The Shadow Portrait (33 page)

“She might. You two have always been very close. I’m going to talk with Cara, also, and I want you two to talk some sense into Mary Ann. I don’t want to be the villain in this case.” A silence fell across the room, and Oliver Lanier paused, as if the echo of his words had stirred something deep within. He was silent for a long time, and then he reached up and
touched his chin with a gesture of uncertainty, a rare thing, indeed, for him. “You must understand, Clinton. I want the best for Mary Ann. It’s not that I’m trying to take something away from her because I don’t want her to have something that’s good. I do want her to have the very best, but I think this would be a disaster for her. Those who go to Africa have to be very tough. I could have stood it. You know how I grew up, but I doubt if you could. You’re too soft.”

He doesn’t even know he’s insulting me,
Clinton thought. He listened as his father went on speaking of what high hopes he had for Mary Ann, and how they would all be dashed and her life ruined if she married George.

Finally Oliver turned and said, “I can count on you, can’t I, Clinton?”

“I’m afraid not, Father,” Clinton responded, standing. “You and I are not of one mind about this. Mary Ann’s twenty-six years old. She’s in love, and she wants to get married, and I’m not the one to say that God hasn’t called her. If He has called her to the mission field, she’d better go. If she’s not tough enough, God will have to toughen her up, I suppose.”

A scowl creased the lips of the older man, and he stared at his son. “I’d hoped for better, but I don’t know why. All right, go on back to your work.”

When Clinton got to the door, his father said, “That preacher, Barney Winslow, is speaking at Calvary Church again. I don’t want Mary Ann to go. Don’t give them any help.”

Clinton stood there stock still for a moment. He almost agreed, but something rebellious came to him then, and instead of replying he clamped his lips together, turned, and moved outside, closing the door firmly behind him. He walked across the room without a glance and, stepping into his own office, shut the door. He did not return to work, however, but went to the window and stared out for a long time. The hum of the traffic two stories below filled his office, but he
ignored it. He was displeased about what had just happened, and finally he jerked himself around, smacked his fist into his open palm and exclaimed, “Why didn’t I tell him he’s wrong! Don’t I have any guts at all?” He put his hands behind him and clasped them together, hunching his shoulders forward, thinking how he might have stood up to his father, but finally he sighed and said, “I guess it’s too late for anything like that.”

Going back to work, he toiled steadily until almost four o’clock. Finally he heard the chiming of a church bell in the distance and pulled out his watch. As he looked at the time, his face grew intent.
Barney Winslow is speaking at Calvary Baptist Church tonight, and I’m to stop Mary Ann from going.
With a sudden angry gesture, he snapped the watch closed and replaced it in his vest pocket, then reached over and got his coat and slipped into it. He pulled the brown derby off of the rack and settled it firmly on his head. Turning to look in the mirror, he pulled the hat to a sharper angle that gave him a more dashing appearance—or so he thought. “So Mary Ann’s not supposed to go hear Reverend Winslow, and I’m supposed to keep her from doing it,” he murmured. He studied his image in the mirror, and as he stared at himself, something seemed to snap within him. “Well, we’ll just see about that!”

Turning, he stepped outside his office door, walked by the clerks without a word, and left the building. Getting into a cab, he gave his home address and then sat back, his mind busy with the plan that seemed to form itself even as the hansom cab rolled over the cobblestones. “We’ll see about that!” he murmured firmly, and an enigmatic smile pulled the corners of his lips up. “We’ll just see!”

Mary Ann was standing beside Cara, who was staring at a canvas. For nearly an hour she had just dabbed at it, not daring to make a major stroke. Ordinarily she did not mind people watching her work, but her failure to produce the
portrait she had struggled with for some time made her irritable, and she turned, saying, “Mary Ann, why don’t you go somewhere else? You’re making me nervous.”

“I never made you nervous before. What’s the matter?”

“Why, I can’t paint this picture. All I can come up with is some kind of a shadow of what I want.” She gestured toward the canvas, which was sufficiently sketched in to reveal its main subject, a woman and her daughter, but where little progress had been made except on the background. “The background was easy enough,” she said, sweeping the brush over the area behind the two figures.

“You’ve done very well. Why, I didn’t know you’d ever been in that part of town.”

“It was just once a long time ago,” Cara murmured. She remembered the time and added, “James was bringing me home from the doctor. Mother was with me. There was some sort of accident and we stopped. I looked out and saw this woman and her little girl. They were poorly dressed, and they were standing in front of this old, dilapidated building with garbage cans piled in front and a mangy alley cat sunning on the stoop. You see?”

“You got all that so well. Look at that cat!” Mary Ann exclaimed. “Why, you can almost see the fleas on him!”

“Oh yes, that part’s easy,” Cara said wearily. She sat down in the canvas chair and tossed the brush down in a gesture of futility, which was unusual for her. “I can’t get their faces, Mary Ann. I see them, but I can’t make it come out on the canvas.”

“You’ll get it. Just keep working.”

“I don’t think so. All I’ll ever have is a shadow portrait.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Flowers are so easy. They don’t have any souls, but when someone paints a portrait, the soul of that person ought somehow to come out. You saw that picture by George Luks of the laughing boy. Why, you could see so vividly what was in his heart. He had a dirty face and his right hand was all scratched up by something.
An old man’s coat hung on him, but the joy in him came out despite the poverty that was so obvious. How does the artist do that? I’ve asked Phil, but he says it has to be inside before it can get outside. He always says you can’t get something out that’s not in.”

