“There you go again!” exclaimed Griggs.
“Bless your old heart, man — I’m working, and you’re doing nothing. I have the right of way. Haven’t I, Miss Lauderdale?”
“Of course,” answered Katharine. “But I want to hear Mr. Griggs—”
“ ‘Griggs on Struggles’ — it sounds like the title of a law book,” observed Crowdie.
“You seem playful this morning,” said Griggs. “What makes you so terribly pleasant?”
“The sight of you, my dear fellow, writhing under Miss Lauderdale’s questions.”
“Doesn’t Mr. Griggs like to be asked general questions?” enquired Katharine, innocently.
“It’s not that, Miss Lauderdale,” said Griggs, answering her question. “It’s not that. I’m a fidgety old person, I suppose, and I don’t like to answer at random, and your question is a very big one. Not as a matter of fact. It’s perfectly easy to say yes, or no, just as one feels about it, or according to one’s own experience. In that way, I should be inclined to say that it’s a matter of accident and circumstances — whether men who succeed have to go through many material difficulties or not. You don’t hear much of all those who struggle and never succeed, or who are heard of for a moment and then sink. They’re by far the most numerous. Lots of successful men have never been poor, if that’s what you mean by hard times — even in art and literature. Michael Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Chaucer, Montaigne, Goethe, Byron — you can name any number who never went through anything like what nine students out of ten in Paris, for instance, suffer cheerfully. It certainly does not follow that because a man is great he must have starved at one time or another. The very greatest seem, as a rule, to have had fairly comfortable homes with everything they could need, unless they had extravagant tastes. That’s the material view of the question. The answer is reasonable enough. It’s a disadvantage to begin very poor, because energy is used up in fighting poverty which might be used in attacking intellectual difficulties. No doubt the average man, whose faculties are not extraordinary to begin with, may develop them wonderfully, and even be very successful — from sheer necessity, sheer hunger; when, if he were comfortably off, he would do nothing in the world but lie on his back in the sunshine, and smoke a pipe, and criticise other people. But to a man who
“ ‘That’s good, Crowdie,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s distinctly good.’ “ — Vol. II., 189.
is naturally so highly gifted that he would produce good work under any circumstances, poverty is a drawback.”
“You didn’t know what you were going to get, Miss Lauderdale, when you prevailed on Griggs to answer a serious question,” said Crowdie, as Griggs paused a moment. “He’s a didactic old bird, when he mounts his hobby.”
“There’s something wrong about that metaphor, Crowdie,” observed Griggs. “Bird mounting hobby — you know.”
“Did you never see a crow on a cow’s back?” enquired Crowdie, unmoved. “Or on a sheep? It’s funny when he gets his claws caught in the wool.”
“Go on, please, Mr. Griggs,” said Katharine. “It’s very interesting. What’s the other side of the question?”
“Oh — I don’t know!” Griggs rose abruptly from his seat and began to pace the room. “It’s lots of things, I suppose. Things we don’t understand and never shall — in this world.”
“But in the other world, perhaps,” suggested Crowdie, with a smile which Katharine did not like.
“The other world is the inside of this one,” said Griggs, coming up to the easel and looking at the painting. “That’s good, Crowdie,” he said, thoughtfully. “It’s distinctly good. I mean that it’s like, that’s all. Of course, I don’t know anything about painting — that’s your business.”
“Of course it is,” answered Crowdie; “I didn’t ask you to criticise. But I’m glad if you think it’s like.”
“Yes. Don’t mind my telling you, Crowdie — Miss Lauderdale, I hope you’ll forgive me — there’s a slight irregularity in the pupil of Miss Lauderdale’s right eye — it isn’t exactly round. It affects the expression. Do you see?”
“I never noticed it,” said Katharine in surprise.
“By Jove — you’re right!” exclaimed Crowdie. “What eyes you have, Griggs!”
“It doesn’t affect your sight in the least,” said Griggs, “and nobody would notice it, but it affects the expression all the same.”
“You saw it at once,” remarked Katharine.
