quickest and shortest route.
Treffinger was a comparatively young man at the time of his
death, and there had seemed no occasion for haste until haste was
of no avail. Then, possibly, though there had been some
correspondence between them, MacMaster felt certain qualms about
meeting in the flesh a man who in the flesh was so diversely
reported. His intercourse with Treffinger's work had been so
deep and satisfying, so apart from other appreciations, that he
rather dreaded a critical juncture of any sort. He had always
felt himself singularly inept in personal relations, and in this
case he had avoided the issue until it was no longer to be feared
or hoped for. There still remained, however, Treffinger's great
unfinished picture, the Marriage of Phaedra, which had never
left his studio, and of which MacMaster's friends had now and again
brought report that it was the painter's most characteristic
production.
The young man arrived in London in the evening, and the next
morning went out to Kensington to find Treffinger's studio. It
lay in one of the perplexing bystreets off Holland Road, and the
number he found on a door set in a high garden wall, the top of
which was covered with broken green glass and over which
a budding lilac bush nodded. Treffinger's plate was still there,
and a card requesting visitors to ring for the attendant. In
response to MacMaster's ring, the door was opened by a cleanly
built little man, clad in a shooting jacket and trousers that had
been made for an ampler figure. He had a fresh complexion, eyes
of that common uncertain shade of gray, and was closely shaven
except for the incipient muttonchops on his ruddy cheeks. He
bore himself in a manner strikingly capable, and there was a sort
of trimness and alertness about him, despite the too-generous
shoulders of his coat. In one hand he held a bulldog pipe, and
in the other a copy of Sporting Life. While MacMaster was
explaining the purpose of his call he noticed that the man surveyed
him critically, though not impertinently. He was admitted into a
little tank of a lodge made of whitewashed stone, the back door
and windows opening upon a garden. A visitor's book and a pile
of catalogues lay on a deal table, together with a bottle of ink
and some rusty pens. The wall was ornamented with photographs
and colored prints of racing favorites.
"The studio is h'only open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays,"
explained the man--he referred to himself as "Jymes"--"but of
course we make exceptions in the case of pynters. Lydy Elling
Treffinger 'erself is on the Continent, but Sir 'Ugh's orders was
that pynters was to 'ave the run of the place." He selected a key
from his pocket and threw open the door into the studio which, like
the lodge, was built against the wall of the garden.
MacMaster entered a long, narrow room, built of smoothed
planks, painted a light green; cold and damp even on that fine
May morning. The room was utterly bare of furniture--unless a
stepladder, a model throne, and a rack laden with large leather
portfolios could be accounted such--and was windowless, without
other openings than the door and the skylight, under which hung
the unfinished picture itself. MacMaster had never seen so many
of Treffinger's paintings together. He knew the painter had
married a woman with money and had been able to keep such of his
pictures as he wished. These, with all of 182 his
replicas and studies, he had left as a sort of common legacy to
the younger men of the school he had originated.
As soon as he was left alone MacMaster sat down on the edge
of the model throne before the unfinished picture. Here indeed
was what he had come for; it rather paralyzed his receptivity for
the moment, but gradually the thing found its way to him.
At one o'clock he was standing before the collection of studies
done for Boccaccio's Garden when he heard a voice at his
elbow.
"Pardon, sir, but I was just about to lock up and go to
lunch. Are you lookin' for the figure study of Boccaccio
'imself?" James queried respectfully. "Lydy Elling Treffinger
give it to Mr. Rossiter to take down to Oxford for some lectures
he's been agiving there."
"Did he never paint out his studies, then?" asked MacMaster
with perplexity. "Here are two completed ones for this picture.
Why did he keep them?"
"I don't know as I could say as to that, sir," replied James,
smiling indulgently, "but that was 'is way. That is to say, 'e
pynted out very frequent, but 'e always made two studies to stand;
one in watercolors and one in oils, before 'e went at the final
picture--to say nothink of all the pose studies 'e made in pencil
before he begun on the composition proper at all. He was that
particular. You see, 'e wasn't so keen for the final effect as for
the proper pyntin' of 'is pictures. 'E used to say they ought to
be well made, the same as any other h'article of trade. I can lay
my 'and on the pose studies for you, sir." He rummaged in one of
the portfolios and produced half a dozen drawings, "These three,"
he continued, "was discarded; these two was the pose he finally
accepted; this one without alteration, as it were.
"That's in Paris, as I remember," James continued reflectively.
"It went with the Saint Cecilia into the Baron H---'s
collection. Could you tell me, sir, 'as 'e it still? I
don't like to lose account of them, but some 'as changed 'ands
since Sir 'Ugh's death."
"H---'s collection is still intact, I believe," replied MacMaster.
"You were with Treffinger long?"
"From my boyhood, sir," replied James with gravity. "I was
a stable boy when 'e took me."
"You were his man, then?"
"That's it, sir. Nobody else ever done anything around the studio.
