55. CHAPTER LV.
ARTHUR MERLIN'S GREAT PICTURE.
Arthur Merlin had sketched his great picture of Diana
and Endymion a hundred times. He talked of it with his
friends, and smoked scores of boxes of cigars during the conversations.
He had completed what he called the study for
the work, which represented, he said, the Goddess alighting
upon Latmos while Endymion slept. He pointed out to his
companions, especially to Lawrence Newt, the pure antique
classical air of the composition.
“You know,” he said, as he turned his head and moved his
hands over the study as if drawing in the air, “you know it
ought somehow to seem silent, and cool, and remote; for it is
ancient Greece, Diana, and midnight. You see?”
Then came a vast cloud of smoke from his mouth, as if to
assist the eyes of the spectator.
“Oh yes, I see,” said every one of his companions—especially
[ILLUSTRATION]
Aunt Winnifred In Arthur's Studio.
[Description: 538EAF. Page 330. In-line Illustration. Image of a long-haired man seated before an easel with a paint pallette in one hand and an older woman seated looking at a large piece of paper.]
Lawrence Newt, who did see, indeed, but saw only a
head of Hope Wayne in a mist. The Endymion, the mountain,
the Greece, the antiquity, were all vigorous assumptions
of the artist. The study for his great picture was simply an
unfinished portrait of Hope Wayne.
Aunt Winnifred, who sometimes came into her nephew's
studio, saw the study one day, and exclaimed, sorrowfully,
“Oh, Arthur! Arthur!”
The young man, who was busily mixing colors upon his pallet,
and humming, as he smoked, “'Tis my delight of a shiny
night,” turned in dismay, thinking his aunt was suddenly ill.
“My dear aunt!” and he laid down his pallet and ran toward
her.
She was sitting in an arm-chair holding the study. Arthur
stopped.
“My dear Arthur, now I understand all.”
Arthur Merlin was confused. He, perhaps, suspected that
his picture of Diana resembled a certain young lady. But
how should Aunt Winnifred know it, who, as he supposed,
had never seen her? Besides, he felt it was a disagreeable
thing, when he was and had been in love with a young lady for
a long time, to have his aunt say that she understood all about
it. How could she understand all about it? What right has
any body to say that she understands all about it? He asked
himself the petulant question because he was very sure that
he himself did not by any means understand all about it.
“What do you understand, Aunt Winnifred?” demanded
Arthur, in a resolute and defiant tone, as if he were fully prepared
to deny every thing he was about to hear.
“Yes, yes,” continued Aunt Winnifred, musingly, and in a
tone of profound sadness, as she still held and contemplated
the picture—“yes, yes! I see, I see!”
Arthur was quite vexed.
“Now really, my dear aunt,” said he, remonstratingly, “you
must be aware that it is not becoming in a woman like you to
go on in this way. You ought to explain what you mean,” he
added, decidedly.
“Well, my poor boy, the hotter you get the surer I am.
Don't you see?”
Mr. Merlin did not seem to be in the least pacified by this
reply. It was, therefore, in an indignant tone that he answered:
“Aunt Winnifred, it is not kind in you to come up here and
make me lose my time and temper, while you sit there cooly
and talk in infernal parables!”
“Infernal parables!” cried the lady, in a tone of surprise
and horror.
“Oh, Arthur, Arthur! that comes of not going to church.
Infernal parables! My soul and body, what an awful idea!”
The painter smiled. The contest was too utterly futile.
He went slowly back to his easel, and, after a few soothing
puffs, began again to rub his colors upon the pallet. He was
humming carelessly once more, and putting his brush to the
canvas before him, when his aunt remarked,
“There, Arthur! now that you are reasonable, I'll tell you
what I meant.”
The artist looked over his shoulder and laughed.
“Go on, dear aunt.”
“I understand now why you don't go to our church.”
It was a remark so totally unexpected that Arthur stopped
short and turned quite round.
“What do you mean, Aunt Winnifred?”
“I mean,” said she, holding up the study as if to overwhelm
him with resistless proof, “I mean, Arthur—and I could cry
as I say it—that you are a Roman Catholic!”
Aunt Winnifred, who was an exemplary member of the
Dutch Reformed Church, or, as Arthur gayly called her to her
face, a Dutch Deformed Woman, was too simple and sincere
in her religious faith to tolerate with equanimity the thought
that any one of the name of Merlin should be domiciled in the
House of Sin, as she poetically described the Church of Rome.
“Arthur! Arthur! and your father a clergyman. It's too
dreadful!”
And the tender-hearted woman burst into tears.
But still weeping, she waved the picture in melancholy confirmation
of her assertion. Arthur was amused and perplexed.
“My dear aunt, what has put such a droll idea into your
head?”
“Because—because,” said Aunt Winnifred, sobbing and wiping
her eyes, “because this picture, which you keep locked up
so carefully, is a picture of the Holy Virgin. Oh dear! just
to think of it!”
There was a fresh burst of feeling from the honest and affectionate
woman, who felt that to be a Roman Catholic was
to be visibly sealed and stamped for eternal woe. But there
was an answering burst of laughter from Arthur, who staggered
to a sofa, and lay upon his back shouting until the tears
also rolled from his eyes.
His aunt stopped, appalled, and made up her mind that he
was not only a Catholic but a madman. Then, as Arthur grew
more composed, he and his aunt looked at each other for some
moments in silence.
“Aunt, you are right. It is the Holy Virgin!”
“Oh! Arthur,” she groaned.
“It is my Madonna!”
“Poor boy!” sighed she.
“It is the face I worship.”
“Arthur! Arthur!” and his aunt despairingly patted her
knees slowly with her hands.
“But her name is not Mary.”
Aunt Winnifred looked surprised.
“Her name is Diana.”
“Diana?” echoed his aunt, as if she were losing her mind.
“Oh! I beg your pardon. Then it's only a portrait after all?
Yes, yes. Diana who?”
Arthur Merlin curled one foot under him as he sat, and,
lighting a fresh cigar, told Aunt Winnifred the lovely legend
of Latmos—talking of Diana and Endymion, and thinking of
Hope Wayne and Arthur Merlin.
Aunt Winnifred listened with the utmost interest and patience.
Her nephew was eloquent. Well, well, thought the
old lady, if interest in his pursuit makes a great painter, my
dear nephew will be a great man. During the course of the
story Arthur paused several times, evidently lost in reverie—
perhaps tracing the analogy. When he ended there was a
moment's silence. Then Aunt Winnifred looked kindly at
him, and said:
“Well?”
“Well,” said Arthur, as he uncurled his leg, and with a
half sigh, as if it were pleasanter to tell old legends of love
than to paint modern portraits.
“Is that the whole?”
“That is the whole.”
“Well; but Arthur, did she marry him after all?”
Arthur looked wistfully a moment at his aunt.
“Marry him! Bless you, no, Aunt Winnifred. She was a
goddess. Goddesses don't marry.”
Aunt Winnifred did not answer. Her eyes softened like
eyes that see days and things far away—like eyes in which
shines the love of a heart that, under those conditions, would
rather not be a goddess.
