Complete Works of Earl Derr Biggers, page 239
“Oh,” she smiled. “Father told you.”
“Yes. Gave me a free ride to the cemetery and everything. The old story of the Montagues and Capulets. By the way, who’s playing Romeo? Clarence Ward had a precious son if I’m not mistaken.”
“Herb Ward,” she answered. “Just graduated from law school — Harvard.”
“Oh, yes — little Herb. Pale young shrimp with curls and the air of a crown prince. Used to ride around town in a pony cart. Nearly ran over a dog of mine once, and I pulled him out of the cart and blacked his eye. Them was the happy days.”
“You always did have such brutal instincts,” she reminded him. “Even now you look more like a boiler maker than an artist. It’s hard to believe. Are you sure you’re the Bob Dana who paints?”
“Lead me to my new studio and I’ll prove it to you. By the way, your father said—”
“Oh, yes. Come inside.” She led him into a big cool hall. “You’re the white-haired boy round here — any room in the house you want. That’s orders. Anybody who happens to be established there must be dropped from the window.”
“Look out or I’ll take your room.” He followed her up the stairs and they made the rounds of the second floor. His selection fell on a large guest-room with a good north light not too impeded by the trees. “Move everything out — rugs and all,” he said. “Just a kitchen chair and maybe a little table.”
“It shall be done, O Rajah,” laughed Dell. They returned to the upper hall. The girl snapped on an electric light, illuminating a dark corner. “By the way, you’d better take a look at that,” she said.
She pointed to a crayon portrait of a tired, dyspeptic-looking man in middle age. His lips were a thin line on a thin face, his eyes fishy, his entire aspect chill and bleak and seemingly lacking in all human feeling.
“Oh, yes — your grandfather,” said Bob Dana, and his heart sank. For a long moment he and Henry Benedict stared at each other.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dell said. “You’re thinking, ‘There’s old Eight-Per-Cent. Benedict. I’ve got to resurrect him, and gosh, how I dread it!’”
“You wrong me,” Bob smiled. “I was just wondering — how do we get from him to you? No connection that I can see.”
“Thanks for the ad. Well, the least said about poor Grandfather the soonest mended. As a tyrant he made the Kaiser look weak. However, do the best you can.”
“Your father says he wants a speaking likeness.”
“Heaven forbid!” said Dell. She snapped off the light, and Henry Benedict receded into the shadows. “I moved him up here myself. Some battle, but I won. We’ve got a few other photographs — an old tintype, and one of him on his wedding day. He looked quite human then.”
“Oh, I’ll make out,” Bob told her. “Your father has promised to keep a sharp watch on me and tell me when I’m wrong.”
“You poor thing — I’m afraid he will. Pretty tough for you.”
“That’s all right,” he assured her as he followed her downstairs. “I’ve got a strong constitution and a cheerful disposition. At least I always did have — up to to-day. Somehow I feel terribly depressed and mean this afternoon.”
“Why’s that?”
“I can’t make out.” He held the screen door for her and they returned to the porch. A shaft of sunlight fell across her hair. “Honey!” Bob Dana cried.
“What?” she inquired, surprised.
“Honey,” he repeated enthusiastically. “The color of your hair, I mean. I’ve been trying ever since I saw you again to think what that shade reminded me of. I know now. It’s honey — the sort of honey I used to have for breakfast at a little pension in Rome. Lots of butter, and this honey, and delicious hot rolls Oh, my lord!”
“What now? Bob, you are absurd.”
“No, I’m not. I just remembered what’s wrong with me. This depressed, sad feeling. This wave of bitter regret. I ate two of Herman Schall’s rolls for breakfast, and the darned things weren’t half baked.”
“Oh,” said Dell, “that’s too bad. But you’ll get over it. Only keep off Herman Schall’s bread. Do you really like my hair?”
“Like it? It’s lovely! As a matter of fact — I don’t want to spoil you, Dell — but you’re quite wonderful. I wish it was your portrait I was going to paint.”
“Well, I’m Father’s favorite child. There are no others, of course, but I’m well in the lead. Maybe after you do Grandfather you’ll get an order to do me.”
“No,” he said, sternly shaking his head. “I couldn’t consider it. Sorry — something else I just remembered. Artist, you know. Can’t support myself, let alone a What I mean is, I’ve got to keep my mind off girls. Not so much as look at one. Dangerous. First thing I knew—”
“What are you talking about? You don’t for a minute think that I—”
“No, Dell; no, I mean to say, might get to know you, like you, think better of your whole sex. Go right on from bad to worse, meet some little flapper, fall for the wedding idea — another artist gone wrong!”
“You’re in no danger here, my lad,” said Dell. “Shall I tell Father you’ll punch the time clock in the morning?”
“Expect me at nine.”
“All right. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me around the house; I live here, you know. But I want to set your mind at rest, so I’ll tell you a little secret. Keep it dark. This thing is more like the Capulets and Montagues than you imagined. I’m engaged to Herbert Ward.”
“What! Little Herb Ward?”
“Yes. He’s not so bad. The curls are gone and he drives a racing car now.”
“Well, I’m glad,” said Bob grimly.
“Thanks. I knew you would be.”
“You don’t understand. I mean I’m glad I blacked his eye that time. I only wish it had been permanent.”
“You — an artist!” she said derisively. “With all those brutal instincts struggling inside you.”
“Ain’t any brutal instincts struggling inside me,” he told her. “Just the little old indigestion I bought from Herman Schall.”
And he went from her down the walk, as solemn as the cast-iron deer.
* * * * *
“TO-MORROW morning at ten o’clock,” said the Evening Enterprise some weeks later, “the doors of the First National Bank’s new home will be thrown open to the public. The citizens of Mayfield may be pardoned a keen pride in what they will behold. It is doubtful if any city of similar size between New York and Chicago can boast finer banking-rooms. Pillars, partitions and walls of marble, mahogany paneled rooms for the directors and the president, in the basement safety deposit vaults of the newest design and construction — all in all a revelation in modern banking quarters. To the strains of sweet music discoursed by the Mayfield Silver Clarinet Band the directors and officers will be happy to meet their friends and show them about. It is understood that the chef d’oeuvre of the main banking-room is to be a portrait of Henry Benedict, the late president of the institution, painted by our talented and up-and-coming young townsman, Robert Dana, son of the late Melville Dana, well and favorably known to all our people. ‘Come one, come all’ is the invitation extended by the bank.”
At about the time Will Varney’s words were being read by the citizens of Mayfield Bob Dana sat before his finished job of work in his studio on the second floor of the Benedict house. He looked at the moment neither up nor coming, but rather down and out. The feeling of hopelessness, of doubt concerning his own ability, that all true artists experience at the moment of final achievement was his, and the remarks of the small but select group of spectators gathered at his back did little to dispel it.
“Well, I don’t know,” Eugene Benedict was saying dubiously. “What do you think, Nellie?”
He appealed to his wife, a haughty beauty in her time, but somewhat faded now. She adjusted her glasses and stared — a stare famous in Mayfield, where she had long been the social arbiter.
“I don’t know either,” she admitted. “Sometimes I think it looks like Father — and sometimes I don’t.”
“My case exactly,” said Eugene. “Around the chin — somehow. Did you make the chin fuller, Bob, as I suggested?”
“I think it’s just wonderful,” Dell announced.
Bob gave her a grateful look. “I’ve done my best,” he said to Eugene. “I’ve changed it and changed it and changed it, day after day, as your opinions altered. Sometimes I think — you’ll pardon my saying it — that the thing would have been better if I hadn’t listened to you quite so much.”
“But we knew Father better than you did,” Mrs Benedict reminded him.
“Yes,” Bob sighed wearily. “Yet you never did agree on the color of his hair. And as for the eyes — one of you said gray, and another green, and another light blue. It’s what always happens on this sort of portrait. I’ve done my best, as I said, and if you don’t like it I’ll be happy to draw a knife through it now, and pay you back that advance when I can.”
“No, Bob, no!” cried Benedict, alarmed. “It’s not so bad as that, my boy. Perhaps we’ve given you a wrong impression. We were so close to Father, of course we’d be over-critical. It’s not bad — not bad at all — I’ll be mighty glad to hang it. Besides,” he added with the usual tact of the layman discussing an artist’s work, “the inscription is to be the important thing, after all.”
Bob and Delia exchanged a long, understanding look. “Sure,” Bob said. “That’s the way to look at it. The inscription will takeoff the curse.”
“Now let’s get down to dinner,” Eugene ordered. “I’ve got a busy night ahead at the bank. Will you stay, Bob?”
“Not to-night, thank you,” Bob answered.
“Well, I’ll take the picture down in the car to-morrow morning. Drop in about nine and help me hang it. Now, Nellie, let’s get along. Delia!”
The two older people left the room. Bob picked up his coat.
“Don’t you mind them,” smiled Dell. “They don’t know anything about art — not even what they like.”
“It does resemble the old boy, Dell?”
“Bob — it’s uncanny. I’m darn glad it’s going to hang in the bank, and not up here. It would make me nervous.”
“Then maybe that newspaper was right. I mean — perhaps I have a little talent.”
“A little? Bob — what ails you?”
“Oh, I always feel like this just after I’ve finished a thing. Gloomy.”
“Then you ought always to have some one around — some one who thinks you’re — wonderful.”
He stood staring into her eyes. He had been staring into them a great deal of late — in the intervals of work; at luncheon, which he had been taking daily with the Benedicts; sometimes at dinner, too; and in the evenings. There had been a period when Eugene urged him warmly to look into Dell’s eyes, Eugene’s feeling being that they somewhat resembled Henry Benedict’s. After a thorough investigation Bob denied this.
But now the portrait was finished. Bob Dana held open the door of the guest-room studio.
“You’re wanted at dinner,” he smiled.
Dell followed him out on to the front porch. “I suppose you’ll be going back East soon?” she inquired.
“Yes; in a few days. Got some unexpected business to look after first. Poor Father left me a little plot of land on the north side — the only thing he owned after a long hard struggle. They’re thinking of a factory there, and I may sell it for fabulous wealth. All the money in the world — six thousand dollars.”
“Good luck,” she said. “You must come up often until you go.”
“I’ll come for my things,” he told her. “But” — he shook his head— “that’ll be about all, Dell. That had better be about all.”
“Delia!” her mother called.
“Good-by,” said Dell. “And the portrait, Bob — it’s wonderful. I’ll tell the world.”
“Thanks,” he smiled. “The same goes for you. You’ve helped me through; I’d have quit cold long ago if you hadn’t been hanging around. You see, I’m sort of silly and temperamental in many ways — even if I do look like a boiler maker. Good-by, Dell.”
He endured dinner at the Mayfield House, and passed a solemn evening with a magazine in the apartments of the late Mr. Cornell. Promptly at nine in the morning he appeared at the First National Bank. Entering the big front doors he found himself in a fragrant bower of roses and other blooms.
“Well, things certainly look festive,” he remarked when he encountered the perspiring president. He took hold of the tag on a big basket of roses. “Compliments of the Mayfield Lumber Company,” he read.
Eugene smiled. “Yes, everybody whose notes we hold has come across,” he remarked. “And yet some people say there is no sentiment in business.” Bob looked at him in sudden wonder. Had little Eugene a sense of humor, after all? The banker pointed to the spot where the portrait was to hang.
“Pretty good light, eh? That brass plate shows up fine. I’m glad I had it in big letters. ‘More than any of his contemporaries influenced the life of his times and left his impress on the town.’ That ought to hold Clarence Ward for a while. Now, boys, bring the ladder.” He picked up the portrait and turned to Bob. “All the fellows have looked this over. They’re delighted with it. Say it’s Father to the life. Congratulations.”
Bob saw the portrait hung, and collected a check for eight hundred dollars.
“Like to have you stay and meet our leading citizens,” Eugene suggested. “Might interest you to hear their comments on the picture.”
Bob was alarmed. “You don’t insist on that?”
“Oh, no, of course not.”
“Then I think I’d — I’d rather not.”
“Funny fellows, these artists,” thought Eugene Benedict.
Bob left the bank just as the Mayfield band began to discourse sweet music and the eager citizens were crowding in. From others later he heard of that day’s happenings. The opening proved a big success, and no small part of the interest shown was accorded Henry Benedict’s portrait. But the painting itself, Bob judged, figured only incidentally in the excitement. It was the sentiment on the brass plate underneath that won most comment. Every one recognized it at once for what it was, a direct challenge to the Ward family. The non-combatants were amused and warmed at once to the fray; arguments arose. The spirit seemed to be: “Is this a private fight, or can anybody get into it?”
Clarence Ward, slim, dignified, gray-haired, with the manner of the law courts, came, all unsuspecting, into the bank about noon. He was standing before the portrait of old Henry Benedict when Eugene emerged from his office on the way to lunch. There, just as the sweet music came to a sudden stop, the two met. The spectators held their breath.
“Hello, Clarence,” said Eugene breezily. “What do you think of our new home?”
“Very fine,” admitted Mr. Ward coldly. “I have just been reading the inscription under your father’s portrait.”
“Ah, yes,” said Eugene, smiling sweetly.
“You ought to write fiction, Eugene,” Mr. Ward advised. “Fiction, I believe, is mostly lies.”
Eugene flushed. “I am not aware of any inaccuracy in that inscription,” he said.
“A pinch-penny banker!” sneered Mr. Ward. “Eight-Per-Cent. Benedict, I believe they called him, though I don’t recall that he was ever satisfied with that modest rate.”
“That will do!” Eugene cried.
“You have insulted the memory,” Mr. Ward went on, flushing, too, “of one of the finest men who ever lived, an incorruptible judge, an honored member of Congress—”
“A country lawyer with a mind as broad as a knife blade!” Eugene cut in. “A millstone round the neck of progress!”
“Enough!” shouted Mr. Ward.
“You started it,” the banker said. “Boasting on your dead father’s tombstone. Did you think you could get away with that fairy story? Not likely!”
“I intend,” interrupted Mr. Ward, “to withdraw my personal account from this bank. I shall also withdraw all funds of which I am trustee.”
“Withdraw, and be damned to you!” roared Eugene.
He turned and walked from the bank. Mr. Ward glared after him. The feud was on.
That evening, the warmest of the summer, to date, Bob Dana walked the streets of his native town. His dominant emotion was joy. Henry Benedict was finished; never again need he stare at that horrible crayon portrait, never again writhe in his chair over the problem of Henry’s eyes. He had eight hundred dollars in his pocket, he was twenty-five, life stretched before him gay and wonderful.
At the corner of Park Avenue and Market Street he narrowly escaped being hit by an automobile.
He awoke in time, however, and leaped nimbly to safety. The car ran up to the curb, stopped, and a familiar voice called “Whoo-oo!”
“What’s the idea?” asked Dell as he went up to her. “Trying to end it all? You gave me a turn, I’ll say.”
“Sorry,” he apologized. “Just one of those boneheaded pedestrians. You should have run me down. World’s better without my sort. Better for motorists, I mean.”
“Hop in,” she ordered. “I’ll give you a spin. It will cool your fevered brow.”
“Thanks.” He climbed into the seat at her side, and seized his hat just in time as she shot the car off into the night. The cushions were soft, the breeze rushed over him pleasantly. “This is elegant,” he said. “And it’s an old story to you. Curse the rich!”
“Cut out the cursing,” Dell answered. “We had plenty of that at dinner. Father held forth on the subject of Clarence Ward.”
“That so? I heard there was quite a little grapple at the bank.”
“Sure was! Father’s inscription did the work. He asked for a row, and now he’s got it. I hope he’s satisfied.”
“Well, the lad’s jazzed things up. Give him credit. Say, I rather like the moon. Take a look at it.”
“No, thanks. I was doing just that when I nearly ran over you. Better keep my eyes on the job.”
“All right. I’ll look at it for you and report. It’s a grand old moon, Dell. Same moon I’ve seen shining on the Arno and on the roses that bloom on the long road up to Fiesole. I’ve seen it shining on the Colosseum and on the Seine and on lovers in the Luxembourg, and from the Embankment watched it silver the roofs of Parliament and Big Ben in his tower. I’ve seen it shining on the Atlantic in the wake of a ship when the band was playing an old-fashioned waltz — and now I’ve seen it shining on your hair.”
