Captain Gunbolt Charity
and the Painted Lady

S.S. Boston.

April 2nd. Evening.

I had a splendid offer made me to-day. A man came aboard, with what looked like a drawing-board, wrapped in brown paper.

He had a letter of introduction from a man who knows me.

“My name’s Black, as I guess Mr. Abel’s told you in the letter,” he said. “I want to talk business with you, Cap’n Charity.”

“Go ahead!” I said.

“What I say, goes no further, that’s understood, I guess?” he asked. “Mr. Abel gave you a good name, Cap’n, an’ he told me a thing or two about you that sounded pretty safe to me.”

“I’m mum!” I told him. “If you’ve murdered someone, it’s no concern of mine, and I don’t want to hear about it. If it’s anything clean, get it off your chest. You’ll find me a good listener.”

He nodded.

“You know about that Mona Lisa bit of goods?” he asked me.

“The picture?” I said.

He nodded again.

“Well,” he said, “they got the wrong one. That’s a copy that’s been made from the original. It’s a mighty good copy. It should be; it cost me over twenty thousand dollars, before it was finished.

“It’s so good, you couldn’t make ’em believe it isn’t the original. I got the original, though, safe and sound; and a patron of mine’s mad for it. That’s what I came to see you about. I’ve got to get it taken across and through the U.S.A. Customs.”

“But you don’t tell me that a copy could fool all the art experts who’ve seen the recovered Mona Lisa?” I said. “Why the old canvas—”

“Wood, Cap’n,” he interpolated.

“It’s on wood, is it? “ I said. “I’d never realised that. Well you don’t tell me they don’t know the kind of wood, and the smell and the general oldness and the seasonedness, and all the rest of it, of a panel of wood as old as that must be. The very smell of it would be enough to tell them whether it was the original or not.

“And that’s not all! Why the pigments they used; they can’t be matched to-day, so I understand. And how’d you get the ‘time tone,’ the ‘time surface’—? Why, man, any one of these things could never be faked properly—not well enough to deceive an expert who knew his business. And then, I shouldn’t think it would be possible for any man alive to even imitate the feeling of the picture—that is, if it’s anything like I’m inclined to believe it must be.

“Don’t you see, your tale won’t wash. All these things put together, make a picture as famous as the Gioconda absolutely un-forgable—that is, of course, to an expert.”

“Now, Cap’n,” he said, “you’ve had your say, and I’ll have mine.”

“First of all, to get a panel that could not be pronounced anything but genuine, Cap’n, I had the Mona Lisa panel split, using a special machine-saw for the purpose. It was an anxious job, I can promise you. The man who cut it was an expert at his job, and the saw was a specially made ribbon-saw, with hair-fine teeth.

“He practised on a dozen model panels, before I’d let him split the Mona. Then he put the picture flat on the steel saw-table, and he just skinned off the Mona with no more than a sixteenth of an inch of wood under her. He did it as easy and smooth as skimming milk; but I just stood and sweated till it was done.

“He got a hundred dollars for that ten minutes’ bit of work, and I guess I got a hundred extra grey hairs.

“Well, Cap’n, then I took the Mona, and mounted her on a brand new panel, for she was on a layer of wood so thin that she bent just with picking her up.

“That’s how we got the panel for the copy. The copy’s painted on the old Mona Lisa panel. Smart, wasn’t it? I guess the Experts couldn’t get past that—what! Not much, Sir!

“Queer, when you come to think of it, Cap’n, that if those Frenchmen only thought to notice it (not that they could, after not seeing the lady for a couple of years!) they’d the clue right there, in the thinner panel, that the Mona’s been doctored!

“Great, I call it! And she’ll hang there all through the ages; and people’ll come from all parts and stare and gasp and go away, feeling they’ve seen the only Genuine! And all the time she’ll be where all the real stuff’s going—in God’s own country, Sir— U.S.A. That’s her.

“And to think a pair of calipers would give the whole show away, if only they’d taken the thickness of the panel, before a ‘friend’ of mine lifted her out of the Louvre!”

“That was smart, certainly,” I said. “You can spin a good cuffer. What about the old pigments and all the rest of the impossible things—eh?”

“The pigments, Cap’n, cost me exactly fifteen thousand dollars in cold cash. I bought old canvasses of the same period—some of them were not bad either, and I scraped ’em, Sir. Yes I did, for the pigments that were on ’em. Nearly broke my heart! But this is a big business. Then an old painter I know, got the job of his life. He’s as clever a man as ever stole a canvas, ’cause he hadn’t money to pay for it.

“I got hold of him and locked him up in a room for three months, to get the drink out of him. If someone’d done that for him regular, and given him paint, brushes and canvas, he’d have been pretty near as big a man as the Master himself; but he never could keep his elbow down.

“At the end of the three months, when I’d all my pigments re-ground and mixed ready for use, I showed him the Mona and the empty panel. He went down on to his blessed knees to the thing, and pretty near worshipped.

“I told him there were five thousand big fat dollars for him, the day he’d finished a copy of her, on the wooden panel; that’s if the copy were so good, I couldn’t tell one from t’other.

“Well, Cap’n, he did it. And he did it properly, like a monk might pray. Four months he took; and when it was finished,  I couldn’t have told one painting from the other except that the new one wanted ‘sunning’—that’s a little secret of my own. I do part of it with a mercury lamp, and part of it with the sun and coloured glass. I gave her a solid year of that treatment, while she was drying and hardening. Then I’d have defied L. da V. himself to tell one from t’other!”

