"By George!" he said; "it does look like me. I never realized before that I was such a whelp."
"Fiddlesticks!" Claymore rejoined briskly, taking the gla.s.s from him.
"Don"t talk nonsense. Take your place and let"s get to work."
IV
On the afternoon of the same day Celia came into the studio with her face clouded. She received her lover"s greetings in an absent-minded fashion, and almost before the musical tinkle of the zither on the door which admitted her had died away, she asked abruptly:--
"What in the world have you been doing to Ralph?"
"I? Nothing but painting him. Why?"
"Because he came down here this morning in a perfectly heavenly frame of mind. He has been in Boston to see about some repairs on his tenement-houses at the North End that I"ve been teasing him to make ever since the first of my being there last winter; and he came in this morning to say he thought I was right, and he was going to take hold and do what I wanted."
"Well?" questioned Tom, as she broke off with a gesture of impatience.
"And after he "d been down here for his sitting, he came back so cross and strange; and said he"d reconsidered, and he did n"t see why he should bother his head about the worthless wretches in the slums. I can"t see what came over him."
"But why should you hold me responsible for your cousin"s vagaries?"
"Oh, of course you are not," Celia replied, with a trace of petulance in her tone; "but I am so dreadfully disappointed. Ralph has always put the whole thing off before, and now I thought he had really waked up."
"Probably," Claymore suggested, "it is some new phase of his ill-starred love affair."
Miss Sathman flushed to her temples.
"I do not know why you choose to say that," she answered stiffly. "He never speaks to me of that now. He is too thoroughly a gentleman."
"What!" Tom burst out, in genuine amazement. "Good heavens! It was n"t you?"
Celia looked at him in evident bewilderment.
"Did n"t you know?" she asked. "Ralph has been in love with me ever since we were in pinafores. I did n"t speak of it because it did n"t seem fair to him; but I supposed, of course, that was what you meant when you spoke. I even thought you might be jealous the least bit."
Claymore turned away and walked down the studio on pretense of arranging a screen. He felt as if he had stabbed a rival in the back. Whether by his brush he had really an influence over Thatcher, or the changes in his sitter were merely coincidences, he had at least been trying to affect the young man, and since he now knew Ralph as the lover of Celia, his actions all at once took on a different character, and the second portrait seemed like a covert attack.
"Ralph is so amazingly outspoken," Celia continued, advancing toward the easel and laying her hand on the cloth which hung before her cousin"s portrait, "that I wonder he has not told you. He is very fond of you, though, he naively says, he ought not to be."
As she spoke, she lifted the curtain which hid the later portrait of Ralph. She uttered an exclamation which made Claymore, whose back had been turned, spring hastily toward her, too late to prevent her seeing the picture.
"Tom," she cried, "what have you done to Ralph?"
The tone pierced Claymore to the quick. The words were almost those which Celia had used before, but now reproach, grief, and a depth of feeling which it seemed to Tom must come from a regard keener than either gave them a new intensity of meaning. The tears sprang to Miss Sathman"s eyes as she looked from the canvas to her lover.
"Oh, Tom," she said, "how could you change it so? Ralph does not look like that."
"No," Claymore answered, his embarra.s.sment giving to his voice a certain severity. "This is the reverse of the other picture. This is the evil possibility of his face."
He recovered his composure. Despite his coldness of demeanor, there was a vein of intense jealousy in the painter"s nature, which tingled at the tone in which his betrothed spoke of her cousin. He had more than once said to himself that, despite the fact that Celia might be more demonstrative than he, his love for her was far stronger than hers for him. Now there came to him the conviction, quick and unreasonable, that although she might not be aware of it, her deepest affection was really given to Ralph Thatcher.
"Why did you paint it, Tom?" Celia pursued. "It is wicked. It really does not in the least resemble Ralph. I suppose you could take any face and distort it into wickedness. Where is the other picture?"
Without a word Tom brought the first portrait and set it beside the second. Celia regarded the two canvases in silence a moment. Her color deepened, and her throat swelled. Then she turned upon Claymore with eyes that flashed, despite the tears which sprang into them.
"You are wicked and cruel!" she said bitterly. "I hate you for doing it."
Tom turned pale, and then laughed unmirthfully.
"You take it very much to heart," he remarked.
The tears welled more hotly in her eyes. She tried in vain to check them, and then with a sob she turned and walked quickly from the studio, the zither tinkling, as the door closed after her, with a gay frivolity that jarred sharply on Tom Claymore"s nerves.
