There were a few sympathetic whispers as he grasped the corner of the drape. Mattie held her breath. Then, in a dramatic sweep of velvet, he revealed the painting.
The crowd gasped, awestruck.
Mattie knew intimately every brush stroke, every shadow, each strand of hair and droplet of water, but the painting amazed even her. Had she truly done it herself? Or had the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelites possessed her soul, guiding her hand?
Her mother and father, lost at sea, she’d depicted in vibrant oils as a Siren and a sailor.
On the left, the nude female figure half-reclined upon stark black rock, her scaly fish tail barely visible beneath the swirling emerald depths of the sea, her pale bosom slashed by strands of her dark, wet hair. Her lips were parted as if in melancholy song, and her face appeared to glow with ethereal light.
Below her, the sailor, his shirt torn from his shoulders, his bronze hair drenched, his face tormented by wondrous obsession and fatigue, sank in the waters at her feet, one hand reaching up towards her in supplication.
Just looking at the painting, Mattie could feel their tragedy. Yet the scene spoke of hope as well. From the skies above the doomed pair, the somber clouds broke to reveal a single shimmering bolt of sunlight, a guiding beacon to heaven and happiness beyond.
So enrapt was she, reliving the emotion of the painting—sorrow, frustration, promise—that at first Mattie failed to hear the whispers. When they finally registered, she couldn’t have been more astonished.
"Good God!"
"What kind of daughter—“
"—not even a stitch of clothing!"
"Lawrence would turn in his grave if—“
"How could she—“
"Indecent, I tell you!"
The spell of the painting broken, Mattie turned a bewildered face to the crowd. Some of them stood with open mouths, as if she’d just unveiled a three-headed calf. Uncle Ambrose’s face turned ruddy, and he shook with outrage. And in the corner of the room, her perfectly composed cousin Diana fell over in a dead faint.
A full hour had passed since the debacle in the ballroom. Yet Mattie still waited, picking at the arm of the worn leather chair facing her uncle’s deserted desk in the library. Clearly he intended to let her stew until all the guests departed before he came, as he’d promised, "to deal with her." She wondered if he made his petitioners fidget in this chair before they begged him for a morsel of his considerable funds.
She chewed at her lip. She didn’t understand why everyone had reacted so badly to her work. Surely Diana’s swooning had less to do with what she’d seen on the canvas than with the tightness of her stays—which was a perfect example of what the Pre-Raphaelites fought against. Restraint was a thing of the past. Constriction of one’s artistic expression made no more sense than the wasp-waisted devices of torture women endured in the name of fashion.
Yes, she thought, scooting the chair back with a harsh scrape. That was it. She’d explain it all to her uncle when he came to speak to her. If he ever came.
She rubbed a damp palm over the arm of the chair, then pushed herself up again and began pacing. Had the Brothers faced such scorn when they first presented their paintings to the public? She supposed she’d have to inure herself to criticism if she wanted to ascend to their prominence in the art world. For above all—as her parents had told her from the time she was old enough to hold a paintbrush—she must never fight her nature. She must be true to herself.
It was no easy task when one was shuffled from one household to another, as she’d been since her father’s...accident. Only Uncle Ambrose had even made the attempt to tame Lawrence’s "wild child." The other relatives seemed to consider Mattie a curse to be passed from kin to kin, a wicked girl as foolhardy as her father. They whispered that it was her father’s flagrant disregard for convention that had killed him, that Mattie was surely destined for the same fate.
But Mattie knew the truth. She wasn’t wicked, only...different. So her parents had said.
If her fingers found much more delight wrapped around an artist’s pencil than stuck in a sewing thimble or lilting across piano keys or any of the half-dozen or so activities appropriate to a lady’s station, it wasn’t because she was wayward. She was only using her God-given talent.
Just because she’d rather spend her afternoons sketching the sailors at the docks than sipping tea in some old biddy’s parlor didn’t mean she was depraved.
Just because her portraits of family members were painstakingly accurate, down to each wrinkle and scar, rather than obsequiously flattering, didn’t mean she was vulgar.
