Shadow (Gale)

by Zona Gale

SHADOW

By ZONA GALE

NO," Linnie said steadfastly, "wont."

He called it "yunt," and this made the monosyllable rather taking, though it was the height of the rudeness of Linnie, who was four.

"Please, dear," Etheldreda coaxed. She was on her knees beside the Picotée rose tree, and if Linnie had had a maturer joy in color he would have known that her white gown against those opening roses made a picture to which nothing might be denied. In a way he did know, for something filled him with a vague reproach, whereas he never felt reproached when he stormed the will of Miss Cecil, in black, in a high-backed chair.

"No," he said, nonetheless, "No-no." For this special quick combination of sound with this particular accent always marked his baby ultimatum.

Near by stood Sophie Vron, Linnie's nurse-maid, her little blue Dutch cap bewitchingly awry about her little pink Dutch face. And the face, as Etheldreda had noticed at least three times that day, showed signs of recent tears.

"Aw, Master Linfield," Sophie said gently, "go on, let the man paint you pretty."

But as she did not look at him when she spoke, Linnie did not answer. Sophie Vron was, as a matter of fact, looking, one may say, with a sigh in her eyes at Etheldreda's frock—a thing of cream white and cunning lines of lace and tiny tucks for shadows. The tucks for shadows made the high lights the more beautiful, though of this Sophie was of course not expertly conscious. All that Sophie knew about it was that in her simple heart she suddenly loathed her black and white checked gingham and her little winged Dutch cap. However, one would not have said that this had been the reason for her tears.

Etheldreda sighed. She wanted such a little thing of Linnie. It was only that Moberly, the artist in the lodge had told her how Joseph Winchell, the London artist who lived there with him, wished above most things to paint the child. He had seen Linnie marching in the wood with his "go-stick," a tall white staff which old Miss Cecil had been wont to carry. And Winchell said that that staff meant Age and Afternoon and shadowy encroaching; and that it was wonderful, the child using it as a toy. Moreover, he observed that Linnie had the beauty of the angels.

And Linnie positively refused to pose. It was, manifestly, nothing to him that Etheldreda on her knees beside the rose tree was making lists of alluring things that he should have if he would consent. This, she told herself, was pardonable when the issue was not one of duty, but solely of inclination. As for Linnie's inclination, it had a most innocent air of being almost carried, but this was merely to soften his ultimate drawing-back.

"If I did," he inquired now, "tould I have a live fish?"

"Yes," Etheldreda promised eagerly, "oh, yes."

"In a tank? A gul-lass tank?"

"By all means," she assured him.

"A tank," Linnie elaborated, "fuller water?"

"Oh, it shall even have water," she smiled.

Linnie considered.

"Well, an' tould I have," said he, "a li'l—li'l yellie chicken? Wiv torn-meal for always?"

"Oh," Etheldreda promised, "the most beautiful little yellow chicken, Linnie. All your own."

The child looked dreamily over the rose tree, watched the idle flight of a butterfly drifting down the imperceptible wind, and spoke his thoughts:

"Now—is eggs bruvvers an' sisters?"

"Are eggs—" Etheldreda repeated, bewildered.

"Now—yes," said Linnie. "'Tause chickens is."

The butterfly lit airily on the rose tree, and Linnie thought of something else.

"Oh," he said, "tould I have 'at wosebuah for mine? An' pick 'em all off? Now, all off? Nen I would!"

"Might you have the Picotée rose tree? No, indeed," said Etheldreda decidedly. "You know you may not, Linnie. Oh, but see," she pleaded, "with the fish and the tank and the chicken and all the other things, you will let him paint your picture, dear?"

"No," said Linnie serenely, "yunt."

Sophie Vron had noted the least fold in Etheldreda's girdle, and she sighed a little.

"Aw, Master Linfield," she observed, "ain't you the deceiver! You're a regular man that way."

"Sophie," said Etheldreda, "can you think what makes him object?" Also she wondered if Sophie's cynicism might not explain Sophie's tears.

"La, ma'am, no, ma'am," said Sophie. For she was the little maid whom Moberly and Winchell had both sketched in their Holland notes, and whom Etheldreda had coaxed Miss Cecil to engage for Linnie, and Sophie herself knew how to pose as she knew how to breathe. "La, ma'am," she added, "if it was me I'd rather set for my picture then have honey!"

