Chapter 23

"THE WOMAN BORIS LOVED"

At last Neva had made a portrait she could look at without becoming depressed. For the free workman there is always the joy of the work itself�the mingling of the pain which is happiness and the happiness which is pain, that resembles nothing so much as what a woman experiences in becoming a mother. But, with the mother, birth is a climax; with the artist, an anti-climax. The mother always sees that her creation is good; her critical faculty is the docile echo of her love. With the artist, the critical faculty must be never so mercilessly just as when he is judging the offspring of his own soul; he looks upon the finished work, only to see its imperfections; how woefully it falls short of what he strove and hoped. The joy of life is the joy of work�the prize withers in its winner's hand.

After her first year under Raphael, Neva's portraits had been successful�more successful, perhaps, than they would have been if she had had to succeed in order to live. She suspected that her work was overpraised; Raphael said not, and thought not, and his critical faculty was so just that neither vanity nor love could trick it. But when she finished the portrait of Narcisse�Narcisse at her drawing table, her face illumined from within�her eyes full of dreams, one capable yet womanly hand against her smooth, round cheek, the background a hazed, mysterious mirage of fairylike structures�when this portrait was done, Neva looked on it and knew that it was good. "It might be better," said she. "It is far, far from best�even my best, I hope. But it is good."

She did not let her master see it until she had made the last stroke. Theretofore he had always said some word of encouragement the moment he looked at any of her work submitted to him. Now, he stood silent, his eyes searching for flaws, instead of for merits. There was no mistaking the meaning of that criticism; Neva thrilled until she trembled. It was the happiest moment of her life.

"I guess you've hit it, this time," he said at length. "Worse work than that has lived�on its merits."

"I'm afraid I'll never be able to do it again," she sighed. "It seems to me an accident."

"And so it was," replied he. "So is all inspired work. Yes, it's an accident�but that kind of accidents happen again and again to those who keep good and ready for good luck." He turned and, almost forgetting the woman in the artist, put his hand affectionately, admiringly, on her shoulder. "And you�my dear�you have worked well."

"Not so well as I shall hereafter," replied she. "I've been discouraged. This will put heart into me."

He smiled with melancholy. "Yes�you'll work better. But not because you're less discouraged. This picture gives you pleasure now. Six months hence it will be a source of pain every time you think of it. There's a picture I did about twelve years ago that has stretched me on the rack a thousand times. I never think of it without a twinge. Why? Because I feel I've never equaled it since. They say I have�say it's far inferior to my later work. But I know�and it galls."

The bell rang and presently Molly appeared with Raphael's man-of-all-work carrying a large canvas, covered. "Ah�here it is!" cried Boris, and when the two servants were gone, he said to Neva: "Now, shut your eyes, and don't open them till I tell you."

A few seconds, then he cried laughingly, "Behold!" She looked; it was a full-length portrait of herself. She was entering a room, was holding aside a dark purple curtain that was in daring, exquisite contrast with her soft, clinging, silver-white dress, and the whiteness of her slender, long, bare arms. The darkness in which her figure, long and slim and slight, was framed, the flooding light upon it as if from it, the exceeding beauty of her slender face, of her dreaming, dazzled eyes, all combining to suggest a soul, newly awakened from a long, long sleep, and entering life, full equipped for all that life has for a mind that can think and a heart that can love and laugh and weep� It was Neva at her best, Boris at his best.

He looked from the portrait to her, and back again. "Not right," he muttered discontentedly. "not yet. However, I'll touch it up here." Then to her, "I want a few sittings, if you'll take the trouble to get out that dress."

She was gazing at his work with awe; it did not seem to her to be herself. "It is finished, now," said she to him.

"It will never be finished," he replied. "I shall keep it by me and work at it from time to time." He stood off and looked at it lovingly. "You're mine, there," he went on. "All mine, young woman." And he took one of her long brushes and scrawled "Boris" across the lower left corner of the canvas. "It shall be my bid for immortality for us both. When you've ceased to belong to yourself or anyone, when you shall have passed away and are lost forever in the abyss of forgotten centuries, Boris's Neva will still be Boris's. And men and women of races we never dreamed of will stand before her and say, 'She�oh, I forget her name, but she's the woman Boris loved.'"

A note in his mock-serious tone, a gleam in his smiling gaze made the tears well into her eyes; and he saw them, and the omen put him in a glow. In his own light tone, she corrected, "A woman Boris fancied."

"The woman Boris loved," he repeated. "The woman he was never separated from, the woman he never let out of his sight. There are two of you, now. And I have the immortal one. What do you think of it?"

"There's nothing left for the mortal one but to get and to stay out of sight. No one that once saw your Neva would take much interest in mine."

"It's a portrait that's a likeness," said he. "With you, the outside happens to be an adequate reflection of the inside." And he smiled at her simplicity, which he knew was as unaffected as it always is with those who think little about themselves, much about their surroundings.

"I wish I could see it," she said wistfully.

"You can see it in the face of any man who happens to be looking at you."

But she had turned to her portrait of Narcisse and was eying it disdainfully. "I must hide that," she went on, "as long as yours is in this room. How clumsy my work looks�how painstaking and 'talented.'" She wheeled it behind a curtain.

"None of that! None of that!" he protested severely. "Never depreciate your own work to yourself. You can't be like me, nor I like you. Each flower its own perfume, each bird its own song. You are a painter born; so am I. No one can be more."

"I know, I know," she apologized. "I'm not as foolishly self-effacing as when you first took me in hand, am I?"

"You make a braver front," replied he, "but sometimes I suspect it's only a front. Will you give me a sitting this afternoon?"

"I'll change to that dress, and tell Molly not to let anyone in."

She had been gone about ten minutes when the bell rang again. Boris continued to busy himself with paints and brushes until he caught Armstrong's voice. He frowned, paused in his preparations, and listened.

"Is Miss Genevieve at home?" Armstrong was saying.

To Boris's astonishment, he heard the old woman answer, in a tone which did not conceal her dislike for the man she was addressing, "Yes, sir. Go into the studio. She will be in shortly."

Armstrong entered, to find himself facing Raphael's most irritating expression�an amused disdain, the more penetrating for a polite pretense of concealment. "Come in, Mr. Armstrong," cried he. "But you mustn't stay long, as we're at work."

"How d'ye do," said Armstrong, all but ignoring him. "Sorry to annoy you. But don't mind me. Go right on." And he began to wander about the room�Raphael had thrown a drape over his picture of Neva. The minutes dragged; the silence was oppressive. Finally Armstrong said, "Miss Carlin must be dressing."

"Beg pardon?" asked Boris, as if he had not heard.

"Nothing," replied Armstrong. "Perhaps I was thinking aloud."

Silence again, until Raphael, in the hope of inducing this untimely visitor to depart, said, "Miss Carlin is getting ready for a sitting."

"You are painting her portrait?"

"Yes."

"That will be interesting. I'd like to see how it's done. I'll sit by quite quietly. You won't mind me."

"I'm afraid you'll have to go," replied the painter. "I'd not be disturbed, but a spectator has a disastrous effect on the sitter."

"I see," said Armstrong. "Well, I'll wait until she comes. Are you just beginning?"

"No," replied Raphael curtly.

"Is that the portrait?" asked Armstrong, indicating the covered canvas.

Boris hesitated, suddenly flung off the cover.

"Ah!" exclaimed Armstrong, under his breath, drawing back a step.

He gazed with an expression that interested Boris the lover even more than Boris the student and painter of human nature. Since the talk with Atwater, Armstrong had been casting this way and that, night and day, for some means, any means, to escape from the sentence the grandee of finance had fixed upon him; for he had not even considered the alternative�to strike his flag in surrender. But escape he could not contrive, and it had pressed in upon him that he must go down, down to the bottom. He might drag many with him, perhaps Atwater himself; but, in the depths, under the whole mass of wreckage would be himself�dead beyond resurrection. At thirty a man's reputation can be shot all to pieces, and heal, with hardly a scar; but not at forty. Still young, with less than half his strength of manhood run, he would be of the living that are dead. And he had come to see Neva for the last time, after fighting in vain against the folly of the longing�of yielding to the longing, when yielding could mean only pain, more pain.

And now that he had weakly yielded, here was this creation of the genius who loved her, to put him quite down. He was like one waking to the sanity of reality from a dream in which he has figured as all that he is not but longs to be. "Even if there had been no one else seeking her," he said to himself, "what hope was there for me? And with this man loving her� Whether she loves him as yet or not, she will, she must, sooner or later." Beside the power to evoke such enchantment as that which lived and breathed before him, his own skill at cheating and lying in order to shift the position of sundry bags of tawny dirt seemed to him so mean and squalid that he felt as if he were shrinking in stature and Raphael were towering. At last, he was learning the lesson of humility�the lesson that is the beginning of character.

