THE STORYTELLER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 61, 28 November 1907, Page 3

THE STORYTELLER.

MADE AMD UHMADE. o (By Chris. Sewell.) K was occasionally the habit of Humphrey Myth to sweep shadowy ideals and notions, which, owing to overwork, refused to crystallise, from . his brain, and to quit his small London •tudio, in order that he might wander irhererer his fancy chose to lead. At such times his painting paraphernalia was strapped to his wide shoulders, his blue eyes were watchful, and a boyish sensation of adventure in the »ir made his step light and free. He seldom returned unrewarded. For a week past now something had been whispering to him of raged mountain peaks silhouetted against a sulky sky, of purple heather patches like honourable unhealed wounds on the breasts of green hills, of brown streams which leapt laughing from boulder to boulder, of dripping dells smelling deliciously damp, and ferns that clothed the dead arms of giant oaks. The whispers grew louder— each London morning they teased him, each suffocating London night they accompanied him to his unrest ful bed. "Overwork,' ' he said to himself; "overwork and bruin-fag." And lie let them have theirVay. He dived straight into the green wild heart of Wales, and

proceeded to tramp up bill and down dale in eager quest of the inspiration which was to make his holiday more valuable to him than months of workaday life. And behold one morning he fell into it (if one can fail into an inspiration! almost literally, though it was not a trout pool or a gurgling brook, but Just a maiden pale as the lily-maid of Astolat, lying on the kind wide bosom of a hillock. He emerged suddenly from one of those dark, abrupt little woods in which the country abounds, and started back, because for one-eighth of a second he feared he had come face to face with a tragedy. Breathing ratter fast, lie bent down,

his hand to his b row. Heaven be thanked! There was a faint tinge of Colour in her cheeks, and her U>»oui rose and fell. This was not Heath, but Death's twin brother, sleep. The next moment Humphrey was rapidly loosening the straps at his shoulders, and releasing the accessories of hig profession. The sleeping girl Stretched herself and sighed. Ah I she was going to wake — she .would be frightened or angry, or both. No, the sign she had given was but an earnest ot deeper slumbers to come. She turned her head a little, nestled her face till a froud of fern brushed her forehead, and slept sounder than before.

Had «he chosen her • pose—or perbape the had sot chosen it—K was all and more than all the soul of artist Could desire. Blyth, in his Paris student days, had always been considered the quickest worker in the ateliers. This gilt stood him in excellent stead now. The irregularity of the whole thing Appealed to his Bohemian instincts—the romance pleased the poet which is always enshrined in or enshrines the artist. In a quarter of an hour of silent, passionate work, he had the picture roughly, but accurately, before Aim.

The outline of the blue zephyr frock, Open at the throat, the flouting hair mingled with bracken, the almost perfect arm thrown above the head, the foil, slightly-parted lips—everything was absolutely faithful to the unconscious model. For a moment he waited, then a Warm, thrilling impulse seized him. lie Itole to her ride, and dropped a kiss, a ■mail, light lum, on her lips. It was a riskr, mediaeval thing to do, but he did it, and its memory lived with him lot ever. Then, without staying to strap his accessories, he, stole away. She must not wake and matt poetry into prose-r-angry prose, too, probably! Or stolen waters—sweet now beyond Compare—bitter. He walked swiftly, putting a couple Of miles between himself and the sleeper, and then he sat down upon a boulder nod washed into his sketch the proper tints, hat their excellences should grow dim in his mind with the passing of time. He had only one regret as he lay birateU down that' night in a lonely, hard "Welsh bed. "Her eyes," he said to himtdf, "they should be grey—a very soft, rather sad grey."

