The man lifted his pallid, haggard face and, with a yellow, claw-like hand wiped the beads of clammy sweat from his forehead; while his deep-sunken eyes leered at her with an insane light.
The woman was at no pains to conceal her disgust. In her voice there was no hint of pity. "Didn't Marie tell you that I wished to be alone?"
"Of course," he jeered in his rasping whisper, "that's why I came." He gave a hideous resemblance to a laugh, which ended in a cough--and, again, he drew his skinny, shaking hand across his damp forehead "That's the time that a man should visit his wife, isn't it? When she is alone. Or"--he grinned mockingly--"when she wishes to be?"
She regarded him with open scorn and loathing. "You unclean beast! Will you take yourself out of my room?"
He gazed at her, as a malevolent devil might gloat over a soul delivered up for torture. "Not until I choose to go, my dear."
[Illustration: "Well, what do you want? What are you doing here?"]
Suddenly changing her manner, she smiled with deliberate, mocking humor.
While he watched, she moved leisurely to a deep, many-cushioned couch; and, arranging the pillows, reclined among them in the careless abandonment of voluptuous ease and physical content. Openly, ostentatiously, she exhibited herself to his burning gaze in various graceful poses--lifting her arms above her head to adjust a cushion more to her liking; turning and stretching her beautiful body; moving her limbs with sinuous enjoyment--as disregardful of his presence as though she were alone. At last she spoke in cool, even, colorless tones; "Perhaps you will tell me what you want?"
The wretched victim of his own unbridled sensuality shook with inarticulate rage. Choking and coughing he writhed in his chair--his emaciated limbs twisted grotesquely; his sallow face bathed in perspiration his claw-like hands opening and closing; his bloodless lips curled back from his yellow teeth, in a horrid grin of impotent fury. And all the while she lay watching him with that pitiless, mocking, smile. It was as though the malevolent devil and the tortured soul had suddenly changed places.
When the man could speak, he reviled her, in his rasping whisper, with curses that it seemed must blister his tongue. She received his effort with jeering laughter and taunting words; moving her body, now and then, among the cushions, with an air of purely physical enjoyment that, to the other, was maddening.
"If this is all you came for,"--she said, easily,--"might have spared yourself the effort--don't you think?"
Controlling himself, in a measure, he returned, "I came to tell you that your intimacy with that damned painter must stop."
Her eyes narrowed slightly. One hand, hidden in the cushions, clenched until her rings hurt. "Just what do you mean by my intimacy?" she asked evenly.
"You know what I mean," he replied coarsely. "I mean what intimacy with a man always means to a woman like you."
"The only meaning that a creature of your foul mind can understand," she retorted smoothly. "If it were worth while to tell you the truth, I would say that my conduct when alone with Mr. King has been as proper as--as when I am alone with you."
The taunt maddened him. Interrupted by spells of coughing--choking, gasping, fighting for breath, his eyes blazing with hatred and lust, mingling his words with oaths and curses--he raged at her. "And do you think--that, because I am so nearly dead,--I do not resent what--I saw, to-day? Do you think--I am so far gone that I cannot--understand--your interest in this man,--after--watching you, together, all--the afternoon?
Has there been any one--in his studio, except you two, when--he was painting you in that dress--which you--designed for his benefit? Oh, no, indeed,--you and your--genius could not be interrupted,--for the sake--of his art. His art! Great God!--was there ever such a damnable farce--since hell was invented? Art!--you--_you_--_you_!--" crazed with jealous fury, he pointed at her with his yellow, shaking, skeleton fingers; and struggled to raise his voice above that rasping whisper until the cords of his scrawny neck stood out and his face was distorted with the strain of his effort--"_You!_ painted as a--modest Quaker Maid,--with all the charm of innocence,--virtue, and religious piety in your face. _You!_ And that picture will be exhibited--and written about--as a work of _art!_ You'll pull all the strings,--and use all your influence,--and the thing--will be received as a--masterpiece."
"And," she added calmly, "you will write a check--and lie, as you did this afternoon."
