White Ashes. Sidney R. Kennedy
perceiving his victim writhe and went gayly on.
"But unhappily our Stanwood is so impractical. Probably he would have declined the commission. Atmospheric envelopes slowly en route to the dead letter office of dream pastels demand his whole attention. Painting is crass; he mildly cameos. Tonal nuances—shades of imperceptible difference in the shadowy debatable land between things colored exactly alike—claim his earnest interpretation. When he rarely speaks, it is usually an important contribution to the world's artistic knowledge on some such subject as 'The Influence of Rubens' Grandmother on his Portraits of his Second Wife' or 'The True Alma Mater of Alma Tadema.'"
The artist, whose round smooth face was pink with rage, almost choked, but was wholly unable to reply. That he should be made the gross butt of a man such as Wilkinson was bad enough, but that this should take place in the presence of ladies—and especially of Helen Maitland—was almost unendurable.
Miss Maitland, seeing the flames approaching the magazine with alarming rapidity, hastily started a back-fire, adapting Wilkinson's style to her purpose with a success which—repartee not being her strongest point—astonished even herself.
"Charlie's views on art," she said to the smoldering Pelgram, "are always interesting because they are so wholly free and natural. Most art critics are checked and biased by having studied their subject and formed certain fixed impressions which are bound to come to the surface in their criticisms; some critics are influenced by having gone so far as to look at meritorious pictures in an endeavor to analyze and appreciate them intelligently; but Charlie labors under no such restraints. Once he went into the Louvre, but it was to get out of the rain. Except for an acute sense of smell, he could not detect an oil painting from a water color, even if he should try; and except for an abnormal self-confidence he would hesitate in the first step of criticism—a careful consideration of the value of the canvas as compared with that of the frame. It is therefore because Charlie is the only self-admitted art critic who knows nothing whatever of the subject, that his opinions are so interesting, for they are sure to be absolutely impartial and free from all bias of every kind. But where he heard of Alma Tadema is a puzzle to me, unless that name has been utilized by the manufacturer of some new tooth powder or popular cigar that has failed to attract my notice in the street car advertisements," she concluded thoughtfully.
The harassed artist turned with a look of almost abject canine gratitude toward his defender. Intervention from any source was welcome, but Miss Maitland's unexpected appearance as his belligerent partisan lifted him with a single swing from the abysmal humiliation of ridicule to the highest summit of hope. Helen had always been polite to him, but never before had she warmed to his outspoken defense. She had usually expressed an interest in his work, but as a matter of fact some of it was worthy of her quite impersonal interest. In his own set, men accustomed to formulate their opinions with complete independence and considerable shrewdness frequently remarked that Stan was an awful ass, but he could paint some. This was the common last analysis, the degree of qualifying favor being measured in each case by the comparative pause between the last two words and the accent and inflection upon the ultimate.
And even among those who considered Pelgram's asinine qualities plainly predominant, there was an admission of his certain artistic readiness, a cleverness in his grouping, a superficial dexterity in his brush work, a smartness and facility in the method of his pursuit of false gods. The irrepressible Wilkinson had struck true to the mark of his weaknesses, but something could well be said for the unhappy poseur in whom his shaft had quivered. Some one had observed that Pelgram regarded the appearance of his person and of his studio as of more serious importance than that of his canvases, but his commissions withal came in sufficient numbers to permit his extensive indulgence in bodily and domestic adornment. Granting him to be an ass, he certainly was a reasonably successful one, and he was even generally held to be a talented one.
For all his work was cursed by his indecision, he was surprisingly steady along the line of personal relations. At one time he would devote himself wholly to the production of exotic-looking pastels; at another time to nothing but the strangest of nocturnes in which the colors were washed on in a kind of sauce so thin that the frames, instead of being placed on easels, had to be laid flat on table tops in order to keep the pictures from running off their canvases onto the floor while being painted. But with people, his first likes and dislikes were definite and usually final, and this quality of personal consistency had come to a fixed focus on Helen Maitland.
Helen, for her part, had never given him any other encouragement than to express her approval of some of his pictures that she honestly liked, but Pelgram needed no other encouragement. His cosmos bulged with ego of such density that he and his pastels and nocturnes were crowded together in it indistinguishably. Admiration of his work was necessarily admiration of himself. It was only a question of degree. With an extraordinary manifestation of good taste and common sense, amounting almost to inspiration, he had some time since decided that he would like to marry Miss Maitland, but his admiration for her was so deep that his self-assurance was shaken to the point of hesitation. Thus far he had not ventured to speak, but his heart bounded at her swift defense of him and her effective attack on Wilkinson.
In the brief pause, while Wilkinson was rallying his forces for another charge on Pelgram's tonal battlements, John M. Hurd entered the room.
Mr. Hurd was a thickset man with a firm, clean-shaven jaw and a face furrowed by deep lines, but with eyes that oddly enough looked comparatively youthful and capable not only of appreciating humor, but even of manufacturing it. He appeared to be a man who, by the exercise of his pronounced talent for commercial strategy, could drive, without an atom of pity, his opponent into a corner, but who, after penning him there, could take an almost boyish amusement in watching the unfortunate's futile efforts to escape. The magnate was dressed in a dark cutaway coat with gray trousers, a pear-shaped turquoise pin adorned his black tie, and his dress fully reflected the solid respectability of the directors' meeting from which he had just come.
He took up his position, standing with his back to the window, stirring the sugar in the cup of tea which his daughter had given him. His entrance had snapped the tension between his impecunious step-nephew and the painter.
"Well, how are you all?" he remarked genially. "Really, Isabel, you have quite a salon. How is the portrait going, Helen?—or should I have asked the artist and not the subject? Glad to see you, Cole—is the fire insurance business good? Do you know, I made quite a lot of money out of insurance last year—had it figured out recently."
"In what way, sir?" Cole politely inquired, anticipating the answer.
"By not insuring anything," replied Mr. Hurd, with a short laugh.
"Hello, Charlie, had a busy day?"
As Wilkinson's extreme disinclination for industry of any legitimate sort was well known to all the party, Mr. Hurd's innocently expressed but barb-pointed question brought a general smile, and Pelgram permitted himself the luxury of a suggestive cough.
"Well, no, Uncle John," replied the young man addressed, half apologetically. "Physically, to-day has been on the whole rather restful; however, my active mind has been running as usual at top speed," he added.
Mr. Hurd felt inclined to concede the activity of his nephew's mind, in so far that he had never known its headlong flight to be delayed by contact with an idea—that is to say, an idea of any particular value. Still, in the presence of the rest he spared his young relative, merely remarking dryly and in a manner intended to create the impression of closing the incident with the honors on his own side, "I dare say if your mind runs long enough, Charlie, it will eventually be elected."
This rejoinder had no definite meaning, but that fact in itself made any retort comparatively difficult, and Wilkinson merely helped himself in silence to another sandwich.
Presently Bennington Cole announced that he must be going on, as he had an appointment with an out-of-town insurance agent who was leaving Boston that evening, and soon afterward Miss Maitland took her departure, escorted by Pelgram. Then Wilkinson went, having executed as much havoc as he could among the comestibles, and Isabel was left with her father. Mr. Hurd lit a cigar and looked thoughtfully at his daughter.
"Splendid