Past the rose tree Etheldreda saw tea brought out to the big porch. And tea usually meant Moberly. He was in fact at that moment coming up the slope of the lawn from the lodge, which seemed to kneel at the feet of the larger house much as he knelt at the feet of Etheldreda. She saw him coming, and her face lit softly, not with a blush, but with a kind of quickening flame. And as for Moberly, it smote him with a certain giddiness that, in a perfectly possible world, it was doubtless possible that she might have been looking for his coming. In fine, since they two had met in a certain light of spring two months before, Moberly knew well enough how matters had come to be with him. And he knew, too, that the time was drawing momentarily nearer when he must tell her, since to tell her had now become the sole reason for summer, roses, the sun, and the universe. But instead of approaching her with a lyric of all this on his lips, as would have been quite natural to him, he merely took her hand, looked briefly in her eyes, and sat down in a porch chair with a cup of excellent English breakfast tea and a crisp crumpet. For this is the way of the world.

"How are you to-day?" Moberly said. And summer, roses, the sun, and the universe heard the "dear" in his voice, if Etheldreda did not hear.

"I am very well, thanks," said Etheldreda. "And you?"

"I am all the better for the tea in the plan of things," he said gravely. "And the crumpets."

"Those crumpets," Etheldreda assured him, "are no better than they should be. They are not brown enough."

"That," said Moberly, "is like wishing a rose to be redder."

"But not at all," Etheldreda contended. "A rose is a rose."

He said; "And a crumpet a crumpet——"

It was amazing how infinitely little they talked about, those two people of cleverness and gifts. But manifestly they both knew very well what it all meant. One would have said that Sophie Vron and her sweetheart would have known too. Is it not as if love pitches everybody in the same key and says: "Now sing. No matter what words. Sing!"

"Many things have happened to-day," Etheldreda announced presently. "Miss Cecil has consented to dine out this evening. The Picotée rose has bloomed. And Sophie has been grieving over something. Also," she might have added and did not, "this gown has come home, quite new!"

"Poor Sophie," said Moberly, wondering much who would take Etheldreda down to dinner and ignoring the Picotée rose—but already he knew and adored every line of the dress—"I hope that great splendid Norwegian sweetheart of hers has not been behaving badly."

"Is there a Norwegian sweetheart?" said Etheldreda. "You haven't told me."

"All I know," said Moberly, "is that I've met them in the village. A fine straight young fellow of a quite surprising blondness. He looked like a Viking and Sophie looked like a rose. What else has happened?"

"I'm afraid," Etheldreda said ruefully, "that Linnie refuses to pose for Mr. Winchell."

"Does he really?" Moberly exclaimed. "Little beggar! Winchell has set his heart on painting him."

On which, suddenly and as if at the name of Winchell, Moberly's face clouded.

"I'm afraid I've bribed him shockingly," Etheldreda went on. "The last thing he said was that he would do it if we would give him the Picotée rose tree. Miss Cecil refuses to tell him he must pose. She says he must do right always, but that in a matter like this he is a free agent. Now, nobody whom Mr. Winchell wishes to paint ought to be a free agent!"

Moberly looked at her quickly and the cloud darkened.

"Do you think so?" he said, "Well, Winchell wishes enormously, for example, to paint you."

Down in the garden Linnie had just lifted a chocolate-colored caterpillar from the earth and he held it toward heaven and ran to them.

"It's p'ayin' it's a butterfly!" he claimed shrilly when at the very foot of the porch steps Sophie tried to take it away from him,

Etheldreda hardly saw them.

"Mr. Winchell wishes to paint me!" she was saying in some astonishment.

"He means to ask you at once," Moberly said. "He's got an idea for a thing called 'Shadow'—a dusk effect. Splendid conception it is. He wants you for the central figure—for Shadow herself. Would you?" Moberly asked wistfully. But the wistfulness, one would have said, was not precisely a wistfulness that she consent.

Etheldreda laughed lightly and looked down on Linnie, still intent on his caterpillar. All at once she rather understood the child.

"No," she said, decidedly. "Mr. Winchell is very good. But I'm afraid, like Linnie, I 'yunt.'"

And this Linnie, on the gravel, did not hear at all, and Sophie Vron, near by, heard with parted lips of wonder; and Moberly beard with a lifting of his face which not summer, roses, the sun, and so on, could possibly have mistaken.

"I couldn't possibly," Etheldreda said gravely. "Really, I'd far rather he didn't ask me. I will not pose on any account."

She held out her hand for his cup. By reason of the strength that was in him Moberly prevented himself from folding that hand and her other hand, and drawing her to him while he said what he longed to say. Instead, since obviously he could not take an opportunity which she had unconsciously made, he simply put down his cup and sat in the porch chair looking at her. As the world demands.

But Sophie Vron went round the house marveling. Not pose! Miss Etheldreda would not pose, when she might be painted wearing that frock of cream-white, all cunning lines of lace and tiny tucks for shadows. Oh, thought Sophie, who knew how to pose as she knew bow to breathe, if she had a dress like that! Whereat Sophie's China-blue eyes filled with tears. If she did have a dress like that, woe to a certain Norwegian sweetheart (who looked like a Viking), and woe to his high-handed ways. She would say to him——

But instead of what she would have said to him she heard herself really saying (for such is the way of the world):

"Aw, Master Linfield. Put down the caterpillar an' leave 'm go his own road, pretty."

Linnie, having obeyed, hunched his shoulders very high and held his arms close to his sides.

"I'm a bottle," he explained. "'Fumery. Not med'cine."

Sophie was occupied in trying to fathom how even Linnie could refuse to be painted.

"Master Linfield, darlin'," she said, "do please go on set for Mr. Winchell."

Linnie shook his head and marched to the measure of his irrevocable determination.

"No-no," he said, "I yunt. An' I yunt. An' I yunt—yunt—yu——nt!"

 

At seven that evening Miss Cecil and Etheldreda drove to their dinner party. At eight Sophie put Linnie to bed. Just before nine she went briskly in to "red up" Miss Etheldreda's rooms. And lying on a willow couch in her dressing room she came full upon that frock of Etheldreda's—a thing of cream white and cunning lines of lace and tucks for shadows.

Sophie looked at it almost reverently. It had, in its empty, straying arms, a kind of pathetic assurance of its prettiness if only some one was wearing it. It lay there idle, disregarded, a thing of momentary waste in Nature, like flowers in the dark. All this Sophie no more thought out than she thought out the processes of the blooming of the Picotée rose, but the consciousness flowed through her like the perfume of the rose, and it intoxicated her.

She lifted the gown. Must not one lift a thing in order to lay it in its tissues? She held it up before her, half recalling that she was just Miss Etheldreda's height and almost as slender. The touch of the mousseline, the sibilant slipping of the silk, the caress of the lace in the sleeves gave her an indefinite happiness. And she turned and in the pier glass she saw her hated black and white checked gingham and her little Dutch winged cap. These were the last points in the argument where she had realized no argument to have taken place. In an instant the black and white check and the winged cap lay on the rug and Sophie, with trembling fingers, was fastening about her slim little figure Miss Etheldreda's cream-white gown.

She never forgot that first frightened, ecstatic look at herself in the pier glass when she was arrayed. If the Viking could see her now! Her hair, that always lay heavy and bright under the Dutch cap, now caught the light in uncovered waving coils. And the pinkness and whiteness and youth of her were by the gown, set off to a really amazing perfection. She had a beauty of her own. Moberly had praised her when he painted her in those Holland fishing scenes of his, and Winchell had praised her before that when he had sketched her, with a basket on her arm, coming from the village. But now—now! Sophie was amazed at herself. For behold, she felt like a different being. She knew, in short, for the first time, the feminine sixth sense of being well dressed.

She stepped across the rug to the mirror, and the slipping of the silk made her heart beat. She lifted a fan which lay on Etheldreda's table and swayed it languidly. Then she paused, arrested by the enormity of her thought:

Miss Cecil and Miss Etheldreda were dining out. They would not be at home for another hour. The servants were all below, the house was perfectly quiet and, save for a dim lamp swinging in the lower hall, quite unlighted. Why should she not go downstairs and pretend?

Sophie stepped out in the corridor, and the stillness reassured her. On the stairs the clamor of that silkiness of hers seemed suddenly to fill the house, the wide air—to sweep about and to return in swishing waves along which she floated. But not for her life could she, even in her misgiving, have silenced it. Oh, Sophie cried in the spirit, all her life she had footed about in noiseless ginghams and cotton-lined serges. Here, here at last was the music of the spheres.

If that Norwegian sweetheart could see her now!

