“I hope you’ll be nice to him, Katharine,” said Mr. Lauderdale. “There are many reasons—”
“Oh, yes! I’ll be nice to him,” answered the young girl, with a short, quick frown that disappeared again instantly.
“I don’t like your expression, my child,” said Alexander Junior, severely, “and I don’t like to be interrupted. Mr. Crowdie is very kind. He wishes to paint your portrait, and he proposes to give us the study he must make first, which will be just as good as the picture itself, I have no doubt. Crowdie is getting a great reputation, and a picture by him is valuable. One can’t afford to be rude to a man who makes such a proposal.”
“No,” observed Mrs. Lauderdale as though speaking to herself. “I should really like to have it. He is a great artist.”
“I haven’t the least intention of being rude to him,” answered Katharine. “What does he mean to do with my portrait — with the picture itself when he has painted it — sell it?”
“He would have a perfect right to sell it, of course — with no name. He means to exhibit it in Paris, I believe, and then I think he intends to give it to his wife. You always say she is a great friend of yours.”
“Oh — that’s all right, if it’s for Hester,” said Katharine. “Of course she’s a friend of mine. Hush! I hear the bell.”
“When did Mr. Crowdie talk to you about this?” asked Mrs. Lauderdale, addressing her husband.
“This morning — hush! Here he is.”
Alexander Junior had an almost abnormal respect for the proprieties, and always preferred to stop talking about a person five minutes before he or she appeared. It was a part of his excessively reticent nature.
The door opened and Walter Crowdie appeared, a pale young man with heavy, red lips and a bad figure. His eyes alone redeemed his face from being positively repulsive, for they were of a very beautiful blue colour and shaded by extremely long brown lashes. A quantity of pale hair, too long to be neat, but not so long as worn by many modern musicians, concealed the shape of his head and grew low on his forehead. The shape of the face, as the hair allowed it to be seen, resembled that of a pear, wide and flaccid about the jaws and narrowing upwards towards the temples. Crowdie’s hands were small, cushioned with fat, and of a dead white — the fingers being very pointed and the nails long and polished. His shoulders sloped like a woman’s, and were narrow, and he was heavy about the waist and slightly in-kneed. He was too fashionable to use perfumes, but one instinctively expected him to smell of musk.
Both women experienced an unpleasant sensation when he entered the room. What Mr. Lauderdale felt it is impossible to guess, but as Katharine saw the two shake hands she was proud of her father and of the whole manly race from which she was descended.
Last of all the party came Alexander Senior, taking the utmost advantage of age’s privilege to be late. Even he, within sight of his life’s end, contrasted favourably with Walter Crowdie. He stooped, he was badly dressed, his white tie was crooked, and there were most evident spots on his coat; his eyes were watery, and there were wrinkles running in all directions through the eyebrows, the wrinkles that come last of all; he shambled a little as he walked, and he certainly smelt of tobacco smoke. He had not been the strongest of the three old brothers, though he was the eldest, and his faculties, if not impaired, were not what they had been. But the skull was large and bony, the knotted and wrinkled old hands were manly hands, and always had been, and the benevolent old grey eyes had never had the womanish look in them which belonged to Crowdie’s.
But the young man was quite unconscious of the unfavourable impression he always produced upon Mrs. Lauderdale and her daughter, and his languishing eyelids moved softly and swept his pale cheeks with their long lashes as he looked from one to the other and shook hands.
Alexander Junior, whose sense of punctuality had almost taken offence, rang the bell as his father entered, and a serving girl, who lived in terror of her life, drew back the folding doors a moment later.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONVERSATION AT dinner did not begin brilliantly. Mrs. Lauderdale was tired, and Katharine was preoccupied; as was natural, old Mr. Lauderdale was not easily moved to talk except upon his favourite hobby, and Alexander Junior was solemnly and ferociously hungry, as many strong men are at regular hours. As for Crowdie, he always felt a little out of his element amongst his wife’s relations, of whom he stood somewhat in awe, and he was more observant than communicative at first. Katharine avoided looking at him, which she could easily do, as she sat between him and her father. As usual, it was her mother who made the first effort to talk.
“How is Hester?” she asked, looking across at Crowdie.
“Oh, very well, thanks,” he answered, absently. “Oh, yes, — she’s very well, thank you,” he added, repeating the answer with a little change and more animation. “She had a cold last week, but she’s got over it.”
“It was dreadful weather,” said Katharine, helping her mother to stir the silence. “All grandpapa’s idiots had the grippe.”
“All Mr. Lauderdale’s what?” asked Crowdie. “I didn’t quite catch—”
“The idiots — the asylum, you know.”
“Oh, yes — I remember,” said the young man, and his broad red lips smiled.
Alexander Senior, whose hand shook a little, had eaten his soup with considerable success. He glanced from Katharine to the young artist, and there was a twinkle of amusement in the kindly old eyes.
“Katharine always laughs at the idiots, and talks as though they were my personal property.” His voice was deep and almost musical still — it had been a very gentle voice in his youth.