And whose business was it if her sketchbook, her private sketchbook, contained a bare male torso here and there?
Besides, it wasn’t nonconformity that had killed her father. Yes, he’d lived a dangerous, exciting life, traveling and writing papers about exotic places—the jungles of India, the sands of Egypt, the wilds of Africa.
But his love of adventure hadn’t killed him. He’d died of a broken heart. When his wife succumbed to fever on their excursion to the West Indies, he’d cast himself from the ship into the waters of the Caribbean, deciding there was nothing left to live for.
No one spoke of his brief letter of sad farewell. Instead, Lawrence Hardwicke was tactfully proclaimed “lost at sea.”
In the five years since then, Mattie, too, had floated like a ship adrift, finding temporary harbor with various kin whose expectations she could never quite fulfill.
But she was almost eighteen now. Soon she’d no longer worry about their expectations. She’d embark upon her own life, just as her parents had done, put her ship in order and let the winds take her where they willed.
The mantel clock chimed. Mattie shivered. Another quarter hour had passed, and the fire, reduced to red-limned coals, needed tending. But she didn’t dare touch it. Everything in the library belonged exclusively to her uncle. He’d made that abundantly clear when she’d arrived two years ago and helped herself to a precious volume of Renaissance art. He’d rapped her knuckles with a ruler and lectured her about personal property in booming tones that were probably heard in Yonkers.
But she’d never forgotten the lesson. No one touched what belonged to Ambrose Hardwicke.
Mattie sighed, her anxiety dulled to restless boredom. She leaned forward toward the mahogany desk and straightened the blotter. Then, on a devilish impulse, she set it askew again. She flounced back into the chair and began drumming her fingers atop the glossy, lemon-oiled surface of the desk—forward and backward, forward and backward. The day’s newspaper was scattered across the blotter, and she inclined her head to peer at the headlines.
Casting caution aside, she shuffled the paper together and reversed it so she could read it. There was nothing of much interest to her, mostly politics, financial enterprises, and the usual stories of murder and mayhem. Then, on the fourth page, a small advertisement caught her eye. She rested her finger on the column and traced the words.
"Man of a Decent Age and Not Unhandsome desires God-fearing, Respectable Woman to head West for purposes of Matrimony. Will pay for Transport by Steamer and provide Sustenance in the form of a Modest Home, Full Provender, and whatever niceties a Woman of Dignity may require and my profession as a Physician and Gold Miner may afford, in exchange for Maintenance of that Household, including Purchasing of Supplies, Preparing of Meals, Laundering of Clothing, and other customary wifely duties. All interested parties send Correspondence to Paradise Bar, California. Yours faithfully, Doctor James Harrison."
Mattie smiled. How strange those Californians were, advertising for a wife. "A God-fearing, Respectable Woman" indeed. What Respectable Woman would head west to marry a man she’d never met? Her cousins were Respectable Women, and they’d sooner walk into the path of a runaway carriage than allow themselves to be dragged aboard a steamer bound for California.
Mattie’s musings were interrupted by the click of the library door behind her. She swiftly pushed the newspaper back
across the desk and, for once, wisely waited for Ambrose to speak first.
"I’ve had to call the physician for Diana." He didn’t boom this time, but somehow his low growl seemed far more deadly than the verbal cannonballs he usually fired.
Wary of his volatile temper, she kept her back straight and her eyes focused on the desk before her, and then gently cleared her throat. "Is she all right?"
"No, she is not all right." Mattie could almost hear the grinding of his teeth. "She’s had a shock."
She swallowed guiltily. "Actually, I believe it may have been the tightness of her stays rather than—"
"What!"
She grimaced. There it was. The cannon.
His boot heels clacked heavily on the floor as he marched up behind her, and she prepared to listen to a thunderous tirade. But it never came. Instead, he hissed at her like one of the coals smoldering in the fireplace.
"Is this what comes of my generosity? How I’m rewarded for taking in my brother’s child? First with that lascivious painting, and now with vulgar speech?"