“And the chap who painted the copy” I asked.

“He got his five thousand bucks,” he said, casually. “There’s a lot of absinthe in five thousand dollars.”

“Poor devil,” I said. “What was the idea of getting this copy made for twenty thousand dollars, when you had the real thing?”

“It was for the French Government to sneak,” he told me.

“What?” I said.

“It was for a plant!” he explained. “It was going to be ‘planted’; and then an agent of mine was going to approach the picture-dealers and offer to sell it, as the real thing, you know.

“And of course, I knew no dealer on the East side the duck-pond would look at it. No use to anyone this side, except to get ’em into bad trouble. I knew the next thing they’d do, would be to lay information, for the sake of the reward and the press notices.”

“Well,” I asked, “what had you to gain by all that, and what did you gain by getting your agent into the hands of the police?”

“He bungled things!” he told me. “It wasn’t my fault he got nabbed. However, he don’t matter. He’ll be made for life, when he comes out clear of all the bother. I’ll see to that; and he knows he can trust me, so long as he holds his tongue.”

“But the reason you wanted the authorities to cop the copy you’d spent twenty thousand dollars on?” I asked again. “If you were so anxious for them to have a copy, why didn’t you offer to sell it back? They’d have paid a decent sum—quite decent, I should imagine—that’s if they couldn’t get their hands on you first!”

“That’s just the point,” he explained. “If I’d offered to sell back the picture, they’d have approached it in a more suspicious spirit; and I want no blessed suspicions at all, Cap’n. If they thought I was trying to get rid of the original, secretly to a dealer, and that they had dropped on me unexpectedly, then their whole frame of mind would be the way I want it to be—see?

“You see, Cap’n, I paid twenty thousand dollars odd to get that copy made, simply for a blind. I’m taking the original out to U.S.A. where I’ve got a patron for it at five hundred thousand dollars, as I’ve told you; or anyway as I’m telling you now.

“But he won’t even look at it, if there’s going to be any bother attached. I’ve to clean up behind me. I’d to let the French Government have back what they think is their picture; and then my patron can hang the original in his private gallery, without fear of trouble.

“He’s a real collector, and it’s sufficient for him to know he’s got the original, under his own roof-slates, without wanting to shout the song half across the world, like a society hostess.

“If there are any comments, he’ll acknowledge it to be what it isn’t—and that’s a copy. This is bound to go down, as people are convinced the original is clamped up good and solid, back in its old place in the Louvre. Thank God for that sort of collector, I say.” They make living possible for people in my business. Now, have you got all the points, Cap’n?”

He grinned so cheerfully, that I had to do the same thing.

“But all the same,” I told him, “I’m not available for handling stolen goods, Mr. Black. You’ll have to try further up.”

“Come now, Cap’n Charity,” he said; “and you a good American, too! I guess we got to have this bit of goods in little old U.S.A. It’s too fine for any other nation on earth. You mustn’t think it’s only the dollars I’m thinkin’ of. Why, Cap’n, there’s a patron of mine, right here in England, that will give me ninety thousand pounds for it, now that I’ve made it safe; and that’s only fifty thousand dollars under what I’m to get across the water. And out of that fifty thousand I’ve to pay you, and all expenses, and run the risk of the U.S.A. Customs dropping on it, and all my work going up in a flare!

“No, Sir! If it were just the dollars only I’m after, I’d sell it right here, within twenty-four hours, and be shut of all trouble and risk; but it’s got to go over to our country, Cap’n, and stay right there, till it’s acclimatised.”

I couldn’t help liking the man for that. But I had to stare at him a bit, to size up how much he was honest and how much I was dreaming: but he was honest, right enough; and I felt I’d got to look good and hard; so that I’d not forget what an honest picture-dealer looked like.

“What about the French?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I guess I’m not French, Cap’n,” he said. “Anyway, they’ve got a fine copy, and you couldn’t persuade them, not with a hammer, that it wasn’t the real one; not unless you showed ’em the original. I’ll agree then they might grow suspicious; but there’s not got to be any suspicions set going. That’s what all my work’s been to stop.”

“Look here,” I said; “for all I know, this one you want me to put through, may be the copy, that you’re going to palm off on your customer!”

“No, Sir!” he replied, very wrathy in a moment. “No, Sir ! I never try that sort of thing. No double-crossing for me! I’ve never done a patron yet. That’s how I’ve built up my business. I’m known to be honest.”

“It’s a pity you can’t put it through, openly, as the original,” I said. “You’d have no duty at all to pay then, seeing that it’s more than a hundred years old. Anyway, why don’t you put the thing through yourself, as a copy? If your customer’s going to manage to palm it off to his friends (and there’s likely to be some experts among ’em) as a copy, why don’t you put it through the Customs, frankly, as a copy? There’ll be nothing much to bother about in the duty-line on a mere copy by an unknown artist. Shove a fairly good price on it, so they won’t think you’re trying to jew them, and there you are. Anyway, Mister, that’ll come a heap cheaper than paying me what I should need, before I’d even look at a job of this sort.”

He put his finger to the side of his nose, in French fashion.

“Don’t you worry, Cap’n,” he replied. “That picture’s worth five hundred thousand dollars; and I guess I’m taking no chances at all. You must reckon there’s others that guess things about this, besides me, and it ain’t only the Customs I’m bothering about, but it’s a little bunch of crooks that have got to suspecting more than’s good for them. And I guess if they can’t get a finger in the pie, they’re capable of dropping a hint to the New York Customs, just for spite.

