The Diabolical Portrait

FOUR nations combined to produce the exquisite enigma, Elaine Bischoff. Her family traditions were more thrilling than the fairy tales that stimulate the imaginations of ordinary children. Before she was out of short dresses, she was familiar with the story of her paternal grandfather's sudden and perilous flight from Russia, because, although of the aristocracy, he held views that were listed as "dangerous," and of his subsequent disgust with Germany because it was too conservative, followed by his elopement to America with the daughter of a high dignitary. Likewise she had heard, over and over again, the detailsof romance of her maternal forbear — a French duke who, taking service as a tutor, ventured into Spain, bent upon a certain deed in furtherance of a family feud, was diverted from his plan by love for the daughter of his enemy, won her in spite of his apparently humble station, forced her father, at point of pistol, to consent to their marriage, fled in the night to escape assassination, and divulged his identity only when the Atlantic separated him from his new relatives and his equally furious ancestral ones.

       The child of this union had been a beautiful, spirited girl who, strange as it may seem to them who scoff at heredity, had had a way of doing about as she pleased; and one day it had pleased her, after a few hours' acquaintance, to marry the son of those other two refugees. So while, on the theory that America is a melting pot, the child of this third impulsive couple was an American girl, it was impossible to classify her as of any nationality. She was just Elaine Bischoff, and not to be catalogued.

       With such a family tree, it was not surprising that Elaine was a curious blossom, highly colored, exhaling strange, exotic perfume. Her beauty was of a rare, dusky sort. Her features were not without a dainty feminine wistfulness, yet there was a far mystery in her eyes, and a delicious pungency in the accents of her voice. Even her parents, who had lived always in a world of romance, sometimes looked upon her with awe; and as for her teachers and her childhood friends, after the first few attempts to penetrate into her life, they abandoned all such hope, attractive though she was, and dismissed her as "queer." Yet Elaine was a very human sort of girl, enjoying everything that all children enjoy, only in a quieter, more abstracted manner. It was only as she unfolded into womanhood that she found pleasure in mingling with her acquaintances on equal terms. This was inevitable. Because of her magnetism, it was natural that, willing or unwilling, she should be drawn into the eddies of life, and, once there, so much homage was accorded her that she must have been a supernatural being not to have enjoyed her triumphs. So eventually she found herself, by easy stages, a social idol, a reigning beauty, equipped mentally and physically for conquest.

       "Elaine Bischoff's charm is her unexpectedness," one experienced hostess observed.

       This worthy matron had invited Elaine to a dinner party for the specific purpose of providing an interesting partner for a distinguished foreigner, who was not entirely unacquainted with the Bischoff family history; but the perverse child had seen fit to devote herself almost exclusively to a protracted debate with a nobody on her other side, concerning the respective virtues of Airedale terriers and Boston bulldogs.

       On the other hand, another hostess, who had included Elaine in a house party because of her faculty for "livening things up a bit," was chagrined to find herself unable to divert that young person's interest from a determination to learn to play billiards. Elaine's painful efforts in this direction persisted in spite of, or perhaps because of, an ineptitude surprising in so versatile an individual.

       Yet she was not always, or even usually inconsiderate. Nor were such incidents caused by lack of consideration so much as by an honest humility as to her own value in the gatherings of which she was a sublimely unconscious radiant center of interest. Ordinarily she was most tractable, and, when bored, she merely took refuge in the same air of detachment that had baffled her childhood associates, but that now, in the bloom of her young womanhood, lent a mystical touch to her personality.

       It was in such a mood that Weckryl Krapta first saw her, at an ultrafashionable ball. Elaine, tired of dancing, had turned a deaf ear to all protests and escaped to a quiet corner. Krapta, speaking English only with violent effort and dancing not at all, but a guest because his revolutionary paintings had made him famous on two continents, noticed her as he wandered idly through the rooms. He looked at her intently; she met his gaze absently. He stared analytically a moment, then spoke to her — in Spanish:

       "What are you doing — among these —–" and he waved his arm with an all-embracing gesture of contempt.

       "How did you know I speak Spanish?" she asked, mildly curious.

       "Your eyes."

       "And what makes you think I am not one of — 'these?'"

       "Your mouth."

       "And what makes you so impertinent?"

