“Why not? Deep knowledge of women. When they want time, there’s doubt. Where there’s doubt with a woman, there’s no desire.”
“Why should she have doubts? What’s wrong with me?”
“You’re always asking that,” said Lancelot. “Some day somebody is going to be fool enough to tell you. Horace, face it — you’re no Romeo like me. I’ve got the face for it.”
“I love her,” said Horace. “That’s enough for any woman.”
Lancelot rolled his eyes. “That anyone could be so simple! A man who has only love to offer is in the ring with a glass jaw. Now then, let’s see.” He studied himself in the mirror. “I think I’ll paint it full face, kind of serious but with a little twinkle, man of the world, knowing, but full of heart.”
Well, by the end of the week the self-portrait was finished and Horace took it along to the school. He set it up on the easel and pretended to be putting a few finishing touches to it. When Nancy Reeves saw it she was enraptured.
“It ain’t,” said Horace, who had learned enough by now to play along with art talk to some extent, “quite finished. It needs a something — a point of... well, of something.”
“Yes, perhaps it does, Horace. But you’ll get it.”
She put a hand gently on his shoulder. They were in a secluded part of the room. “By the way, I’ve come to a decision about your proposal. It’s better for me to tell you here in public because it will keep it on a calm, sane, level basis — a perfect understanding between two adult people who considered carefully, very carefully, before making an important decision. I feel that by producing in you this wonderful flowering of talent that I’ve completed my role, that I have no more to give. Marriage after this would be an anticlimax, since my attachment to you is really an intellectual and artistic one, rather than any warm, passionate, romantic craving. I know that you will understand perfectly, dear Horace.”
“You mean, no go?” asked Horace.
Nancy nodded gently. “I’m sorry. But for a woman, love must be an immediate thing. There must be something about a man’s face that is instantly compelling. Now take this painting of yours — there’s a man’s face that is full of the promise of romance, of tenderness and yet manly strength. I’d like to meet your friend.”
For a moment Horace sat there, the great fire of his love just a handful of wet ashes. That Nancy Reeves could go for Lancelot just by seeing his portrait filled Horace with bitterness — a bitterness made even blacker by the fact that Horace had taken Lancelot’s bet at twenty to one, and now stood to lose £100.
“You mean,” said Horace, “that you could go for him?”
“He’s certainly got a magic. You’ve caught his compulsive personality and—”
“You should really see him,” said Horace jealously. “One-half of his face is as purple as a baboon’s... well, like this—”
In a fit of pique, Horace picked up his brush, squirted some purple paint onto his palette, and slapped the purple thickly over the right side of Lancelot’s face.
From behind him Nancy Reeves’s voice said breathlessly, “But Horace — that’s just the defiant abstract touch it needed! The unconventional, the startling, the emphatic denial of realism... Horace, it’s staggering! Pure genius. Don’t do a thing more to it — not another stroke!”
Horace stood up, looked at her, and said, “There’s a lot more I could do to it. But if you like it so much — keep him. Call it ‘A Painter’s Goodbye.’ ” He walked out and he never went back to Art School again.
A week later, while Horace was sitting dejectedly in Lancelot’s room watching him work at a painting, the local Detective-Inspector and a Constable walked in unexpectedly.
The Inspector nodded affably and said, “Hello, Horace. Evening, Lance. Forging old masters, eh?” He was in a good mood.
Horace gave him a cold stare, and Lancelot kept his hand up to his face to cover his pale lilac cheek.
The Inspector went on, “Funny — I never connected you two with that wages snatch. Bit out of your line. Thought it was strictly an uptown job.”
He leaned forward and looked at the painting on which Lancelot was working. “Nice. Nice brushwork. Fine handling of color. Bit of a dabbler myself. Bitten by the bug, you know. Great relaxation. Go to all the exhibitions. They had one at the Art School yesterday. Picked up this little masterpiece by Horace Head.”
The Constable stepped forward and brought from behind him Lancelot’s self-portrait with Horace’s purple-cheeked addition.
“Fine bit of work,” said the Inspector. “Sort of neo-impressionistic with traces of nonobjective emotionalism, calculated to shock the indifferent into attention. It did just that to me — so you can take your hand away from your cheek, Lance, and both of you come along with me.”
And along they went — for a three year stretch.
But it didn’t stop Lancelot painting. He did it in prison and he did it when he came out. Gets 500 guineas a canvas now, and his name is known all over the country.
But he’s not often in the Minerva Club. His wife — who was a Miss Nancy Reeves — doesn’t approve of the types there and rules the poor fellow with a rod of iron.
Florence V. Mayberry
Out of the Dream Stumbling
One of the oddest stories we’ve published in a long time — a strange story that will get under your skin, skewer into your consciousness — and perhaps into your subconscious...
The man on the witness stand looked younger than he was. Thirty-four, the papers said. In spite of the strain he was under, he had an unused look. Not innocent. The facts of the case made that apparent, and they were underscored by the too-soft set of his mouth. He just looked, simply, unused. The sob sisters were playing him up as a struggling artist, Bohemian, tempted, all that sort of thing. But as for tempting, some people tempt with a crook of the finger.
He was frightened. He kept staring at his sister, who sat in the courtroom with her head down. The way he stared added to his unused look — the way a child looks at its mother, helpless and beseeching. Hurt, too, as though he couldn’t believe anyone could punish him.
The sister was from a different cut of cloth. A thin, pale woman with use all over her. Not ugly. Good features, if the observer went beyond the strain on her face. She was obviously anguished by her brother’s trouble. Several of the newspaper stories had featured her — how she had worked so many years to help her brother become an artist, how she refused to believe he could murder anyone, in spite of the evidence. All the broken, strained, understated words by which she tried to tell how much she loved him...
Many a person in the courtroom was wrenched by pity because of the sister. It gave the case a deeper perspective.
“Call my sister again, please call Lulie back!” the man on the witness stand, cried out, as the prosecuting attorney continued to question him.
An embarrassed hush fell over the courtroom...
If they call me up there again, I’ll break down, I know I will. I wish I could just stay out of the courtroom until — poor Jack, he sounds just as he did when he was three years old and fell down the stairs and cut his chin and wouldn’t let anyone but me touch him. I can’t believe we’ve grown up, and that this has happened to us.
If I didn’t have to listen to all these questions! I think I know what happened, but with all these questions and the answers they think they ought to hear, what really happened becomes a secret that keeps running and hiding. When it hides, I have to search and search. And is it the truth when I find it? I don’t know any more.