“Not a very valuable property,” observed Alexander Junior, fixing his eye severely on the serving girl, who forthwith sprang at Mrs. Lauderdale’s empty plate as though her life depended on taking it away in time.
The Lauderdales had never kept a man-servant. The girl was a handsome Canadian, very smart in black and white.
“Wouldn’t it be rather an idea to insure all their lives, and make the insurance pay the expenses of the asylum?” enquired Crowdie, gravely looking at Alexander Junior.
“Not very practical,” answered the latter, with something like a smile.
“Why not?” asked his father, with sudden interest. “That strikes me as a very brilliant idea for making charities self-supporting. I suppose,” he continued, turning to his son, “that the companies could make no objections to insuring the lives of idiots. The rate ought to be very reasonable when one considers the care they get, and the medical attendance, and the immunity from risk of accident.”
“I don’t know about that. When an asylum takes fire, the idiots haven’t the sense to get out,” observed Alexander Junior, grimly.
“Nonsense! Nonsense, Alexander!” The old man shook his head. “Idiots are just as — well, not quite as sensible as other people, — that would be an exaggeration — but they’re not all so stupid, by any means.”
“No — so I’ve heard,” said Crowdie, gravely.
“So stupid as what, Mr. Crowdie?” asked Katharine, turning on him rather abruptly.
“As others, Miss Lauderdale — as me, for instance,” he answered, without hesitation. “Probably we both meant — Mr. Lauderdale and I — that all idiots are not so stupid as the worst cases, which are the ones most people think of when idiots are mentioned.”
“Exactly. You put it very well.” The old philanthropist looked pleased at the interruption. “And I repeat that I think Mr. Crowdie’s idea of insuring them is very good. Every time one dies, — they do die, poor things, — you get a sum of money. Excellent, very excellent!”
His ideas of business transactions had always been hazy in the extreme, and his son proceeded to set him right.
“It couldn’t possibly be of any advantage unless you had capital to invest and insured your own idiots,” said Alexander Junior. “And that would just amount to making a savings bank on your own account, and saving so muc
h a year out of your expenses for each idiot. You could invest the savings, and the interest would be all you could possibly make. It’s not as though the idiots’ families paid the dues and made over the policies to you. There would be money in that, I admit. You might try it. There might be a streak of idiocy in the other members of the patient’s family which would make them agree to it.”
The old man’s gentle eyes suddenly lighted up with ill temper.
“You’re laughing at me, Alexander,” he said, in a louder voice. “You’re laughing at me!”
“No, sir; I’m in earnest,” answered the son, in his cool, metallic tones.
“Don’t the big companies insure their own ships?” asked the philanthropist. “Of course they do, and they make money by it.”
“I beg your pardon. They make nothing but the interest of what they set aside for each ship. They simply cover their losses.”
“Well, and if an idiot dies, then the asylum gets the money.”
“Yes, sir. But an idiot has no intrinsic value.”
“Why, then the asylum gets a sum of money for what was worth nothing, and it must be very profitable — much more so than insuring ships.”
“But it’s the asylum’s own money to begin with—”
“And as for your saying that an idiot has no intrinsic value, Alexander,” pursued the old man, going off on another tack, “I won’t have you say such things. I won’t listen to them. An idiot is a human being, sir, and has an immortal soul, I’d have you to know, as well as you or I. And you have the assurance to say that he has no intrinsic value! An immortal soul, made for eternal happiness or eternal suffering, and no intrinsic value! Upon my word, Alexander, you forget yourself! I should not have expected such an inhuman speech from you.”
“Is the ‘vital spark of heavenly flame’ a marketable commodity?” asked Crowdie, speaking to Katharine in a low voice.
“Idiots have souls, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist, looking straight across at him, and taking it for granted that he had said something in opposition.
“I’ve no doubt they have, Mr. Lauderdale,” answered the painter. “I never thought of questioning the fact.”
“Oh! I thought you did. I understood that you were laughing at the idea.”
“Not at all. It was the use of the word ‘intrinsic’ as applied to the value of the soul which struck me as odd.”
“Ah — that is quite another matter, my dear sir,” replied the old gentleman, who was quickly appeased. “My son first used the word in this discussion. I’m not responsible for it. The younger generation is not so careful in its language as we were taught to be. But the important point, after all, is that idiots have souls.”
“The soul is the only thing anybody really can be said to have as his own,” said Crowdie, thoughtfully.
Katharine glanced at him. He did not look like the kind of man to make such a speech with sincerity. She wondered vaguely what his soul would be like, if she could see it, and it seemed to her that it would be something strange — white, with red lips, singing an evil song, which she could not understand, in a velvet voice, and that it would smell of musk. The side of her that was towards him instinctively shrank a little from him.
“I am glad to hear you say that, Mr. Crowdie,” said the philanthropist with approbation. “It closes the discussion very fittingly. I hope we shall hear no more of idiots not having souls. Poor things! It is almost the only thing they have that makes them like the rest of us.”
“People are all so different,” replied the artist. “I find that more and more true every day. And it takes a soul to understand a soul. Otherwise photography would take the place of portrait painting.”
