Complete weird tales of.., p.547
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 547
She lay back in her antique gilded chair, hands extended along the arms, looking at him with a smile that was still shy.
“My idea of you — of an artist — was so different,” she said.
“There are all kinds, mostly the seriously inspired and humourless variety who makes a mystic religion of a very respectable profession. This world is full of pale, enraptured artists; full of muscular, thumb-smearing artists; full of dreamy weavers of visions, usually deficient in spinal process; full of unwashed little inverts to whom the world really resembles a kaleidoscope full of things that wiggle—”
They began to laugh, he with a singular delight in her comprehension of his idle, irresponsible chatter, she from sheer pleasure in listening and looking at this man who was so different from anybody she had ever known — and, thank God! — so young.
And when the bell rang and the clatter announced the advent of luncheon, she settled in her chair with a little shiver of happiness, blushing at her capacity for it, and at her acquiescence in the strangest conditions in which she had ever found herself in all her life, — conditions so bizarre, so grotesque, so impossible that there was no use in trying to consider them — alas! no point in blushing now.
Mechanically she settled her little naked feet deep into the big bath-slippers, tucked up her white wool sleeves to the dimpled elbow, and surveyed the soup which he had placed before her to serve.
“I know perfectly well that this isn’t right,” she said, helping him and then herself. “But I am wondering what there is about it that isn’t right.”
“Isn’t it demoralising!” he said, amused.
“I — wonder if it is?”
He laughed: “Such ideas are nonsense, Miss West. Listen to me: you and I — everybody except those with whom something is physically wrong — are born with a full and healthy capacity for demoralisation and mischief. Mischief is only one form of energy. If lightning flies about unguided it’s likely to do somebody some damage; if it’s conducted properly to a safe terminal there’s no damage done and probably a little good.”
“Your brushes are your lightning-rods?” she suggested, laughing.
“Certainly. I only demoralise canvas. What outlet have you for your perfectly normal deviltry?”
“I haven’t any.”
[Illustration: “‘I know perfectly well that this isn’t right,’ she said.”]
“Any deviltry?”
“Any outlet.”
“You ought to have.”
“Ought I?”
“Certainly. You are as full of restless energy as I am.”
“Oh, I don’t think I am.”
“You are. Look at yourself! I never saw anybody so sound, so superbly healthy, so” — he laughed— “adapted to dynamics. You’ve got to have an outlet. Or there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
She looked at her fruit salad gravely, tasted it, and glanced up at him:
“I have never in all my life had any outlet — never even any outlook, Mr.
Neville.”
“You should have had both,” he grumbled, annoyed at himself for the interest her words had for him; uneasy, now that she had responded, yet curious to learn something about this fair young girl, approximately his intellectual equal, who came to his door looking for work as a model. He thought to himself that probably it was some distressing tale which he couldn’t help, and the recital of which would do neither of them any good. Of stories of models’ lives he was tired, satiated. There was no use encouraging her to family revelations; an easy, pleasant footing was far more amusing to maintain. The other hinted of intimacy; and that he had never tolerated in his employees.
Yet, looking now across the table at her, a not unkind curiosity began to prod him. He could easily have left matters where they were, maintained the status quo indefinitely — or as long as he needed her services.
“Outlets are necessary,” he said, cautiously. “Otherwise we go to the bow-wows.”
“Or — die.”
“What?” sharply.
She looked up without a trace of self-consciousness or the least hint of the dramatic:
“I would die unless I had an outlet. This is almost one. At least it gives me something to do with my life.”
“Posing?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t quite understand you.”
“Why, I only mean that — the other” — she smiled— “what you call the bow-wows, would not have been an outlet for me…. I was a show-girl for two months last winter; I ought to know. And I’d rather have died than—”
“I see,” he said; “that outlet was too stupid to have attracted you.”
She nodded. “Besides, I have principles,” she said, candidly.
“Which effectually blocked that outlet. They sometimes kill, too, as you say. Youth stifled too long means death — the death of youth at least. Outlets mean life. The idea is to find a safe one.”
She flushed in quick, sensitive response:
“That is it; that is what I meant. Mr. Neville, I am twenty-one; and do you know I never had a childhood? And I am simply wild for it — for the girlhood and the playtime that I never had—”
She checked herself, looking across at him uncertainly.
“Go on,” he nodded.
“That is all.”
“No; tell me the rest.”
She sat with head bent, slender fingers picking at her napkin; then, without raising her troubled eyes:
“Life has been — curious. My mother was bedridden. My childhood and girlhood were passed caring for her. That is all I ever did until — a year ago,” she added, her voice falling so low he could scarcely hear her.
“She died, then?”
“A year ago last February.”
“You went to school. You must have made friends there.”
“I went to a public school for a year. After that mother taught me.”
“She must have been extremely cultivated.”
The girl nodded, looking absently at the cloth. Then, glancing up:
“I wonder whether you will understand me when I tell you why I decided to ask employment of artists.”
“I’ll try to,” he said, smiling.
“It was an intense desire to be among cultivated people — if only for a few hours. Besides, I had read about artists; and their lives seemed so young, so gay, so worth living — please don’t think me foolish and immature, Mr. Neville — but I was so stifled, so cut off from such people, so uninspired, so — so starved for a little gaiety — and I needed youthful companionship — surroundings where people of my own age and intelligence sometimes entered — and I had never had it—”
She looked at him with a strained, wistful expression as though begging him to understand her:
“I couldn’t remain at the theatre,” she said. “I had little talent — no chance except chances I would not tolerate; no companionship except what I was unfitted for by education and inclination…. The men were — impossible. There may have been girls I could have liked — but I did not meet them. So, as I had to do something — and my years of seclusion with mother had unfitted me for any business — for office work or shop work — I thought that artists might care to employ me — might give me — or let me see — be near — something of the gayer, brighter, more pleasant and youthful side of life—”
She ceased, bent her head thoughtfully.
