The Logan County Banner

LOVE AND PAINT.
Why Miss Baxter Gave Up Her
Chosen Profession.

The dining car was in a shimmer of
light. The dead white of heavy linen,
the opalescent glint of glassware and
the quiet gleam of silver trembled together
in the swift motion of the train.
Miss Baxter, who had but recently left
her berth, dropped into a seat and
leaned back a moment, dazed by this
lavish waste of color. Meanwhile, the
insistent sunshine took liberties with
the dull brown of her severely brushed
hair, ran burning fingers through it,
and edged it with coquettish gold.
Then she hastened to draw the curtain
and throw a pale blue square of shade
over her corner of the table, sighing as
she settled down again and all the
painful scenes of the evening before
came surging back.
She felt half a notion to lay her head
on the table and cry outright. She
glanced down instead and fingered her
ring—his ring—while her glasses grew
misty. She wondered whether she
should have kept the ring, now that it
no longer meant anything. The ques-
tion was still undecided when she
pulled herself together with a visible
tremor and turned to the menu card.
Dining-car breakfasts are not timed to
wait on the settlement of subtleties in
ethics, particularly after the steward
has made the "last call."
In the few minutes Miss Baxter had
been in the car she had not noticed her
companions. As she raised her head,
she was startled to see a familiar face
dimly taking shape across the table.
She had removed her glasses and was
about to press her handkerchief to her
eyes; but she then put them resolutely
on again and looked fixedly through
their misty crystals.
"Mr. Woodson, where did you come
from?" she demanded at length, as his
well-known features gradually took
definite shape before her.
Woodson did not speak at once. He
was noticing how her hair would tum-
ble down in wayward ringlets in spite
of her efforts to keep it staidly back.
and how her cheeks persisted in dim-
pling, however resolutely she closed
her lips together. Then he said:
"From New York, of course. Does
my dress suit look as though I'd boarded
the train in these rural precincts?
I thought you knew the cut better."
"Do you mean to say that you've
been on this train all this while—after
after last night?" Miss Baxter
asked with slightly heightened color.
"Guessed it, the first time," Woodson
exclaimed, brightening. "I tell you,
Grace, you should have gone into the
law instead of art. You'd have been
great on cross-examination."
"Never mind, Mr. Woodson; you seem
to forget that I prefer to make my own
career—we've discussed that before,
however. And so you've been on this
train ever since I have?" she concluded,
reflectively.
"A little longer, in fact. I made a
mistake and got here half an hour
early—read the time-table backwards,
hence these clothes. But now, see
here, small girl," Woodson went on
with great deliberateness; shaking out
his napkin into his lap, and gazing in-
tently into the blurred, blue depths of
Miss Baxter's glasses. "See here, now,
do you suppose just because a girl jilts
me—" Miss Baxter interposed a depre-
cating gesture—"yes, I repeat it. Do
you suppose, just because a girl jilts
me, and I have reason to believe is go-
ing to the ends of the earth to get
where she will never see me again,
that my sense of responsibility ends till
I've seen her safely where she wants
to go? No, I've made New York unin-
habitable for you, and I shall make
what amends I can by chaperoning you
to Colorado or Kamchatka or wher-
ever it is you are going. Now what
shall I order for breakfast?"
"Harry, you're cruel. You know
Mr. Fleming was going out there for
the color, and I thought it would be a
good chance to continue my outdoor
work."
"Fleming!
That prig! Well, I didn't
know before that he was going. I see
there is still more reason why I should
go now—and stay.
"But I forbid your doing any such
foolish thing."
"To tell the truth, Grace, I thought
of staying all the time—of going into
some business there.
"Why, you never told me
of it be-
fore."
"Well, I never thought of it till after
I left you last night. Then it occurred
to me I might go into sheep or cattle or
something like that."
"At Manitou?"
"Why not?"
"It's a summer resort."
So much the better. I'd only want
to be there in the summer, anyhow."
"Harry, you're a trifler.
"Well, I can peel an orange, anyhow
—if you'll allow me," Woodson ex-
claimed, taking from her hand the one
she was making a sad mess of.
"Harry, I never can forgive you—for
doing this," Miss Baxter concluded,
after a moment's contemplation of the
whirling blur of green through the car
window.
Well, I never could forgive myself
if I hadn't—and there it was," he as-
serted, dispassionately, laying the
pulpy, broken sphere of the orange be-
fore her.
It is quite a jaunt from Manhattan
to Manitou; but one morning they ex-
changed the cushioned weariness of
the train for that blue hollow of the
hills, with its gaily-colored roofs and
gables showing here and there up
the canyon, like a scattered troop of
butterflies. Then life became one long
breath of delight. What color there
was! The earth seemed hung in some
rarer medium than common air. The
yellow cactus blossoms were like flakes
of flame. A scarlet flower fairly burned
into the sight. Grace developed a new
enthusiasm every day, and piled her
palette with cobalt and chrome. Even
Fleming, who had preceded them,
smoked a trifle faster than usual, and
grunted out now and then: "Put in
your color pure. Make her jump."
So they painted from morning till
night, keeping two or three studies un-
der way at once—putting in blues
where Woodson saw greens, and pur-
ples where he saw nothing but nonde-
script sand, and doing all the inex-
plicable things that should be done ac-
cording to the gospel of the luminists.