“If the Customs put their eyes on the picture, after a hint like that, they’d hold it and communicate with the French authorities, and it’d be all U-P then, once the two pictures were put together and compared.

“And, anyhow, Cap’n, I reckon there may be a bit of trouble, going across; for the gang’ll never drop trying, until it’s ‘no go’ for them. They’ll sail with the picture and me, on the chance of nipping in before we get to the other side. I’d not be surprised if they came across with a proposal to go shares or split. If they can’t do me in any other way.

“Now, what’s it to be, Cap’n Charity—are you on, or is it no go?”

I thought for a few seconds, then I answered him:—

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I guess I’d like it to go across to God’s country; and I suppose it’s about as much right in the Louvre, as Cleopatra’s needle has on the Embankment. Doesn’t it belong by rights to Italy?”

He winked at me, and shrugged his shoulders, in a grotesque fashion.

“I guess, Cap’n,” he told me, “we won’t go into that now, or the Lord knows where the complications are going to end. It’s going to belong in little old U.S.A., and that’s good enough for me. . . . What’ll your figure be, Cap’n?”

“Five per cent,” I told him. “That’ll be twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Very good, Cap’n,” he agreed. “It’s a good tough price; but I’ll come across all right. I reckon the more you stand to make out of it, the more like you are to do your best! And just what that is, I guess every Customs official each side of the pond knows! If you do up to your usual, the New York Customs’ll never even smell it. That’s why I’ve come to you; and that’s why I don’t kick at your figure.

“You’re a dandy, Cap’n ! You’re IT! I heard about the way you ran that cargo of smokes into Liverpool. That was smart now! That must have taken a bit of planning!”

“Where’s the picture?” I asked him.

“Here!’’ he said, almost in a whisper, and patted the wrapped up drawing-board affair, that he held under his arm.

“Bring it along into my cabin, and let’s have a look at it,” I told him. “I want to see this smile that won’t come off, that I’ve heard so much about. Is it anything wonderful?”

“Cap’n,” he said, with extraordinary earnestness, “it is wonderful! It’s as if one of the old gods had got in some mighty fine work on the panel.”

We went along to my cabin, and I shut and locked both doors. Then he unwrapped the thing, on the table. It was painted on what appeared to be a solid panel of hard wood, about three quarters of an inch thick. I looked at it for a good bit. It was certainly fine and strange.

“It’s got something about it that looks as if a clever devil had painted it,” I told him. “She’s got no eyebrows. That makes her look a bit peculiar and, somehow, slightly abnormal. But it doesn’t explain what I mean. It’s as if the elemental female smiled out in her face—not what we mean now-a-days by the word woman; but all that is the essential of the female, as opposed to the essential of the male—not the man, you know! The smile is conscienceless; not consciously so, but naturally. . . . It’s as if the unrestrained female—the ‘faun’ in the woman—the subtle licence in her—the subtle, yet unbridled, goat-spirit in her, were spreading out over her face, like a slow stain. It’s the truth about that side of a woman that the best part of a man insists on turning his blind eye to. The painting ought to be called:—‘The Uncomfortable Truth!’”

“Cap’n,” he said, “for a man that pretends not to understand pictures, you’re doing mighty well! I guess you’ve just put into words, a bit that I’ve felt, but couldn’t ever get unmuddled into plain talk. I’ve felt that, many and many a time, since—well since she came into my hands. It isn’t that she’s bad, so much as that she’s not good! It’s as if she’s got a throwback fit on. I guess women get that sometimes—more often than we think!”

“They’re primitive things,” I said. ‘‘Nature keeps them too close to her, to let them be anything else, at bottom. A woman’s as primitive as a savage—whether she’s cultured or uncultured. Just notice, for instance, her idea of repartee! It is to be crudely insolent in a modulated voice, if she’s cultured, and otherwise if she isn’t! Her desires are more moderate than a man’s, only in those things she doesn’t want. When she wants a thing, she’s no more sense of moderation than a child or a savage. Look at her immoderate notions of dressing herself, or undressing herself, perhaps is what I ought to call it! She’s no sense of moderation, except about the things she doesn’t want! And even then she’s immoderate not to want ’em!”

“Cap’n”, he said, “you’ve sure been hit sometime by a woman, and I reck’n she wasn’t much good to God or man. I guess I recognise the symptoms!”

I had to laugh at his cuteness; but I didn’t add up the particulars for him!

“All the same,” I said, nodding at the Mona, “it’s a good painting and clever insight; but it’s rotten bad art. It’s unmoral!”

“Lord, Cap’n Charity, don’t talk like that!” he said, genuinely distressed. “I’d begun to think I’d met a man that understood things my way of looking at ’em. An’ then you go and blow off like that!”

“Art’s not got the right to be a vehicle for unwholesomeness!” I said, smiling a bit at his earnestness.

“I guess, Cap’n, you’re wrong, all the way there!” he asserted. “Art’s the right to do and say and be what it likes, so long as it’s clever and wonderful enough.”

“No,” I said. “Have a cigar. It’s not worth talking about, anyway; but you can take it from me that when Art claims only its Privileges, and shirks its complementary Responsibilities, it is bound to become as undesirable as any other irresponsible force.”

“I quit, Cap’n!” he said, biting off the end of his cigar. “You out-argue me. The chief thing that counts just now, is there’s five hundred thousand dollars on the table there; and twenty-five thousand of them are yours, the day you hand me the painted lady, safe and sound, in Room 86 of the Madison Square Hotel, New York.

