White Magic: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

“Well, what of it?” demanded he gloomily of his gloomy self. Why, pay the bill. Pay like a man. “I couldn’t marry her if I would. I wouldn’t marry her if I could. But I can pay the bill for making a fool of myself.” He glowered savagely around. “The next time a good-looking woman comes here,” he muttered, “I’ll take to my heels and hide in the woods till she’s gone. I see I’m no longer to be trusted in female society. At my age—with my plans—after all I’ve been through—to make such an easy ass of myself!” He sat down despondently on the bench—sprang up—for was it not there—lying there—just where he had seated himself—that he had first seen her? He glanced round the studio. He groaned. Everything in it reminded him of her; and there, in the center, in the most favorable light, on the easel—was she herself!

He rushed outdoors. Sunshine shimmering and sparkling on the foliage—he could see her, the yellow hair aflame with sunbeams, flitting gracefully through the aisles of the forest! A heavy bill it was to be! But he set his teeth. “She is not for me, nor I for her. If she were here now I’d talk to her just as I did. But, thank God, I didn’t realize until I had done the only thing that’s sane and honorable. I wonder how long it will be before I can begin to forget?”

Every morning he awoke vowing he would not touch or look at her picture that day. Every morning he cut short his walk that he might get to the studio earlier and busy himself at the picture. He partially consoled himself with the reflection that at least he was improving it, was not altogether wasting his time. And he found evidence of real strength of purpose in the fact that he kept away from the waterfall. For two weeks he daily feared—or hoped—whether fear or hope or both he was not sure—that she would come to the studio. As the days passed and she did not appear he felt that she was getting over her infatuation; to stay away thus long unless her enthusiasm had cooled was wholly unlike her impetuous and brave nature. This thought did not make him happier exactly, but athwart its gloom shot one sincerely generous gleam: “Anyhow, I’m paying alone,” said he to himself. “And that’s as it should be. It was altogether my fault. I am older, more experienced. I ought to have seen that the strangeness and novelty of our meetings were appealing to her young imagination—and I ought to have broken off at the very outset. If she had been a poor girl leading a quiet, dull life the consequences might have been serious. Yes, and I might have been weak enough to marry her out of regret—and that would have been misery for us both.”

He tried fighting against the desire to spend his days with that picture. He tried yielding to the desire. But neither abstinence nor excess availed. He tried savage, sneering criticism—found that he loved her for her defects and her weaknesses. He tried absurd extravagance of romancing—found that he had quite lost his sense of humor where adulation of her was concerned. The kiss flamed on. He decided to leave—to fly. But he discovered that if he went he would surely take the picture; and of what use to go, if he lugged his curse along with him?

One afternoon late he went to the door to get the full benefit of a cool breeze that had sprung up. He saw, a few hundred yards away, Rix and a man climbing up through the dense woods toward his workshop. He wheeled round, rushed in and put the picture away—far back in the depths of the closet, behind a lot of other pictures. In its place on the easel he set a barely begun sketch—one of his attempts to distract his mind. Then, with no alteration in his appearance—his hair was mussed this way and that, and his negligee shirt was open at the neck and rolled up to the elbows—he lit a cigarette and sauntered to the door again. His not making any effort to improve upon his appearance was characteristic and significant; rarely indeed has there been a human being habitually less self-conscious than he. It would take a very vain person to continue to think of himself or herself on becoming suddenly a spectator at some scene of tremendous interest. Roger was in that state of mind all the time. His senses were so eager, his mind so inquisitive, his powers of observation so acute that his thoughts were like bees on a bright, summer day—always roving, and returning home only to unload what had been gathered and quickly depart again in quest of more from the outside.

As the ascent was steep he had ample time to compose his thoughts and his expression. She must not see or feel anything that would make it, however little, harder to pursue the road Fate had marked out for her. The man beside her was obviously her father—obviously, though there was no similarity of face or manner or figure. The relationship was revealed in that evasive similarity called family favor—a similarity which startlingly asserts itself even in dissimilarities, as if the soul and the body had a faint aureole which appeared only at certain angles and in certain lights. He was a little, thin man—dry and dyspeptic—with one of those deceptive retreating chins of insignificant size that indicate cunning instead of weakness. He had a big, sharp nose, a rough skin and scraggly mustache, with restless, gray-green eyes. He was very slouchily dressed in dusty gray. When he took off his straw hat to wipe his brow Roger was astonished by the sudden view of a really superb upper head which transformed his aspect from merely sly to dangerously crafty—the man with the nature of a fox and the intelligence to make that nature not simply a local nuisance but a general scourge. “I’d like to paint him,” thought Roger—and compliment could no further go in an artist who detested portrait work.

As the two drew near Rix waved her sunshade at him and nodded. He advanced, holding to his cigarette. When she extended her hand—a gloved hand, for she was in a fashionable, white, walking costume—her eyes did not lift and her color wavered and her short, sensitive, upper lip trembled slightly. “Mr. Wade, I want you and father to know each other,” said she. As her voice came the thrill that shot through him dropped his cigarette from between the fingers of his left hand. He and Richmond gave each other a penetrating, seeing glance, followed by a smile of immediate appreciation.

Richmond gave and took back his hand quickly—the hand shake of the man who is impatient of meaningless formalities. “I’ve come to look at the picture,” said he, in his voice the note of one who neither wastes his own time nor suffers others to waste it.

Roger froze instantly. “I’m sorry you’ve had your journey for nothing,” said he.

Richmond looked at him aggressively. Roger’s tone of the large, free spirit that does as it wills was to Richmond, the autocrat, like a challenging trumpet. “It’s here—isn’t it?” said he.