Ewing's Lady

by Harry Leon Wilson

"I can make that into a real cow for you, if you like, after we get home."

But the old man only chuckled at him, making him regret that he had ever so little curbed his criticism. He had an impulse to fight, a craving to arouse resistance. But he saw that Sydenham was no target for him, save in a sort of subcaliber practice. He hoped this novel combativeness would not wither under the first glance of Teevan's sharp little eyes.

It was dusk when they reached the city, and Ewing went to the Monastery to dine. He had long shunned the place, for the men there talked of things they had done or were doing, and they had made him, without meaning to, feel "out of it," as he told himself. For he, if he talked, could tell only of wonders he meant to do, and, lacking an audience composed of Teevans, he was shrewd enough to see that these would sound too wonderful and the future too distantly vague.

He had always been glad, however, of his drawing on the east wall. They could not believe him wholly lacking after that, nor refuse him fellowship if he sought it. He avoided the crowd when he entered the room—the men he knew best were at a long table on the rear veranda just outside the open windows—and chose a small table opposite his drawing. He had thought of it often during the afternoon while he harangued Teevan in imagination. It had occurred to him that this was the only thing he had really done since coming to New York, and he had been seized with a longing to look at it again, to prove to his own eyes that the thing which was really his own—not Corot's nor Millet's nor even Sydenham's—was not an inconsiderable thing, not a thing he need despair of building on.

As he ate, his eyes eagerly retraced the lines. After the soup he had to look down to his plate to know if his fork brought him fish or flesh. The sketch delighted him. He was surprised that he had been able to do it. He began to doubt his present mastery of the technique it displayed, fearing he had wandered too long in the Teevan-prescribed maze, dawdled too long in the little man's palace of illusions. One thing he knew: he would not dare mount a table and try another such drawing before them all. He had done this one as unthinkingly as he would have saddled a horse or sighted a rifle, indifferent to observers. It rushed upon him sickeningly that all his association with Teevan had tended to destroy his belief in himself. The coffee found him afraid—ragingly afraid.

The voices from the group outside came to him murmurously, and at intervals he would listen to the careless, bantering talk. One voice related that its wielder had smoked opium in Cairo. He heard cries of mock horror, and the drawl of Chalmers—"Cairo—that's where the 'streets' come from." Griggs was presently extolling some ancient and wonderful sherry. "Great stuff! You take a sip and you don't swallow it—it just floats off through your being like a golden mist. He only has about a dozen bottles—out of a lot that was put down for Napoleon or somebody in 1830." Baldwin's voice floated in: "All right, old man, but they had to put it down a long way to reach Napoleon in 1830."

There was a laugh at this, and it came to the lone listener as the care-free echo of a world he had tried for and lost. Lost thus far—but there was farther to go, other days to live, other wise men to counsel with. He could have believed it heartily, if it were not for that thought of Mrs. Laithe, the thought that was always like a beast devouring his heart. Meantime, if he could only have a breathing spell, some days of quiet. He wished his own hills were not so far away. He was sure that a little time back in the cabin studio would give him his old bearings.

His thought ran to Mrs. Laithe's brother, who had come to town the week before, bronzed and bearded and violent with enthusiasm for his Western life. He decided that a talk with Bartell would be tonic to his mood; the bare mention of familiar names and places would hearten him—of the Wimmenuche and Bar-7, Old Baldy and Dry Fork. And perhaps he had seen Ben lately; the two might even have driven down to Pagosa together.

And it would be an excuse for seeing her. For two months he had sought her only thus, with something he could hold in his mind as an excuse, for he was abashed by that nameless thing that troubled her, and troubled, as well, the little man who had meant so much to him—for Teevan, when the brandy was low, continued to speak of women.

He walked quickly round to the house in Ninth Street, where he asked for Bartell. But only Mrs. Laithe was at home. This embarrassed him, great as was his solicitude for her. She had sought his confidence more than once of late, but he could not tell her of doubts only half defined, of fears vague to absurdity, of anxieties that might well be baseless. He thought that now he could have talked, finding her alone, but for once she seemed rather curiously preoccupied. They sat together in the library with only a half light, the two windows opened for random breezes. Suddenly, as her face was toward him, dim though the light was, he caught the look that had troubled him so hauntingly in the spring. He knew that look now; it was the look he had seen on his father's face in the last year of his life—the look of a spirit divesting itself of the flesh.