"Yes."
The novelist laughed grimly. "I think it will do the trick. But, believe me, there will be consequences!"
The artist was in his studio, at work upon the big picture, when Mrs.
Taine called, the day of her return to Fairlands.
It was well on in the afternoon. Conrad Lagrange and Czar had started for a walk, but had gone, as usual, only as far as the neighboring house. Yee Kee, meeting Mrs. Taine at the door, explained, doubtfully, that the artist was at his work. He would go tell Mr. King that Mrs. Taine was here.
"Never mind, Kee. I will tell him myself," she answered; and, before the Chinaman could protest, she was on her way to the studio.
"Damn!" said the Celestial eloquently; and retired to his kitchen to ruminate upon the ways of "Mellican women."
Mrs. Taine pushed open the door of the studio, so quietly, that the painter, standing at his easel and engrossed with his work, did not notice her presence. For several moments the woman stood watching him, paying no heed to the picture, seeing only the man. When he did not look around, she said, "Are you too busy to even _look_ at me?"
With an exclamation, he faced her; then, as quickly, turned again; with hand outstretched to draw the easel curtain. But, as though obeying a second thought that came quickly upon the heels of the first impulse, he did not complete the movement. Instead, he laid his palette and brushes beside his color-box, and greeted her with, "How do you do, Mrs. Taine?
When did you return to Fairlands? Is Miss Taine with you?"
"Louise is abroad," she answered. "I--I preferred California. I arrived this afternoon." She went a step toward him. "You--you don't seem very glad to see me."
The painter colored, but she continued impulsively, without waiting for his reply. "If you only knew all that I have been doing for you!--the wires I have pulled; the influences I have interested; the critics and newspaper men that I have talked to! Of course I couldn't do anything in a large public way, so soon after Mr. Taine's death, you know; but I have been busy, just the same, and everything is fixed. When our picture is exhibited next season, you will find yourself not only a famous painter, but a social success as well." She paused. When he still did not speak, she went on, with an air of troubled sadness; "I _do_ miss Jim's help though. Isn't it frightful the way he disappeared? Where do you suppose he is? I can't--I won't--believe that anything has happened to him. It's all just one of his schemes to get himself talked about. You'll see that he will appear again, safe and sound, when the papers stop filling their columns about him. I know Jim Rutlidge, too well."
Aaron King thought of those bones, picked bare by the carrion birds, at the foot of the cliff. "It seems to be one of the mysteries of the day,"
he said. "Commonplace enough, no doubt, if one only had the key to it."
Mrs. Taine had evidently not been in Fairlands long enough to hear the story of Sibyl's disappearance--for which the artist mentally gave thanks.
"I am glad for one thing," continued the woman, her mind intent upon the main purpose of her call. "Jim had already written a splendid criticism of your picture--before he went away--and I have it. All this newspaper talk about him will only help to attract attention to what he has said about _you._ They are saying such nice things of him and his devotion to art, you know--it is all bound to help you." She waited for his approval, and for some expression of his gratitude.
"I fear, Mrs. Taine," he said slowly, "that you are making a mistake."
She laughed nervously, and answered with forced gaiety. "Not me. I'm too old a hand at the game not to know just how far I dare or dare not go."
"I do not mean that"--he returned--"I mean that I can not do my part. I fear you are mistaken in me."
Again, she laughed. "What nonsense! I like for you to be modest, of course--that will be one of your greatest charms. But if you are worried about the quality of your work--forget it, my dear boy. Once I have made you the rage, no one will stop to think whether your pictures are good or bad. The art is not in what you do, but in how you get it before the world. Ask Conrad Lagrange if I am not right."
"As to that," returned the artist, "Mr. Lagrange agrees with you, perfectly."
"But what is this that you are doing now? Will it be ready for the exhibition too?" She looked past him, at the big canvas; and he, watching her curiously stepped aside.
Parts of the picture were little more than sketched in, but still, line and color spoke with accusing truth the spirit of the company that had gathered at the banquet in the home on Fairlands Heights, the night of Mr.
Taine's death. The figures were not portraits, it is true, but they expressed with striking fidelity, the lives and characters of those who had, that night, been assembled by Mrs. Taine to meet the artist. The figure in the picture, standing with uplifted glass and drunken pose at the head of the table--with bestial, lust-worn face, disease-shrunken limbs, and dying, licentious eyes fixed upon the beautiful girl musician--might easily have been Mr. Taine himself. The distinguished writers, and critics; the representatives of the social world and of wealth; Conrad Lagrange with cold, cynical, mocking, smile; Mrs. Taine with her pretense of modest dress that only emphasized her immodesty; and, in the midst of the unclean minded crew, the lovely innocence and the unconscious purity of the mountain girl with her violin, offering to them that which they were incapable of receiving--it was all there upon the canvas, as the artist had seen it that night. The picture cried aloud the intellectual degradation and the spiritual depravity of that class who, arrogating to themselves the authority of leaders in culture and art, by their approval and patronage of dangerous falsehood and sham in picture or story, make possible such characters as James Rutlidge.
