Ewing's Lady Part 24

She thought there was a trace of bitterness in his voice, but she answered, "Friends, surely, Alden."

"We've skirted this thing often, Nell, but you never seemed certain before."

"I didn't--I think I never was _quite_ so certain before, Alden--but now I'm driven all one way."

"I believe that." He rose and spoke in a livelier manner. "But if you won't be wise for me, Nell, be wise for some one else. For G.o.d's sake feel a little worry about your health. I say you look unpromising at this moment."

"I've always been well," she insisted brightly.

"And, Nell, I've wanted to be so much more than a friend to you that my feelings are a bit blurred just now--but I believe I'll always do what a friend should."

CHAPTER XIX

THE UNBLAZED WAY

Ewing was loath to sleep that night, for in sleep he must leave the thought of her who, having been only a picture to him, had come suddenly to life. The magic would have seemed no greater if his own mother had issued livingly from the canvas. How it had happened he knew not, but this woman was all at once the living spring of his life. The thought of her was a golden mist enveloping him. He did not once call it love, but he thought of the gracious women he had loved in books, and knew she was all of them in one.

And once he had been almost careless in her presence! How he marveled at that now, when he knew that henceforth every approach to her would be an event. He shuddered at the memory of what he had been saved from--that swift brute impulse to hold her close against his breast. Must he feel that always--fight it always, to be blasted if he lost? At least in his own secret world he was free to treasure each memory of her dearness.

And he could make her glad. He could work as man had not worked before.

He could make her a little glad.

He feverishly began a drawing for the _Knickerbocker_ the next morning.

Craig, the art editor, had said that he could use six drawings as good as the two he was shown, and they had decided on scenes that would give variety to the series. But that was before a Teevan had come into his life, and now he had lost a month in the dream of satisfying that patron critic.

It was good to prove that he could still draw in his own way; he had suffered so long in that rage of impotence; and he kept to the work until dusk, making no stop for food, even when the noise of falling bodies came to mark the luncheon hour.

When Teevan sauntered in at six the two went to dine at a restaurant.

Ewing had no longer dreaded the meeting. He was ready to show Teevan that there had been no true failure. But Teevan merely listened to the bare outline of fact as they threaded a way through the evening crowd.

He made no comment, and Ewing thought this might be due to the difficulty of conversing in a noisy street.

But after ordering dinner with a nice deliberation, Teevan spoke determinedly of other matters. Ewing ventured a humorous reference to his despair when he left the school, meaning to compel the inference that he no longer despaired. Teevan languidly mentioned a violinist he had heard the evening before.

"--Two Bach numbers, the suite in F minor rather exquisitely done. Bach wrote tremendously well for the fiddle. Technical skill in the performer, you ask? Yes, entirely adequate; indeed, he gave rather a warm reading, really not lacking a certain elevation of style, even a n.o.bility of utterance. That was quite all of interest, though. The Dvorak _humoresque_--a thing transcribed from a piano piece and made sentimental--has one of those effective pa.s.sages in double notes, certain to win an encore from the mob; and the twenty-fourth caprice of Paganini was merely a smart exhibition of harmonic playing--mere squibs and firecrackers and rockets, the veriest fireworks. Ah, it's small wonder the world has so few artists when it demands so little." And Teevan sighed significantly.

Ewing was chilled by this avoidance of himself, though he could not yet believe it intentional.

"I haven't given up," he declared, by way of reminding Teevan. "You shall see that I'm stubborn."

Teevan affected to study a group of diners at a neighboring table as he replied:

"Oh, yes, I gather that you left the school when you found it difficult."

"But you see----"

"This soup is worth while, really. Soup is surprisingly difficult. Yet the world believes perfect soups to be plentiful." He sighed again. "It merely shows the vitality of error."

Ewing felt his woman-given courage leaving him at this attack, or rather at this lack of attack. He had been prepared to have his friend exhibit doubt, disbelief, chagrin--anything that would still show an undiminished esteem. But the intimate note had gone from Teevan's speech. He talked at large as Ewing had heard him talk to roomfuls of people.

"Ah, yes, the vitality of error. Give the world a lie about soup or souls, and you'll not soon worry that lie away. It's clutched with a bulldog jaw. Say good soup is common--G.o.d-fearing Christians echo the lie. Say Berkeley denies the existence of matter, and men with Berkeley at hand repeat you. Say Locke denies all knowledge except through the medium of the senses, and students of Locke pa.s.s on the absurdity. Bacon was by no means the first thinker to proclaim the deficiencies of the Aristotelian philosophy--a system already in disrepute when he wrote the 'Instauration.' Yet in our crude yearning for concreteness, for specific idols, we laud him as the father of the inductive philosophy--as if induction weren't an inevitable process in any mind grown beyond primitive concepts. Gad! I had a dog once that used induction a dozen times a day, and he'd never so much as heard of Bacon."

