Part 3

Once he threw down a handful of brushes and started out for a tramp. It occurred to him that the city sights and smells, the endless hum and roar, the rapid pace of the crowded streets would tone him up and set his thoughts in a new line; he was tired of the whistling gales and tossing trunks and booming surf that haunted his nights and confused his days. A block away from the studio a flower-woman met him with a tray of daffodils and late crocuses. A sudden puff of wind blew out her scant, thin skirt; a tree in the centre of the park they were crossing bent to it, the branches creaked faintly. The fresh, earthy odour of the flowers moved him strangely. He bought a bunch, turned, and went back to the studio, to sit for an hour gazing sightlessly ahead of him.

Suddenly he started up and approached the sketch.

"It wants wind," he muttered, half unconsciously, and fell to work. An hour passed, two, three--he still painted rapidly. Just as the light was fading a thunderous knock at the door ushered in the two men he knew best. He nodded vaguely, and they crossed the room in silence and looked at the picture. For a few moments no one spoke. Presently Willard took a brush from his mouth and faced them.

"Well?" he said.

The older man shook his head. "Queer sky!" he answered briefly.

The younger looked questioningly at Willard. "You'll have to get a gait on you if you hope to beat Morris with that," he said. "What's up, Willard? Don't you want that prize?"

"Of course I do." His voice sounded dull, even to himself. "You aren't any too sympathetic, you fellows----" he tried to feel injured.

The older man came nearer. "What's that white thing there? Good Lord, Will, you're not going to try a figure----"

Willard brushed rapidly over the shadowy outline. "No--that was just a sketch. The whole thing's just a sort of----"

"The whole thing's just a bluff!" interrupted the younger man, decidedly. "It's not what you told us about at all--and it's not good, anyway. It looks as if a tornado had struck it! You said it was to be late afternoon--it's nearer midnight, as far as I can see! What's that tree lying around for?"

His tone was abusive, but a genuine concern and surprise was underneath it. He looked furtively at his older friend behind Willard's back. The other shook his head expressively.

Willard bit his lip. "I only wanted to try--it won't necessarily stay that way," he explained. He wished he cared more for what they said. He wished they did not bore him so unspeakably. More than all, he wished they would go.

The younger one whistled softly. "Pretty late in the day to be making up your mind, I should say," he remarked. "When's it going to dry in? Morris has been working like a horse on his for six weeks. He's coming on, too--splendid colour!"

Willard lit a cigarette. "Damn Morris!" he said casually. The older man drew on his glove and turned to go.

"Oh, certainly!" he replied cheerfully. "By all means! No, we can't stay--we only dropped in. We just thought we'd see how you were getting along. If I were you, Will, I'd make up my mind about that intoxicated tree and set it up straight--good-bye!"

They went out cheerfully enough, but he knew they were disappointed and hurt--they had expected so much from that picture. And he wished he cared more. He looked at it critically. Of course it was bad, but how could they tell what he had been doing? It was the plan of months changed utterly in three hours. The result was ridiculous, but he needed it no longer--he knew what he wanted now, what he had been fighting against all these days. He would paint it if he could--and till he could. The insistent artist-passion to express even bunglingly something of the unendurable beauty of that strange night was on him, and before the echo of his guests' departure had died away he was working as he had never worked before, the old picture lying unnoticed in the corner where he had thrown it.

He needed no models, he did not use his studies. Was it not printed on his brain, was it not etched into his heart, that weird vision of the storm, with the floating fairy creature that hardly touched the earth? Was there a lovely curve in all her melting postures, which slipped like water circles into new shapes, that he did not know? That haunting, elf-like look, that ineffably exquisite _abandon_, had he not studied it greedily then in the wood, and later, in his restless dreams? The trees were sentient, the bushes put out clasping fingers to detain him, the wind shrieked out its angry soul at him; and she, the white wonder with her floating wisps of stinging hair, had joined with them to mock at him, the startled witness of that mad revel of all the elements. He knew all this--he was drunk with it: could he paint it? Or would people see only a strange-eyed girl dancing in a wood?

