understand it.
Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the
weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced,
and that then it always changed. And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler
or easier way, they would ask.
But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit began. No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky. He couldn’t explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter was,
that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally’s sight six hours she was so
famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all
consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into
his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn’t when she
went out of it.
In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs
of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest portrait, in
spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out
from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress
there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers liked it: He said it
was just himself all over–a portrait that sweated moods from every pore,
and no two moods alike. He said he had as many different kinds of
emotions in him as a jug.
It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy
picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the
American earl in a peer’s scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars
indicative of an earl’s rank, and on the gray head an earl’s coronet,
tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way. When
Sally’s weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her
weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation
of his blood.
Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit
together, Sally’s interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon
the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock. Presently, in
the midst of Tracy’s serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew
was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately
against it. After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.
“Oh, my darling, what have I done–what have I said? It has happened
again! What have I done to wound you?”
She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep
reproach.
“What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have
unwittingly revealed–oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not
believe it, would not believe it!–that it is not me you love, but that
foolish sham my father’s imitation earldom; and you have broken my
heart!”
“Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing.”
“Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting
to guard your tongue, have betrayed you.”
“Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These
are hard words. When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one
instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no guarding
for that.”
“Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not
thinking of their significance–and they have told me more than you meant
they should.”
“Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it
as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting