above him, a sheer wall, many times his own height, was the blank, unbroken face of the rock. That he had tried to scale even this was evident, for finger-marks from bleeding hands were thick thereon; but he had finally abandoned the effort. Physically, he was conquered. It seemed that one could almost hear the quick coming and going of his breath. Yet, prostrate as he lay, his eyes were turned toward the barrier his body could not scale, to a something which crowned its utmost height,—something indefinite and unattainable,—the supreme desire and purpose of his life.
The two spectators sat silent. Other visitors came near, glanced at the canvas and at the pair of observers, and passed on with muffled footsteps.
The girl turned, and, as on the night at the roof-garden, found the man's eyes upon her.
"What name does your friend give to his work?" she asked.
"He calls it 'The Unattainable.'"
"And what is its meaning?"
"Ambition, perfection, complete happiness—anything striven for with one's whole soul."
Florence was studying her companion now as steadily as he had been studying her a moment before. "To your—friend it meant—"
"Happiness."
The girl's hands were clasped in her lap in a way she had when her thoughts were concentrated. "And he never found it?" she asked.
Unconsciously one of Sidwell's hands made a downward motion of deprecation. "He did not. We made the circuit of the earth together in pursuit of it—but all was useless. It seemed as though the more he searched the more he was baffled in his quest."
For a moment the girl made no reply, but in her lap her hands clasped tighter and tighter. A thought that made her finger-tips tingle was taking form in her mind. A dim comprehension of the nature of this man had first suggested it; the fact that the canvas was unsigned had helped give it form. The speaker's last words, his even tone of voice, had not passed unnoticed. She turned to the canvas, searched the skilfully concealed outlines of the tattered figure with the upturned eyes. The clasped hands grew white with the tension.
"I didn't know before you were an artist as well as a writer," she said evenly.
Sidwell turned quickly. The girl could feel his look. "I fear," he said, "I fail to grasp your meaning. You think—"
Florence met the speaker's look steadily. "I don't think," she said, "I know. You painted the picture, Mr. Sidwell. That man there on the mountain-side is you!"
Her companion hesitated. His face darkened; his lips opened to speak and closed again.
The girl continued watching him with steady look. "I can hardly believe it," she said absently. "It seems impossible."
Sidwell forced a smile. "Impossible? What? That I should paint a daub like that?"
The girl's tense hands relaxed wearily.
"No, not that you paint, but that the man there—the one finding happiness unattainable—should be you."
The lids dropped just a shade over Sidwell's black eyes. "And why, if you please, should it be more remarkable that I am unhappy than another?"
This time Florence took him up quickly. "Because," she answered, "you seem to have everything one can think of that is needed to make a human being happy—wealth, position, health, ability—all the prizes other people work their lives out for or die for." Again the voice dropped. "I can't understand it." She was silent a moment. "I can't understand it," she repeated.
From the girl's face the man's eyes passed to the canvas, and rested there. "Yes," he said slowly, "I suppose it is difficult, almost impossible, for you to realize why I am—as I am. You have never had the personal experience—and we only understand what we have felt. The trouble with me is that I have experienced too much, felt too much. I've ceased to take things on trust. Like the youth and the key flower I've forgotten the best." The voice paused, but the eyes still kept to the canvas.
"That picture," he went on, "typifies it all. I painted it, not because I'm an artist, but because in a fashion it expresses something I couldn't put into words, or express in any other way. When I began to climb, the object above me was not happiness but ambition. Wealth and social place, as you say, I already had. They meant nothing to me. What I wanted was to make a name in another way—as a literary man." The dark eyes shifted back to the listener's face, the voice spoke more rapidly.
"I went after the thing that I wanted with all the power and tenacity that was in me. I worked with the one object in view; worked without resting, feverishly. I had successes and failures, failures and successes—a long line of both. At last, as the world puts it, I arrived. I got to a position where everything I wrote sold, and sold well; but in the meantime the thing above me, which had been ambition, gradually took on another shape. Perfection it was I longed for now, perfection in my art. It was not enough that the public had accepted me as I was; I was not satisfied with my work. Try as I might, nothing that I wrote ever reached my own standard in its execution. I worked harder than ever; but it was useless. I was confronting the blank wall—the wall of my natural limitations."
The voice paused, and for a moment lowered. "I won't say what I did then; I was—mad almost—the finger-marks of it are on the rock."
The girl could not look longer into the speaker's eyes. She felt as if she were gazing upon a naked human soul, and turned away.
"At last," he went on in his confession, "I came to myself, and was forced to see things as they were. I saw that as well as I thought I had understood life I had not even grasped its meaning. I had fancied the attainment of my object the supreme end, and by every human standard I had succeeded in my purpose; but the thing I had gained was trash. Wealth, power, notoriety—what were they? Bubbles, nothing more; bubbles that broke in the hand of him who clasped them. The real meaning and object of existence lay deeper, and had nothing whatever to do with the estimate of a person by his fellows. It was a frame of mind of the individual himself."
Florence's face turned farther away, but Sidwell did not notice. "Then, for the last time," he hurried on, "the unattainable changed form for me, and became what it seems now—happiness. For a little time I think I was happy—happy in merely having made the discovery. Then came the reaction. I was as I was, as I am now—a product of my past life, of a civilization essentially artificial. In striving for a false ideal I had unfitted myself for the real when at last I discovered it."
Unconsciously the man had come closer, and his eyes glowed. At last his apathy was shaken off, and his words came in a torrent. "What I was then I am to-day. Mentally, I am like an inebriate, who no longer finds satisfaction in plain food and drink, but craves stimulants. I demand activity, excitement, change. In every hour of my life I realize the narrowness and artificiality of it all; but without it I am unhappy. I sometimes think Mother Nature herself has disowned me; when I try to get near her she draws away—I fancy with a shudder. Solitude of desert, of forest, or of prairie is no longer solitude to me. It is filled with voices—accusing voices; and I rush back to the crowd and the unrest of the city. Even my former pleasures seem to have deserted me. You have spoke often of accomplishing big things, doing something better than anyone else can do it, as an example of pleasure supreme. If you realized what you were saying you would know its irony. You cannot do a thing better than anyone else. People, like water, strike a dead level. No matter how you strive, dozens of others can do the thing you are doing. Were you to die, your place would be filled to-morrow, and the world would wag on just the same. There is always someone just beneath you watchfully waiting, ready to seize your place if you relax your effort for a moment. The term 'big things' is relative. To speak it is merely to refer to something you do not personally understand. Nothing seems really big to the one who does it. Nothing is difficult when you understand it. The growing of potatoes in a backyard is just as wonderful a performance as the painting of one of these pictures; it would be more so were it not so common and so necessary. The construction of a steam-engine or an electric dynamo is incomparably more remarkable than the merging of separate thousands of capital into millions of combination, yet multitudes of men everywhere can do either of the former things and are unnoticed. We worship what we do not understand, and call it big; but the man in the secret realizes the mockery and smiles."
Closer came the dark face. The black eyes, intense and flashing, held the listener in their gaze.
"I said that even my pleasures seem to have deserted me. It is true. I used to like to wander about the city, to see it at its busiest, to loiter amid the hum and the roar and the ceaseless activity. I saw in it then only friendly rivalry, like a hurdle race or a football game—something pleasing and stimulating. Now it all affects me in just the reverse way. I look beneath the surface, and my heart sinks to find not friendly competition, but a battle, where men and women fight for daily bread, where the weak are crowded and trampled upon by the strong. In ordinary battle the maimed and the crippled are spared, but here they still fight on. Mercy or quarter is unknown. Oh, it is ghastly! I used to take pleasure in books, in the work of others; but even this satisfaction has been taken from me—except such grim satisfaction as a physician may feel at a post mortem. The very labor that made me a success in literature caused me to be a dissector of things around me. To learn how others attained their ends I must needs tear their work apart and study the fragments. This habit has become a part of me. I overlook the beauty of the product in the working of the machinery that produced it. I watch the mixing of literary confections, served to the reader so that upon laying down the book he may have a good taste in his mouth. People themselves, those I meet from day to day, inevitably go through the same metamorphosis. I see them as characters in a book. Their foibles and peculiarities are grist for my mill. Everything, everyone, when I appear, slips into the narrow confines of a printed page. I can't even spare myself. Fragments of me can be had for a price at any of the book-stalls. I've become public property—and with no one to blame but myself."
The flow of speech halted. The speaker's face was so near now that the girl could not avoid looking at it.
"Do you wonder," he concluded, "that I am not happy?"
The girl looked up. The two pairs of brown eyes met. Outwardly, she who answered was calm; but in her lap the small hands were clasping each other tightly, so that the blood had left the fingers.
"No, I do not wonder now," she answered simply.
"And you understand?"
"Yes, I—no, there's so much—Oh, take me home, please!" The sentence ended abruptly in a plea. The slender body was trembling as with cold. "Take me home, please. I want to—to think."
"Florence!" The word was a caress. "Florence!"
But the girl was already on her feet. "Don't say any more to-day! I can't stand it. Take me home!"
Sidwell looked at her closely for a moment; then the mask of conventionality, which for a time had lifted from his face, dropped once more, and he also arose. In silence, side by side, the two made their way down the long hall to the exit. Out of doors, the afternoon sun, serene and smiling, gave them a friendly greeting.