He did not know how many days he had been at work on it; he ate what the cleaning-woman brought him; his face was bristled with a stubby growth; the cigarette boxes strewed the floor. Men appeared at the door, and he urged them peevishly to go away; people brought messages, and he said he was not in town, and returned the notes unread. In the morning he smiled and breathed hard and patted the easel; at night he bit his nails and cursed himself for a colour-blind fool.

There was a white birch, strained and bent in the wind, that troubled him still, and as he was giving it the last touches, in the cold, strong afternoon light, the door burst open.

"Look here, the thing closes at six! Are you crazy?" they called to him, exasperatedly. "Aren't you going to send it?"

"That's all right, that's all right," he muttered vaguely, "shut up, can't you?"

They stood over behind him, and there was a stillness in the room. He laid down his palette carefully and turned to them, a worried look on his drawn, bristled face.

"That's meant to be the ocean beyond the cliff there," he said, an almost childlike fear in his eyes, "did--did you know it?"

The older man drew in a long breath.

"Lord, yes! I hear it!" he returned, "do you think we're deaf?"

The younger one squinted at various distances, muttering to himself.

"Dryad? Undine? No, she frightens you, but she's sweet! George! He's painted the wind! He's actually drawn a wind! My, but it's stunning! My!"

Willard sank into a chair. He was flushed and his legs shook. He patted the terrier unsteadily and talked to her. "Well, then! Well, then! So she was, iss, so she was!"

The older man snapped his watch. "Five-thirty," he said. "Put something 'round it, and whistle a cab--we'll have to hurry!"

Willard fingered some dead crocuses on the stand beside him. "Look out, you fool, it's wet!" he growled. The older man patted his shoulder.

"All right, boy, all right!" he said soothingly. "It's all done, now--never mind!"

They shouldered it out of the door while he pulled the terrier's ears.

"Where you going?" they called.

"Turkish bath. Restaurant. Vaudeville," he answered, and they nodded.

"All alone?"

"Yes, thanks. Drop in to-morrow!"

"----And drive like thunder!" he heard them through the open window.

A week later he was walking up Broadway between them, sniffing the fresh, sweet air comfortably, the terrier at his heels. At intervals they read him bits from the enthusiastic comments of the critics.

"Mr. Willard, whose 'Windflower' distanced all competitors and won the Minot prize by a unanimous verdict of the judges, has displayed, aside from his thorough master of technic, a breadth of atmosphere, an imaginative range rarely if ever equalled by an American. Nothing but the work itself, so manifestly idealistic in subject and treatment, could convince us that it is not a study from life, so keen, so haunting is the impression produced by the remarkable figure of the Spirit of the Gale, who seems to sink before our eyes on the falling trunk, literally riding the storm. In direct contrast to this abandon of the figure is the admirable reticence of the background which is keyed so low----"

Willard stopped abruptly before the window of a large art establishment where a photograph of the picture was already displayed. "I want one of those," he said, "and I'm going out into the country for a bit before I sail, I think."

"Oh, back there?" they asked, comprehensively.

"Yes, back there!"

IV

As the train rushed along he explained to himself why he was going--why he had not merely sent the photograph. He wanted to see her, to brush away the cloud of illusion that the weeks had spun around her. He wanted to realise definitely the difference between the pale, silent, unformed New England girl and the fascinating personality of his picture. Ever since he left her they had grown confused, these two that his common sense told him were so different, and he was beginning to dread the unavowed hope that for him, at least, they might be some day one. The same passionate power that had thrown mystery and beauty into colour on the canvas wove sweet, wild dreams around what he contemptuously told himself was little better than a lay figure, but he yielded to it now as he had then.

When he told himself that he was going purposely to hear her talk, to see her flat, unlovely figure, to appreciate her utter lack of charm, of all vitality, he realised that it was a cruel errand. But when he felt the sharp thrill that he suffered even in anticipation as his quick imagination pictured the dream-cloud dropping off from her, actually before his eyes, he believed the journey more than ever a necessary one.