The world rolled unemotionally on, £nd time rolled with it To Mine the inexorable passing ot days brought success —to sonic failure. In the latter category was Humphrey Blyth. A more wnolesale failure wa« Lis, inasmuch an. he had touched (lie pinnacle of fame—and fallen headlong. "My Lady Slumbers'' had taken London by atom. The Hanging Committee of Burlington House bad sealed it with a eign of their beat favour. It had been talked about, also written about, and alwaya favourably. A legion of wouldbe purchasers had beseiged Humphrey ►-some with very tempting offers. Bat the picture was to him as a child Of his flesh. He refused to sell. Etiquette, so he told himself, among other things, forbade him, for was not "My Lady Slumbers" a portrait—and who waa be that be should dispose of portraits save to the originals thereof? So be refused to sell. And the pictan became his companion—hLs conAdante, yes, and something more— something which would have made its removal from his walls the tearing asundtr of joints and sinews. He hugged to himself the fancy that he alone of all tuen had kissed those lips—just he and >BO one else. The picture had made his tuune, be felt, and the little-understood works which he had disposed of with difficulty aforetime should be with "My Lady Slumbers" as the dividingline, but "Stepping-stones of their dead •elves to higher things." So artist proposes, anil so, alas! Destiny disposes! Destiny came this lime in the shape Ct a desperate fire in a email fashionable Jiotel just opposite to Humphrey's Juarters. It came one night just as he was preparing to seek the rest he badly wanted. It came with shouts—the gurgling of bells and the crackling of timber. Humphrey rushed out "No one inside now—all warned in time,'' a flustered policeman told him •a be pushed through the throng. And then, even as he spoke, Destiny thrust forward an arm. and gave the lie to the policeman's words. At a window on the second floor appeared the slight form of a girl. Smoke cringed across the aperture, showing tmt her outline, and then engulphed her again; but the "Oh! God save me!" was (tear, enough. Firemen were working like men distraught at another wing, but someone fetrieved a ladder from somewhere—it just reached to the windnw-»iil.

The idea of a rescue looked r<':.i'»t<and ugly—more ugly than can )«• eoneeived by narrative. No one stirrtd. Then, as one possessed, diil Humphrey %aw his way through the gaping, praying, cursing mob. "Damp a blanket!" he shrieked to the window, without any hope of lieing beard or obeyed, "and wrap it round your head —I'm coming!" And come he did. The distance was abort, bat the flames were long, and the amoke a subtler tortorer than the flames. But Humphrey had the temperament which rises wholesale and exulting to

greet sharp emergencies. How he carried that muffled, swooning figure into safety he never knew, la calm after-moments he even doubted that he carried it at all, for, directly he was numbly aware that no more effort was ncc'df". he sank thankfully Into an abyss of painless darkness. He came to himself in what he hopefully believed to be a few minutes. It was OJ»? pn« npuo, uimh v. jo pij-i-iioi ai[ }tmj s«.w uoiid.Mjvl arnoii isji| >i]\ in reality two days. lead-heavy, throbbing hands. It was some hours before hi- seir.nd acute perception took tangible form. and then all existence seemed to ri-c j np and smite him a mighty blow, from , which he had not even the energy to ] wish he might recover. For all practical purposes—if they escaped amputation, which was grievously ilonWfiil—thrne hands of his would lie thenceforth entirely useless. "ifv l-adv Slumbers." and ori» or two little'studies that hid commanded no M ]t. were all that remained ro him of the Art that had been. The nur*e who broke the news •(JTiimphrev had Tieen un.crcmniii..ii-lv ambulaneed to the nearest h...pit„n rried nfi she did so. Hnmnhrev did not cry- he swore at her softlv for her tears. Rut s| lf knew men. and bad seen 3e«pai>bcfnre. =o she gave him a stimulant and had her cry 01* later or:, in ttr own cubicle.

I On one point ho was passionately obstinate. The girl he ha d saved—no power on earth should induce him to met her. •She called daily. She rained flowers and grapes and benedictions upon him, she Drought perpetual and scented notes —which he would not read. The nuree interceded for her. 'She's American; you'd like her, and she's heartbroken about it all," she said. Humphrey grunted, and turned ins face—like the king of old—to the wall. "And, again. she sails for \ew York tomorrow—mayn't 1 admit her today?" But he was very weak. The pettishness of ill-health enfolded him. "She's spoilt my life," he cried—'•she and her cursed vanity" (rumours hail come to him that the rescued girl had run back at the last moment for her diamonds), "and I'll never willingly set I eyes un her—l swear it. Let her go back, and good riddance!" And she went.

Another year swelled the mighty to- [ tal of time. Humphrey had moved to a flat—a tiny, tiny flat, very cheap and high up. He was well now, but his hands, always carefully gloved, were only by courtesy called by the name. He could feed himself and even dress himself by resorting to strange devices, and that was the limit. How to exist in a world already stocked by able-handed men, it was a piteous problem. From his mother hi had inherited a small sum, bui the sum was gradually dwindling towards va- j nishing point. So in the tiny Hat he sat and smoked

and thought. And over the mantelpiece "My Lady" slumbered still. She was the one luxury left him now—the one link between the lalxnirless present and the softly-tinted past. "Open your eyes, sweetheart, and tell me what to do!" he said one day suddenly aloud, stretching towards the picture his deformed hands. "I want advice—and, oh! Heaven, I want you!" And then despair caught him up, and twisted him in its relentless arms this way and that. He thought of something which his father (a war correspondent in his day) had carried through many a campaign—something small and neat, which lay upstairs in the drawer; but its voice, lona silent, might still speak j sleep and peace.

"I believe it's the only way,'' he said, debating with himself, "the only way." That evening the depressing woman who came in to "do" for him announced, "a gentleman to see you," and departed sighing. Enter the gentleman breezily through the sigh. The gentleman was energetic and transatlantic. He'd seen "My lady Slumbers" in last year's Academj—"guessed it was dam bully," and in short coveted it with all the persistency with whicli transatlantic gentlemen, to whom money is no object, can covet things. "The girl's a peach, sir," said he. "and I just yearn to see her in my little parlour in Massachusetts." Everything grated on Humphrey Blyth nowadays—this man grated more than most things. "The picture is not for sale," said he, with grim British obstinacy. li Not for salet Why, you dew surprise me—see here, we won't haggle about the figure—ser-ppose—" Humphrey rose. He was hungry and angry. He would ser-ppose nothing. In the end he was exceedingly radc to the transatlantic gentleman, who eventually went awav. bargaining to the last.

"I shall send my daughter," said he, as a final threat; "she'd talk the hind leg off an alligator." Humphrey did not doubt it, and said so. He drew an uncomplimentary picture of the daughter, and told the depressed woman who "did" for him to admit no one of her own sex on any pretext whatever. But, after all, the woman who "did" for him had ran out in a macintosh to watch a funeral at the psychological moment, and Humphrey was obliged to discover the raison d'etre of a ring.

He stood in the hall with a hand on the door, the daughter who conld "talk the hind leg off an alligator*' stood on the steps, and the flush on her cheek wa« as small and delicate as it hod been when she slept unknowing on the breast of the mountain. She v>rc blue, too—Humphrey noted it as one notices things in a dream, and her eyes were grey—*oft, eager grey. "I knew you must come some time." he said, stretching out both his maimed hands to her. A notion that much brooding anil »lecpless nights had created her warred with an idea that she had been sent by Providence to avert—the inevitable.

Then, somehow, they were upstairs and in his room, and she was on her knees en-ing as though her heart would break. '•l've—Oh! Mr. Blyth—to think I've seen you at last. And I felt every kind of a hypocrite when Pops told me to come round and coax you to sell that picture. . . . You wouldn't see jne before, and I didn't know why you should want to see me now." '•Wouldn't sec you before?" he echoed dazedly.

"At the hospital." she said, raising her head. "Don't you understand?" ''You?" he began, and then stopped. '•You ?" '•Oh! Mr. Myth, I'm your evil genius. I inspired your greatest work. they tell me, and I've taken away your power of doing any more. . , . Fate's a queer thing, isn't it?" "But you?" he repeated again, feeling for words which were but foolish when they came. "Why should you sleep on a mountain?" She smiled sadly, and laid her hand timidly on his arm. "Why shouldn't I?" she said. "Pops had dragged me twenty mortal miles over your Welsh hills—he sprints like a Canadian-Pacific locomotive when he's in the mood—and I was just done for. Next spring he saw the picture, and knew it in a minute, but he had a big deal on at home, and was obliged

to run back; and while he was away, the—tile fire came, and then you just loathed me, and I'm not surprised." She was crying again—crying bitterly. •And now I know you're proud, and 1 honour you for it, and I know you won't touch our 'infernal dollars,' as I heard you call them to the nurse one day; but will you sell—it—that picture—for anv price von like to ask?" He laughed. Still this seemed to him a delicious dream. ■Mv price is a big one," he said. •Yes-yes—?" ■A very big one." ••But what?" "It is the animate for the inanimate. If I give up 'My Lady Slumlierim:,' I must have 'My'Lady Waking.' I am mad to say this, of eoursi —oriy, we're not strangers; but 1 am a pauper—and

\ on—" •I'd lie wor-e than a pauper," saiil the, "if you hadn't said it. -Tust hecause I'd have lost everything worth havinp in my li/e." Then Humphrey, still (as he deemel it) an irresponsible figure in a glorious vi-ion. ki—i'd her. Everything wan so amazing, that it couldn't matter what In- did -lw-ide-. in ilreann nothing mat--1.1-. •1).) you know. I've never been kissed bw'nn-'.'" .-he whimpered. ''l'm so glad." Then lie awoke. And he had just reason cno-igh left to rontradiet her statement, and to ,-eal the enntradiction. when the woman who "did for him" returned sniffing. She took the nnmis-takahh? atmosphere of joy which met her on the threshold as ■» personal affront.