       "Your beauty."

       Elaine laughed at his boldness.

       "You must be a poet."

       "I am — now."

       "And what have you been before — now?"

       He introduced himself, and Elaine was interested immediately. She had seen several of his most famous and least understood canvases, and talked to him about them intelligently. Krapta was her slave from that moment, She was the first beautiful woman he had ever met who had the faintest idea of what he was trying to do, of what his paintings meant. Not that she always praised his work — she could be critical as well as appreciative — but at least she understood. If he became her slave, however, he was no lowly worshiper, but a wild, erratic, at times almost ferocious devotee. To him, women had always been mere tools of his craft, creatures he could bend to his purpose. Here was one who met him on his own ground, and the fact that there was such a strong bond of mutual interest between them in itself made their clashes the more intense. For weeks Krapta paid constant court, but Elaine remained untouched. There was no strength behind his passion, no manhood, merely a rampant egotism that refused to tolerate anything which did not coincide with his desires.

       While this struggle was at its height, Elaine met Leonard Vosburg. The contrast between him and Krapta was perfect. Vosburg was the coming man in high finance, every one acknowledged. At thirty-five he had grasped firmly the top rung of his ladder, sacrificing to his career everything except health. His strong physique reflected the same impressive power that his mentality had displayed in the manipulation of vast interests. When he walked through a crowd, people instinctively moved aside to make room for him to pass.He possessed all the elements of strength that Krapta lacked, and if he seemed to lack all the passion that Krapta possessed, it was because his life had been passed in an atmosphere of ideas rather than in one of emotions, under the open sky of existence rather than in its hothouses. Yet even in society he was more at home than many who made its activities their life interest, because of his tendency to accept such things at their face value, which, oftener than not, is their true value after all. To him, social frivolity was neither an end nor a bore, but merely a minor decoration among the world's affairs.

       So Vosburg, having met Elaine several times and found her always charming, quietly decided that he would marry her. Nor was it so cold-blooded a decision as his manner of arriving at it may appear. He did not parade his feelings, even before himself, but that did not prove that they were non-existent. He ordered his courtship with all the methodical precision that he would a business campaign. He did not even recognize Krapta as an obstacle, shouldering him aside with easy indifference. This was not such a difficult task as it might seem, for already Elaine was feeling the strain of the turbulent friendship that had sprung up between her and the painter, and she welcomed the calmness of this new association. Her own vibrant forces had been deeply stirred and she needed repose.

       Krapta stormed, as he found himself eliminated more and more from her list of engagements, but the more he stormed, the more he was eliminated. Elaine told him so in simple words in four languages, intimating that unless he were capable of sane friendship, she would not consider continuing even a mere acquaintance.

       Krapta made one final, silly attempt to come between Vosburg and Elaine before he abandoned hope. Leading Vosburg to a quiet alcove, one evening when they chanced to meet in the home of a mutual friend, he sputtered a protest in cubist English, the purport of which was that Elaine was his betrothed, had given him her "sacred promise," and that he would not tolerate the young financier's intrusion.

       "I think you are lying,"' Vosburg remarked calmly and cheerfully. "But let us ask Miss Bischoff. She is here."

       Krapta became voluble in Slavic polysyllables, like a machine gun out of order, and retreated with more haste than dignity, his feelings further ravished by the sound of his rival's chuckles. But from this time, whatever may have been his emotions, he kept them in hand. Apparently he was quite reconciled to his defeat, was cordial and deferential toward Elaine, casual and indifferent toward Vosburg. And when the engagement was announced, he was prompt to send his congratulations and to beg of Elaine the privilege of painting her portrait as a wedding gift. This was the more remarkable because he had always refused to paint portraits, rejecting offers of fabulous sums by women who knew only that to own such a canvas would be a social triumph and an outward mark of patronage of the arts.

       Elaine discussed the matter with Vosburg, and he told her to do as she wished. He himself knew nothing of art. He liked pictures if they told him a story, appealed to his sense of the beautiful, which was frankly primitive, or reproduced attractive scenes or likenesses of persons of whom he was fond. He realized that Elaine was interested in matters of this sort, of which he was ignorant, and told her, if she wanted a Krapta portrait, the only one in the world, to accept the opportunity. So she provided herself with a chaperon and for many days posed in Krapta's studio.

       Elaine was puzzled by the painter's attitude throughout these sessions. He scarcely spoke to her, but worked swiftly, silently, feverishly. He would sit and stare at her for five or ten minutes, his face immobile, his eyes steady, wide, unblinking as those of a statue. Then he would dart to his easel, muttering unintelligibly as he fused his colors and placed them upon the canvas with rapid, sweeping strokes. One day he told her it was not necessary for her to come again, but refused to permit her to see the unfinished portrait.

       "No, no!" he protested. "When you come back from your wedding journey, then it will be in your home, waiting for you. Until then, no one shall see it."

       Even had Elaine seen it, she would not have understood what Krapta was doing. Had it been a portrait of another person, she might have comprehended, in a measure, but no one is capable of analyzing his own likeness. This was a likeness, more so than most portraits even by those artists who confine themselves to the reproduction of a mere semblance of their subject, But it was more than that — it was an indictment, a masterpiece of diabolism in line and color. For the first time in his career, Krapta had given free rein to certain theories of his own. The principle, in brief, was that it is possible so to manipulate expressions that a portrait may tell the truth about the outward appearance and yet lie subtly and malignantly about the character.

       For Krapta had discovered it was possible to parallel in the portrayal of emotions and characteristics what has been done for all time in combining colors. For instance, mixing blue and red, the artist obtains purple. Painting an object in which blues and reds are intricately associated, he can record the idea by the use of purple. The object will be recognizable at once in the picture, yet it assumes a new character. The original was not purple, but the painter is able to force the spectator to believe this untruth. Similarly, when one looks at a patch of shade, he knows the darkened side of a tree is green, but the artist denies this, and the pigment he employs to reproduce it is either black or a sort of midnight blue. Yet the picture looks like the scene it represents, or misrepresents.

       "If this can be done with color," Krapta said to himself, "why cannot it be done with character?"

       So he had concentrated his genius upon the problem and discovered the secret, and it was this secret that had made him great. He had employed it in many forms, the fusion of two, three, and even four ideas to produce one, which, containing all of them, faithfully representing the lineaments from which they were derived, yet had an effect that was entirely different. Now, impelled by passion, jealousy, and hate, he was utilizing this principle to picture, not Elaine Bischoff, but a woman who, in every feature and line, was her counterpart, in every expression her apparent similitude, but whose character was as foreign to Elaine's as evil is to goodness.

       When he had finished his work, he stood before it and smiled a wicked, snarling smile. Elaine, the woman of countless moods, of infinite resource, had been a perfect subject for his demoniac scheme. Elaine's nature was passionate, though the passion was latent; she was buoyant; she was impulsive. Elaine was proud, sensitive, in love with life, imaginative, independent, daring, generous, sympathetic, responsive. The best traits of four virile races were embodied in her personality. She supplied all the primary life colors for Krapta's palette, and he used them all. As a result, it was not the sweet blending of all the finest tones of character that made up the Elaine whom Vosburg loved which Krapta had placed upon his canvas, but a terrible woman at whom her friends might look and remark:

       "So that is Elaine! That is why she never seemed quite one of us!"

       The first impression from the portrait was simply one of a beautiful young woman in a conventional evening gown, so charming in appearance that one looked again. Then, as in a room gradually filling with stifling fumes from an open gas jet, there crept over the spectator a feeling of revulsion. Cunningly blending her pride and her mystery, Krapta had evolved a cynical sneer. No one had ever seen Elaine sneer, yet here was proof; the portrait was a perfect likeness, and it sneered. Combining her independence and her impulsiveness, he had shown her as cruel, callous to the feelings of others. She might have been a Lucretia Borgia, or that woman whose lovers paid for a few hours of bliss with death and an inglorious graye in a weighted sack in the Seine. Generosity and imagination were surely admirable qualities, but as they were wedded through Krapta's unscrupulous art, they told falsely that she was merely reckless.