I always mixed 'is colors and 'e taught me to do a share of the
varnishin'; 'e said as 'ow there wasn't a 'ouse in England as could
do it proper. You ayn't looked at the Marriage yet, sir?"
he asked abruptly, glancing doubtfully at MacMaster, and indicating
with his thumb the picture under the north light.
"Not very closely. I prefer to begin with something simpler;
that's rather appalling, at first glance," replied MacMaster.
"Well may you say that, sir," said James warmly. "That one regular
killed Sir 'Ugh; it regular broke 'im up, and nothink will ever
convince me as 'ow it didn't bring on 'is second stroke."
When MacMaster walked back to High Street to take his bus
his mind was divided between two exultant convictions. He felt
that he had not only found Treffinger's greatest picture, but
that, in James, he had discovered a kind of cryptic index to the
painter's personality--a clue which, if tactfully followed, might
lead to much.
Several days after his first visit to the studio, MacMaster
wrote to Lady Mary Percy, telling her that he would be in Lo
ndon
for some time and asking her if he might call. Lady Mary was an
only sister of Lady Ellen Treffinger, the painter's widow, and
MacMaster had known her during one winter he spent at Nice. He
had known her, indeed, very well, and Lady Mary, who was
astonishingly frank and communicative upon all subjects, had been
no less so upon the matter of her sister's unfortunate marriage.
In her reply to his note Lady Mary named an afternoon when
she would be alone. She was as good as her word, and when
MacMaster arrived he found the drawing room empty. Lady Mary
entered shortly after he was announced. She was a tall woman,
thin and stiffly jointed, and her body stood out under the folds
of her gown with the rigor of cast iron. This rather metallic
suggestion was further carried out in her heavily knuckled hands,
her stiff gray hair, and her long, bold-featured face,
which was saved from freakishness only by her alert eyes.
"Really," said Lady Mary, taking a seat beside him and
giving him a sort of military inspection through her nose
glasses, "really, I had begun to fear that I had lost you
altogether. It's four years since I saw you at Nice, isn't it? I
was in Paris last winter, but I heard nothing from you."
"I was in New York then."
"It occurred to me that you might be. And why are you in London?"
"Can you ask?" replied MacMaster gallantly.
Lady Mary smiled ironically. "But for what else, incidentally?"
"Well, incidentally, I came to see Treffinger's studio and
his unfinished picture. Since I've been here, I've decided to
stay the summer. I'm even thinking of attempting to do a
biography of him."
"So that is what brought you to London?"
"Not exactly. I had really no intention of anything so serious
when I came. It's his last picture, I fancy, that has rather
thrust it upon me. The notion has settled down on me like a thing
destined."
"You'll not be offended if I question the clemency of such a
destiny," remarked Lady Mary dryly. "Isn't there rather a
surplus of books on that subject already?"
"Such as they are. Oh, I've read them all"--here MacMaster
faced Lady Mary triumphantly. "He has quite escaped your amiable
critics," he added, smiling.
"I know well enough what you think, and I daresay we are not
much on art," said Lady Mary with tolerant good humor. "We leave
that to peoples who have no physique. Treffinger made a stir for
a time, but it seems that we are not capable of a sustained
appreciation of such extraordinary methods. In the end we go
back to the pictures we find agreeable and unperplexing. He was
regarded as an experiment, I fancy; and now it seems that he was
rather an unsuccessful one. If you've come to us in a missionary
spirit, we'll tolerate you politely, but we'll laugh in our
sleeve, I warn you."
"That really doesn't daunt me, Lady Mary," declared
MacMaster blandly. "As I told you, I'm a man with a mission."
Lady Mary laughed her hoarse, baritone laugh. "Bravo! And
you've come to me for inspiration for your panegyric?"
MacMaster smiled with some embarrassment. "Not altogether
for that purpose. But I want to consult you, Lady Mary, about
the advisability of troubling Lady Ellen Treffinger in the
matter. It seems scarcely legitimate to go on without asking her
to give some sort of grace to my proceedings, yet I feared the
whole subject might be painful to her. I shall rely wholly upon
your discretion."
"I think she would prefer to be consulted," replied Lady
Mary judicially. "I can't understand how she endures to have the
wretched affair continually raked up, but she does. She seems to
feel a sort of moral responsibility. Ellen has always been
singularly conscientious about this matter, insofar as her light
goes,--which rather puzzles me, as hers is not exactly a
magnanimous nature. She is certainly trying to do what she
believes to be the right thing. I shall write to her, and you
can see her when she returns from Italy."
"I want very much to meet her. She is, I hope, quite
recovered in every way," queried MacMaster, hesitatingly.
"No, I can't say that she is. She has remained in much the
same condition she sank to before his death. He trampled over
pretty much whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don't
recover from wounds of that sort--at least, not women of Ellen's
grain. They go on bleeding inwardly."
"You, at any rate, have not grown more reconciled," MacMaster
ventured.
"Oh I give him his dues. He was a colorist, I grant you;
but that is a vague and unsatisfactory quality to marry to; Lady
Ellen Treffinger found it so."