As he walked up the little country street his heart beat fast; the greening lawns, the fresh, faint odours, the ageless, unnamable appeal of the spring stirred his blood and thrilled him inexpressibly. He was yet in the first flush of his success; his whole nature was relaxed and sensitive to every joy; he let himself drift on the sweet confused expectancy, the delicious folly, the hope that he was to find his dream, his inspiration, his spirit of the wind and wood.

A child passed him with a great bunch of daffodils and stopped to watch him long after he had passed, wondering at the silver in her hand.

At the familiar gate a tall, thin woman's figure stopped his heart a second, and as a fitful gust blew out her apron and tossed her shawl over her head, he felt his breath come more quickly.

"Good heavens!" he muttered, "what folly! Am I never to see a woman's skirt blown without----"

She put the shawl back as he neared her--it was Mrs. Storrs's sister. She met his outstretched hand with a blank stare. Suddenly her face twitched convulsively.

"O Mr. Willard! O Mr. Willard!" she cried, and burst into tears.

The wind blew sharper, the elm tree near the window creaked, a dull pain grew in him.

"What is it? What's the matter?" he said brusquely.

"I suppose you ain't heard--you wouldn't be apt to!" she sobbed, and pushing back the locks the wind drove into her reddened eyes, she broke into incoherent sentences: he heard her as one in a dream.

"And she would go--'twas the twenty-fifth--there was dozens o' trees blown down--'twas just before dark--her mother, she ran out after her as soon's she knew--she called, but she didn't hear--she saw her on the edge o' the rocks, an' she almost got up to her an' screamed, an' it scared her, we think--she turned 'round quick, an' she went right off the cliff an' her mother saw her go--'twas awful!"

Willard's eyes went beyond her to the woods; the woman's voice, with its high, flat intonation, brought the past so vividly before him that he was unconscious of the actual scene--he lived through the quick, terrible drama with the intensity of a witness of it.

"No, they haven't found her yet--the surf's too high. We always had a feeling she wouldn't live--she wasn't like other girls----"

Half unconsciously he unwrapped the photograph.

"I--I brought this," he said dully. The woman blanched and clutched the gate-post.

"Oh, take it away! Take it away!" she gasped, a real terror in her eyes. "O Mr. Willard, how could you--it's awful! I--I wouldn't have her mother see it for all the world!" Her sobs grew uncontrollable.

He bent it slowly across and thrust it in his pocket.

"No, no," he said soothingly, "of course not, of course not. I only wanted to tell--you all--that it took the prize I told you about and--and was a good thing for me. I hoped--I hoped----"

He saw that she was trembling in the sudden cold wind, and held out his hand.

"This has been a great shock to me," he said quietly, his eyes still on the woods. "Please tell Mrs. Storrs how I sympathise--how startled I was. I am going abroad in a few days. I will send you my address, and if there is ever anything I can do, you will gratify me more than you can know by letting me help you in any way. Give her these," and he thrust out the great bunch of daffodils to her. She took them, still crying softly, and turned towards the house.

Later he found himself in the woods near the great oak that lay just as it had fallen that night. Beneath all the confused tumult of his thoughts one clear truth rang like a bell, one bitter-sweet certainty that caught him smiling strangely as he realised it! "She's won! She's won!"

There, while the branches swayed above him, and the surf, sinister and monotonous, pounded below, the vision that had made them both famous melted into the elusive reality, and he lived again with absolute abandonment that sweet mad night, he felt again her hair blown about his face as he lay on the windy cliff with the lady of his dreams.

For him her fate was not dreadful--she could not have died like other women. There was an intoxication in her sudden taking away: she was rapt out of life as she would have wished, he knew.

Slowly there grew upon him a frightened wonder if she had lived for this. Her actual life had been so empty, so unreal, so concentrated in those piercing stolen moments; she had ended it, once the heart of it had been caught and fixed to give to others faint thrills of all she had felt so utterly.

"She died for it!" he felt, with a kind of awe that was far from all personal vanity--the blameless egoism of the artist.