       But, most sinister of all, bringing to the surface her undeveloped passion, and weaving into it the web of her love of life and the woof of her keen sympathy and responsiveness, the painter had produced an expression that bespoke infidelity, that said, "This woman is not to be trusted, for she cannot be faithful, even if she so desired." And all these characteristics — derision, callousness, cruelty, recklessness, infidelity — focused in turn into one terrible and indefinable quality that fairly seared the heart of any one who looked into the dark, mystical eyes of the portrait, and forced him to turn away, almost in physical pain. Yet none could deny that this was Elaine. Covering the picture, and then examining merely one feature at a time, it was a perfect likeness. In color and line there was no fault to be found. It was a diabolical portrait.

       Let the skeptic who says that such a thing is not possible study a massive orchestral chord by Richard Strauss, tone by tone. First sound the bassoon, then the viola, then the violin, the tuba, the trombone, the clarinet, and so on, one at a time, all the instruments the composer has used. Each is clear, true, pleasing. Then sound the chord as the score of the composition demands, and there results a dissonance that veritably seems to pierce the brain. Yes — it has been done in music, and in other arts, similarly. This was what Krapta had learned to do in painting, and this was what he had done, as never before, in his portrait of Elaine Bischoff. No more could you hear the purity of the flute, the resonance of the cello, the pastoral note of the oboe, but only a horrible, jangling cacophony of character.

       Before the Vosburgs left on their honeymoon, Krapta had selected, in the home to which they would return, the place where the portrait was to hang. It was on the landing of a broad staircase, in full view from the entrance hall. He superintended the hanging, the installation of lighting apparatus, inspected the work from every angle, and was satisfied. As he left the house, the characteristic snarling smile came over his face, and he said to himself:

       "Now let us see what happens in the nest of the lovebirds!"

       Radiantly happy, satisfied with their venture, the honeymooners returned. When they reached the house, Elaine sprang from the automobile and ran up the steps.

       "Don't ring for the servants," she coaxed. "Let's have this first moment alone. Have you the key?"

       Leonard responded to her mood and handed the key to her. She opened the door, and they entered, Elaine closing the door softly and turning eagerly for the embrace she expected. But Leonard's first glance had fallen upon the portrait, and he stood staring at it, forgetful of the original. He was stunned, stabbed. He did not need a knowledge of art to see what Krapta had told only too plainly. It was a picture with an obvious story, and while Leonard could not grasp the details, the story hurt him excruciatingly. Elaine followed his gaze.

       "Why, it's Krapta's portrait!" she exclaimed, "But it's so simple and realistic, not at all in his usual manner."

       "What is it?" Leonard gasped. "What is the matter with it?"

       "Matter with it? Why, nothing. It's simply a good likeness." For, to Elaine, the picture told only what her mirror told her daily. She could not analyze what, to her, was hardly more than a photograph.

       "But it's terrible!" Leonard protested.

       "Nonsense!" Elaine laughed. "See," and running up the steps, she stood beside the painting. "Isn't it like me?"

       "Yes — yes. It is. That's the terrible thing about it. Don't you see anything wrong with the expression? I don't know anything about art, but somehow I can't bear to look at it."

       Elaine ran down and put herself in his arms.

       "I'm afraid you're quite hopeless," she said, with a ripple of laughter. "And it's really too late for you to begin studying art. You haven't time days, and I can't spare you evenings for night school."

       So the man of affairs took a deep breath and shook himself, as if trying to wake from a bad dream, and they dismissed the matter. That is, Elaine did. Leonard only attempted to. From time to time, he would wander back, stare at the picture, wrinkle his brows, and then hurry away almost as if it were the ghost of a dreadful tragedy. He even suggested moving it to a less conspicuous place, but Elaine would not listen.

       "A Krapta in the house — and hidden! Why, Leonard, don't you know this is the only portrait ever painted by the most famous of modern artists? Any one of our friends would give anything in the world to own such a treasure." She was quite impatient with his density, but immediately atoned for it tenderly.

       At length Leonard schooled himself to avoid looking at the portrait, not realizing that it no longer mattered, so firmly had all its details become embedded in his mind. Thus the thing Krapta had planned began to take place. Leonard was not accustomed to examining his feelings. His life had been comparatively free from emotions, ruled always by his brain. But here was something that attacked his sub-conscious emotions, something that his brain could not fathom. His love for Elaine was the first experience he had ever had that had penetrated beneath the surface of his existence. The happiness it had brought him was of a simple, almost childlike quality, something that did not need explanation, to be accepted merely as a high privilege. He knew nothing of the immutable law of opposites, and did not comprehend that it was the constant sparkle of her infinite variety upon the calm surface of his life that formed the basis of a deep and abiding affection. Subtly, the hypnotic power of the portrait worked upon him, and he was as incapable of placing the source of his internal disturbance as he had been of understanding the cause of his original happiness.