“I guess you got that all plain, Cap’n. Meanwhile, I’ll book my passage across with you. I reckon I shall feel easier, sleeping in the same ship with her.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Black,” I told him. “If you’ve got an hour or two to put in, you’ll find that chair’s comfortable, and that’s my brand of whisky in the rack, and there’s Perrier and Soda, whichever you fancy.”

“Right you are, Cap’n,” he said; and while he was making himself comfortable, I began to get out my colours, palette and brushes.

“You paint, Cap’n?” he asked, over the top of his glass. He seemed surprised.

I nodded towards the oils and water-colours, round the bulksheads. He got up with his glass of whisky, and began to go the round, sipping, and muttering some astonishment, as he journeyed.

“My word, Cap’n!” he said at last, facing round at me. “You sure can paint some! And I guess I’m slinging no cheap flattery. What you going to do now?”

“I’m going to do an oil sketch of the Mona as a keepsake, right now, and before I hide her for the voyage,” I told him. I hauled out a sheet of prepared cardboard from my portfolio. “I guess I’d like to remember I once handled the original,” I went on. “And I’d like to have a shot at that smile. The trick of it catches me.”

“Good for you, Cap’n,” he said, quite interested, and set down his whisky, while he propped up the Gioconda, in a good light from the glazed skylight, above. Then he came round behind me, to watch.

I finished the thing, a rough sketch, of course, in about an hour and a half; and Mr. Black seemed to be genuinely impressed.

“Cap’n,” he said, “that’s good work, you know! You’re a mighty queer sort of sea-captain!”

“Mr. Black,” I said, as I fetched out my pipe, “you’re a mighty queer sort of picture-dealer!”

But he couldn’t see it.

April 8th. At sea.

Mr. Black’s an interesting man to talk to; but he’s got the itch to know where I’ve hidden his blessed picture. I’ve explained to him, though, that when a secret has to be kept, it’s better kept by one head than by any other number you could think of in a month.

He’s had to agree that my method’s the right one; but, every time I ask him up to my chart-room for a smoke and a yarn, he has a try to wheedle out of me whereabouts I’ve stowed away his five hundred thousand dollar lady.

Meanwhile, I’ve found that he’s a good taste for other things besides pictures. As he put it:—

“Cap’n, I’m no one-horse show, in the matter of liking good things. A pretty woman I like, and if they’re good, so much the better—”

“They’re rare!” I told him.

“I grant you that, Cap’n,” he said. “As rare as a high-pressure man with a sound temper. That’s why they’re some worth finding. Well, I like a pretty woman, a good violin solo, a good whisky, a good picture, and a good patron of art. And I reckon the five mean life!”

I smiled, and I said nothing; but when he came up to my chart-room to-day, I introduced him to a pretty young American, of the name of Lanny, who has made a point of pall-ing on with me, and has come up to look at my pictures.

When he came in, she was criticising my copy of the Gioconda, on cardboard, which I had pinned up on the bulkshead; and after I had introduced him, she hauled him into the discussion, willy-nilly.

“I think that’s a fine piece of work of the Captain’s,” she said. “But you sure ought to see the original in the Louvre, Mr. Black. Captain Charity’s done fine; but the original just gives you shivers all down your spine.”

“I’ve seen it, Miss Lanny,” he assured her, “and I agree with you. It’s a mighty wonderful thing. But Cap’n Charity don’t reckon it’s good art!”

“What!” said Miss Lanny. “Captain Charity, you don’t tell me that?”

“It’s not good art, Miss Lanny,” I said. “It’s true; but it shows the ugly side of a woman’s character.”

“That’s downright insulting, Captain,” she said, warmly. “I reckon it shows what the great artist meant it to show. It shows the delicate subtlety and refined spirituality of woman. There’s more in La Gioconda’s smile than in the laughter of a hundred men.”

“I hope you’re right, Miss Lanny,” I said. “For the sake of the hundred men. In fact, I’m sure you are right, supposing that the hundred men are good average, clean, wholesome citizens.”

This talk occurred this morning; and I put the stopper on then, for it was getting a bit too serious. I felt if the young lady came out with any more of that cheap Suffragette I’m-better-’n-any-man-that-steps-the-earth kind of thing, I should begin to feel like the giant, when the boy slapped him with his own hair-brushes. And when I get feeling like that, I never know whether I’m going to turn rude or over polite; and either way is not the method, when there’s a pretty girl in one’s chart-room, who looks as if she’s good as gold and chock full of hell-fire, all in one and the same moment.

But they seldom are either, let alone both; not when it comes to the pinch. They so often talk big, and then fizzle out into silly viciousness, or else you find the gold’s only gilding on top of a deal of petty thoughts on things in general and men in particular! Lord! doesn’t that sound narky!

April 10th. Night. Late.

Great excitement. At least. Mr. Black’s in a state.

He’s spent most of the last two days spooning Miss Lanny, in my chart-house, while I’ve made shots at doing sky effects in water-colours.

I call that cool, to try to cut me out with the young lady; though I can’t say that she’s seemed backwards! But I’ve had my revenge! I’ve made a set of six caricatures of the two of ’em looking generally spoony and absolutely loony!

However, this sort of thing has to be paid for!

About an hour ago, Mr. Black sent word by a steward, would I come along to his cabin. Lord! The mess! Someone, or several, I should think, had been through his place, and left it like a wooden township after a cyclone.

His box lids had all been ripped off; his bed had been pulled to pieces, and his mattress had been cut open; his wardrobe (he’s got a suite de luxe, off the saloons) was ripped away from the bulkshead, and was lying on its side, and the mirror had been broken clean out and lay on the carpet.