He left the little town hardly consciously. On his outward voyage, when the gale beat the vessel and the wind howled to the thundering waves, he came to know that though a love more real, a passion less elusive, might one day hold him, there would rest always in his heart and brain one ceaseless inspiration, one strange, sweet memory that nothing could efface.

WHEN PIPPA PASSED

Mr. Delafield, stepping comfortably forth from his club, had dined especially well, and was in a correspondingly good humour. As the brisk March wind swept across the corner just in front of him, he meanwhile settling his glossy hat more firmly on a fine, close-clipped grey head, a sudden kindly impulse, not entirely usual with him, sent him bending to his knee to pick up the fugitive slip of white, scribbled foolscap that fluttered by him, hotly pursued by a slender young man.

"Thanks. Oh, thanks!" murmured the pursuer, as Delafield, with a courteous inclination of the head, tendered the captured slip.

"Not at all." A consciousness of the boy's quick panting, his anxious tug at the paper, actually an almost audible beating of the heart, drew the older man to look carefully at him. A white, oval face, drooping mouth, black, deep-set eyes that fairly burned into his, compelled attention.

"Important paper, I suppose?" he inquired lightly. "Wouldn't want to lose it."

"No--oh, no!"

"Get a wigging at the office?"

"It--it's not--they are my own--it is a poem!" stammered the young man.

Delafield chuckled involuntarily, and then, as a quick red poured over the other's cheeks, he made a hasty gesture of apology.

"No offence--none at all, I assure you, Mr.--Mr. Poet! I was only taken by surprise. One doesn't often assist a poet in catching his works!" He laughed again, a contented after-dinner laugh.

Then, as the young man fell behind him quietly, the incident being over, an idle desire for company prompted him to delay his own pace.

"Do you write much? Get it printed? Good publisher?" he inquired genially. Few persons could resist Lester Delafield's smile: his very butler warmed to it, and the woman who retained her reserve under it he had never met.

Again the young man blushed. "Published? No, sir; I never dared to see--I don't know if it's worth being printed," he said.

"But you think it's pretty good, eh? I'll bet you do. I used to. Let me see it. I'll tell you if it's worth anything."

They had turned into a quieter cross-street; the wind had passed them by. Standing under a street-light, benevolently amused at his impulse, Delafield tucked his stick under his arm, uncreased the paper, and noted the title of the poem aloud: _To the Moon in a Stormy Night._ His eyebrows lifted; he glanced quizzically at the young man, but met such an earnest, searching look, so restrained, yet so quivering, so terrified, yet so brave, that his heart softened and he read on in silence.

A minute passed, two, three, and four. The man read silently, the boy waited breathless in suspense. The noisy, crowding city seemed to sweep by them, leaving them stranded on this little point of time.

Mr. Delafield raised his eyes and regarded the boy thoughtfully.

"You say you wrote this?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir."

"When did you write it?"

"Last night."

"Have you any more like it?"

"I don't know if it's like it. I've got quite a good deal more. What do you----" He could get no further. Drops of perspiration started from his forehead. His mouth was drawn flat with anxiety.

"This poetry," said Delafield, with a carefully impersonal calm, "is very good. It is remarkably good. It is stunning, in fact. '_And moored at last in some pale bay of dawn_'--why did you stop there? Isn't that rather abrupt?"

"That was when it ended. Do you really think----"

"I don't think anything about it. I know. You have a future before you, my young friend. I should like to see--Good Lord, what is it?"

For the boy had twined his arms around the lamp-post and was slowly sinking to the pavement. His face was ghastly white. Delafield grasped his arm, and as their eyes met, the older man drew a quick breath and scowled.

"It's not because--you're not--when did you have your lunch?" he demanded shortly.

The boy smiled weakly.

"And your breakfast?"

"Oh, I had _that_--quite a little--really I did!" he half whispered.

Delafield got him on his feet and around the corner to a restaurant. As they entered, the smell of the food weakened him again, and he staggered against his friend, begging his pardon helplessly.

"Soup--and hurry it up, it's immaterial what kind," the host commanded.

