Portraits are exactly like people in one respect. What we see on the surface depends greatly on what is beneath it.
When I begin to paint a portrait, I mix ivory, black, and lead white in linseed oil. I coat my canvas with this until it is a fine gray, like the fog of a spring morning. Then I layer it until I can see into its depth. Then I choose my colors. I know that the gray beneath them will give them an elegant sense of cool, which will please my patrons. That is how they wish to see themselves. But the colors I select are how I see them.
Lilac and lavender are my favorite shades, but they would never do for the Boits. For their young, healthy skins, I chose lead white, vermilion, bone black, rose madder, and viridian green. I decided to paint Florence, Jane, and Julia in black and white school clothes and to give Mary a plum dress for contrast. The only other bit of color I would permit my figures would be a sickly pink ruff for Popau’s white dress.
The next day I began laying down the gray. It was a soothing thing to make so many strokes all alike and to see my beautiful fog come into being. I swept my brush strongly across the canvas, feeling like some ancient god creating weather.
The more godlike-playful I felt, the more the things around me began to feel as if they had personalities of their own. It was like slipping backward toward childhood, when one’s bed, one’s chair, one’s plate and bowl all have their own characters. Except that in childhood, these nearly living things are friends.
The things in that foyer were not. The vases stood on guard against me. The red screen pushed me away. The mirror watched. The house was strangely silent. I saw no one in the hall, heard nothing anywhere. Even Flint left me alone. The silence felt like another living presence, and not a friendly one.
Like a frightened child trying to be brave, I began to whistle. Not that I was frightened. Not then.
I worked until my great canvas was a cloud, slowly drying, waiting for what would come next.
A cloud of witness, I thought.
I stepped back and took a look at my work. I would need to put on at least one more coat, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. I was satisfied with what I had, for now. I began to clean my brushes.
The sweet scent of ambergris made me turn my eyes to the canvas.
There, in the drying gray paint, I saw the vague, but real, outline of a form.
It was taller than I was, and its arms were raised high. Whether they were threatening or pleading, I could not tell. The thing had no face, and almost no head, just a mass flowing into the shoulders. I could not see hands or feet; nor could I say if it was male or female. I could not even be sure that it was human. But it was there.
I stopped whistling.
I approached the shape, putting my face almost against it. Up close, it looked exactly like gray paint that was drying a little faster than the paint around it. *
I stepped back. The farther I got from the canvas, the clearer the figure became. The edges of the thing seemed to move slightly, even while the shape remained unchanged. Perhaps it was breathing.
“What are you?” I whispered.
And as I spoke, the shape ceased to be. The paint became a uniform shade of gray.
Was I afraid? Yes, but not just afraid. I was fascinated. I felt cut loose from the time and place I was in, even though everything in the foyer still stood out in sharp relief. All of my senses were working together. The scent of paint and ambergris was as immediate as sight, and my ears heard the perfect silence with the attention a fox might give to a rustle in the grass. My skin was alive to the air and to the faint breeze from somewhere that touched my hand. I had the impression that time itself had slowed down, or even stopped.
Not so fast, I thought. I took a crayon and traced the spot where the thing had been. I can’t say why I did it. I must have had some thought of catching whatever it was, freezing it in place. Or witnessing it.
It was the work of a moment, and then I had—nothing. A foolish, empty loop—the outline of a child’s version of a ghost in a shroud.
“I’m not a child,” I announced. “You can’t frighten me this way. If you want to scare me off, you’ll have to do better.”
“I do beg your pardon, sir. Did I startle you?” said Flint.
I could have hugged him, I was so glad to see another person.
“No, Flint, no,” I nearly laughed. “I’m just—talking to—to the demons, you know.”
“Very good, sir,” Flint said. “Would you care for tea?”
“Good heavens, Flint, I had no idea I had stayed as late as teatime,” I said.
“It is four o’clock, sir, and Mrs. Boit would not wish you to go without your tea,” Flint said.
“Thank you, Flint, I would like some,” I said.
“Very good, sir,” said Flint. “I’ll fetch it at once.”
I almost reached out an arm to keep him with me. But the spell, or whatever it had been, was broken. The foyer was empty of feeling.
Flint brought the tea, wheeling a little trolley with a handsome pot, a delicate cup, and a plate of cucumber sandwiches.
Flint poured me a cup, and I sipped. It was good, strong stuff, exactly what I needed.
“Very quiet here today, Flint,” I said, studying the outline on the canvas.
“The Misses Boit have gone to Versailles with Miss Joseph, sir,” Flint said. “Mrs. Boit is indisposed.”
“Any word from Mr. Boit?” I asked.
“A cable, sir, announcing his safe arrival in Boston. Will there be anything else?”
“Yes,” I said. “Would you look at the line I’ve drawn and tell me what it makes you think of?”
“Very well, sir,” Flint said, looking at me as if I were being very, very odd.
He studied the canvas intently. He moved closer to it, and to the side.
Then he said, “I confess, sir, it does not make me think of anything. I am sorry.”
“No, no, you’re perfectly right,” I said. “There is nothing there.”
“Of course not, sir,” Flint said.
Then I said, “Did you smell anything, Flint? When you brought the tea?”
“Yes, sir. The tea. And the paint of course,” Flint said.
“Nothing else?” I asked.
“Such as what, sir?” Flint replied.
“Ambergris,” I said.
“I do not think so, sir,” Flint said.
“Thank you, Flint,” I said.
He left.
Alone in the foyer, I finished my tea and cleaning up. It was dark outside now, and the gas lamps had been lit, making the foyer seem warm and welcoming.
When I was about to call for my coat, I walked between the huge vases and faced the mirror.
“I think I like Flint,” I said. “I hope he’s not helping you. I hope he’s an honest man. But what was all this about? Smells and stains on paint. That’s all you are, I think. A sort of stain. If you were anything more, you’d do more, wouldn’t you? You’d do something horrible to drive me away. Well, I’ll be back tomorrow. My canvas will need another coat. I’ll cover up that little sketch of mine and go on to paint the girls. And I’ll find a way to use this painting to break your spell. You know that, don’t you? You know I’m going to win. Ah revoir.”
Flint brought my things. As he helped me into my coat, he said, “I observe, sir, that you have clarified the sketch you asked me about. Though I confess, I don’t understand it.”
“What?” I said, and turned to look at the canvas.
The figure I had made had altered. The things that might have been arms had extended and acquired hands. The fingers were long, unnaturally long. They seemed to have claws.
“Flint, bring me some bread at once,” I said.
“Bread, sir?”
“Yes, soft bread. I use it to rub out stupid ideas. I don’t know what I was thinking, Flint. But I don’t want the girls to see that atrocity.” When Flint had brought me a fat, fresh loaf, I tore it apart and wadded it into balls. Then I scrubbed them over that lines I had drawn, and the lines I had not drawn.
“There,” I said to the empty room once the canvas was blank again. “Much better, don’t you think?”
There was no answer, but I knew something had heard me.