The marble top had been lifted off the wash-stand, and the carpet had been pulled up in several places and was ripped across, as if with a pair of shears.

In his dining room, the Louis sixteenth sofa had met bad trouble, and yielded up its springs, much tapestry and the ghost, all at once. The writing table had its top lifted off, and another table had evidently seen trouble. The heavy pile carpet here was divorced both from itself and the floor, and lay in heaps, literally cut to pieces.

In the bathroom, some of the tiles had been forced out, as if the human cyclone had meant to make sure of what lay below; and in the dressing-room, things had equally not been neglected.

I sat down on the wreckage of Mr. Black’s bed, and roared. He just stood and stared.

“You sure see the funny side of a thing, Cap’n!” he said at last.

“This’ll pay you for cutting me out with my lady friends!” I told him, when I could breathe again. “I suppose you been up, spooning on the boat-deck, instead of coming down and turning-in at a reasonable hour, like a Christian.”

He looked sheepish enough to please me.

“Providence, Mr. Black,” I told him, “is always careful to leave the dustpan on the stairs, when it sees we’re getting too ’aughty.” Then I got serious. “Missed anything?” I asked him.

“Not a thing yet,” he said; “but it’ll take a bit of straightening out.”

I rang for his servant, and sent a message to the chief steward.

Fortunately the next suite was empty, and we moved Mr. Black’s gear into it. Just the three of us; for I want no talk among the passengers until the trip is finished. That sort of thing is better kept quiet.

The chief steward locked up the whole suite, and we knew then there could be no talk; for Black’s servant had not been allowed in to see the place, since the trouble.

“Now, Mr. Black,” I said, “come along up to my place for a talk.”

When we reached my cabin, Mr. Black had a whisky to pick him up; and we talked the thing over; though I saw he didn’t see as far into it as I had done already.

“Anyway,” I told him, “you’ve lost nothing; and now they’ll leave you alone. They’ve proved the thing isn’t in your possession. If it had been, they’d sure have had it—eh?”

“Sure!” he said, soberly. “Are you mighty certain it’s safe where you’ve put it?”

“Safe till the old ship falls to pieces!” I told him. “All the same, they must be a pretty determined lot, whoever they are; and I expect they’ll be paying my quarters a visit if they get the half of a show. By the Lord! I’d like ’em to try it on!”

April 11th. Afternoon.

Mr. Black and Miss Lanny spent the morning up with me in my chart-room. The talk turned on a water-colour I was making of the distant wind-on-spray effects, and I hit out once or twice at Miss Lanny’s critical remarks.

“That’s pretty good, Cap’n Charity,” she said, looking over my shoulder; “but I like your copy of the Gioconda better; though you haven’t got the da Vinci ability to peep underneath, and see the abysmal deeps of human nature.”

“Dear lady,” I said, “may I light a cigarette in your presence, and likewise offer you one?”

She accepted, and Mr. Black also.

“Da Vinci was a great painter!” I said.

“I’m sure,” she answered.

“But he wasn’t a great artist. . . . Understand, I’m judging him just on the Mona, which is the only thing of his I’ve seen; but which is supposed to be his greatest work.”

“That’s a wicked thing to say, Cap’n!” she interrupted. “The whole world acclaims him great!”

“He’s one more proof,” I said, “of the truth of my contention that a man may be a ‘great painter’ or a ‘great sculptor’ without being a great artist; in other words a man of great feeling, and intellectuality combined—that is to say, a Compleat Personality.

“I admit that a great artist does occasionally happen to be a ‘great painter’ or a ‘great sculptor’; and as a result his sculpture or painting, as the case may be, is vastly more complete, perfect, great, (call it which you like) than the work of the other sort; but, so far, the ‘other sort’ seems able to dispense with the greatness of personality, which is the ‘bricks’ of the great artist. . . . This quality doesn’t appear to be necessary to their ‘greatness,’ any more than greatness of Personality is necessary to the making of a great singer. A great singer may be (and sometimes is) a human pig, into whose larynx has been inserted the throstle of an angel; but he’s still what he’d be if you took the tune-pipe out of his throat—and that’s plain unadulterated, unintellectual, unfeeling p-i-g. I don’t mean to say they’re unemotional. They’re generally emotional enough, the Lord knows! So’s a congenital idiot, a drunken man, a woman of easy virtue, or a certain type of actor when he’s just been told he’s outtopped old Garrick!”

She was gasping now in her attempts for words suitable to my eternal quenching. She got some of them out; but they cut no ice! Finally, she demanded fiercely, in so many words:—“What do you mean?”

That was a plain question; and I answered it plainly:—

“The da Vinci johnny was too busy looking out for his abysmal deeps of human nature, to remember the heights!” I told her. “He was like a painter, with his eye glued into a sewer, painting and sweating himself into eternal fame—that is in the eyes of other Perverts like himself; and in the eyes of the big blind, indiscriminative, unmeaning crowd that follows the shouting of the Perverts, because they don’t know enough to shout tosh frankly.

“Now, the value of the Mona must be put at a high figure, maybe ten million dollars in the open market.” (I grinned cheerfully at the back of my mind.) “But if it’s worth that, it’s worth it as a painting—not as a compleat work of art!”

“You’re mad, Cap’n; either mad or ignorant, or both!” she slammed out at me, and I could see that Mr. Black wanted to say much the same thing.

“St. Paul is my brother, dear lady,” I said; “only he was accused of achieving his through much learning!