       All Leonard could see was that, even as there was something mysterious and elusive about the portrait, so there was something mysterious and elusive about Elaine. Her sudden transitions from grave to gay, from maturity to almost irresponsible childlikeness, from passion to calmness, bewildered him now, though previously he had enjoyed the scintillating effect of their interplay. Her very simplicity baffled him, since he had been forced to look at her through the veil cast about her by the picture, and seemed to remove her to another world than his. His delight in a fascinating mood was marred by wonder as to its cause and speculation as to its probable duration. Unconsciously he began to think of his wife as unstable, fickle.

       As soon as the conventions permitted, Krapta began calling frequently at the Vosburg home. Elaine welcomed him gladly, for now that he had to all appearances become reasonable, she found his dynamic genius stimulating. There Was no one quite like him, and he provided diversion flavored with novel ideas; so, without pretense of affectation, she made him feel at home. He formed the habit of dropping in casually for tea, frequently finding her alone. Several afternoons, Vosburg, returning early from the city, found them engaged in earnest conversation in strange tongues he could not understand, and after a perfunctory greeting, he would disappear to his own quarters.

       "Your husband — does he like the portrait?" Krapta asked one day.

       "I'm sorry to say he doesn't seem to," she replied apologetically. "But then, you know, he doesn't pretend to care for advanced art, and you must reaiize that you do not paint for the uninitiate."

       "Oh, these American men!" Krapta exclaimed. 'What do they know, after all, that is worth knowing? But pardon me. I forget myself."

       "Don't apologize, for you are utterly mistaken. It is the things worth knowing they do understand — the real things, not the mere decorations."

       "But you are real. Do you suppose your husband understands you?"

       Elaine parried the question, but the idea was now specifically implanted. She could not fail to sense the change in Leonard's attitude toward her, an attitude of constant questioning, of scrutiny. It made her feel a little anxious and self-conscious. Now that Krapta had put the question in so many words, she was worried. Had her marriage to a man of such substantial characteristics been, after all, a mistake? Was she unfitted to be the mate of the big, honest, straightforward Leonard? She knew her life was swayed by impulse, his ruled by design and foresight. The thought placed a cloud over her that robbed her actions of the spontaneity that was their charm. She sought to overcome this by perpetual study of Leonard's desires and tastes and by added manifestations of affection, but with the weight upon her heart growing daily, these were not convincing.

       Thus, day by day, Leonard's feelings and Elaine's supplemented one another, and fed the flame of misapprehension that was smoldering in their secret lives. There was something between them that, could they only have discussed it, they could have cleared away, since it was merely a mist; but as neither of them had the faintest idea of what was going on, there was no road by which they could approach the subject. Elaine sighed now, almost as often as she smiled — Elaine, who never had known the meaning of a sigh. Krapta was more and more welcome, because he helped her to forget; and he, observing certain symptoms, with keen intuition, was careful to be merely entertaining, his little personal attentions being too insignificant to be noticed individually, yet subtly mounting to a considerable total. He brought to Elaine relief from the problem that was crushing her spirit, and with elation he noted the increasing cordiality of her manner toward him.

       So it happened that Leonard, approaching the tea room one day, heard Elaine's laughter, clear and silvery. It eccurred to him that he had not heard her laugh so in many weeks. Entering, he found her alone with Krapta, nodded coldly, and left them together. As he approached the stairs, his eyes fell upon the portrait, and he shuddered. There it was — the whole story. Elaine — cruel, callous, reckless, sneering at him and all the world — unfaithful.

       "Unfaithful!"