“You want — friends? Young ones — with intellects? You want to combine these with a chance of making a decent living?”
“Yes.” She looked up candidly: “I am simply starved for it. You must believe that when you see what I have submitted to — gone through with in your studio” — she blushed vividly— “in a — a desperate attempt to escape the — the loneliness, the silence and isolation” — she raised her dark eyes— “the isolation of the poor,” she said. “You don’t know what that means.”
After a moment she added, level-eyed: “For which there is supposed to be but one outlet — if a girl is attractive.”
He rose, walked to and fro for a few moments, then, halting:
“All memory of the initial terror and distress and uncertainty aside, have you not enjoyed this morning, Miss West?”
“Yes, I — have. I — you have no idea what it has meant to me.”
“It has given you an outlook, anyway.”
“Yes…. Only — I’m terrified at the idea of going through it again — with another man—”
He laughed, and she tried to, saying:
“But if all artists are as kind and considerate—”
“Plenty of ’em are more so. There are a few bounders, a moderate number of beasts. You’ll find them everywhere in the world from the purlieus to the pulpit…. I’m going to make a contract with you. After that, regretfully, I’ll see that you meet the men who will be valuable to you…. I wish there was some way I could box you up in a jeweller’s case so that nobody else could have you and I could find you when I needed you!”
She laughed shyly, extended her slim white hand for him to support her while she mounted to her eyrie. Then, erect, delicately flushed, she let the robe fall from her and stood looking down at him in silence.
CHAPTER II
SPRING CAME UNUSUALLY early that year. By the first of the month a few willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of clipped verdure in its wake.
Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship.
Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made endless nuisances of themselves all day long.
In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter’s pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with, pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile.
And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained uncrowded.
Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment:
“Burleson — and you, Sam Ogilvy — and you, Annan, all say that the exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn.
“It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue.
“But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always centre. This year it happens to be José Querida who stems the sparkling mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little swirl. Next year — or next decade it may be anybody — you, Annan, or Sam — perhaps,” he added with a slight smile, “it might be I. Quand même. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and it’s up to us to go about our business. And I’m going. Good-bye.”
He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful, elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many.
“Hell,” observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, “it’s all right for Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where half the people are crowded around his own picture.”
“What a success he’s having,” mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the window at a pretty girl across the street.
Annan nodded: “He works hard enough for it.”
“He works all the time,” grumbled Burleson, “but, does he work hard?”
“A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard,” observed Ogilvy— “if you see any merit in that, John.”
Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more bovine than ever:
“What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?” he demanded.
Annan laughed: “Poor old honest, literal John,” he said, lazily. “Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be able to accomplish that, John?”
“I wouldn’t like it at all!” roared Burleson in serious disapproval.
“That’s because you’re a sculptor and a Unitarian,” said Annan, gravely.
“My God!” shouted Burleson, “what’s that got to do with a hen scratching herself!”
Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of “touching up John”; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others, emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own common-sense and the futility of his friends.
“Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine Theatre,” he said in his honest, resonant voice. “I wish to Heaven I could paint like him.”
Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: “Kelly
Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew.”
“No, the most skilful,” suggested Ogilvy. “I have known more gifted men who never became skilful.”
[Illustration: “‘What’s the matter with it, then?’”]
“What hair is that you’re splitting, Sam?” demanded Burleson. “Don’t you like Kelly’s work?”
“Sure I do.”
“What’s the matter with it, then?”
There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time, the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson — voiced in utter good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville’s work. And his answer had been a universal silence.
Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: “I have never in my life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville’s.”
“Sure thing,” grunted Burleson.
“His personal manner of doing his work — which the critics and public term ‘tek — nee — ee — eek,’” laughed Annan, “is simply gloriously bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it — and what colour!”
There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence.
Ogilvy’s dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and everybody turned toward him:
“Then,” he said, slowly, “what is the matter with Neville?”
Somebody said: “He does convince you; it isn’t that, is it?”
A voice replied: “Does he convince himself?”
“There is — there always has been something lacking in all that big, glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing — whatever it is,” said Ogilvy, quietly. “Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too omniscient—”
“And we mortals can’t stand that,” commented Annan, laughing. “‘Raus mit
Neville!’ He paints joy and sorrow as though he’d never known either—”
And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled silence.
“That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work,” said Gail, deliberately. “When he has passed through it and it has made his hand less steady, less omnipotent—”
“That’s right. We can’t love a man who has never endured what we have,” said another. “No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with an unscarred soul. A little hell for his — and no living painter could stand beside him.”
“Piffle,” observed John Burleson.
Ogilvy said: “It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known sorrow can best depict it — not perhaps most plausibly, but most convincingly — and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and — better taste.”
“Why do you want to paint tragedies?” demanded Burleson.
“One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to paint anything else — needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual.”
“That’s piffle, too!” said Burleson in his rumbling bass— “like that damn hen you lugged in—”
A shout of laughter relieved everybody.
“Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?” insisted Burleson, scornfully.
“There’s usually no necessity to hunt trouble,” said Annan.
“But you say that Kelly never had any and that he’d paint better if he had.”
“Trouble might be the making of Kelly Neville,” mused Ogilvy, “and it might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell, but on the man who’s frying on the gridiron.”
Annan said: “Personally I don’t see how Kelly could paint happiness or sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly than he does. And yet — and yet — sometimes we love men for their shortcomings — for the sincerity of their blunders — for the fallible humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest — what Kelly shows us — evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm…. If he could only make us love him—”