“Meanwhile, I assert that our friend da Vinci was not a great artist—not if you judge him on the merits of the Mona as a compleat work of art. (Fine word compleat. Means just what I want it to mean!)”

“Why? Why? Why?” she broke out again, reduced once more to blank questioning.

“Yes,” joined in Mr. Black, beginning to show warmth, “I’d just like to know, Cap’n, how you make out da Vinci’s not a great or compleat, or whatever you like to call it, artist?”

“Because,” I said, “Art is personality expressed in and through the ‘artist’s’ subject. If the artist’s personality is a great personality and a balanced one, it will express itself in and through his subject in a great and balanced way. And the greater and more balanced the personality, the more the artist’s work will approximate to perfect art—Great Art; always supposing that the man is a master craftsman, which, of course, is understood.

“The Great Art is the great, wise, compleat human personality, vital and therefore creative, expressing itself through some medium; inevitably a ‘handicraft.’ I’m using the word widely.

“If, however, the artist has a twisted personality, the twist will express itself in and through his work, and the work will be as much out of perspective in its deviation from compleat sanity and truth, as it would be technically, were the artist an indifferent craftsman.

“You see, sound art is a true, personal expression of anything, in its general relationship to human nature. If a man’s art produces results which are not coupled up with human nature, it becomes non-intelligible to the human; as much so, as are the X rays to the human retina!

“And it is because of all these things that I condemn the Mona as a work of the highest art. It is the product of a twisted art and a very great handicraft.”

“It is a perfect work of great and wondrous art!” said Miss Lanny. “I like to see how piffly little amateurs, try to teach the Master!”

I laughed at her bad temper.

“Dear lady,” I said, “you admit my copy of the Gioconda is not so bad,” and I beckoned to where I had pinned the picture on the bulkshead, under the skylight.

“By the side of the original,” she smiled at me, “it is as a ginger-pop bottle beside a Venetian glass wonder. You sure got a healthy conceit of yourself, Cap’n!”

“Mea culpa, dear lady!” I murmured, holding out my case of gold-tips. “I suppose you’ll deny next the truth of my contention that all art must say something, or it’s nothing?”

“Art needn’t say a thing, and you know it, Cap’n!” she said.

“Just so,” agreed Mr. Black. “It’s sufficient to be just what it is! A picture isn’t meant to be a book!”

“Quite so!” I told him. “It takes a certain amount of brains and mental energy, that is, personality, to write even a moderately good book! And a book is great or not, in so far as it says much or little, and says it truly or askewly, completely or incompletely. And that simple little test is the test for all art—painting, sculpture, prose, poetry, music—all of it; for if a ‘work of art’ says nothing, it is nothing.

“The matter with the Mona is that it says only part of what it should say; and the part that it does say is no more a compleat measure of a woman, than a pint-measure approximates to a furlong, in any sense. He has seen only the female in the woman, and painted it in the ‘moment of gratification.’ It no more approximates to a normal or compleat human woman, than a male, portrayed in a moment of murderous fight, approximates to a normal or compleat human man. It is simply an abnormality—showing nothing beyond what is painted! As abnormal as if the artist had drawn, shall we say, one enlarged nostril of an ape-man, and handed that down to posterity as a compleat work of art. But it is wonderful handicraft; and does not forget the shaven eyebrows—”

“Why, Cap’n, you’ve painted your copy with eyebrows!” interrupted Miss Lanny.

“Yes,” I said. “I like the effect better. I’ve no use for those abnormal effects. Besides, it’s more decent!”

“Lord!” muttered Mr. Black, “you sure are cracked to-day, Cap’n.”

“The Mona,” I asserted once more, “is a twisted fragment of a woman—the produce of a twisted nature. As opposed to this inadequacy, the Greatest Art is complete, in the sense that it shows a Man or a Woman or a Moment in such a way that you see, with the great and particular insight of the artist who created the work, the thing you are shown, plus all the rest, which it makes or aids you to comprehend also. It portrays the Man, the Woman, or the Moment, in such a way that you realise, as you look, all the potentialities of the Man, the Woman, the Moment—The greatness and absurd weakness of the Man; the infinite tenderness and incredible meanness of the Woman; and the æons of Eternity that lie in wait behind the Moment.

“The Gioconda is, as I’ve said, a small Art and a very great Handicraft; that is, if it is anything at all! It’s abnormal—a fine handicraft and a cute brain used to give out to the world the twisted freakishness of the biassed soul, that could not see the woman as a complete whole! I understand, I guess, because I’m a bit twisted myself; it’s only in odd moments that I can fight down the twist in me, which makes me see every woman worse even than she is.

“There, you see! I can’t stop slamming at ’em; not even when I’m out to explain!”

I had to laugh at myself; and the tension eased out of the two of them. I had watched the softer look of capable feminine interest, supersede the incapable critical light in Miss Lanny’s eyes, as I had explained my own short-comings.

“Cap’n Charity’s sure running amock, every time a woman’s on the carpet!” said Mr. Black. “I guess, Miss Lanny, he’s like a number of men, he’s gone and got fond of a bad ’un, some time or other, and she’s scorched the youngness out of his soul. I know!”

He wagged his head at me.

“The only reason he’ll talk about the Mona, is because she’s a woman, bless her,” he said. “But, you know, Cap’n, you’ll sure have to quit going on the rampage like that, or it’ll be getting a habit. I once got a bit like that myself, and I guess I know! It was some fight I had to break from it.”

Miss Lanny reached out her hand for another cigarette, and then bent towards me, for a light.

