And conscious of its foulness he had planned an evil thing. It had crossed his mind like a dark shadow, obscuring the fair horizon of his better nature the moment he looked upon the face of the woman his father was about to marry. He had known her first, that was the beautiful irony of it; and he was keeping silent because in her, installed as his father’s wife, he saw a means of retaliation. His hatred of his father was no growth of a day, and the face in the locket, the letter from the woman herself that he had read the night he began his latest debauch, had hardened it into a fixed idea.
The knowledge that his father had brought him here to-day merely to advertise the perfect amity of their relationship angered him; and now Colonel Craighill dismissed him urbanely, saying that he would take his cigar with Fraser, the short, grave, round-faced corporation lawyer, who was soon, it appeared, to accept the nation for his client.
Wingfield, with his eye on the situation, carried Wayne below for a game of billiards.
CHAPTER VI
BEFORE A PORTRAIT BY SARGENT
WAYNE CRAIGHILL’S education had been planned by his father on broad lines. The Craighills had of old been Presbyterians, but Colonel Craighill was no bigot; therefore, in keeping with his generous attitude in such matters, Wayne was sent to a preparatory school in Vermont conducted under Episcopalian auspices. Moreover, the head of St. John’s was a personal friend, whom Colonel Craighill knew well. Nothing could be better for the boy than a few years spent under the eye of the famous master. The transition from the Presbyterianism in which he was born to the High Church school was abrupt. The very vocabulary of worship was different; the choral services in the beautiful chapel appealed to his emotional nature, and he found a quiet joy in his own participation in the singing when he attained in due course to a place in the orderly offices of the choir. From the preparatory school Wayne went to the Institute of Technology. His mother had pleaded for the law; but Colonel Craighill pointed out the superiority of scientific education in a day when science guarded so many of the approaches to success. And Wayne, born among the iron hills, was persuaded that his best course lay in fitting himself for a career in keeping with the greatest interests of his native state, and so his father prevailed, and Wayne had, not without much stress and resistance of spirit, taken his degree in science. Certain aspects of mining, and of the chemistry of the forge had appealed to him, but rather to his strong imagination than to any practical use he saw in his knowledge. He had spent a summer in a large colliery, obedient to his father’s wish that the young man should apply and test theory before he had a chance to forget the teaching of the schools; and Wayne had entered into this with relish. But while he had taken into his own strong hands every tool used in mine labour, and fed boiler furnaces and sat by the scales in weigh houses, he had shared also the social life of the world of coal. He had spent his evenings in the saloons of the mine village, talking and drinking with the miners in a spirit of democracy that won their affections. His violence when drunk had first manifested itself at this period. He was so big and powerful that the fierce reinforcement of his natural strength by drink made him a terror. He had once run wild through the long black lane of a mine, driving an electric motor and train of wallowing mine cars, captured after a fight from their lawful conductors, smashing finally a line of coal pillars with a force that might have shaken the huge cave down upon him.
So far as his own aptitude and taste were concerned his education went for naught. The Homeric, picturesque side of industrial Pennsylvania appealed to him. The wresting of the enormous latent power from the hills; the sky lighted by the glow of multitudinous ovens and furnaces; the roar and shriek of machinery; the grimy toilers at their moulding and tempering—these and like phenomena touched his imagination, and he cared little for their practical side while they were so much more captivating as panorama than as trade. We need not deal in unprofitable speculations as to what a different education might have made of Wayne Craighill; for an intelligent appreciation of books and pictures and a love of music are too easily confused with genius. Let it suffice that some playful god had injected into his blood a drop of the divine essence, enough merely to visit upon him the fleeting moods of the dreamer and the restless longings of those who seek the light that never was.
His nature was compounded of many elements of good and evil. Taste, delicacy, fine feeling, he had in abundance; he was sensitive to the appeal of beautiful things. In fits of solitude and industry he would read voraciously; many subjects awakened his curiosity. But his passions were strong and deep, and they had their way with him. Again, his restraint and measure were surprising. Wingfield, who knew him best of all, was amazed at times by the sobriety and wisdom of Wayne’s judgments. We have said that he was the child of his city; more than this, he not unfitly expressed its genius, its confused aims, its weaknesses and its aspirations. The iron of the hills was in his blood; and iron, let us remember, has the merit as well as the defects of its qualities!
Joe drove Wayne to the Modern Art Institute in the machine. He went early to have a glimpse of several recent additions to the collection before the meeting of the orchestra committee, and later he was to go to his sister’s.
The peace of the quiet gallery enfolded him gratefully. He paid his respects to old favourites, saving a half-hour for the new arrivals. Dick Wingfield’s mother, convoying two girls, was among the other visitors. He had reached a point at which, half-unconsciously, he gave the women he knew an opportunity to cut him if they wished. The two girls became rather obviously intent upon the upper line of canvasses as he passed them. They were the daughters of his father’s neighbours; they had known him all their lives, and yet they deliberately turned their backs upon him. He had paused, a little resentful, a little ashamed, in a farther corner, when Mrs. Wingfield drew near and spoke to him. She had been one of his mother’s intimate friends and she touched him gently on the arm.
“I am glad to see you, Wayne. We very rarely meet any more. I wish you would come to see me.”