“Oh — Griggs sees everything,” answered Crowdie. “He probably observed the fact last night when he was introduced to you, and has been thinking about it ever since.”
“Now you’ve interrupted him again,” said Katharine. “Do sit down again, Mr. Griggs, and go on with what you were saying — about the other side of the question.”
“The question of success?”
“Yes — and difficulties — and all that.”
“Delightfully vague— ‘all that’! I can only give you an idea of what I mean. The question of success involves its own value, and the ultimate happiness of mankind. Do you see how big it is? It goes through everything, and it has no end. What is success? Getting ahead of other people, I suppose. But in what direction? In the direction of one’s own happiness, presumably. Every one has a prime and innate right to be happy. Ideas about happiness differ. With most people it’s a matter of taste and inherited proclivities. All schemes for making all mankind happy in one direction must fail. A man is happy when he feels that he has succeeded — the sportsman when he has killed his game, the parson when he believes he has saved a soul. We can’t all be parsons, nor all good shots. There must be variety. Happiness is success, in each variety, and nothing else. I mean, of course, belief in one’s own success, with a reasonable amount of acknowledgment. It’s of much less consequence to Crowdie, for instance, what you think, or I think, or Mrs. Crowdie thinks about that picture, than it is to himself. But our opinion has a certain value for him. With an amateur, public opinion is everything, or nearly everything. With a good professional it is quite secondary, because he knows much better than the public can, whether his work is good or bad. He himself is his world — the public is only his weather, fine one day and rainy the next. He prefers his world in fine weather, but even when it rains he would not exchange it for any other. He’s his own king, kingdom and court. He’s his own enemy, his own conqueror, and his own captive — slave is a better word. In the course of time he may even become perfectly indifferent to the weather in his world — that is, to the public. And if he can believe that he is doing a good work, and if he can keep inside his own world, he will probably be happy.”
“But if he goes beyond it?” asked Katharine.
“He will probably be killed — body or soul, or both,” said Griggs, with a queer change of tone.
“It seems to me, that you exclude women altogether from your paradise,” observed Mrs. Crowdie, with a laugh.
“And amateurs,” said her husband. “It’s to be a professional paradise for men — no admittance except on business. No one who hasn’t had a picture on the line need apply. Special hell for minor poets. Crowns of glory may be had on application at the desk — fit not guaranteed in cases of swelled head—”
“Don’t be vulgar, Crowdie,” interrupted Griggs.
“Is ‘swelled head’ vulgar, Miss Lauderdale?” enquired the painter.
“It sounds like something horrid — mumps, or that sort of thing. What does it mean?”
“It means a bad case of conceit. It’s a good New York expression. I wonder you haven’t heard it. Go on about the professional persons, Griggs. I’m not half good enough to chaff you. I wish Frank Miner were here. He’s the literary man in the family.”
“Little Frank Miner — the brother of the three Miss Miners?” asked Griggs.
“Yes — looks a well-dressed cock sparrow — always in a good humour — don’t you know him?”
“Of course I do — the brother of the three Miss Mi
ners,” said Griggs, meditatively. “Does he write? I didn’t know.” Crowdie laughed, and Hester smiled.
“Such is fame!” exclaimed Crowdie. “But then, literary men never seem to have heard of each other.”
“No,” answered Griggs. “By the bye, Crowdie, have you heard anything of Chang-Li-Ho lately?”
“Chang-Li-Ho? Who on earth is he? A Chinese laundryman?”
“No,” replied Griggs, unmoved. “He’s the greatest painter in the Chinese Empire. But then, you painters never seem to have heard of one another.”
“By Jove! that’s not fair, Griggs! Is he to be in the professional heaven, too?”
“I suppose so. There’ll probably be more Chinamen than New Yorkers there. They know a great deal more about art.”
“You’re getting deucedly sarcastic, Griggs,” observed Crowdie. “You’d better tell Miss Lauderdale more about the life to come. Your hobby can’t be tired yet, and if you ride him industriously, it will soon be time for luncheon.”
