Ewing

“ Its hangings are dingy, its plenteous gilt is tarnished; and it seems to live on memories of a past when fashion splendidly thronged its corridors. But peace lies beyond the gloom of its portals, and Ewing was glad to be housed from the dazing tumult outside. ”

“ Ewing awoke in the night at some jolting halt of the train, to feel an exciting thrill of luxury as he stretched in his berth. Here was no stumbling about in the dark to search for a lost trail; nor must he rise in the chill dawn to worry a blaze from overnight embers, cook a discouraging breakfast, catch horses, and lade unwilling beasts with packs. Things would be done for him; and the trail was wide and level as befits the approach to the world. ”

“ As they entered the studio Mrs. Laithe saw that the easel had been wheeled into the light from the big window and that a woman's portrait had been placed upon it. Had Ewing looked at her on the instant he might have detected that her face seemed to ripple under some wind of emotion. But his own eyes had been on the portrait.
"That's my mother," he said, unconsciously hushing his voice.
"I should have known it," she answered, with a kind of spurious animation. "The face is so much like yours. It is a face one seems to have known before, one of those elusive resemblances that haunt the mind. ”

“ Ewing gathered his strength, like a wrestler who has been pressed to the ground, but lifts himself with infinite effort, and went resolutely toward her. Gently he unclasped her arms from Cooney's neck. ”

“ She stopped at last, panting, striving to keep back the passionate words of entreaty that still formed, crushing them down in a maddened consciousness of their impotence. She stared wildly, feeling only a still stubborn determination. Ewing would soon come—yet it seemed that she had no resource save appeal. She felt this and raged against it, striding away from Teevan across the room. For the first time in her gentle life she was feeling the sensation she thought a man must feel in fighting. She had an impulse to strike blindly, to wound, to beat down with her hands. ”

“ Ewing began to watch this girl, a slight but rounded creature with yellowish hair curving down either side of her tanned face. He caught a greenish light in her eyes, as she bent to her task with a somewhat anxious concentration.
Mrs. Laithe brought him the tea, which he helplessly took, and presented him to a vivid-hued young matron, who made room for him beside her. His part in the talk that followed was confined to mutterings of agreement, tinged now and then with a discreet sympathy. He heard the latest golf and yachting news and sprightly chat of the lady's newest motor car. ”

“ And Ewing obeyed, beginning each time the task that grew day by day more hatefully useless. In the beginning he had felt that if he could get that plaster woman off by himself he could draw her. The long habit of solitude had left him confounded by the crowd. There had been something almost shameful to him about drawing publicly, and he had the impulse to curl an arm about his sketch to hide it a little as he worked. He felt sick with the hot, dry air and the breathing of the stallful of men. ”

“ The dinner itself possessed an atmosphere of sophistication, a temperament, even. It sated the exigent appetite of Ewing—his luncheon with Sydenham had been a mere adventure in meagerness—and sated without cloying, but it was more than food to him. As he ate, and drank of a burgundy whose merit he was ill qualified to appraise, he was conscious of a real fascination growing within him for the man who favored him with so distinguished a notice ”

“ She rose to look at a clock, and knew that Teevan probably awaited Ewing. But she could be first there, and she felt equal to the clash. The very fever would sustain her. And she would be wary once more that day, cunning to learn what she had to oppose. Then she would be valiant. If the fever only gave her strength, small matter the fuel that fed it. ”

“ The full, maddening realization came to her on a day when Ewing walked with her to the lake. He turned on her suddenly when they had mounted a slope, seized both her hands, and looked long into her eyes with a certain grave wonder.
"You are made new," he said at last. She trembled [278] in a sudden panic, divining the truth of it, feeling, as he spoke, a great rush of life overwhelming her.
"You are living again, you are going to live. I knew you would live." He still gripped her hands. ”

“ Ewing was shyer of her when evening brought this change of habit. At such times he found it easier to talk to Mrs. Laithe, who sat—or, oftener, lay—with her eyes turned from the light, speaking but little.
"I'm glad to be away from town," she said to him, as he sat a moment beside her one day, "and I'm glad you're away. I need to be quiet, and you shall do as you like. Virginia will go about with you and make you gay. Virginia always makes us gay." ”

“ Lowndes as he did so, for there had come from her a murmur of protest at the light. Ewing also looked at her from where he stood on the hearth rug. The lighting of the room had intensified some electrical current that pulsed from each to each. The woman returned Ewing's gaze with the absorption of one moved beyond all arts of convention. Her eyes glistened, ominous of tears, and her small, lean chin trembled as her lips parted. Ewing turned from her distress, appealing by look to the big man, who watched them both, but his gaze was at once drawn back to the woman. ”

“ If Teevan had retorted, had raised a hand, or betrayed anything but abject fear, shrinking in his chair, turning eyes of appeal to his son, Ewing would have vented his rage. But this died into mere loathing as he looked. Teevan was near to whimpering, in his fear. Ewing turned away with a gesture of repulsion.
"That's best, after all," remarked the son coolly.
"Doubtless he deserves kicking more than any unkicked man alive, but you'll be glad you didn't do it."
Ewing shot another look at Teevan, and then said, almost as if to himself. ”

“ But then, what would have been a [308] cry of terror became a mere gurgling snarl, for Ewing's hands had met about his throat with unerring deftness. Teevan was half-raised from the chair, his head was forced back, and for an instant his eyes met Ewing's in full consciousness. Then his mouth opened wide, but not for speech, and his eyes rolled in the agony of that choking grip. Ewing felt the thing writhe in his clutch, then felt a sudden terrible relaxation, and his pressure ceased in unthinking response to this. ”