Woodson sat by and chaffed. He
couldn't paint. He wouldn't smoke,
He parried Grace's occasional inquir-
ing glances by explaining that he was
negotiating to go into the cattle busi-
ness: a man was going to bring him a
herd on trial.
Meanwhile he arrayed his shapely
figure in cowboyish top boots, blue
shirt and slouch hat which became
him immensely and made a sinister im-
pression among the blazers and tennis
suits of summering Manitou. Grace
was absorbed and satisfied. One day
an idea struck him. "Grace," said he,
"I found a little bit down here the
other day that I'd like to have you
sketch—to send home, you know.
You'll do it, won't you?"
"Why, of course. I'll speak to Mr.
Fleming."
"Oh, hang Mr. Fleming." Woodson
broke in. "Fleming's all right in his
way, but I want you—your sketch, you
know."
The place was quite a distance away,
over the mesa. They set out for it
the next day.
"Here it is," Woodson exclaimed,
after quite a tramp, pointing over the
burning plain to where a row of cot-
tonwoods were banked against the
sky, tremulous in the vibrant air.
"There, do that; call it 'A Hundred in
the Shade,' or something like that."
"It doesn't seem to compose very
well," Grace murmured, holding the
tips of her fingers together and inclos-
ing the picture in a rosy frame, through
which she gazed, half shutting her eyes
in truly artistic intentness.
Well, never mind that: get the char-
acter of it. You know Fleming says
the character's the thing. That's what
I want—the character—the true char-
acter of this beastly country."
So Grace donned her big blue apron
and set to work with her biggest
brushes. But somehow she had trouble.
The quality of that sky, burning with
light and yet deep in hue, did not seem
to reside in cobalt, however fresh from
the tube. The value of the stretch of
plain, tremulous under the flaring
heavens, disturbed her, too, and when
she came to put in the airy wall of cot-
tonwoods along the horizon the whole
thing ended in a painty muddle.
"Oh, I can't do anything to-day!"
Grace exclaimed, petulantly, wiping
her troubled brow with the back of her
hand and leaving a streak of blue along
her forehead that intensified her puz-
zled look.
"Why don't you put those trees in
green?" Woodson asked, with serious
concern, as Grace renewed her strug-
gles with the regulation blues and
purples.
"But I don't see them so," she
murmured in a moment of absorbed ef-
fort.
"Grace," he blurted out almost be-
fore he knew it, "I don't believe you
see anything. Excuse me, but I don't
believe you ever did. I don't believe in
your art; I don't believe in your ca-
reer; I don't believe in your indepen-
dence! You're simply spoiling the
nicest girl in the world with it. You
see everything through Fleming's eyes.
You see things blue and purple because
he does; and he—well, he sees things
that way because some fellows over in
Paris do, and I don't believe in it.
There, now, I've said it, come—"
But it was not arranged that he
should finish what he had to say.
He had looked down to the ground
where he sat as he spoke of
Fleming. When he looked up, Grace
was several feet away from him, hur-
rying down the hill, with her head
bowed.
"I'm a brute, a miserable brute!"
Woodson remarked to himself with
considerable force, as he watched her
striding toward the half-dry creek.
But some one ought to have
told her. Her art is all foolishness.
Look at Fleming, even. He's forty,
and I'd like to know where he'd be if it
wasn't for his teaching. But I'm a
brute, just the same, a heartless
brute!"
There was a plum thicket along the
creek, and watching Grace disappear
within it Woodson set about picking up
her sketching kit. This done, it oc-
curred to him that it would be a proper
penance on his part to wash her brush-
es—he had always hated dirty brushes
so. Lathering them up, he started to-
ward the creek. When he got there he
could see no sign of Grace. Could it be
that anything had happened to her?
The thought made him catch his breath
for a moment. He knew she was im-
pulsive—capable of any rash move in a
moment of excitement. Then he heard
a stirring in the plum thicket, and came
face to face upon her in a little open-
ing, crying softly to herself.
"Grace," he called out, "why, what's
the matter? I know I'm a brute, but I
didn't think you'd take it so."
"Oh, can't you help me?" she plead-
ed, and began grasping about and feel-
ing aimlessly around with her hands.
He saw that her hair was loosened
and that her wrists and face were
scratched and bleeding in a dozen
places.
"Why, what's the matter?" he
queried again, as she came groping to-
ward him and stumbled against him.
"Can't you help me at all?"
"Of course I can, small girl, you're
all right. Nothing shall touch you,"
he reiterated as his arms closed around
her.
"Oh, silly, can't you see I've lost my
glasses!" she exclaimed, pulling away
from him and flushing red among the
greenery. But he held her tight.
"You don't want them, you see bet-
ter without them, blue eyes.' Confess
now, you never really saw before.
Give up trusting in those wretched
glasses and trying to be independent.
Come, see your career through my
eyes."
But still she held back at arm's
length, really defiant. His fingers left
a white circle where they clasped her
wrist. She seemed ready to cry and
then smiled instead. "You'll get my
glasses if I promise?"
He nodded.
Suddenly throwing her arms about
his neck she said: "I always liked
your eyes," and pressed a kiss on either
lid. "Maybe you were right about my
art," she added, seriously. "But—this
needn't interfere, need it?"
"Interfere! why, I'll tell that man
that I've decided not to take his cattle
and we'll turn the whole herd into
paint."
Then he reached over and carefully
disengaged her glasses from the twig
where he had seen them hanging as he
entered the thicket.—G. Melville Up-
ton, in Kate Field's Washington.