He seized the arm of her chair and wrenched it around towards him, startling a squeak from her. She shrank as his beefy hands clasped both arms of the chair, trapping her between them.
"Tell me, girl, and I won’t hear any lies." His jaw was clenched, and his mustache quivered. "Who did you connive into it, eh? Who sat as a model for your filthy painting? Which servant am I going to have to dismiss?"
Surprise widened her eyes. A model? Dear Lord, did he honestly believe that any of his servants had the time to sit for...
"Who was it?" He rattled the chair, and she glimpsed murder in his purpling face. Good heavens, he was serious.
She gasped. "No one!" She didn’t dare tell him the truth—that she’d styled the figure after herself, painting in her room before a looking glass, bare to the waist. "I did it...from my imagination."
He narrowed his eyes, obviously unconvinced. Then he stepped briskly from her, muttering, "I should never have let Lawrence’s brat sully my household."
Mattie’s throat tightened. She’d grown accustomed to her uncle’s bluster. Most of it was as harmless as a spring storm blowing through. But she’d never heard him say such a hurtful thing. The pain of it made her eyes water.
He growled and leaned something against the desk—her painting. It was draped again. She supposed he considered it too vile to expose.
"Blazes, girl," he grumbled. "Can’t you do anything right? Now you’ve let the fire die." He crossed to the hearth and jabbed briskly at the coals with a heavy iron poker, adding two more logs.
Mattie’s head swam as she bit back tears. Nothing she did ever pleased him. She supposed she should be used to scorn by now, but it always hurt.
"I’ve tried to civilize you," he muttered, his back to her as he prodded the flames. "God knows I’ve tried to bring you up to Hardwicke standards. I’ve given you every opportunity to make something of yourself. I’ve fed you and clothed you like one of my own. I’ve introduced you to the best of society. Damn it all!"
She flinched. No matter how angry Ambrose Hardicke was, she’d never heard him swear, never.
"I’ve let you consort with my own innocent daughters, even when it was against my better judgment."
A hard lump clogged her throat like a half-swallowed lemon drop. How could he say such things to her?
"And this!" he said, gesturing toward the painting with the poker. "This is how I’m repaid. With this...this revolting monstrosity of a painting that’s an affront to the memory of my dear brother and a public humiliation to the Hardwicke name."
Mattie sat, too stunned to answer, too paralyzed with pain to defend herself. Was that what he thought of her masterpiece? That it was a monstrosity? Was that what everyone thought?
The flames snapped and flared behind him, and for a moment Ambrose looked like the Devil himself silhouetted against the inferno. Then he set the poker into its stand and thoughtfully stroked the end of his mustache.
"Henceforward, Mathilda, while you live beneath my roof, you will no longer indulge in such licentious avocations. I’ve had the servants remove the paints and canvases from your room, along with your sketchbooks."
His words sucked the very breath from her lungs. Not her art. It was all she had. He couldn’t take that away from her.
"As for this abomination..." He snatched up the painting.
She sprang to her feet and grabbed his sleeve. "No!" Surely he didn’t mean to take her masterpiece as well. As a desperate afterthought, she added, “Please.”
He extracted his arm. "It’s for the best," he said sternly.
"No." Panic seized her by the throat, leaving her voice a feeble whisper. Lord, she hated to beg. "Not my...please-Uncle-don’t-take-my—"
"I won’t have filth like this infecting the Hardwicke house."
"But it’s...” She tried to modulate her voice to a reasonable tone. “It’s mine." Lord, what did he intend to do with it? Pack it away in the attic? Give it to the servants? Sell it?
His eyes flattened like storm clouds as he turned away from her. And suddenly she knew what he intended.
"No!" she screamed.
She dove for his coattails, trying to stop him, and skidded on the hem of her skirt. The satin ripped, and her knee banged on the polished oak floor as she caught the back of his coat. He grunted, nearly losing his footing himself.
"Please!" she shrieked.
He half-turned toward her, his eyes rolling in fear as if a madwoman pursued him.