       Leonard spoke the word aloud, and something snapped in his brain. Elaine, his wife, could not be unfaithful. It was preposterous, Leonard might have no talent for dissecting emotions, but he had confidence in his judgment of men and women, a capacity that never yet had failed him. He paused at the foot of the stairs to consider what could be the source of this silly idea that Elaine was capable of infidelity. He stared at the portrait defiantly, and traced back the course of his thoughts over the preceding weeks. With a flash of revelation, it came to him that from the moment of their arrival from a wonderful wedding journey, at the close of a period of perfect harmony, things had gone wrong. Down to the instant when his eyes had encountered that portrait, their happiness had been complete, and ever since then he had been groping in an endeavor to find the Elaine he had known before.

       "I don't know what it is, but I do know just when it began," he said to himself slowly. He had succeeded in tracing the discord to the moment of its birth, and that was all the proof he needed.

       Then all the pent-up emotion of weeks flashed out in a burst of anger so intense that it demanded physical action. Opening his pocketknife, he sprang up the steps and attacked the painting, hacking and slashing and tearing. With powerful strokes, he drove the sharp weapon through canvas and wooden backing. Sometimes he buried it so deep that he had to tug with all his strength to remove it. The slender steel snapped at length, but he continued to cut and hack with the sharp, jagged corner of the blade. In a few seconds, the picture was a tangle of shreds and fantastically colored ribbons. There was not the least semblance of a portrait, not apatch large enough to identify it. Still his anger was unappeased, and in his unreasoning wrath, finding gradual release from the mysterious burden in his work of destruction, he continued reducing the strips to minute fragments. Finally there was nothing left but a gaudy heap of tatters.

       Then came the reaction, and, breathless from the strenuousness of his efforts, he stood back and leaned against the banister; and gradually there came upon him a sensation of surprising calmness and rest. The thing was done thoroughly done, and he was satisfied that he had absolute justification for it. For the first time in weeks there dawned again a vision of the real Elaine, the Elaine he had loved, married, and taken upon a never-to-be-forgotten honeymoon. And for a time he had lost this vision, merely because of this heap of fragments of canvas and paint. It was all so clear now that it was almost ridiculous. Deliberately he stooped down, scooped up in both hands all of the pieces he could hold, and made his way to the tea room. Pushing aside the portières, he stood in the doorway and displayed the evidences of his deed.

       "Krapta," he remarked, in even tones, "you're a clever devil, but it won't work. Here's your damned picture — all there is left of it."

       Krapta almost screamed at him in his rage. He could not find English words to express his fury, and sprang at Vosburg with the ferocity of a beast.

       "Sit down!" Vosburg commanded.

       Krapta looked into his eyes, measured his tense frame with evil, but wavering glance, and obeyed, muttering Slavic imprecations.

       "I don't know the secret of this sort of thing," Vosburg went on, and held out the shreds of canvse, "but I do know that it gave me the blue devils. You knew very well it would raise some sort of a ruction, and I notice you have been keeping around pretty close to see what would happen. Well — it has happened. Now you can go."

       Elaine had risen from her chair, but did not move again. She stood, statue-like, a look of wonder on her face. Could this be true? Was Leonard right about the portrait, after all? She remembered his detestation of it, from the moment he had first seen it. In a flash she lived over again the incident of their homecoming which had been clouded by his uneasiness. Then, remembering the powerful effect certain other paintings of Krapta's had had upon herself, enlightenment came to her intuitively.

       "Am I telling the truth or not?" Vosburg demanded of the painter.

       Krapta did not reply. He sat silent, ceasing even, to mutter, glancing shiftily from one to the other, and then to the floor. He was beaten, irretrievably, and he knew it. Lacking Vosburg's strength and sincerity, lacking even the courage of an animal brought to bay, he was unable to meet Vosburg's eyes. Even had he been able, he could not have met Elaine's, for she was looking steadily at her husband, a new light glowing in her face. And not possessing even the savoir faire to be graceful in defeat, he finally slunk quickly out of the room, and left the house.

       Leonard crushed the bits of canvas into a ball and flung them into the fireplace. Now that it was all over, he felt strangely embarrassed, as if he had been play-acting. He spoke with hesitating awkwardness:

       "I don't suppose any one else ever deliberately burned a Krapta painting."

       But Elaine paid no attention to his words. His complete domination of the situation thrilled her. This big, quiet husband of hers had met Krapta on his own ground and beaten him with superb ease.

       "Leonard!" she cried.

       The spell of the diabolical portrait was forever broken.

(THE END)