human
And do you mean to tell me, you hardened atheist, that you don't believe in the doctrine of future punishments? What are they going to do with _you_ in the next world? And that picture-dealer? And _me_? Two hun-- It's an outrage! It's--the picture wasn't worth fifty, by a stretch of the most charitable imagination! Two hundred, d-- Why, Cummings, I'll paint no end of Old Girls, First and Last Grey Hairs--I'll flood the market! Two-- Good Lord! Bartlett goes back to his easel, and silently resumes his work. After a while:
gpt
Who's been offered up?
human
What?
gpt
Who's the victim? My patron? The noble and discriminating and munificent purchaser of The Old Girl?
human
Oh! Mrs. Bellingham. She's going to send it out to her daughter in Omaha.
gpt
Ah! Mrs. Blake wishes to found an art museum with that curiosity out there? Sorry for the Omaha-has. Cummings makes a gesture of impatience.
human
Well, well; I won't then, old fellow! I'm truly obliged to you. I accept my good fortune with compunction, but with all the gratitude imaginable. I say, Cummings!
gpt
Well?
human
What do you think of my taking to high art,--mountains twelve hundred feet above the sea, like this portrait of Ponkwasset?
gpt
I've always told you that you had only to give yourself scope,--attempt something worthy of your powers
human
Ah, I thought so. Then you believe that a good big canvas and a good big subject would be the making of me? Well, I've come round to that idea myself. I used to think that if there was any greatness in me, I could get it into a small picture, like Meissonier or Corot. But I can't. I must have room, like the Yellowstone and Yo-Semite fellows. Don't you think Miss Wyatt is looking wonderfully improved?
gpt
Wonderfully! And how beautiful she is! She looked lovely that first day, in spite of her ghostliness; but now
human
Yes; a _phantom_ of delight is good enough in its way, but a _well woman_ is the prettiest, after all. Miss Wyatt sketches, I think I told you.
gpt
Yes, you mentioned it.
human
Of course. Otherwise, I couldn't possibly have thought of her while I was at work on a great picture like this. She sketches -- Bartlett puts his nose almost on the canvas in the process of bestowing a delicate touch--
gpt
--Bartlett retires some feet from the canvas and squints at it,--
human
Bartlett steals a look of joy at his friend's vexation, and then continues seriously:
gpt
I've been having a curious time, Cummings. The other remains silent.
human
Don't you want to ask me about it?
gpt
I don't know that I do.
human
Why, my dear old fellow, you're hurt! It _was_ a silly joke, and I honestly ask your pardon. He lays down his brush and palette and leaves the easel.
gpt
Cummings, I don't know what to do. I'm in a perfect deuce of a state. I'm hit--awfully hard; and I don't know what to do about it. I wish I had gone at once--the first day. But I had to stay,--I had to stay.
human
Do you really mean it, Bartlett? I didn't dream of such a thing. I thought you were still brooding over that affair with Miss Harlan.
gpt
Oh, child's-play! A prehistoric illusion! A solar myth! The thing never was. He rejects the obsolete superstition with a wave of his left hand.
human
I'm in love with this girl, and I feel like a sneak and a brute about it. At the very best it would be preposterous. Who am I, a poor devil of a painter, the particular pet of Poverty, to think of a young lady whose family and position could command her the best? But putting that aside,--putting that insuperable obstacle lightly aside, as a mere trifle,--the thing remains an atrocity. It's enormously indelicate to think of loving a woman who would never have looked twice at me if I hadn't resembled an infernal scoundrel who tried to break her heart; and I've nothing else to commend me. I've the perfect certainty that she doesn't and can't care anything for me in myself; and it grinds me into the dust to realise on what terms she tolerates me. I could carry it off as a joke at first; but when it became serious, I had to look it in the face; and that's what it amounts to, and if you know of any more hopeless and humiliating tangle, _I_ don't.
gpt
You can't imagine it? What's the reason you can't imagine it? Don't be offensive, Cummings! He stops in his walk and lowers upon his friend.
human
Why shouldn't I be in love with Miss Wyatt?
gpt
Oh, nothing. Only you were saying
human
I was saying! Don't tell me what _I_ was saying. Say something yourself.
gpt
Really, Bartlett, you can't expect me to stand this sort of thing. You're preposterous.
human
I know it! But don't blame me. I beg your pardon. Is it because of the circumstances that you can't imagine my being in love with her?
gpt
Oh, no; I wasn't thinking of the circumstances; but it seemed so out of character for you
human
Oh, love's always out of character, just as it's always out of reason. I admit freely that I'm an ass. And then?
gpt
Well, then, I don't believe you have any more reason to be in despair than you have to be in love. If she tolerates you, as you say, it _can't_ be because you look like the man who jilted her.
human
Ah! But if she still loves _him_?
gpt
You don't know that. That strikes me as a craze of jealousy. What makes you think she tolerates you for that reason or no-reason?
human
What makes me think it? From the very first she interpreted _me_ by what she knew of _him_. She expected me to be this and not to be that; to have one habit and not another; and I could see that every time the fact was different, it was a miserable disappointment to her, a sort of shock. Every little difference between me and that other rascal gave her a start; and whenever I looked up I found her wistful eyes on me as if they were trying to puzzle me out; they used to follow me round the room like the eyes of a family portrait. You wouldn't have liked it yourself, Cummings. For the first three weeks I simply existed on false pretences,--involuntary false pretences, at that. I wanted to explode; I wanted to roar out. If you think I'm at all like that abandoned scoundrel of yours in anything but looks, I'm _not_! But I was bound by everything that was decent, to hold my tongue, and let my soul be rasped out of me in silence and apparent unconsciousness. That was _your_ fault. If you hadn't told me all about the thing, I could have done something outrageous and stopped it. But I was tied hand and foot by what I knew. I had to let it go on.
gpt
I'm very sorry, Bartlett, but
human
Oh, I dare say you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't had a wild ass of the desert to deal with. Well, the old people got used to some little individuality in me, by-and-by, and beyond a suppressed whoop or two from the mother when I came suddenly into the room, they didn't do anything to annoy me directly. But they were anxious every minute for the effect on _her_; and it worried me as much to have _them_ watching _her_ as to have _her_ watching _me_. Of course I knew that she talked this confounded resemblance over with her mother every time I left them, and avoided talking it over with the father.
gpt
But you say the trouble's over now.
human
Oh--_over_! No, it isn't over. When she's with me a while she comes to see that I am not a mere _doppelgänger_. She respites me to that extent. But I have still some small rags of self-esteem dangling about me; and now suppose I should presume to set up for somebody on my own account; the first hint of my caring for her as I do, if she could conceive of anything so atrocious, would tear open all the old sorrows. Ah! I can't think of it. Besides, I tell you, it isn't all over. It's only not so bad as it was. She's subject to relapses, when it's much worse than ever. Why