The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-05


 dustry and virtue, and he probably
 would have been famous by this time II
 he had never found out who it was
 bought that first picture. But he
 picked up a young flower girl in the
 Gilsey House lobby one night and in- sisted on posing her for fanciful head. He worked harder on that than on any
 thing he had ever done, and the result
 astonished everybody. Knoedler took
 it and had it sold for a round sum
 within two days.
 Then Pierce got a note to the effect
 that both his pictures had been bought
 by the same person. and that he had
 expressed the wish to have Churchill
 paint a portrait. A meeting was ar
 ranged and the wealthy connoisseur
 who had taken such strong fancy to
 Pierce's stuff proved to be old Colonel
 MacEagan, wealthy English Irish man who had made his money in India, had relatives in the peerage and was as proud and irascible as a turkey cock. Pierce used to call him "The Gobbler" in those old palny days when he was first at work upon Miss Hester s portrait, but I've heard him use worse |
 ter the final explosion. But that comes later in the story,
 Miss Hester was perfect type of the young English beauty, a bit languld 1 and dreamy of manner, but, according to Pierce, the very soul of tenderness, loyalty and imagination. There's no ,l doubt that she had an exaggerated mo- tion of the superiority of the colonel, Land she carried the English idea of filial piety and respect beyond the lim- it's usually set by self-reliant, grown-up 1 American girls. The sittings began at MacLagan's town house in Fifth ave nue, but as soon as Churchill got into his new studio the British goddess il- l luminated it almost daily with her dag zling presence. Pierce never told an body that he was in love with the girl l but his friends all knew it, and, try as /! he might to conceal the state of affairs he betrayed his secret in thousand ways peculiar to young men of red cor puscles and vigorous fancies.
 It was in october that Miss MacLa- gan became a pupil as well as a patron of Pierce's studio He had often sworn that he would never paint portraits or 1 teach, that both meant slavery, drud- gery, dishonor, and that he'd starve first. And yet-but this was one of the I signs! Miss MacLagan was getting on splendidly," Churchill told me late l the following January. and I didn't wonder for never was there more en- | thusiastic teacher nor yet more in- | spring pupil. His studio was filtered | all over with studies of her face, her | hand, shoulder, foot, eyes. He had | done her in water colors, and the great 1 life-size portrait itaelf was swiftly l growing into a masterpiece that must have made Pierce famous if-but that's going ahead too fast again.
 Churchill was sitting smoking with friend the night of the explosion. They had just drawn away the hangings from the portrait of Hester when Col onel MacLagan. "the gobbler," rushed into the room. He flung upon the floor bundle of cardboards and papers and purple with rage, his white head wag- ging like a puppet, he bawled:
 ''There, you d. audacious dauber take them! How dare you teach my daughter to make pictures of you, you impudent pauper, Don't you ever show your face at my house again, you lying, sneaking-'
 Stop right there, colonel" said Pierce picking up the bundle as he rose and plucking at the string. He was very pale and there was puzzled look behind the angry flash of his black eyes. Don't use such language to me, sir; I might"
 You might what, sir?" The choleric old soldier had half-raised his cane,
 q might kill you, colonel" said the artist, trying to smile.
 The Englishman stood fuming for an instant as Pierce unwrapped the bun de. A little twitching at the corners of his mouth, 8 choking sensation in his throat, a tear springing to his eyes, were the only signs that Pierce made when he saw the contents of the parcel. They were all sketches, drawings, little pen and ink or crayon portraits of him self in hundred poses, done from memory toiled at by tender hands, guided by the loving heart of the girl who thus yielded first to her father and then to her lover, the secret that she had never betrayed before.
 Well, that was the beginning of the end. Colonel MacLagan blurted out sonnet hing about sending in your blasted bill," but Pierce never sent any bill. They never asked for the portrait and Hester never appeared in his path way again.
 Oh. those English girls are miracu- lously flial!
 Pierce didn't work much after that, and what he did lacked spontaneity and motive. He had to give up his studio and he sold nothing. The MacLagans sent him a check for five hundred dol lars few weeks after he had begun to live on one meal and fifty drinks day, but he sent it back without word and never heard from them again Finally | he lost heart altogether and went away ito Mexico I believe, but no matter. His old friends in New York haven't | heard of him since. Probably he dis covered that fierce Nirvana that lies stinging sweet in the liquid amber of 1 Tequila; perhaps he has found the ! longer, less bitter peace of death. But | that doesn't matter, either, to any one | except him, because Miss Hester is 1 married-"well married" The story ought to end right here, | but 1t doesn't, because on the noble | walls of a fine home on Murray Hill | hangs life-size painting of Psyche 1 sitting, lost and alone, on the beetling cliff of A storm -clOuded island looking |