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The Portrait
by
“Tries to fail?”
“Well, no; that’s not quite it, either; I didn’t want to make a failure of Vard’s picture, but I did so deliberately, with my eyes open, all the same. It was what one might call a lucid failure.”
“But why–?”
“The why of it is rather complicated. I’ll tell you some time–” He hesitated. “Come and dine with me at the club by and by, and I’ll tell you afterwards. It’s a nice morsel for a psychologist.”
At dinner he said little; but I didn’t mind that. I had known him for years, and had always found something soothing and companionable in his long abstentions from speech. His silence was never unsocial; it was bland as a natural hush; one felt one’s self included in it, not left out. He stroked his beard and gazed absently at me; and when we had finished our coffee and liqueurs we strolled down to his studio.
At the studio–which was less draped, less posed, less consciously “artistic” than those of the smaller men–he handed me a cigar, and fell to smoking before the fire. When he began to talk it was of indifferent matters, and I had dismissed the hope of hearing more of Vard’s portrait, when my eye lit on a photograph of the picture. I walked across the room to look at it, and Lillo presently followed with a light.
“It certainly is a complete disguise,” he muttered over my shoulder; then he turned away and stooped to a big portfolio propped against the wall.
“Did you ever know Miss Vard?” he asked, with his head in the portfolio; and without waiting for my answer he handed me a crayon sketch of a girl’s profile.
I had never seen a crayon of Lillo’s, and I lost sight of the sitter’s personality in the interest aroused by this new aspect of the master’s complex genius. The few lines–faint, yet how decisive!–flowered out of the rough paper with the lightness of opening petals. It was a mere hint of a picture, but vivid as some word that wakens long reverberations in the memory.
I felt Lillo at my shoulder again.
“You knew her, I suppose?”
I had to stop and think. Why, of course I’d known her: a silent handsome girl, showy yet ineffective, whom I had seen without seeing the winter that society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the crayon, I tried to trace some connection between the Miss Vard I recalled and the grave young seraph of Lillo’s sketch. Had the Vards bewitched him? By what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled into drawing the terrible father as a barber’s block, the commonplace daughter as this memorable creature?
“You don’t remember much about her? No, I suppose not. She was a quiet girl and nobody noticed her much, even when–” he paused with a smile– “you were all asking Vard to dine.”
I winced. Yes, it was true–we had all asked Vard to dine. It was some comfort to think that fate had made him expiate our weakness.
Lillo put the sketch on the mantel-shelf and drew his arm-chair to the fire.
“It’s cold to-night. Take another cigar, old man; and some whiskey? There ought to be a bottle and some glasses in that cupboard behind you… help yourself…”
II
About Vard’s portrait? (he began.) Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a queer story, and most people wouldn’t see anything in it. My enemies might say it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure; but you know better than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. Between me and Vard there could be no question of failure. The man was made for me–I felt that the first time I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep from asking him to sit to me on the spot; but somehow one couldn’t ask favors of the fellow. I sat still and prayed he’d come to me, though; for I was looking for something big for the next Salon. It was twelve years ago–the last time I was out ere–and I was ravenous for an opportunity. I had the feeling–do you writer-fellows have it too?–that there was something tremendous in me if it could only be got out; and I felt Vard was the Moses to strike the rock. There were vulgar reasons, too, that made me hunger for a victim. I’d been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There’d been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. Then the critics had been insinuating that I could do only Spanish things–I suppose I had overdone the castanet business; it’s a nursery-disease we all go through–and I wanted to show that I had plenty more shot in my locker. Don’t you get up every morning meaning to prove you’re equal to Balzac or Thackeray? That’s the way I felt then; only give me a chance, I wanted to shout out to them; and I saw at once that Vard was my chance.