And the thought of that great Viking gave Sophie inspiration. She would play at welcoming him. She had seen Miss Etheldreda welcome guests and had observed her extreme quiet which, until she understood, had almost impressed her simple soul as hostility. Now Sophie remembered this, and it fitted admirably upon the haughty welcome which she yearned to give the Viking. She swept through the dim hall, advanced to the door set wide ajar to the summer night, stepped out to the great shadowy porch with the wine of her daring in her veins, and suddenly unfurled Miss Etheldreda's fan and lifted it to her face, marring that copied quiet of hers by a distinct gasp of pure horror.

Mr. Winchell, of the lodge, was coming up the steps.

Winchell had, as usual, dined with Moberly at the lodge; after which his friend, following a custom that, to Winchell's bewilderment, had been growing upon him of late, went off "for a tramp" alone. At dinner Moberly had vouchsafed nothing about that proposed picture called "Shadow," but he had explained to Winchell with amusement that Master Linnie's price for posing would be one whole Picotée rose tree, for his own. Thus it had occurred to Winchell, left alone, that he might as well seize that evening to beg Etheldreda to pose for him and to argue a bit with Linnie. And, he thought now for a breath, he had had the good fortune to find Etheldreda at home alone.

"Miss Etheldreda?" he said. "Is it—Miss Etheldreda?" he added.

On which Sophie fell into sudden little breaths of sobbing. And the dim hall lamp touched her hair to briefness.

"I beg your pardon," Winchell said in deep distress, "I will go away. I am so sorry——"

"Oh," said Sophie, "Mr. Winchell, sir, it's me. It's me."

He knew her voice. He saw her face now vaguely, for she lowered the fan. But for his life he could not make out what was the matter with the girl. It struck him that in some indefinable way she seemed different—grown taller, become of a strangely impressive presence. Perhaps, he thought indefinitely, she had married. He had known a certain satisfied authority to come then to women of Sophie's class. Yet this was more.

"What is it, Sophie?" he asked perplexedly. "Could—could I help you at all?"

Sophie shook her head. Winchell thought for a moment.

"Is Miss Etheldreda at home?" he asked.

Again Sophie shook her head.

"No, she ain't," she said, with a certain haste, "she's out. I know that."

For he actually seemed not to notice the dress, thought Sophie, and if only he would go before he did notice— Another thought struck her.

"Miss Etheldreda, she won't pose for you anyhow," she said, "I heard her say it to-day. She won't pose for you, sir."

Sophie had leaned a little forward. Winchell, looking up from the lower step, saw her with that dim light behind her, her white gown and hair gathering to themselves all the brightness in a world of shadow. There was a magnificent line from waist to hem of the long white gown, but the rest was in shadow. Shadow on her brow, on the slimness of her, shadow all about her—why, Sophie Vron, the little maid who knew how to pose as she know how to breathe, suddenly seemed to Winchell the very incarnation of Shadow, of the picture he had dreamed.

"Sophie!" he said, "stand just as you are. Please—just as you are."

With her gradually relieved understanding that Winchell was by no means as specifically conscious of the significance of that frock of cunning lines as she was, and that indeed he was wholly ignorant of those criminal waves of supreme silkiness which she could liberate when she moved, the wine of her daring began once more to flow in Sophie's youthful veins. Also, the wine of a delight. For here, where only to-day she had seen Miss Etheldreda sitting serene in her wonderful gown and throwing to the winds a chance for which she herself so longed, that chance had now fallen upon her. Come what would, she said to herself, now was now. She, Sophie Vron, was posing for a picture in no other than that wonderful gown—and oh, if the Viking could but see her!

Winchell, standing on the porch in the half light that fell from the hall, was sketching rapidly, on something he had had in a pocket, and he was triumphant in the certainty that he had got what he wanted. Sophie Vron! It seemed incredible that this was she, of those Holland fishing studies. There was now actually a kind of majesty about her. What had brought it? Even her tears were a part of it. Ah, Shadow, as he had dreamed her and had hardly hoped for her, she was here, newborn for his picture, the living Shadow.

"Glorious, glorious!" he said, "Why, you wonderful little creature!"

And that, as he came up the avenue from his tramp whereon had been born the resolution to tell Etheldreda the divine truth that very night was what Moberly saw and what he heard.

He stopped short on the gravel, down by the Picotée rose. There could be, he thought, no doubt of what he saw. And only that afternoon Etheldreda had said: "I couldn't possibly. I'd far rather he didn't ask me. I will not pose on any account." Yet there was the slim whiteness of that slender figure, the hair bright in the dusk, the incarnation of Shadow among vassal shadows; and before her was Winchell, daring to say that, to her. Ah, "nobody ought to be a free agent when Mr. Winchell wishes to paint one."