"But, my dear Lady Mary," expostulated MacMaster, "and just
repress me if I'm becoming too personal--but it must, in the
first place, have been a marriage of choice on her part as well
as on his."
Lady Mary poised her glasses on her large forefinger and
assumed an attitude suggestive of the clinical lecture room as
she replied. "Ellen, my dear boy, is an essentially
romantic person. She is quiet about it, but she runs deep. I
never knew how deep until I came against her on the issue of that
marriage. She was always discontented as a girl; she found
things dull and prosaic, and the ardor of his courtship was
agreeable to her. He met her during her first season in town.
She is handsome, and there were plenty of other men, but I grant
you your scowling brigand was the most picturesque of the lot.
In his courtship, as in everything else, he was theatrical to the
point of being ridiculous, but Ellen's sense of humor is not her
strongest quality. He had the charm of celebrity, the air of a
man who could storm his way through anything to get what he
wanted. That sort of vehemence is particularly effective with
women like Ellen, who can be warmed only by reflected heat, and
she couldn't at all stand out against it. He convinced her of his
necessity; and that done, all's done."
"I can't help thinking that, even on such a basis, the marriage
should have turned out better," MacMaster remarked reflectively.
"The marriage," Lady Mary continued with a shrug, "was made
on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding. Ellen, in the nature
of the case, believed that she was doing something quite out of
the ordinary in accepting him, and expected concessions which,
apparently, it never occurred to him to make. After his marriage
he relapsed into his old habits of incessant work, broken by
violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted her friends
and foisted his own upon her--many of them well calculated to
arouse aversion in any well-bred girl. He had Ghillini
constantly at the house--a homeless vagabond, whose conversation
was impossible. I don't say, mind you, that he had not
grievances on his side. He had probably overrated the girl's
possibilities, a
nd he let her see that he was disappointed in
her. Only a large and generous nature could have borne with him,
and Ellen's is not that. She could not at all understand that
odious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself upon not
having risen above its sources.
As MacMaster drove back to his hotel he reflected that Lady
Mary Percy had probably had good cause for dissatisfaction
with her brother-in-law. Treffinger was, indeed, the last man who
should have married into the Percy family. The son of a small
tobacconist, he had grown up a sign-painter's apprentice; idle,
lawless, and practically letterless until he had drifted into the
night classes of the Albert League, where Ghillini sometimes
lectured. From the moment he came under the eye and influence of
that erratic Italian, then a political exile, his life had swerved
sharply from its old channel. This man had been at once incentive
and guide, friend and master, to his pupil. He had taken the raw
clay out of the London streets and molded it anew. Seemingly he
had divined at once where the boy's possibilities lay, and had
thrown aside every canon of orthodox instruction in the training of
him. Under him Treffinger acquired his superficial, yet facile,
knowledge of the classics; had steeped himself in the monkish Latin
and medieval romances which later gave his work so naive and remote
a quality. That was the beginning of the wattle fences, the cobble
pave, the brown roof beams, the cunningly wrought fabrics that gave
to his pictures such a richness of decorative effect.
As he had told Lady Mary Percy, MacMaster had found the imperative
inspiration of his purpose in Treffinger's unfinished picture, the
Marriage of Phaedra. He had always believed that the key to
Treffinger's individuality lay in his singular education; in the
Roman de la Rose, in Boccaccio, and Amadis, those works
which had literally transcribed themselves upon the blank soul of
the London street boy, and through which he had been born into the
world of spiritual things. Treffinger had been a man who lived
after his imagination; and his mind, his ideals and, as MacMaster
believed, even his personal ethics, had to the last been colored by
the trend of his early training. There was in him alike the
freshness and spontaneity, the frank brutality and the religious
mysticism, which lay well back of the fifteenth century. In the
Marriage of Phaedra MacMaster found the ultimate expression
of this spirit, the final word as to Treffinger's point of view.
As in all Treffinger's classical subjects, the conception
was wholly medieval. This Phaedra, just turning from her husband
and maidens to greet her husband's son, giving him her
first fearsome glance from under her half-lifted veil, was no
daughter of Minos. The daughter of heathenesse and the
early church she was; doomed to torturing visions and scourgings,
and the wrangling of soul with flesh. The venerable Theseus
might have been victorious Charlemagne, and Phaedra's maidens
belonged rather in the train of Blanche of Castile than at the
Cretan court. In the earlier studies Hippolytus had been done
with a more pagan suggestion; but in each successive drawing the
glorious figure bad been deflowered of something of its serene
unconsciousness, until, in the canvas under the skylight, he
appeared a very Christian knight. This male figure, and the face
of Phaedra, painted with such magical preservation of tone under
the heavy shadow of the veil, were plainly Treffinger's highest
achievements of craftsmanship. By what labor he had reached the
seemingly inevitable composition of the picture--with its twenty
figures, its plenitude of light and air, its restful distances
seen through white porticoes--countless studies bore witness.
From James's attitude toward the picture MacMaster could
well conjecture what the painter's had been. This picture was
always uppermost in James's mind; its custodianship formed, in