The Intoxicated Ghost, and other stories. Bates Arlo

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СКАЧАТЬ any clear consciousness of the reason; and much as might have come a hint of the intentions or motives of another person, came to Tom the thought that he was painting this second portrait that its difference from the first might show him upon what foundations rested his fanciful theory. He wished, he told himself, at least to see how far he had expressed a personality unlike another equally possible.

      As a faint shade on the artist’s inner consciousness rested, however, a feeling that this explanation was not completely satisfactory. He would have been shocked had he even dreamed of the possibility that artistic vanity, aroused by the doubt that it possessed the power of moulding the life and destiny of Ralph, had defiantly turned to throw its influence into the other scale, to prove by its power of dragging the sitter down that its dominance was real. Had any realization of such a motive come to Claymore, he would have been horrified at a thought so evil; yet he failed to push self-investigation far enough to bring him to an understanding of his real motives.

      The painter worked steadily and with almost feverish rapidity, and before the end of the week he was able to substitute the second portrait for the first when Ralph, who had been out of town for a few days, came for his next sitting. Tom was not without a good deal of uneasy secret curiosity in regard to the effect upon Thatcher of the changed picture. He appreciated how great the alteration really was, a difference so marked that he had lacked the courage to carry out his first intention of exhibiting the new canvas to Celia. He excused himself for hesitating to show her the portrait by the whimsical pretext that it would not be the part of a gentleman to betray the discreditable traits of character he believed himself to have discovered as among the possibilities of her cousin’s nature. What Ralph would himself say, the painter awaited with uneasy eagerness, and as the latter, after the customary greetings, walked up to the easel and stood regarding his counterfeit presentment, Tom found himself more nervous than he would have supposed possible.

      Ralph studied the picture a moment in silence.

      “What in the devil,” he burst out, “have you been doing to my picture?”

      “What is the matter with it?” the artist asked, stepping beside him, and in turn fixing his gaze on the portrait.

      “I’m sure I don’t know,” Ralph replied, with a puzzled air; “but somehow or other it seems to me to have changed from a rather decent-looking phiz into a most accursedly low-lived one. Do I look like that?”

      “I suppose a mirror would give a more disinterested answer to that question than I could.”

      Claymore glanced up as he spoke, and hardly repressed an exclamation of surprise. Ralph’s whole expression was changing to correspond with that of the portrait before him. Who has not, in looking at some portrait which strongly impressed him, found in a little time that his own countenance was unconsciously altering its expression to correspond with that portrayed before him; and the chances that such a thing will occur must be doubly great when the picture is one’s own image.

      A portrait appeals so intimately to the personality of the person represented, human vanity and individuality insist so strongly upon regarding it as a part of self, that it stands in a closer relation to the inner being than can almost any other outward thing. It is, in a sense, part of the original, and perhaps the oriental prejudice against being portrayed, lest in the process the artist may obtain some sinister advantage, is founded upon some subtle truth. It can hardly be possible that, with the keen feeling every man must have in regard to his portrait, any one should fail to be more or less influenced by the painter’s conception of him, the visible embodiment of the impression he has made upon another human mind; and since every picture must contain something of the personality of the artist, it follows that a portrait-painter is sure to affect in some degree the character of his sitters. It would rarely happen that this influence would be either intentional or tangible, but must it not always exist?

      Claymore stood for a little time watching Ralph’s face; then he walked away, and returned with a small mirror which he put in the latter’s hand. Thatcher looked at the reflection it offered him, and broke into a hard laugh.

      “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 glass 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?”

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