She reluctantly loosened her grip on his coat. It wouldn’t do to frighten the man. Swallowing hard and licking her lips, she willed her heart to stop racing, willed her voice to return to a sane pitch.
"I’ll do anything you say, Uncle Ambrose. I’ll stop painting. I’ll be good. I promise. Just please..." She was truly begging now, on her knees, no less, clutching at his clothing like a waif in the streets pleading for a crumb. But she didn’t care. She was desperate.
"Unhand me, Mathilda."
She stared into his narrowed eyes. Could she change his mind? Would he listen to her? Reluctantly, she let go of his coat and gave him a watery, hopeful smile.
She saw his jaw tighten once, then release. His eyes softened, and he breathed a long sigh. He reached down to cup her chin affectionately in one hand, as he often did with his own daughters. For one brief moment, she glimpsed forgiveness.
Then he murmured, "It’s for the best, girl."
Before she could digest his words, he slipped off the velvet drape and cast her painting, her best work, her masterpiece, into the heart of the fire.
"No!" Despair ripped through her throat, as if her spirit was torn from her body. "No!"
Sparks leaped up and collided with the canvas like falling stars. Black smoke curled towards the flue. Orange fire licked at the edges of the painting, moving inward voraciously.
Mattie screamed as the flames seemed to sear her soul. It was like watching her child burn.
She scrambled forward on hands and knees, hampered by the tangle of her voluminous skirts.
Liquefied in the heat, the oils began to smoke and bubble, lending eerie life to the sea she’d painted.
Her eyes tearing and her throat clogged with sobs, she fought her way across the slippery floor.
A sudden burst of flame shot through the middle of the painting, startling them both, snapping at the figure of her father like a ravenous shark.
"No!" She knocked Ambrose out of the way and lunged toward the hearth, where a hellish darkness slowly fell over the painting’s ethereal light.
Throwing caution aside, Mattie thrust her hand into the flames, desperate to salvage her masterpiece, desperate to spare her parents a fiery doom.
She didn’t feel the pain of the burn till much later, after the physician had applied a butter salve, wrapped her hand in a linen bandage, and she was tucked into her bed. Even then, it was nothing compared to the agony of her heart.
It was gon
e—her finest work. Just like her parents—as if they’d never been.
And she might as well have been tossed onto the fire alongside her painting, because she wasn’t wanted either.
Her uncle had minced no words when it came to telling her what an affront she was to the Ambrose Hardwicke household. And now she’d exhausted all the Hardwicke households.
She had no one to turn to. She didn’t belong anywhere.
In the darkness, her eyes filled with hot tears, and she clenched her jaw against the trembling urge to sob.
Though she’d tell no one—not even God—in these deep, hopeless hours of the night, when her heart ached and she felt as unloved as a runt pup, she sometimes wished death would come for her. If she died, she might follow her parents, wherever they’d gone. Then she might finally belong.
A ragged sob escaped her then, and she stifled it with her bandaged fist. Why did no one approve of her? Her parents had never criticized her or made her feel unwanted. They’d loved her the way she was.
She closed her eyes, and a tear trickled out to wander down her cheek, lost.
What would become of her now? She couldn’t stay here, not knowing how her uncle felt. But who would take in a streaky-haired, tawny-skinned waif who painted monstrosities?
She sniffled and turned her head on the pillow to watch the gold moon sink slowly beyond the lace curtain. Was there nowhere out there in the vast world where she could be true to herself? Somewhere she could start over? Somewhere she’d be accepted despite her differences?
With blurring eyes, she watched the moon lower in the west, past the stone wall, between the distant treetops, and beyond, toward plains and mountains and forests and rugged land.
And then it came to her.
California.
The Golden West.
Land of opportunity.
Her breath stilled.
No. She couldn’t. She was only a girl—too young, too unworldly for the wilderness. The notion was absurd. Only fallen women and fools went to California.
She flounced onto her side, away from the west, away from the empty promise that called to her beyond the window, and shut her eyes tightly against the ridiculous notion.
Vote Then Read: Volume III Page 97