"I'll not wait," said he, in a voice that smote the heart of Boris, the fellow being sensitive to feeling's faintest, finest note. "Say, please, that I had to go."

Raphael astonished himself by having an impulse of compassion. But he checked it. "He'd better go," he said to himself. "Seeing her would only increase his misery." And he silently watched Armstrong move heavily toward the door into the hall. The big Westerner's hand was on the porti�re and his sad gray eyes were taking a last look at the picture. The faint rustle of her approach made him hesitate. Before he could go, she entered. She was not in the silver-white evening dress Raphael expected, but in the house dress she was wearing when he came.

"I'm just going," Armstrong explained. "I shan't interrupt your sitting."

"Oh, that's off for to-day," replied she. "Now that I've had the trouble of changing twice on your account, you'll have to stop awhile. Morning is better for a sitting, anyhow. We shouldn't have had more than half an hour of good light."

Boris was tranquilly acquiescent. "To-morrow morning!" he said, with not a trace of irritation.

"If you can come at noon."

"Very well."

He covered the picture, which had been quite forgotten by all three in the stress of the meeting of living personalities. He had a queer ironic smile as he pushed it back against the wall, took up his hat and coat.

"You're not going," she objected.

His face shadowed at her tone, which seemed to him to betray a feeling the opposite of objection. "Yes," said he�"since I can't do this, I must do something else. I haven't the time to idle about."

She colored at this subtle reflection upon her own devotion to work. All she said was, "At noon to-morrow, then. And I'll be dressed and ready."

When he heard the outer door close Armstrong said, "I understand now why you like him." He was looking at the draped easel with eyes that expressed all he was thinking about Neva, and about Neva and Boris.

"You liked the picture?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. And there he stopped; his expression made her glance away and color faintly.

"What's the trouble?" she inquired with friendly satire. "Have you lost a few dollars?"

He lowered his head. "Don't," he said humbly. "Please�not to-day."

As he sat staring at the floor and looking somewhat shorn, yet a shorn Samson, she watched him, her expression like a veil not thick enough to hide the fact that there is emotion behind it, yet not thin enough to reveal what, or even what kind of, emotion. Presently she went toward the curtain behind which she had put her portrait of Narcisse. "I don't think I've ever shown you any of my work, have I?" said she.

"No, but I've seen�almost everything."

"Why, you never spoke of it."

"No," he said. Then he added, "I've always hated your work�not because it was bad, but because it was good."

She dropped her hand from the curtain she had been about to draw aside.

"Let me see it," said he. "All that doesn't matter, now."

She brought out the portrait. He looked in silence�he had hid himself behind that impenetrable stolidity which made him seem not only emotionless but incapable of emotion. When he took his gaze from the picture, it was to stare into vacancy. She watched him with eyes shining softly and sadly. As he became vaguely conscious of the light upon the dark path and stirred, she said with irresistible gentleness, "What is it, Horace?"

"Blues�only the blues," replied he, rousing himself and rising heavily from his chair. "I must go. I'll end by making you as uncomfortable as I am myself. In the mood I'm in to-day, a man should hide in his bed and let no one come near him."

"Sit down�please," said she, touching his arm in a gesture of appeal. She smiled with a trace of her old raillery. "You are more nearly human than I've ever seen you."

He yielded to the extent of seating himself tentatively on the arm of a chair. "Human? Yes�that's it. I've sunk down to where I think I'd almost be grateful even for pity." The spell of good luck, of prosperity without reverse, that had held him a mere incarnate ambition, was broken, was dissolving.

She seated herself opposite, leaned toward him. "Horace," she said, "can I help you?" And so soothing was her tone that her offer could not have smarted upon the wound even of a proud man less humbled than he.

"It's nothing in which you could be of the slightest assistance," replied he. "I've got myself in a mess�who was ever in a mess that wasn't of his own making? I jumped in, and I find there's no jumping out. I might crawl out�but I never learned that way of traveling, and at my age it can't be learned."

"Whatever it is," she said, very slow and deliberate, "you must let me help you bear it."

In the silence that followed, the possible meaning of her words penetrated to him. He looked at her in a dazed way. "What did you say�just now?" he asked.

"No matter what it is," she repeated, "we can and will bear it together."

"Does that mean you care for me?" he asked, as if stunned.

"It means I am giving you the friendship you once asked," was her answer, in the same slow, earnest way.

"Oh," he said. Then, as she colored and shrank, "I didn't mean to hurt you. Yes, I want your friendship. It's all�it's more than I've the right to ask, now. You did well to refuse me, when I wanted you and thought I had something to give in return."