As the boy gulped it down he made out a further order, and while the hot meat, vegetables, and bread vanished and the strong, brown coffee lowered in the cup, he lighted a long cigar and talked with a quiet insistence. Later, when his guest blinked drowsily behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, he asked questions, marvelling at the simple replies.

The boy's name was Henry West; it was twenty-two years since he had made his appearance in a family already large enough to regard his advent with a stoical endurance. His people all worked in the mills in Lowell; he, too, till the noise and jar gave him racking headaches. He made his first verses in the mill. He had come to New York to learn to be a clerk in a corner drug-store kept by a distant cousin, but he couldn't seem to learn the business. The names of the things were hard to remember. His cousin said he was absent-minded.

And he had to read everything that was in sight: if a thing was printed he seemed to have to read it. He read books from the library and the night-school when his cousin thought he was polishing the soda-fountain. Of all the things he hated--and they were many--the soda-fountain was the worst. He wanted to study a great deal, but only the studies he liked. Not algebra and geometry, nor chemistry that made his head ache, but history and poetry and French. He thought he would like to know Italian, too. The family supposed he was still in the drug-store, but he had quarrelled with his cousin and left it a month ago. He stayed mostly in the library and helped the janitor with sweeping and airing the rooms. The janitor paid him a little to ease his own hours of night-watching, and often asked him to supper. He read nearly all day and wrote at night. It was better than the mills or the drug-store. He supposed he was lazy--his family always said he was.

"Come to this address to-morrow afternoon and bring the rest of your poetry with you," said Delafield, "I have an engagement at nine. May I keep this one till you come?"--he shook the foolscap significantly. The boy hesitated, almost imperceptibly, then nodded. As Delafield left the little table he did not rise with him, but sat with his eyes fixed on the smoke-rings.

"They do not teach courtesy in the night-schools, evidently," mused the older man, peering for a cab; "but one can't have everything. My manners have been on occasion commended--but I can't write poetry like that."

He tasted in advance the pleasure of reading the poem to Anne: how her brown eyes would dilate and glow, how eagerly her long, slender fingers would clasp and unclasp. People called her cold, they told him; for his part he never could see why. True, she was not kittenish, like the other nieces; she didn't try to flirt with her old uncle, as Ellen's girls did; but what an enthusiasm for fine things, what a quick, keen mind the child had! Child--Anne was twenty-five by now. Was it true that she might never marry? Ellen said--but then Ellen was always a little jealous of poor Anne's money. The girl couldn't help her legacies. Still, at twenty-five--perhaps it was true that she expected too much, thought too seriously, reasoned morbidly that they were after her money.

Seated opposite her in his favourite oak chair, looking with a sudden impersonal appraisal at the slender figure in clinging black lace, the cool pallor of the face under the smooth dark hair, the rope of pearls that hung from her firm, girlish shoulders, it dawned on him that there was something wanting in this not quite sufficiently charming piece of womanhood. She was too black-and-white, too unswerving, too unflushed by life. Humanity, with its countless moulding and colouring touches, seemed to slip away from either side of her, like the waves from some proud young prow, and fall behind.

"Yet she's not unsympathetic--I swear she's not!" he thought, as her eyes glowed to the poem and her lips parted delightedly.

"'_And moored at last in some pale bay_'--Uncle Les, isn't that beautiful! Not that it's really so fine as the first part, but it's easier to remember. And he was hungry? Oh, oh! And you discovered him, didn't you?"

He nodded complacently.

"I'll bring you around the rest of the things to-morrow. I knew you'd enjoy this, Anne. You love--really love--this sort of thing, don't you?"

She nodded eagerly.

"But nothing else? Nobody--you don't think that perhaps you're letting--after all, my dear, life is something more than the beautiful things you surround yourself with--pictures and music and poetry, and all that. It really is. There is so much----"

"There is one's religion," she said quietly and not uncordially. But she had retreated intangibly from him. She sat there, remote as her cold pearls, as far from the rough, sweet uses of the world as the priceless china in her cabinets.

"Oh, yes, of course, there is religion," he answered listlessly.