"Let the red dawn surmise
What we shall do,
When this blue starlight dies
And all is through."
I. BEING THE CONTENTS OF AN UNSIGNED
LETTER SENT TO THE AUTHOR
There are so many things which are
impossible to explain! Why should certain chords in music make me think
of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of
Sainte Cécile send my thoughts wandering among the caverns whose
walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar
and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock that flashed before my eyes the
picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring
foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green
lizard, murmuring: "To think that this also is a little ward of God!"
When I first saw the watchman his
back was toward me. I paid no more attention to him than I had to any other
man who lounged through Washington Square that morning, and when I shut
my window and turned back into the my studio I had forgotten him. Late
in the afternoon, the day being warm, I raised the window again and leaned
out to get a sniff of air. A man was standing in the courtyard of the church,
and I noticed him again with as little interest as I had that morning.
I looked across the square to where the fountain was playing and then,
with my mind filled with vague impressions of trees, asphalt drives, and
the moving groups of nursemaids and holiday-makers, I started to walk back
to my easel. As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in
the churchyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary
movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked
at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the
man that repelled me I did not know, but the impression of a plump white
grave-worm was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my
expression, for he turned his puffy face away with a movement which made
me think of a disturbed grub in a chestnut.
I went back to my easel and motioned
the model to resume her pose. After working awhile I was satisfied that
I was spoiling what I had down as rapidly as possible, and I took up a
palette knife and scraped the color out again. The flesh tones were sallow
and unhealthy, and I did not understand how I could have painted such sickly
color into a study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.
I looked at Tessie. She had not
changed, and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.
"Is it something I've done?" she
said.
"No, I've made a mess of this arm,
and for the life of me I can't see how I came to paint such mud as that
into the canvas," I replied.
"Don't I pose well?" she insisted.
"Of course, perfectly."
"Then isn't not my fault?"
"No. It's my own."
"I'm very sorry," she said.
I told her she could rest while
I applied rag and turpentine to the plague spot on my canvas, and she went
off to smoke a cigarette and look over the illustrations in the Courier
Français.
I did not know whether it was something
in the turpentine or a defect of the canvas, but the more I scrubbed the
more that gangrene defect seemed to spread. I worked like a beaver to get
it out, and yet the disease appeared to creep from limb to limb of the
study before me. Alarmed I strove to arrest it, but now the color on the
breast changed and the whole figure seemed to absorb the infection as a
sponge soaks up water. Vigorously I plied palette knife, turpentine, and
scraper, thinking all the time what a séance I should hold with
Duval who had sold me the canvas; but soon I noticed that it was not the
canvas which was defective nor yet the colors of Edward. "It must be the
turpentine," I thought angrily, "or else my eyes have become so blurred
and confused by the afternoon light that I can't see straight." I called
Tessie, the model. She came and leaned over my chair blowing rings of smoke
into the air.
"What have you been doing to it?"
she exclaimed.
"Nothing," I growled, "it must be
this turpentine!"
"What a horrible color it is now,"
she continued. "Do you think my flesh resembles green cheese?"
"No, I don't," I said angrily, "did
you ever know me to paint like that before?"
"No, indeed!"
"Well, then!"
"It must be the turpentine, or something,"
she admitted.
She slipped on a Japanese robe and
walked to the window. I scraped and rubbed until I was tired and finally
picked up my brushes and hurled them through the canvas with a forcible
expression, the tone alone of which reached Tessie's ears.
Nevertheless she promptly began:
"That's it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes! You have been three
weeks on that study, and now look! What's the good of ripping the canvas?
What creatures artists are!"
I felt about as much ashamed as
I usually did after such an outbreak, and I turned the ruined canvas to
the wall. Tessie helped me clean my brushes, and then danced away to dress.
From the screen she regaled me with bits of advice concerning whole or
partial loss of temper, until, thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented
sufficiently, she came out to implore me to button her waist where she
could not reach it on the shoulder.
"Everything went wrong from the
time you came back from the window and talked about that horrid-looking
man you saw in the churchyard," she announced.
"Yes, he probably bewitched the
picture," I said, yawning. I looked at my watch.
"It's after six, I know," said Tessie,
adjusting her hat before the mirror.