“Was she a very bad woman, Captain Charity?” she said, under her breath. “She must have been!” She looked up into my eyes, through the smoke of her cigarette. “I’m sorry you’ve had that sort of experience of women,” she went on, still in an undertone, and still looking up into my eyes. “You ought sure to know a really nice woman; she would heal you up.”

“Why?” I asked. And then:—“Do you reckon you’re qualified to act the part of kind healer, dear lady?”

“I’d not mind trying,” she said, still in a low tone.

“Why,” I said, out loud, so that Mr. Black could hear, where he sat, over by the open doorway, “in your way, you’re just as bad! You say a thing like that, in a tone to make me think you’re a stainless Angel of Pity and Compassionate Womanhood; and at bottom you’re just another of them! You may be virtuous, I don’t say you aren’t. I believe you are; but you’re up to all the eternal meanness and everlasting deceit of the woman! You come here, posing as my friend; as the friend of Mr. Black, chummy and friendly with us, even to the point of losing your temper; and all the time you’re one of a gang of thieves aboard this ship, trying to diddle Mr. Black or me out of a picture you and your pals think is aboard!”

As I spoke, she had whitened slowly, until I thought she must surely faint. And she sat there, without saying a word, the smoke curling up from her cigarette, between her finger-tips, and her eyes looking at me dumbly, and big and dark through the thin smoke.

Mr. Black had stood up, and taken a quick step towards me, an incredulous anger in his face, as I had proceeded to formulate my charge against Miss Lanny; but he had checked, at my mention of the picture, and now he was staring in a stunned sort of way at the girl. We were both looking at her: but she never moved, and she never ceased to look at me in that speechless fashion.

“You allowed Mr. Black to make love to you last night, late, so that you could keep him up on the boat-deck, while your friends ransacked his suite. And now, as you realise that Mr. Black has not got the picture, you and your friends suppose that I must have it; and you have been directed to divert your valuable attentions to me. . . . If necessary, I don’t doubt that you meant to encourage a little love-making on my part, up on the boat-deck or elsewhere to-night, while an attempt was made on my cabin.

“But I assure you, dear Madam, that, where a lady is concerned, it has been my rule in life to avoid making one of a crowd. Also, as Captain of this vessel, I have facilities for keeping an eye on things which might surprise you and your friends.

“In proof of this, let me mention the names of your gang. . . . They are Messrs. Tillosson, Vrager, Bentley and finally Mr. Alross, your husband.

“I had the names of three of them before we had been at sea twenty-four hours; and now I think I may say I can put my finger on the whole lot of you.

“It is quite within my power to cause the arrest of you and your party; but there is no need.

“Neither Mr. Black nor I have any fear of what your friends can do; for let me tell you, the only Mona Lisa on view aboard this ship, is the copy which you see hanging up there on the bulkshead.

“Surely you did not suppose that if Mr. Black has or had a valuable picture to transmit to New York, he would advertise the fact to people of your sort, by travelling in the same vessel with it!

“That is almost all I have to say. You had better go now. Provided I receive from your party before to-night, the sum of one hundred and two pounds, fifteen shillings (which is the chief steward’s estimate of the damage done to Mr. Black’s suite last night), I shall allow affairs to pass; and your party may land free in New York.

“But, if the money is not delivered before six o’clock to-night, and if afterwards I have any further trouble with Messrs. Tillosson, Vrager, Bentley, Alross or yourself, I shall order the arrest of the entire party, and shall hand you all over to the police, when we enter New York.”

She had spoken not a single word; only once had she shown any sign of feeling, and that was when I announced my knowledge of her relationship to Mr. Alross, a tall, thin, blond man, of quiet manners and an unhappy skill at cards. Then the hand which held the cigarette had begun to shake a little; but, beyond this, never a sign of the shock, except the absolutely ghastly whiteness of her face. She certainly is a woman of nerve, and a good pluck too, I grant her.

Then she stood up suddenly, and what do you think she said?

“Cap’n, your cigarettes are as treacherous as you seem to imagine all women to be. See how it’s burnt me, while I was listening to your scolding. . . . I must run away now.”

And she turned and walked out of the chart-house, as calmly as if she had just been in for one of her usual chats.

“How’s that for ‘some’!” I said to Mr. Black. “Let me tell you, man, I respect her courage. She’s got the real female brand of pluck, and full strength at that. She’s stunned half dead at the present moment, yet she carried it off! But, Lord! She’s a conscienceless creature.”

Mr. Black was all questions; and he wanted to know why I’d tried to make them think the picture wasn’t aboard.

“I told them what I told ’em,” I said, “in the gentle hope that they may try to believe it, and so not consider it worth while to lay information with the Customs, which is a thing they’d do in a moment, as you mentioned, just to make things ugly for us, and to ease their own petty spite.”

“Why not arrest them?” he asked.

“Don’t want any unnecessary Mona Lisa talk in New York, do you?”

“My hat! No!” he said.

“And now they know I’m on to the crowd of them, they’re bound to walk a bit like Agag—eh?” I said. “No, I guess we’ll have no more trouble with ’em, this side of New York. And I bet they pay up within the hour.”

April 12th. Night.

I was wrong in one respect, and right in the other. The money was sent up to me by a steward, inside of half an hour; and I sent back a formal receipt.

But we have not seen the end of our troubles about the picture; for the gang approached Mr. Black quite openly, last night, and told him that if he’d let them come in on a quarter-share of the profits, they’d hold their tongues, and give him all the assistance they could. If he said no; then the New York Customs were going to get the tip, as soon as ever the search officers came aboard.