“I don’t understand that,” Mary Ann remarked.

“I do. The Bible talks about how things are perceived from out of the heart—good things and bad things. If good things are in your heart, why, you know good things will come out. And, of course, the opposite is true.” She stopped speaking and stared at the portrait with great dissatisfaction. Shaking her head, she rose to get a cloth to put over it, but as she did the door burst open and Clinton stepped inside. “Why, Clinton! What’s wrong?”

Moving across the room, Clinton stood before his two sisters. He ignored Cara to face Mary Ann, saying, “Did you know that Reverend Barney Winslow is speaking at Calvary Baptist Church tonight?”

“Of course I know it. George wants me to come, but I can’t.” A look of bitterness filled her beautiful eyes then. Though they were blue as the sky and innocent and virtuous, they were now marred by growing anger. “Father will never let me go to that church again.”

“Well, I think you ought to go.”

Both of the women stared at Clinton. He was holding his head in an abnormal position, and there was something different in his visage—a stubbornness they had seen previously only on a few rare occasions.

“Why, you can’t mean that, Clinton!” Cara said. “She can’t deliberately disobey Father.”

“Mary Ann, I strongly feel that you ought to go.”

Mary Ann suddenly blinked with surprise, but something of Clinton’s adamant determination communicated itself. “I
would
go, but you know what Father would do.”

“Don’t tell him. Just go,” Clinton said.

“How could we do that? Someone would be sure to report
that we were there. Why, Mary Ellen attends the services there. We can’t tell her not to speak about our going,” Mary Ann said. Mary Ellen was one of the family’s maids and a devout Christian, but she was quite a gossip around the house. “Father would be sure to hear of it.”

“Not if you do what I tell you.” Clinton suddenly smiled freely for the first time. “Let the blame fall on me, but I think you ought to go. How are you going to go to Africa if you can’t even go to a church service?”

“What’s wrong with you, Clinton?” Cara said, stepping closer to her brother. “Why are you saying this?”

“You heard about the woman that got her children to do what she wanted by telling them not to do it? Like, ‘Don’t you wash the dishes,’ and then they’d go wash them. Well, I feel about the same way. Father instructed me not to encourage you to go to the meeting. In fact, he asked me to do all I could to dissuade you. Therefore, I’ve got to do it. Here’s what we’re going to do if you’re willing.”

Mary Ann and Cara listened almost breathlessly as Clinton outlined his plan, and when he was through, he asked, “Well, will you do it, Mary Ann?”

“Yes,” Mary Ann said. “I will!”

“And I will, too!” Cara said. She saw the surprise in Clinton’s face and said, “You’ll have to take us both, Clinton.”

“All right, I will. I’ll have the carriage here at six-thirty. The service starts at seven. Be ready.”

After Clinton left the room, Cara said with some hesitation, “Are you sure we should do this, Mary Ann? We know we are directly disobeying Father.”

“I’ve given up wondering about it, Cara,” Mary Ann said. There was sadness in her tone, but a sudden burst of determination showed itself as she bit her lip. “I need to hear all I can about Africa. I wish that I could go with Father’s blessing. But if I can’t, I must go without it.”

As usual, Phil Winslow came in a few minutes before the service started. He had formed the habit of coming to pray with George Camrose before the service, and this time he found Camrose and Barney Winslow in the small study. They greeted him warmly, and George said, “Just time for a quick prayer.”

“Right you are, and I expect to see great things happening.”

“Have you ever thought God might call you to a foreign field, Phil?” Barney inquired.

“No, I never felt that way. I don’t think I got the call. I believe in it, though.”

Barney nodded, saying, “It’s not wise to go unless God sends you.” He smiled and uttered a short, rueful laugh. “ ‘Some got called and sent. Others just up and went.’ That’s what they say about the mission volunteers. A lot of them don’t even make it through the first few months, but if God is in it they make it.”

The three men prayed, then stepped out of the pastor’s study into the large room that served as the church meeting hall. Phil always sat near the back, and now he took his seat. He was surprised to look up and see Clinton Lanier come in through the door, escorting two women wearing black veils over their faces. “What in the world is he doing?” Phil muttered. He recognized the figures of Cara and Mary Ann, though their faces were so heavily veiled he could not make out their features. He watched as they took a seat as far back as possible. Clinton turned suddenly, and caught Phil’s eye and winked at him, an unexpectedly merry smile on his lips.

He looks like the cat that’s eaten the canary,
Phil thought. He had the impulse to go and join him, but obviously Clinton had brought the two women disguised to keep their identity a secret. It did not require a great deal of discernment for Phil to figure out that their father had forbidden them to come. He knew of Oliver Lanier’s adamant stance against his daughter’s serving in Africa, and something about Clinton’s rebellion pleased him. “About time he broke the cord,
but I hope he doesn’t get caught. I’m afraid if he does, he’ll pay dearly.”

The service began as usual with rousing praise and singing of hymns. Phil could not concentrate as fully as he might have liked, for his eyes kept going back to Cara.
I’m not surprised about Mary Ann, but I am surprised about Cara.
He changed his seat then so that he could get a better view of her profile, but he could not see beneath the veil. He determined, however, to intercept her after the service.