Without heeding her remark, he went on,--"You know the picture is worthless. He knows it,--Conrad Lagrange knows it,--Jim Rutlidge knows it,--the whole damned clique and gang of you know it, He's like all his kind,--a pretender,--a poser,--playing into the hands--of such women as you; to win social position--and wealth. And we and our kind--we pretend to believe--in such damned parasites,--and exalt them and what we--call their art,--and keep them in luxury, and buy their pictures;--because they prostitute--their talents to gratify our vanity. We know it's all a damned sham--and a pretense that if they were real artists,--with an honest workman's respect for their work,--they wouldn't--recognize us."
"Don't forget to send him a check,"--she murmured--"you can't afford to neglect it, you know--think how people would talk."
"Don't worry," he replied. "There'll be no talk. I'll send the genius his check--for making love--to my wife in the sacred name of art,--and I'll lie--about his picture with--the rest of you. But there will be--no more of your intimacy with him. You're my wife,--in spite of hell,--and from now on--I'll see--that you are true--to me. Your sickening pose--of modesty in dress shall be something--more than a pose. For the little time I have left,--I'll have--you to--myself or I'll kill you."
His reference to her refusal to uncover her shoulders in public broke the woman's calm and aroused her to a cold fury. Springing to her feet, she stood over him as he sat huddled in his chair, exhausted by his effort.
"What is your silly, idle threat beside the fact," she said with stinging scorn. "To have killed me, instead of making me your wife, would have been a kindness greater than you are capable of. You know how unspeakably vile you were when you bought me. You know how every hour of my life with you has been a torment to me. You should be grateful that I have helped you to live your lie--that I have played the game of respectability with you--that I am willing to play it a little while longer, until you lay down your hand for good, and release us both.
"Suppose I _were_ what you think me? What right have _you_ to object to my pleasures? Have you--in all your life of idle, vicious, luxury--have you ever feared to do evil if it appealed to your bestial nature? You know you have not. You have feared only the appearance of evil. To be as evil as you like so long as you can avoid the appearance of evil; that's the game you have taught me to play. That's the game we have played together.
That's the game we and our kind insist the artists and writers shall help us play. That's the only game I know, and, by the rule of our game, so long as the world sees nothing, I shall do what pleases me.
"You have had your day with me. You have had what you paid for. What right have you to deny me, now, an hour's forgetfulness? When I think of what I might have been, but for you, I wonder that I have cared to live, and I would not--except for the poor sport of torturing you.
"You scoff at Mr. King's portrait of me because he has not painted me as I am! What would you have said if he _had_ painted me as I am? What would you say if Conrad Lagrange should write the truth about us and our kind, for his millions of readers? You sneer at me because I cannot uncover my shoulders in the conventional dress of my class, and so make a virtue of a necessity and deceive the world by a pretense of modesty. Go look in your mirror, you fool! Your right to sneer at me for my poor little pretense is denied you by every line of your repulsive countenance Now get out. I'm going to retire."
And she rang for her maid.
Chapter XII
First Fruits of His Shame
When the postman, in his little cart, stopped at the home of Aaron King and his friend, that day, it was Conrad Lagrange who received the mail.
The artist was in his studio, and the novelist, knowing that the painter was not at work, went to him there with a letter.
The portrait--still on the easel--was hidden by the velvet curtain.
Sitting by a table that was littered with a confusion of sketches, books and papers, the young man was re-tying a package of old letters that he had, evidently, just been reading.
As the novelist went to him, the artist said quietly,--indicating the package in his hand,--"From my mother. She wrote them during the last year of my study abroad." When the other did not reply, he continued thoughtfully, "Do you know, Lagrange, since my acquaintance with you, I find many things in these old letters that--at the time I received them--I did not, at all, appreciate. You seem to be helping me, somehow, to a better understanding of my mother's spirit and mind." He smiled.