"Yes," I replied, "I didn't mean
to keep you so long." I leaned out of the window but recoiled with disgust,
for the young man with the pasty face stood below in the churchyard. Tessie
saw my gesture of disapproval and leaned from the window.
"Is that the man you don't like?"
she whispered.
I nodded.
"I can't see his face, but he does
look fat and soft. Someway or other," she continued, turning to look at
me, "he reminds me of a dream, an awful dream I once had. Or," she mused,
looking down at her shapely shoes, "was it a dream after all?"
"How should I know?" I smiled.
Tessie smiled in reply.
"You were in it," she said, "so
perhaps you might know something about it."
"Tessie! Tessie!" I protested, "don't
you dare flatter by saying you dream about me!"
"But I did," she insisted; "shall
I tell you about it?"
"Go ahead," I replied, lighting
a cigarette. Tessie leaned back on the open window-sill and began very
seriously.
"One night last winter I was lying
in bed thinking about nothing at all in particular. I had been posing for
you and I was tired out, yet it seemed impossible for me to sleep. I heard
the bells in the city ring ten, eleven, and midnight. I must have fallen
about midnight because I don't remember hearing the bells after that. It
seemed to me that I had scarcely closed my eyes when I dreamed that something
impelled me to go to the window. I rose, and raising the sash, leaned out.
Twenty-fifth Street was deserted as far as I could see. I began to be afraid;
everything outside seemed so so black and uncomfortable. Then the sound
of wheels in the distance came to my ears, and it seemed to me as though
that was what I must wait for. Very slowly the wheels approached, and,
finally, I could make out a vehicle moving along the street. It came nearer
and nearer, and when it passed beneath my window I saw it was a hearse.
Then, as I trembled with fear, the driver turned and looked straight at
me. When I awoke I was standing by the open window shivering with cold,
but the black-plumed hearse and the driver were gone. I dreamed this dream
again in March last, and again awoke beside the open window. Last night
the dream came again. You remember how it was raining; when I awoke, standing
at the open window, my night-dress was soaked."
"But where did I come into the dream?"
I asked.
"You you were in the coffin; but
you were not dead."
"In the coffin?"
"Yes."
"How did you know? Could you see
me?"
"No; I only knew you were there."
"Had you been eating Welsh rarebits,
or lobster salad?" I began laughing, but the girl interrupted me with a
frightened cry.
"Hello! What's up?" I said, as she
shrank into the embrasure by the window.
"The the man below in the churchyard;
he drove the hearse."
"Nonsense," I said, but Tessie's
eyes were wide with terror. I want to the window and looked out. The man
was gone. "Come, Tessie," I urged, "don't be foolish. You have posed too
long; you are nervous."
"Do you think I could forget that
face?" she murmured. "Three times I saw the hearse pass below my window,
and every time the driver turned and looked up at me. Oh, his face was
so white and and soft? It looked dead it looked as if it had been dead
a long time."
I induced the girl to sit down and
swallow a glass of Marsala. Then I sat down beside her, and tried to give
her some advice.
"Look here, Tessie," I said, "you
go to the country for a week or two, and you'll have no more dreams about
hearses. You pose all day, and when night comes your nerves are upset.
You can't keep this up. Then again, instead of going to bed when your day's
work is done, you run off to picnics at Sulzer's Park, or go to the Eldorado
or Coney Island, and when you come down here next morning you are fagged
out. There was no real hearse. That was a soft-shelled crab dream."
She smiled faintly.
"What about the man in the churchyard?"
"Oh, he's only an ordinary unhealthy,
everyday creature."
"As true as my name is Tessie Reardon,
I swear to you, Mr. Scott, that the face of the man below in the churchyard
is the face of the man who drove the hearse."
"What of it?" I said. "It's an honest
trade."
"Then you think I did see the hearse?"
"Oh," I said, diplomatically, "if
you really did, it might not be unlikely that the man below drove it. There
is nothing in it."
Tessie rose, unrolled her scented
handkerchief, and taking a bit of gum from a knot in the hem, placed it
in her mouth. Then drawing on her gloves she offered me her hand, with
a frank "Good-night, Mr. Scott," and walked out.
End of PART ONE..... GO TO PART
TWO..... 