V
It was nearly a fortnight before Tom saw Celia again. For a day or two he kept away from her, waiting for some sign that her mood had softened and that she regretted her words. Then he could endure suspense no longer and called at the house, to discover that she had gone to the mountains for a brief visit. He remembered that he had been told of this journey, and he reflected that Celia might have expected him to come and bid her good-by. His mental att.i.tude toward her had been much the same as if there had been some actual quarrel, and now he said to himself that, after all, there had been nothing in their last interview to justify this feeling. He alternately reproached himself and blamed her, and continually the condition of things became more intolerable to him.
His temper was not improved when Ralph, at one of the sittings, which continued steadily, mentioned in a tone which seemed to the artist"s jealous fancy rather boasting, that he had received a letter from his cousin. Tom frowned fiercely, and painted on without comment.
Claymore was working steadily on the second portrait, which was rapidly approaching completion. He said to himself that if his theory was right, and the reflection of his worst traits before a man"s eye could influence the original to evil, he would be avenged upon Ralph for robbing him of Celia, since this portrait of Thatcher was to have a place in the young man"s home. He also reflected that in no way else could he so surely wean Celia from an affection for her cousin, as by bringing out Ralph"s worst side. He despised himself for what he was doing, but as men sullenly yield to a temptation against which all their best instincts fight, he still went on with his work.
He naturally watched closely to see what effect the portrait was already having on his sitter. Whether from its influence or from other causes, Ralph had grown morose and ungracious after Celia"s departure, and Tom was certainly not mistaken in feeling that he was in the worst possible frame of mind. Even the fact that his cousin had written to him did little to change his mood, a fact that Tom, sore and hurt at being left without letters, noted with inward anger.
The two men were daily approaching that point where it was probable that they would come into open conflict. Ralph began to devise excuses for avoiding the sittings, a fact that especially irritated the artist, who was anxious to complete the work. The whole nature of their relations toward each other had undergone a change, and all frankness and friendliness seemed to have gone out of it. Sometimes Claymore felt responsible for this, and at others he laughed at the idea that he had in any way helped to alter Ralph. He was uneasy and unhappy, and when a couple of weeks had gone by without a word from Celia, he resolved that he would follow her to the mountains, and at least put an end to the suspense which was becoming intolerable.
He sent word to Thatcher that he was going out of town for a few days, packed his valise, and went down to his studio to put things to rights for his absence. He arranged the two or three matters that needed attention, looked at his watch, and found that he had something over an hour before train time. He started toward the door of the studio, hesitated, and then turned back to stand in front of the easel and regard the nearly completed portrait of Ralph Thatcher.
It was a handsome face that looked out at him, and one full of character; but in the full lips was an expression of sensuality almost painful, and the eyes were selfish and cruel. The artist"s first feeling was one of gratified vanity at the cleverness with which his work had been done. He had preserved the likeness, and scarcely increased the apparent age of his sitter, while he had carried forward into repulsive fullness the worst possibilities of which he could find trace in the countenance of the original. As he looked, a cruel sense of triumph grew in Claymore"s mind. He felt that this portrait was the sure instrument of his revenge against the man who had robbed him of the love of his betrothed. He considered his coming interview with Celia, and so completely was he possessed of the belief that he had lost her, that he looked forward to the meeting as to a farewell.
At the thought a sudden pulse of emotion thrilled him. He saw Celia"s beautiful, high-bred face before him, and there came into his mind a sense of shame, as if he were already before her and could not meet her eyes. The sting of the deepest humiliation a high-minded man can know, that of standing condemned and degraded in his own sight, pierced his very soul.
"It is myself and not Ralph that I have been harming," ran his thought.
"It has never occurred to me that, even if I was dragging him down, I had flung myself into the slime to do it. Good heavens! Is this the sort of man I am? Am I such a sneak as to lurk in the dark and take advantage of the confidence he shows by putting himself into my hands! Celia is right; she could not be herself and not prefer him to the blackguard I have proved myself."
However fanciful his theory in regard to the effect of the portrait upon Thatcher might be, Tom was too honest to disguise from himself that his will and intention had been to do the other harm, and to do it, moreover, in an underhanded fashion. Instead of open, manly attack upon his rival, he had insidiously endeavored to work him injury against which Ralph could not defend himself.
"The only thing I have really accomplished," groaned poor Tom to himself, "is to prove what a contemptible cur I am."
He took from his pocket his knife, opened it, and approached the canvas. Then that strong personal connection between the artist and his work which makes its defense almost identical with the instinct of self-preservation, made him pause. For an instant he wavered, moved to preserve the canvas, although he hid it away; then with desperate resolution, and a fierceness not unlike a sacred fury, he cut the canvas into strips. So great was the excitement of his mood and act that he panted as he finished by wrenching the shreds of canvas from the stretcher.
Then he smiled at the extravagance of his feelings, set the empty stretcher against the wall, and once more brought to light the original portrait.
"There," he said to himself, as he set the picture on the easel, "I can at least go to her with a decently clean conscience, if I am a fool."
VI