“I don’t quite see that,” said Alexander Junior, who had employed the last few minutes in satisfying his first pangs of hunger, having been interrupted by the passage of arms with his father. “What becomes of colour in photography?”
“What becomes of colour in a charcoal or pen and ink drawing?” asked Crowdie. “Yet either, if at all good, is preferable to the best photograph.”
“I’m not sure of that. I like a good photograph. It is much more accurate than any drawing can be.”
“Yes — but it has no soul,” objected Crowdie.
“How can an inanimate object have a soul, sir?” asked the philanthropist, suddenly. “That is as bad as saying that idiots—”
“I mean that a photograph has nothing which suggests the soul of the original,” said Crowdie, interrupting and speaking in a high, clear tone. He had a beautiful tenor voice, and sang well; and he possessed the power of making himself heard easily against many other voices.
“It is the exact representation of the person,” argued Alexander Junior, whose ideas upon art were limited.
“Excuse me. Even that is not scientifically true. There can only be one point in the whole photograph which is precisely in focus. But that is not what I mean. Every face has something besides the lines and the colour. For want of a better word, we call it the expression — it is the individuality — the soul — the real person — the something which the hand can suggest, but which nothing mechanical can ever reproduce. The artist who can give it has talent, even if he does not know how to draw. The best draughtsman and painter in the world is only a mechanic if he cannot give it. Mrs. Lauderdale paints — and paints well — she knows what I mean.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Lauderdale. “The fact that there is something which we can only suggest but never show would alone prove the existence of the soul to any one who paints.”
“I don’t understand those things,” said Alexander Junior.
“Grandpapa,” said Katharine, suddenly, “if any one asserted that there was no such a thing as the soul, what should you answer?”
“I should tell him that he was a blasphemer,” answered the old gentleman, promptly and with energy.
“But that wouldn’t be an argument,” retorted the young girl.
“He would discover the force of it hereafter,” said her father. The electric smile followed the words.
Crowdie looked at Katharine and smiled also, but she did not see.
“But isn’t a man entitled to an argument?” she asked. “I mean — if any one really couldn’t believe that he had a soul — there are such people—”
“Lots of them,” observed Crowdie.
“It’s their own fault, then, and they deserve no mercy — and they will find none,” said Alexander Junior.
“Then believing is a matter of will, like doing right,” argued the young girl. “And a man has only to say, ‘I believe,’ and he will believe, because he wills it.”
But neither of the Lauderdales had any intention of being drawn out on that point. They were good Presbyterians, and were Scotch by direct descent; and they knew well enough what direction the discussion must take if it were prolonged. The old gentleman put a stop to it.
“The questions of the nature of belief and free will are pretty deep ones, my dear,” he said, kindly, “and they are not of the sort to be discussed idly at dinner.”
Strange to say, that was the species of answer which pleased Katharine best. She liked the uncompromising force of genuinely prejudiced people who only allowed argument to proceed when they were sure of a logical result in their own favour. Alexander Junior nodded approvingly, and took some more beef. He abhorred bread, vegetables, and sweet things, and cared only for what produced the greatest amount of energy in the shortest time. It was astonishing that such iron strength should have accomplished nothing in nearly fifty years of life.
“Yes,” said Crowdie, “they are rather important things. But I don’t think that there are so many people who deny the existence of the soul as people who want to satisfy their curiosity about it, by getting a glimpse at it. Hester and I dine out a good deal — people are very kind, and always ask us to dinners because they know I can’t go out to late parties on account of my work — so we are always dining out; and we were saying only to
-day that at nine-tenths of the dinners we go to the conversation sooner or later turns on the soul, or psychical research, or Buddhism, or ghosts, or something of the sort. It’s odd, isn’t it, that there should be so much talk about those things just now? I think it shows a kind of general curiosity. Everybody wants to get hold of a soul and study its habits, as though it were an ornithorynchus or some queer animal — it is strange, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, suddenly joining in the conversation. “If you once cut loose from your own form of belief there’s no particular reason why you should be satisfied with that of any one else. If a man leaves his house without an object there’s nothing to make him go in one direction rather than in another.”
“So far as that is concerned, I agree with you,” said Alexander Junior.
“There is truth to direct him,” observed the philanthropist.
“And there is beauty,” said Crowdie, turning his head towards Mrs. Lauderdale and his eyes towards Katharine.
“Oh, of course!” exclaimed the latter. “If you are going to jumble the soul, and art, and everything, all together, there are lots of things to lead one. Where does beauty lead you, Mr. Crowdie?”
“To imagine a vain thing,” answered the painter with a soft laugh. “It also leads me to try and copy it, with what I imagine it means, and I don’t always succeed.”
“I hope you’ll succeed if you paint my daughter’s portrait,” remarked Alexander Junior.
“No,” Crowdie replied thoughtfully, and looking at Katharine quite directly now. “I shan’t succeed, but if Miss Lauderdale will let me try, I’ll promise to do my very best. Will you, Miss Lauderdale? Your father said he thought you would have no objection.”
“I said you would, Katharine, and I said nothing about objections,” said her father, who loved accurate statements.
Katharine did not like to be ordered to do anything and the short, quick frown bent her brows for a second.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 663