Moberly's way was to grind his heel into the gravel, to brush past the rose tree, and under his breath to say something which summer, roses, sun, and universe might very well understand. And there in the darkness he came face to face with a man who was, remarkably, saying his own version of the same thing.

The man—even in the gloom Moberly could see that he was of a quite surprising blondness and that he was straight and splendid, like a Viking. And this Viking, who seemed not particularly to care who Moberly was, grasped him roughly by the arm.

"For God's sake, sir," he said huskily, "you are a man. Tell me, who is dot man on dot stoop?"

For a breath Moberly hesitated, held by a real fear of some threatened danger to Winchell. He himself could have challenged Winchell then and there, with a will; but of course no one else should harm him.

"And what is that to you?" Moberly settled it by demanding crisply.

But all at once the man broke down.

"She vas goin' to be my woman," he said simply, "I haf been a brute. An' now I haf lost her."

It is as if Love pitches us all in one key and says: "Grieve. Never mind how. Grieve!" For afterwards Moberly knew that it had been in him to answer, man to man as they stood:

"You have made a mistake. She was to have been mine!"

Instead (for now and then it is the world's way to be sane) he said quietly:

"Whom do you mean? Sophie Vron? But that woman up there is not Sophie Vron."

The man, in his misery, hardly troubled to contradict him.

"I haf heard her speak," he said, "she had tears in her speaking. If you vill not tell me who this man——"

Away back in Moberly's mind a sudden hope leaped up. Even then he smiled at the possibility that he could have mistaken, but he grasped that great Viking by the arm.

"Come with me," he said.

Therefore upon Winchell, joyously sketching this unexpected Shadow, and upon Sophie in her fearful joy to which tears were so near, these two strange companions stepped out from behind the Picotée rose tree and stood at the foot of the steps.

"Etheldreda," said Moberly.

"Sophie!" cried that great Viking,

On which Winchell was left to sketch the empty dark. With a cry that was pure with tenderness Sophie ran down the steps—ran to a sound of silk that filled the wide air, sweeping and returning in waves on which she fairly floated—and threw herself into the great Viking's arms. And on a sudden Moberly, without the least intention in the world, leaped to the top of the steps and grasped Winchell's hand and wrung it frantically.

It was upon this tableau that Miss Cecil and Etheldreda looked out from their returning carriage.

Winchell, divining the very unusual, did the perfect thing and handed Miss Cecil out and accompanied her within doors. And Etheldreda, stepping down beside Moberly, looked upon Sophie who was magnificently unashamed by her lover's arm. And, Miss Cecil having turned up the gas as she went through the hall, the light streamed out full on Sophie Vron and on her gown—that gown of cream-white, with cunning lines of lace and tucks for shadows.

"Oh, ma'am!" said Sophie, guiltily wretched in her great joy.

Moberly knew the dress too. He had adored every line of it that very afternoon. And he knew therefore something of the loveliness of his lady; for in an instant, woman to woman as they stood, Etheldreda saw everything.

"Sophie!" she said, "I don't know his name, but I am very glad."

"Ma'am," said that great Viking resolutely, "if you are willin' we are goin' to get marrit to-morrow."

"Ah," Etheldreda said, "I might have guessed that Sophie is going to wear that pretty gown to be married in!"

"Ma'am! Ma'am!" Sophie gasped.

"Are you not?" said Etheldreda. "Surely you are!" And smiled away the girl's broken words, and waved away the two lovers down the dusk of the garden. And all the wide air was filled with the sound of Sophie's silk, as much as with the fragrance of the Picotée rose. But shadow there was none.

"Etheldreda," said Moberly.

She could not divine all his mood, but in common with the summer, the universe and all the rest she knew very well what he meant. He held out his arms, and she went to him as simply as if it had been so from the beginning.

Came then a little voice, lifted from the hall doorway where Linnie stood:

"I dweamed my cattypilly was gwoin' 'at wosebush. I like 'at wosebush. I want 'at wosebush. An' pick 'em all off. Tause nen——"

They saw Winchell appear from somewhere and catch him up.

"Linnie," said Winchell, "I'll send to Europe for a Picotée rose tree for you, if you will let me paint you. Will you?"

"A Europe wosebush?" said Linnie sleepily. "For mine?"

"Yes," Winchell promised, "for yours. Will you?"

"I will," said Linnie sweetly. "Yes, I will. Shall I now?"