Presently, Conrad Lagrange, when he could trust himself to speak, said, "Your mother's mind and spirit, Aaron, were too fine and rare to be fully appreciated or understood except by one trained in the school of life, itself. When she wrote those letters, you were a student of mere craftsmanship. She, herself no doubt, recognized that you would not fully comprehend the things she wrote; but she put them down, out of the very fullness of her intellectual and spiritual wealth--trusting to your love to preserve the letters, and to the years to give you understanding."
"Why," cried the artist, "those are almost her exact words--as I have just been reading them!"
The other, smiling, continued quietly, "Your appreciation and understanding of your mother will continue to grow through all your life, Aaron. When you are old--as old as I am--you will still find in those letters hidden treasures of thought, and truths of greater value than you, now, can realize. But here--I have brought you your share of the afternoon's mail."
When Aaron King opened the envelope that his friend laid on the table before him, he sat regarding its contents with an air of thoughtful meditation--lost to his surroundings.
The novelist--who had gone to the window and was looking into the rose garden--turned to speak to his friend; but the other did not reply. Again, the man at the window addressed the painter; but still the younger man was silent. At this, Conrad Lagrange came back to the table; an expression of anxiety upon his face. "What is it, old man? What's the matter? No bad news, I hope?"
Aaron King, aroused from his fit of abstraction, laughed shortly, and held out to his friend the letter he had just received. It was from Mr. Taine.
Enclosed was the millionaire's check. The letter was a formal business note; the check was for an amount that drew a low whistle from the novelist's lips.
"Rather higher pay than old brother Judas received for a somewhat similar service, isn't it," he commented, as he passed the letter and check back to the artist. Then, as he watched the younger man's face, he asked, "What's the matter, don't you like the flavor of these first fruits of your shame? I advise you to cultivate a taste for this sort of thing as quickly as possible--in your own defense."
"Don't you think you are a little bit too hard on us all, Lagrange?" asked the artist, with a faint smile. "These people are satisfied. The picture pleases them."
"Of course they are pleased," retorted the other. "You know your business.
That's the trouble with you. That's the trouble with us all, these days--we painters and writers and musicians--we know our business too damned well. We have the mechanics of our crafts, the tricks of our trades, so well in hand that we make our books and pictures and music say what we please. We _use_ our art to gain our own vain ends instead of being driven _by_ our art to find adequate expression for some great truth that demands through us a hearing. You have said it all, my friend--you have summed up the whole situation in the present-day world of creative art--these people are satisfied. You have given them what they want, prostituting your art to do it. That's what I have been doing all these years--giving people what they want. For a price we cater to them--even as their tailors, and milliners, and barbers. And never again will the world have a truly great art or literature until men like us--in the divine selfishness of their, calling--demand, first and last, that they, _themselves_, be satisfied by the work of their hands."
Going to the easel, he rudely jerked aside the curtain. Involuntarily, the painter went to stand by his side before the picture.
"Look at it!" cried the novelist. "Look at it in the light of your own genius! Don't you see its power? Doesn't it tell you what you _could_ do, if you would? If you couldn't paint a picture, or if you couldn't feel a picture to be painted, it wouldn't matter. I'd let you ride to hell on your own palette, and be damned to you. But this thing shows a power that the world can ill afford to lose. It is so bad because it is so good. Come here!" he drew his friend to the big window, and pointed to the mountains.
"There is an art like those mountains, my boy--lonely, apart from the world; remotely above the squalid ambitions of men; Godlike in its calm strength and peace--an art to which men may look for inspiration and courage and hope. And there is an art that is like Fairlands--petty and shallow and mean--with only the fictitious value that its devotees assume, but never, actually, realize. Listen, Aaron, don't continue to misread your mother's letters. Don't misunderstand her as thinking that the place she coveted for you is a place within the power of these people to give.
Come with me into the mountains, yonder. Come, and let us see if, in those hills of God, you cannot find yourself."
When Conrad Lagrange finished, the artist stood, for a little, without reply--irresolute, before his picture--the check in his hand. At last, still without speaking, he went back to the table, where he wrote briefly his reply to Mr. Taine. When he had finished, he handed his letter to the older man, who read:
Dear Sir: