STORY COMPETITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 9 (Supplement)

STORY COMPETITION.

The first place this month it awarded to Mrs, E. Mary Gum6j, Heme Bay, ftW W story, ?,The " jHE FACE. !ii|/i&gr: ■ ! |f (By B. to* GtrRNEY..): ■Utt/ie wrong wiuiL commonW five, palapsr M 4 d W' vt,w- » 'and a Bold, fiery eye. + t, pme - but - Ancient a s chivalry, the theme, _du young Johnny Stephens was a master at Ms craft,a»d the picture and scintillated, with life. Ai :Lst you cdttlit wei-fte muscles of the mighty charger rippling fcatin of Ms shming cd4;; see hi > *<»g£j -quiver with each Breath; eg" "wind of his gay passing sway, % marie and-tail, and the scarlet folds Whis lavish housing. . Shafts of brilliant »« nli glinting lights from the M« e W **«£ If the°young knight% armour; and the wrapt, upturned face plumed helmet was radiant with a divme inner fire that held the eye and Caught •the Breatfi. ' . • ,- j^in<» Oh; a axaeterpfecfl, ancient and div n, ■'as chivalry;, created by a master hand, foui; the mastef stdod and scowled. Jimmy Waldorf, fat, tubby, middle•'feged; loured By years of criticism;, •embittered by a life time of vam seaich:W for the' picture-orthe artist that 'eviry critic dreams of discovering, •Jimmy, pounding, unnoticed up tne •■stairs; Banging, unnoticed into Johnny s 'etndio, gUmpsed over Johnny's shoulder the miracle of paint ??* Jg££ •fire, and gasped with genuine emotion •as he crept up Behind the unconscious •creator. ,- 4 _. , Johnny, suddenly aware of ilia P ie " •eeiice-, spared the little fat man a corner «of: his scowl, and an inarticulate grumoi-:-ing; .But -Jimmy, all the years of culti-

the whole of his attention to a minute j inspection of the picture he had, all his \ life, been seeking. '

H& inspected it from near and far; from every conceivable and inconceivable angle; and when at last he turned to the scowling fcnd muttering Johnny, his rotund and per&piring little countenance had acquired somethings of the rapt wonder that flamed in the pictured face. "You've done it!" gulped Jimmy, emotionally., "You—you've painted me tfctf picture IV© Been looking , for- all my life! It's—it's " He gulped again, and turned back to the picture, touching it here and there with reverent finger tips. "It's-—alive!" he breathed. "Alive —like you and me!"

Johnny, filling his Brush purposefully with white paint, snorted.

"When you've quite finished gushing!" he snarled. "I'll get on with it!" Jimmy, embittered critic- of forty years standing, eyed him distrustfully. Besides acquiring : &• knowledge of .pic-; tures, he had, during that period, acquired quite an insight into ' human nature. He knew a finished picture" whenjhe. saw one, and Johnny Stephens' "Chivalry" was finished down itf fh& last detail; and he did not lilee the looks Of John-ny, and Johnny's whit© paint He hovered in frofit of the picture defensively, much after the manner , of an asxiotts mother. "You'ire not to touch it, Johnny Stephens," he babbled nervously. "It's finished—tfnished!"

Johnny advanced, waving the brush determinedly. "Am I.painting this ——. picture, or. are you-?" he demanded, threateningly. "Get out of the way, you jadkass." He jabbed- dexterously and deposited a smear of. white paint across Jimmy Waldorf's empurpled visage,, and Jimmy Waldorf skipped aside like a. little fat lamßj. but when the Brus'h recklessly approached the beautiful, upturned face, he leaped at the- amazed Johnny, andtofe" th* Bi'ush- from- his finger©, Sctteaitt' ing, "No! no! no!" "You little, brute!" said Johnny with a quiet and disconcerting wrath, and he advanced with terrifying deliberateness on the fat and frightened Jimmy. Johnny Stephens was spare, and well below medium height, but he was wiry,. ; an d would undoubtedly hive recovered the Brush had not Jimmy, in a Blind panic, snapped it in two and flung it in the iire. ' • , The ensuing silence was broken Dy the entrance of a third party-a youngish man, tall, dark and good-looking in a, lean, tanned way—son of a country

create; and an earnest disciple of the wayward Johnny Stephens. His timely entry made little. Jimmy Waldorf blink with relief, and to Yeoland Glass he appealed, almost with team in hie voice. "He- Wanted to paint it out! Paint it out! Paint it out!" "And I will—after I've thrown you out!" snarled Johnny. Yeo intervened. "Paint -what out?" he demanded, approaching the picture reverently. "Paint what out?" "The face!" snapped Johnny, before Jimmy could edge in -with ihis word, "the fade! The silly, simpering, con* orthodox, saintly, smirking face, — it!" "It's —divine!" breathed Yeo. "Divine! I'll divine it!" shrieked Johnny, grabbing feverishly at another brush. "Get out of my way !" He charged furiously at Yeo, but Yeo stood to hie guns, dodging up and down in front of, and utterly baffling the enraged Johnny. "Bβ reasonable!" he begged. 'Leave it for now, and if you still hate it— say,, by the end of the week—then paint it out, if you must!" Johnny, baffled and worn with rage and overwork, paused. "If I've painted it once," he retorted, deadly, "I've painted it 50 times' I've had that canvas five years. The picture itself was easy; but the faee.6ludes me—eludes me!" Yeo, glancing over hte shoulder, surveyed the face with hushed awe, and Johnny went on passionately, "It's all wr.ong. It's- . That face is -the face of an" idealist—a—a visionary; and I want it to be the face of an ordinary man—the-man in the street—light with the - glory of sudden vision—an unexpected glimpse of an ideal—™" He paused, gestured hopelessly. "I can't do it! Every time I touch it I paint that face!" Contempt was in his look. Yeo nodded. "Curious," 'he agreed; and added, tentatively, "But isn't- the man in the street an idealist?"

Johnny negatived it vigorously. "He has ideate, But he's not an idealist. Throw the opportunity in his way, and he'll eoar to heights unknown; : but the- opportunity must come to him. He won't seek it,, and that's the difference between the face I want to paint and the lace I have painted. That thing is looking at stars; and the face I want to paint is the face of a man who has looked up and seen one euddealj—uja£X|>eefce&ljv u

Yeo said, "I see,"- and stepped aside; and while Jimmy hid his face and moaned, Johnny Stephens carefully painted out the upturned, wrapt face. '*» * *

Events moved swiftly after that;_for Johnny took it upon himself to right the wrongs Of a little dancing girl, who sometimes posed as his model.

She fainted in his studio one day, and the charlady, who assisted in bringing her rouiid, told him, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had no Jieed to worry. The girl wasn't any better than she Ought to be. Johnny, who was' 36 and had lived a Bohemian sort of life, was not so shocked as he ought to have been. But he did worry; for the next time the little model came, she had a ■ hunted look in her wide eyes. She told him, in' a desperate, hushed sorb of way, that alarmed Johnny Stephens, that she had been put off at the dance hall.

Johnny Stephens set to wort, in a muddle-headed sort of way, to right a wrong ancient tfs chivalry,- but the man —a great, bull-necked brute from the underworld —laughed in his face, and told him that anyone, whti interfered in his affairs, would get "a smack in the eye," So Johnny, in a burst of misguided quixotism, married her himself He never noticed the wonder and the Worship in her eyes, nor the light that shone in her sad little face every time she looked at him; but went about his work as usual, sublimely unaware that to her he represented a far more gallant figure than that of any knight in shining armo'tir.

Some two weeks later, Jimmy Waldorf, fresh from a heated interview With Johnny Stephens, passed the bull-necked lover, whom he did not know,- on the stairs, and a few minutes afterwards, Yeoland Glass went to Johnny's studio and found him lying, battered < beyond recognition, in front of his pictureChivalry.'

Jimmy, returning on some pretext or another, heard his shout of horror, and went pounding up the- stairs, his heart in his throat and a nameless fear clawing ruthlessly at his breast. There was blood everywhere, spattered all over the hangings and the floor, over the table- cluttered with Johnny's paraphernalia, in his beloved paint box, and a great splodge all across the great canvas. "He was working on that when I was here ten minutes ago," gasped Jimmy, in a hushed voice. "He had a new face on it —just sketched in. A commonplace sort of face, looking downj and — a sort of surprised—"

Hβ took a rag and reverently wiped away the great splash of blood that obscured <tlhe face of ChTvalry, and then he caught his breath on a smothered cry. "Yeo!" Yeoland Glass, kneeling beside tho dead master, looked up into the painted face that gazed so gravely down. It was an ordinary face —a common-place face; but it was the face of one who has come, unawares, on something of surpassing beauty, and it wag the face of Johnny Stephens. (The End.)