Thus he wandered afield during the dinner, with airs of a bored but conscientious host, and Ewing fell lower of heart at each of his periods. He hoped for his chance when the coffee came, but Teevan gave him no opening. The brandy sufficed for his text. We were not brandy-drinkers, unhappily enough--"the wholesomest of all spirits, the distilled essence of cognac grapes, the magic cup of Circe, 'her Orient liquor in a crystal gla.s.s'--and we know as little how to drink a liqueur brandy as we know how to buy it. We gulp it from these straight gla.s.ses, when it should be taken in sips from a gla.s.s small at the top, a gla.s.s first warmed in the palm of the hand. Only so may we capture the bouquet, that elusive fragrance of the May-vine blossom, that wraith of spring-perfumes."

Ewing was still unjustified when the waiter helped them on with their coats, and then he was dismayed to observe that Teevan apparently meant to leave him. The little man held out his hand with "So glad to have had your company--another time--I shall see you again, I hope."

"Please come back with me. I'd like to talk to you--to ask your advice."

He felt himself an outcast.

Teevan's response, a surprised but coldly polite a.s.sent, did not lighten his dejection as they walked back to the studio in silence.

But once there the little man no longer avoided talk of his young friend's fiasco. He let it be seen that another illusion, one fondly cherished, he need not say, had been shattered. He gave the impression that he had talked of other things to forget this--an inadequate device, he let it be inferred.

Ewing confessed his own despondency of the night before, but told how a woman had given him new courage.

"Not the least injury they do us," remarked Teevan of women, somewhat snappishly, "is to wheedle us into taking our failures lightly." That were especially baneful to the artist, it seemed; by his very temperament was he exposed to their blandishing sophistries. The artist cult should be a priesthood, aloof, austere, celibate--deaf to the woman cries of "Never mind!" and "Courage!" and "Another day!" All very well that, but they shut their pretty eyes to real failures, or, at most, survey them with a tender air of belittlement that leaves the defeated one blind to their significance. Speaking largely, the society of women should be shunned by earnest men intent on achievement.

Ewing began to feel that possibly he had taken heart too readily. He was willing to believe this if it would restore him to the little man's esteem. He pointed timidly to the drawing he had begun that morning, eager for the word of praise he believed it to merit.

"Oh, _that_!" Teevan drawled the words, with lifted brows; then went on to speak of Jean Francois Millet, unprosperous villager of Barbizon. He tried--unsuccessfully--to recall an instance when that painter had debased his art. Not once had he made a cheap picture for a magazine. He had never put his Muse to the streets. Millet was not pigeon-livered.

Ewing leaned forward in his chair, his head between his hands. He saw that the mere sale of drawings would be a savorless success, if it bereft him of this plain-speaking but just friend. More, it would leave him small in the eyes of a woman who was now even more than Teevan. He got up doggedly, seized the drawing and began to break the tough bristol board, getting it into four pieces at length and flinging these into the grate. He was unable to resist a secret fond look at the lines he had made with such loving care. Teevan's eyes glistened now, and he held out a hand to Ewing.

"Ah--you give me hope. Bravo!"

"Then you do believe in me; you think I have it in me?"

"Power? Yes; I've seen that. I judge men rather accurately. But I saw that you'd be tempted to rest. The more power, the greater the temptation. It's not so hard to fast in a desert--the less gifted man is less tempted. But to fast with plenty at hand for the reaching, and fair women to counsel content--to refuse apples and flagons, waiting for the ultimate jewel--that takes a _man_. It demands one--there's a certain street saying--who can 'stand the gaff.'"

"And you really think I can stand it? I feel more than ever that I want to succeed."

Teevan beamed on him almost affectionately. "I almost suspect----"

"You shall see that I can," Ewing broke in, but what he thought was, "_She_ will see it."

"It's a matter of endurance," resumed Teevan genially. "Genius is no endowment of supreme gifts. Every man of us has something latent that would set him apart. Genius is only the capacity for expressing that--that phase of yourself which differentiates you from all other selves. Of course only a few succeed. Most of us succ.u.mb to the general pressure to be alike. Yet--I almost believe in you."

Ewing regarded him with glad eyes, touched by this stanch yet discerning adherence.

Returning home that night Teevan, in his library, took down a Bible and searched for a pa.s.sage he only half recalled. He found it at last, one wherein the G.o.d of Israel thunders, not without humor, against the foes of His chosen tribe.

"I will send a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth." He chuckled delightedly as he read it, and wiped tears of mirth from his eyes.

So it befell that Ewing forsook the beaten road of minor achievement that winter, and labored toward the far, high peaks. In his own phrase, the trail was rough and blind. Preceding climbers had not been thoughtful to "blaze" it. But he grudged no effort while he had the little man's applause. And this was not lacking, though it was discreet applause, promoting no slothful content.

It was Ewing who suggested that he paint under the criticism of Sydenham. The little man looked at him in doubt, seeming to suspect a jesting insincerity, then burst into hearty, hand-clapping laughter, crying, "Splendid! An inspiration, indeed! On my word, I hadn't thought of anything half so brilliant."