Aaron King, watching Mrs. Taine as she looked at the picture on the easel, saw a look of doubt and uncertainty come over her face. Once, she turned toward him, as if to speak; but, without a word, looked again at the canvas. She seemed perplexed and puzzled, as though she caught glimpses of something in the picture that she did not rightly understand Then, as she looked, her eyes kindled with contemptuous scorn, and there was a pronounced sneer in her cold tones as she said, "Really, I don't believe I care for you to do this sort of thing." She laughed shortly. "It reminds one a little of that dinner at our house. Don't you think? It's the girl with the violin, I suppose."
"There are no portraits in it, Mrs. Taine," said the artist, quietly.
"No? Well, I think you'd better stick to your portraits. This is a great picture though," she admitted thoughtfully. "It, it grips you so. I can't seem to get away from it. I can see that it will create a sensation. But just the same, I don't like it. It's not nice, like your portrait of me.
By the way"--and she turned eagerly from the big canvas as though glad to escape a distasteful subject--"do you remember that I have never seen my picture yet? Where do you keep it?"
The painter indicated another easel, near the one upon which he was at work, "It is there, Mrs. Taine."
"Oh," she said with a pleased smile. "You keep it on the easel, still!"
Playfully, she added, "Do you look at it often?--that you have it so handy?"
"Yes," said the artist, "I must admit that I have looked at it frequently." He did not explain why he looked at her portrait while he was working upon the larger picture.
"How nice of you," she answered "Please let me see it now. I remember when you wanted to repaint it, you said you would put on the canvas just what you thought of me; have you? I wonder!"
"I would rather that you judge for yourself, Mrs. Taine," he answered, and drew the curtain that hid the painting.
As the woman looked upon that portrait of herself, into which Aaron King had painted, with all the skill at his command, everything that he had seen in her face as she posed for him, she stood a moment as though stunned. Then, with a gesture of horror and shame, she shrank back, as though the painted thing accused her of being what, indeed, she really was.
Turning to the artist, imploringly, she whispered, "Is it--is it--true? Am I--am I _that_?"
Aaron King, remembering how she had sent the girl he loved so nearly to a shameful end, and thinking of those bones at the foot of the cliff, answered justly; "At least, madam, there is more truth in that picture than in the things you said to Miss Andres, here in this room, the day you left Fairlands."
Her face went white with quick rage, but, controling herself, she said, "And where is the picture of your _mistress_? I should like to see it again, please."
"Gladly, madam," returned the artist. "Because you are a woman, it is the only answer I can make to your charge; which, permit me to say, is as false as that portrait of you is true."
Quickly he pushed another easel to a position beside the one that held Mrs. Taine's portrait, and drew the curtain.
The effect, for a moment, silenced even Mrs. Taine--but only for a moment.
A character that is the product of certain years of schooling in the thought and spirit of the class in which Mrs. Taine belonged, is not transformed by a single exhibition of painted truth. From the two portraits, the woman turned to the larger canvas. Then she faced the artist.
"You fool!" she said with bitter rage. "O you fool! Do you think that you will ever be permitted to exhibit such trash as this?" she waved her hand to include the three paintings. "Do you think that I am going to drag you up the ladder of social position to fame and to wealth for such reward as that?" she singled out her own portrait. "Bah! you are impossible--impossible! I have been mad to think that I could make anything out of you. As for your idiotic claim that you have painted the truth--" She seized a large palette knife that lay with the artist's tools upon the table, and springing to her portrait, hacked and mutilated the canvas. The artist stood motionless making no effort to stop her. When the picture was utterly defaced she threw it at his feet. "_That_, for your truth, Mr. King!" With a quick motion, she turned toward the other portrait.
But the artist, who had guessed her purpose, caught her hand. "That picture was yours, madam--this one is mine." There was a significant ring of triumph in his voice.
Neither Aaron King nor Mrs. Taine had noticed three people who had entered the rose garden, from the orange grove, through the little gate in the corner of the hedge. Conrad Lagrange, Myra Willard and Sibyl were going to the studio; deliberately bent upon interrupting the artist at his work.
They sometimes--as Conrad Lagrange put it--made, thus, a life-saving crew of three; dragging the painter to safety when the waves of inspiration were about to overwhelm him. Czar, of course, took an active part in these rescues.
As the three friends approached the trellised arch that opened from the garden into the yard, a few feet from the studio door, the sound of Mrs.
Taine's angry voice, came clearly through the open window.
Conrad Lagrange stopped. "Evidently, Mr. King has company," he said, dryly.
"It is Mrs. Taine, is it not?" asked Sibyl, quietly, recognizing the woman's voice.
"Yes," answered the novelist.
The woman with the disfigured face said hurriedly, "Come, Sibyl, we must go back. We will not disturb Mr. King, now, Mr. Lagrange. You two come over this evening." They saw her face white and frightened.
"I believe I'll go back with you, if you don't mind," returned Conrad Lagrange, with his twisted grin; "I don't think I want any of that in there, either." To the dog who was moving toward the studio door, he added; "Here, Czar, you mustn't interrupt the lady. You're not in her class."
They were moving away, when Mrs. Taine's voice came again, clearly and distinctly, through the window.
"Oh, very well. I wish you joy of your possession. I promise you, though, that the world shall never hear of this portrait of your mistress. If you dare try to exhibit it, I shall see that the people to whom you must look for your patronage know how you found the original, an innocent, mountain girl, and brought her to your studio to live with you. Fairlands has already talked enough, but my influence has prevented it from going too far. You may be very sure that from now on I shall not exert myself to deny it."