“ Sydenham had paused at the first crash, then skipped nimbly from his stool, shouting gleefully, "There goes Griggs's suit of armor!" Then, to Ewing's amazement, he twitched the end of a cord that led to a high mahogany sideboard, causing a cigar box, a copper kettle, and a heavy volume of prints to fall with resoundings that must have carried to the farthest studio. The old man [144] faced him with the ecstatically deafened look of a child amid exploding firecrackers. Then, as he discerned Ewing's startled look, he explained:
"It's only a way the boys have every day at one o'clock. ”

“ Ewing listened, yet with eager eyes for the people at other tables about them. These men and women captivated him by their suggestions of mystery—characters in the play he was forever beholding—curious-looking men whose faces suggested lives of dramatic tension; beautiful women, splendidly arrayed, with much of mystery and something of daring in their animation. ”

“ She had laughter and tears again for this when she was alone, though there were times when, in her weakness, her wild craving for the fullness of what she might not have, she would have told it all in one surrendering cry to him but for the eyes of Kitty Teevan. They were always upon her now—Ewing had hung the portrait in the studio—holding her with passionate entreaty, the mother pleading for herself in the son's memory. She could never tell him, she knew, under those eyes. She must live out her few days in content with that wondrous thing his own eyes revealed for her. ”

“ They had not spoken Ewing's name, but his concern in the matter, the meaning of his faith in the woman, was a matter that seemed to lie open to them both. Alden Teevan had assumed it and she had made no denial. His recognition of it colored his leave-taking.
"All happiness for you, Nell. The game ought to be worth playing with you—and with him. You both live so hard." ”

“ There was timidity in her look until she had seen a mile of that relentless earth rush back and away from her. She seemed to need this assurance that she was going away from the trouble in the crude, literal sense of earthly distance—going off where there was room "to live," she had told Ewing; "to die," she had amended the phrase to herself. For death was now a solace she faced. She who had been so hot for the fight, so avid of life, had been cheated of a combatant's privileges. She could not tell Ewing the truth, and she could not live while he believed the lie. ”

“ His beard was a rich growth, his mustaches curled upward at the ends, his large, heavy eyelids drooped in a perpetual ennui. His usual criticism was a weary "Rub it out!"
When at last he stood beside Ewing's work he gave an effect of collapsing, as if his whole being cried out: "This is too much!" He took the drawing from the board and stuck it to the wall with two thumb tacks. Then, picking up a bit of charcoal, he wrote across it, "A perfect example of how not to do it." ”

“ He saw Teevan applauding this mild declaration of revolt, with his fine, dark little smile, and a courteous inclination of the head, and he thereupon amplified it. He must go back to himself and stay there stubbornly, wheresoever that self led him. Millet might have a restricted sense of color, Corot might have had his faults, and Rousseau have been less than Teevan could have wished him; but these were dead men. And Ewing was alive, determined to do those things that permitted him to feel the little power he might have. ”

“ It was one o'clock when they parted, and then only at a hint that the place would close its old-fashioned doors for the night. Ewing rejoiced to feel that he had made a desirable friend. He liked the little man well. Teevan had said at the last. "You should move on to Paris, my boy. You'll need the touch they give only in that blessed rendezvous of the masters." Ewing went to his room realizing that the world of his dreams did actually abound in adventure. His first day had been memorable.
Teevan walked through Ninth Street to his own home, a few doors beyond the Bartell house. ”

“ The thought of those friendly men knowing his degradation was another stone on the grave of his self-esteem. It was this that made him wait when the others had gone one night, to take down that first crucified drawing from the wall where it had remained, torn and hanging by one tack.
"Will you give it to me?" said a voice, and, as he did not care one way or the other, the spectacled young man put it in his portfolio. Afterwards Ewing thought of asking him why he wanted it, but he did not come back again. He had been advanced to the life class. ”

“ A man who, at seventy, suffered his own despairs with the poignant ecstasy of youth, could not take a boy's failings seriously. Ewing now saw, moreover—for he was beginning to use another pair of eyes than Teevan's—that Sydenham himself was a hopeless mannerist, a color-mad voluptuary, painting always subjectively, refusing all but the merest hints from his subject. ”

“ The elder Teevan, carefully pointing the ends of his small, dark mustache, stood with his back to the dying fire, a coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other, twittering gallantly of a town's desolation wrought by the going away of Mrs. Laithe; and of a town renewed by her great-hearted return. "A preciously timed relenting," [92] he called it, with a challenging sigh toward the lady, as he gracefully flicked back a ringlet of the lustrous brown hair that had fallen low on his brow. Ewing thought it wonderful hair on a man whose face, though ruddy in hue, showed signs of age. ”

“ And of color, that splendid mystery, thing of trick and passion, the little man discoursed with rare sanity.
After these provings of his expertness, Ewing was humble when Teevan chose to point out the more striking deficiencies of his own work. If Teevan made him feel that he must unlearn the vicious little he knew, he performed the duty with a tact that left the youth as large with gratitude as with discouragement. It was by Teevan's counsel that he went to the school. The men of the Rookery tried to dissuade him from that.
"They can't give you anything you haven't got," warned Baldwin. ”

“ Shortly before the Ewings started from Fredericton they went into the barracks, whence a battalion of some regiment had departed two days before, and there discovered a large black retriever who had been left behind. It is needless to say that this deserted gentleman entirely overcame their feelings; he was at once adopted, named "Trouvé," and brought home to England, where he spent a very happy life, chiefly in the South Camp, Aldershot, his one danger there being that he was such a favourite with the soldiers, they over-fed him terribly. ”

“ He found it at last, one wherein the God 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. ”