Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/165

 at fifty with bulldog jowls and sunken stony black eyes, became as good a subject as some Van Gogh guy in an Arles café.

To his dismay however he discovered likeness more elusive than fancy. After several weeks of sweating to satisfy his sitter he achieved a stiff but passable likeness in which the tenseness of his uncertainties gave the portrait the aspect of a semi-stylized fresco.

The painting caused considerable comment for and against. Lauter's opponents said the portrait was one hundred per cent correct because it brought out the mean cast in his eyes and mouth. His party members said on the contrary it showed the Councilman's sense of humor. But the most interesting reaction was that all the hubbub resulted in a demand for portraits by other prominent citizens who decided that anything which produced so much good advertising cheap was good business.

Persuading himself that he had hit naturally on a peculiarly American style of painting, Clem worked out a formula of portraiture. As his literal drawing improved, his portraiture was seen by him as a 20th century American avant-garde continuation of 15th century simplicity, an effect heightened by many coats of golden varnish, the style with which he would invade and conquer New York. And be with Lucy.

When Lucy had left he could think only of following, and became so irritable his mother was sure he had "summer complaint" and nagged about his elimination. For several weeks he had accused himself of being a child despoiler, simultaneously languishing in a lovesick state as the jilted one. The lovemaking didn't seem to mean anything to her but she had invited it. Had he been too rough? Or was she too young? One thing seemed certain. She wasn't pregnant, judging by her photograph. Paradoxically this displeased him.

Leaning negligently against a stage Ionic column, her eyes mocking him from the petal oval of her face, she was a remote Aphrodite, uncapturable as the perfection of the world's art which had caused his retreat home to Congress.

The little devil to let him suffer so!

The thought of writing to Clem never occurred to Lucy. There was nothing she now wanted to know from him.

When the train had pulled out and she could stop nodding and grinning like a jack-in-the box to Vida, Aunt Mabel, Semy and Clem Rh