They told him quite plainly that they knew the picture was aboard; and that they were satisfied I was the one who had it hidden away. But, as they put it to him, it was one thing to hide contraband Jewels, like small packets of pearls, of which a hundred thousand dollars worth could go into one cigar; but that I could never hope to hide from the Customs, if they were put on the scent, a thing the size of the Mona, which being painted on a panel of wood, could not be rolled up small, like a picture on canvas, etc., etc.

They quite worked on poor old Mr. Black’s feelings. I guess he may be some expert at picture stealing, like any other dealer; but he’s out of it when it comes to real nerve—the kind that’s wanted for running stuff through the Customs!

However, I’ve got him pacified; and I guess he’ll manage now to keep a stiff upper lip. I pointed out to him that a twenty-thousand-ton ship is a biggish affair, and there are quite some hiding places aboard of her; and that I know them all.

I told him, in good plain American, that the picture would not be found.

“You needn’t fear they’ll start to break the ship up, looking for it!” I told him. “Ship-breaking is an expensive job. Don’t you get fretful. They’ll never find her, where I’ve put her!”

April 13th. Evening.

We docked this morning, and the gang did their best to do us down.

I reckon they’d guessed I wasn’t keen to arrest them; and they just put the Customs wise to the whole business, before they went ashore, that is, as far as they had it sized up.

Well, next thing I knew, the chief searcher was in my place, demanding Mona Lisas, as if they were stock articles; but I disabused him, to the best of my ability.

“No, Sir!” I told him. “The only Mona Lisa picture we’ve got on exhibition in this gallery, is the one there on the bulkshead; and I guess you can have that for fifty dollars, right now, and take it home. I reckon that’s a good painting now, don’t you, Mister, for an amateur?”

But I couldn’t enthuse him; not up to a sale! He was out for big things it seemed, by his talk; so I let him search. . . .

They’re still at it, and Mr. Black, last I saw of him, as he went ashore, was looking about as anxious as a man who’s bet someone else’s last dollar on a horse race!

April 14th.

Still searching.

April 15th.

Still searching.

April 16th. Afternoon.

Mr. Black sent a messenger down aboard this morning, to ask when ‘it’ was going to come.

I swore; for if that note had got into the wrong hands, the game would have been all up. I’ve warned him to keep away from the ship, and not to communicate with me, in any way. I’ll act as soon as it’s safe.

I decided to give him a heart-flutter, as a lesson to be patient.

“Look here,” I said to the hotel messenger; and I pulled down the cardboard on which was my painted version of the Mona. I rolled it up and handed it across to him. “Take this ashore,” I told him. “Go to a picture dealer’s, and tell them to frame it in a cheap frame, and send it up to A. Black, Esq., Room 86, Madison Square Hotel, with the compliments of Captain Charity. Tell them to wrap it up well; as if it were something valuable. Here’s a dollar for you, my son. Tell them he’ll pay! When you see Mr. Black, tell him that ‘it’—mind you say ‘it’—is coming! . . . It is! . . . When I say so! And not before!”

When he had gone, I sat down and roared at poor Black’s digestion, when he found what ‘it’ amounted to. I guess I’ll not be bothered with him now, until I’m ready to see him.

April 16th. Night.

I went ashore to see Mr. Black this evening. The Customs nabbed me en route, as usual, and I had a search that would have unmasked a blushing postage stamp. But they needn’t fear. I’m not carting Mona Lisas ashore in the thick of this hue and cry!

When I saw Mr. Black, it was for the first time since he left the ship, and he rushed at me.

“Where is it?” he asked. He looked positively ill.

“Dear man,” I said, “I don’t hawk the Mona around with me. Perhaps that’s what you want,” and I pointed to the caricature of the Mona, in its cheap frame, which stood on the top of a book-case.

“Quit it!” he snapped, almost ugly; but I only laughed at him.

Then I took out my hanky, and a bottle of solution. I lifted the picture down and put it on the table; I wet my hanky with the solution, and wiped the picture over gently but firmly.

The eyebrows came away; also one or two other parts where I had laid my fake paint on pretty thick.

“There’s the Mona, Mr. Black,” I said; “and I guess you owe me twenty-five thousand dollars.”

He looked; then he yelled; yes, he fairly yelled; first his delight, then his questions. I endured the first, and answered the second.

“You saw me paint a picture, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Sure!” he said.

“Well, I did that, as I told you, for a keepsake,” I said. “Afterwards, I took the Mona, soaked her off the board-backing you had glued her to, and remounted her on cardboard. Then I painted her a pair of eyebrows with fake paint, and touched up one or two other parts of the picture; and you and Miss Lanny spent most of the voyage criticising the immortal da Vinci. You see, I hung my own copy on the bulkshead first; but afterwards replaced it with the Gioconda.

“Miss Lanny called her even worse things than I did. She told me, if I remember right, that the painting was like a ginger-pop bottle compared with Venetian glass!

“I think I said he was not a big artist; and as for you, you looked as if you backed up what Miss Lanny said. Altogether, poor old da Vinci had a lot of hard things said against him. And all the time, his masterpiece, plus a pair of eyebrows, and some surface polish, was looking down at us from the bulkshead. I offered her to the Customs officer for fifty dollars; but I couldn’t get him to bid.

“Yes, Mr. Black, I’ve enjoyed myself this trip, That’s what I call doing the thing in style.

“Thanks, yes, twenty-five thousand dollars is the figure. I guess we’ve got to celebrate this!”