“We’d better have it at once if you two are going to quarrel,” suggested Hester, with a laugh.
“Oh, we never quarrel,” answered Crowdie. “Besides, I’ve got no soul, Griggs says, and he sold his own to the printer’s devil ages ago — so that the life to come is a perfectly safe subject.”
“What do you mean by saying that Walter has no soul?” asked Hester, looking up quickly at Griggs.
“My dear lady,” he answered, “please don’t be so terribly angry with me. In the first place, I said it in fun; and secondly, it’s quite true; and thirdly, it’s very lucky for him that he has none.”
“Are you joking now, or are you unintentionally funny?” asked Crowdie.
“I don’t think it’s very funny to be talking about people having no souls,” said Katharine.
“Do you think every one has a soul, Miss Lauderdale?” asked Griggs, beginning to walk about again.
“Yes — of course. Don’t you?”
Griggs looked at her a moment in silence, as though he were hesitating as to what he should say.
“Can you see the soul, as you did the defect in my eyes?” asked Katharine, smiling.
“Sometimes — sometimes one almost fancies that one might.”
“And what do you see in mine, may I ask? A defect?”
He was quite near to her. She looked up at him earnestly with her pure girl’s eyes, wide, grey and honest. The fresh pallor of her skin was thrown into relief by the black she wore, and her features by the rich stuff which covered the high back of the chair. There was a deeper interest in her expression than Griggs often saw in the faces of those with whom he talked, but it was not that which fascinated him. There was something suggestive of holy things, of innocent suffering, of the romance of a virgin martyr — something which, perhaps, took him back to strange sights he had seen in his youth.
He stood looking down into her eyes, a gaunt, world-worn fighter of fifty years, with a strong, ugly, determined but yet kindly face — the face of a man who has passed beyond a certain barrier which few men ever reach at all.
Crowdie dropped his hand, holding his brush, and gazing at the two in silent and genuine delight. The contrast was wonderful, he thought. He would have given much to paint them as they were before him, with their expressions — with the very thoughts of which the look in each face was born. Whatever Crowdie might be at heart, he was an artist first.
And Hester watched them, too, accustomed to notice whatever struck her husband’s attention. A very different nature was hers from any of the three — one reserved for an unusual destiny, and with something of fate’s shadowy painting already in all her outward self — passionate, first, and having, also, many qualities of mercy and cruelty at passion’s command, but not having anything of the keen insight into the world spiritual, and material, which in varied measure belonged to each of the others.
“And what defect do you see in my soul?” asked Katharine, her exquisite lips just parting in a smile.
“Forgive me!” exclaimed Griggs, as though roused from a reverie. “I didn’t realize that I was staring at you.” He was an oddly natural man at certain times. Katharine almost laughed.
“I didn’t realize it either,” she answered. “I was too much interested in what I thought you were going to say.”
“He’s a very clever fellow, Miss Lauderdale,” said Crowdie, going on with his painting. “But you’ll turn his head completely. To be so much interested — not in what he has said, or is saying, or even is going to say, but just in what you think he possibly may say — it’s amazing! Griggs, you’re not half enough nattered! But then, you’re so spoilt!”
“Yes — in my old age, people are spoiling me.” Griggs smiled rather sourly. “I can’t read souls, Miss Lauderdale,” he continued. “But if I could, I should rather read yours than most books. It has something to say.”
“It’s impossible to be more vague, I’m sure,” observed Crowdie.
“It’s impossible to be more flattering,” said Katharine, quietly. “Thank you, Mr. Griggs.”
She was beginning to be tired of Crowdie’s observations upon what Griggs said — possibly because she was beginning to like Griggs himself more than she had expected.
“I didn’t mean to be either vague or flattering. It’s servile to be the one and weak to be the other. I said what I thought. Do you call it flattery to paint a beautiful portrait of Miss Lauderdale?”
“Not unless I make it more beautiful than she is,” answered the painter.
“You can’t.”
“That’s decisive, at all events,” laughed Crowdie. “Not but that I agree with you, entirely.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it as you do,” answered Griggs. “That would be flattery — exactly what I don’t mean. Miss Lauderdale is perfectly well aware that you’re a great portrait painter and that she is not altogether the most beautiful young lady living at the present moment. You mean flesh and blood and eyes and hair. I don’t. I mean all that flesh and blood and eyes and hair don’t mean, and never can mean.”
“Soul,” suggested Crowdie. “I was talking about that to Miss Lauderdale the last time she sat for me — that was on Wednesday, wasn’t it — the day before yesterday? It seems like last year, for some reason or other. Yes, I know what you mean. You needn’t get into such a state of frenzied excitement.”
“I appeal to you, Mrs. Crowdie — was I talking excitedly?”
“A little,” answered Hester, who was incapable of disagreeing with her husband.
“Oh — well — I daresay,” said Griggs. “It hasn’t been my weakness in life to get excited, though.” He laughed.
“Walter always makes you talk, Mr. Griggs,” answered Mrs. Crowdie.
“A great deal too much. I think I shall be rude, and not stay to luncheon, after all.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Crowdie. “Don’t go in for being young and eccentric — the ‘man of genius’ style, who runs in and out like a hen in a thunder-storm, and is in everybody’s way when he’s not wanted and can’t be found when people want him. You’ve outgrown that sort of absurdity long ago.”
Katharine would have liked to see Griggs’ face at that moment, but he was behind her again. There was something in the relation of the two men which she found it hard to understand. Crowdie was much younger than Griggs — fourteen or fifteen years, she fancied, and Griggs did not seem to be at all the kind of man with whom people would naturally be familiar or take liberties, to use the common phrase. Yet they talked together like a couple of schoolboys. She should not have thought, either, that they could be mutually attracted. Yet they appeared to have many ideas in common, and to understand each other wonderfully well. Crowdie was evidently not repulsive to Griggs as he was to many men she knew — to Bright and Miner, for instance — and the two had undoubtedly been very intimate in former days. Nevertheless, it was strange to hear the younger man, who was little more than a youth in appearance, comparing the celebrated Paul Griggs to a hen i
n a thunder-storm, and still stranger to see that Griggs did not resent it at all. An older woman might have unjustly suspected that the elderly man of letters was in love with Hester Crowdie, but such an idea could never have crossed Katharine’s mind. In that respect she was singularly unsophisticated. She had been accustomed to see her beautiful mother surrounded and courted by men of all ages, and she knew that her mother was utterly indifferent to them except in so far as she liked to be admired. In some books, men fall in love with married women, and Katharine had always been told that those were bad books, and had accepted the fact without question and without interest.
But in ordinary matters she was keen of perception. It struck her that there was some bond or link between the two men, and it seemed strange to her that there should be — as strange as though she had seen an old wolf playing amicably with a little rabbit. She thought of the two animals in connection with the two men.
While she had been thinking, Hester and Griggs had been talking together in lower tones, on the divan, and Crowdie had been painting industriously.
“It’s time for luncheon,” said Mrs. Crowdie. “Mr. Griggs says he really must go away very early, and perhaps, if Katharine will stay, she will let you paint for another quarter of an hour afterward.”
“I wish you would!” answered Crowdie, with alacrity. “The snow-light is so soft — you see the snow lies on the skylight like a blanket.”
Katharine looked up at the glass roof, turning her head far back, for it was immediately overhead. When she dropped her eyes she saw that Griggs was looking at her again, but he turned away instantly. She had no sensation of unpleasantness, as she always had when she met Crowdie’s womanish glance; but she wondered about the man and his past.
Hester was just leaving the studio, going downstairs to be sure that luncheon was ready, and Crowdie had disappeared behind his curtain to put his palette and brushes out of sight, as usual. Katharine was alone with Griggs for a few moments. They stood together, looking at the portrait.
“How long have you known Mr. Crowdie?” she asked, yielding to an irresistible impulse.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 691