"You didn't want me," she replied. "You wanted only what almost any man wants of almost any woman. And you had nothing to give me in return�for, I don't want from any man only what you think is all a man ought to give a woman, or could give her. I am like you, in one way. I want all or nothing."

"Well�you'd get nothing, now, from me," said he with stolid bitterness. "I'm done for. I wouldn't drag you down with me, even if you'd let me." And he seized his hat and strode toward the door. But she was before him, barring the way. "Drag me down!" she exclaimed. "A few months ago, when you asked me to marry you�then you did want to drag me down. The name of wife doesn't cover the shame of the plaything of passion. Now��"

His stern face relaxed. He looked down at her doubtfully, longingly. It seemed to him that, if he were to try now, if he were to ask of her pity what she had denied to his passion in his strength and pride, he might get it. The perfume of her bright brown hair intoxicated him; his whole body was inhaling her beauty, which seemed to be flowing like the fumes of ecstasy itself through her delicate, almost diaphanous draperies of lace and silk and linen. She had offered only friendship, but passion was urging that she would yield all if he would but ask. All! And what would be the price? Why, merely yielding to Atwater. He need not tell her until he had made terms with him, had secured something of a future materially, perhaps a great future, for he could make himself most useful to Atwater��

"No matter what it is," she said, "you can count on me."

�Yes, most useful to Atwater; and all would be well. Trick her into marrying him�then, compromise with Atwater�and all would be well. He thought he was about to stretch out his arms to take her, when suddenly up started within him the will that was his real self. "I can't do it," he cried roughly. "Stand away from the door!"

"Can't�do�what?" she asked.

"Can't give in to Atwater." Rapidly he gave her an outline of the situation. Partly because he abhorred cant, partly because he was determined not to say anything sounding like an appeal for her admiration and sympathy, he carefully concealed the real reasons of pride and self-respect that forbade him to make terms with Atwater. "I won't bend to any man," he ended. "I may be, shall be, struck down. But I'll never kneel down!"

She seemed bewildered by the marshy maze of trickery through which his explanation had been taking her. "It seems to me," she urged, "that if you don't make terms with Mr. Atwater, don't return to what you originally agreed to do, it'll mean disgrace you don't deserve, and injury to the men who have stood by you."

"So it will," was his answer in a monotonous, exasperating way. "Nevertheless�" He shrugged his shoulders�"I can't do it. I've always been that way. I don't know, myself, till the test comes, what I may do and what I may not do."

Her eyes lowered, but he thought he could see and feel her contempt. She left the door, seated herself, resting her head on her arms. He shifted awkwardly from one leg to the other. He felt he had accomplished his purpose, had done what was the only decent thing in the circumstances�had disgusted her. It was time to go. But he lingered.

She startled him by suddenly straightening herself and saying, or rather beginning, "If you really loved me��"

He, stung with furious anger, made a scornful gesture. "Delilah!" he cried. "It's always the same story. Love robs a man of his strength. You would use love to tempt me to be a traitor to myself. Yes, a traitor. I haven't much morality, or that sort of thing. But I've got a standard, and to it I must hold. If I yielded to Atwater, I should go straight to hell."

"Ah," she exclaimed, as if the clouds had suddenly opened, "then you are right, Horace. You must not yield! Why did you frighten me? Why didn't you say that before? Why did you pretend it was mere stubbornness?"

"Because that's what it is�mere stubbornness. Stubbornness�that's my manhood�all the manhood I've got. I grant terms�I do not accept them."

His manner chilled, where his words would have had small effect. And it conveyed no impression of being an assumed manner; on the contrary, the cold, immovable man before her seemed more like the Armstrong she had known than the man of tenderness and passion. Her words were braver than her manner, and more hopeful, as she said, "You can't deceive me, Horace. It must be that it is impossible to make honorable terms with Atwater."

"As you please."

"You are, for some reason, trying to drive away my friendship. Your pride in your own self-sufficience��"

"You force me to be perfectly frank," he interrupted. "My love for you is nothing but a passion. It has been tempting me to play the traitor to myself. I caught myself in time. I stand or fall alone. You would merely burden and weaken me."

She sat still and white and cold. Without looking at her, he, in a stolid, emotionless way, and with a deliberation that seemed to have no reluctance in it, left her alone.

"Horace!" she cried, starting up, as the porti�re dropped behind him.

The only answer was the click of the closing outside door. She sank back, stared in a stupor at the shrine which the god had visited after so many years�had visited only to profane and destroy.