"To-day, remember. You promised that I should see it
to-day," Elfrida reminded Kendal, dropping instantly into
the pose they had jointly decided on. "I know I'm late,
but you will not punish me by another postponement, will
you?"
Kendal looked sternly at his watch. "A good twenty minutes,
mademoiselle," he returned aggrievedly. "It would be only
justice--poetic justice--to say no. But I think you may,
if we get on to-day."
He was already at work, turning from the texture of the
rounded throat which occupied him before she came in, to
the more serious problem of the nuances of expression in
the face. It was a whim of his, based partly upon a
cautiousness, of which he was hardly aware, that she
should not see the portrait in its earlier stages, and
she had made a great concession of this. As it grew before
him, out of his consciousness, under his hand, he became
more and more aware that he would prefer to postpone her
seeing it, for reasons which he would not pause to define.
Certainly they were not connected with any sense of having
failed to do justice to his subject. Kendal felt an
exulting mastery over it which was the most intoxicating
sensation his work had ever brought him. He had, as he
painted, a silent, brooding triumph in his manipulation,
in his control. He gave himself up to the delight of his
insight, the power of his reproduction, and to the intense
satisfaction of knowing that out of the two there grew
something of more than usually keen intrinsic interest
within the wide creed of his art. He worked with every
nerve tense upon his conception of what he saw, which so
excluded other considerations that now and then, in answer
to some word of hers that distracted him, he spoke to
her almost roughly. At which Elfrida, with a little smile
of forgiving comprehension, obediently kept silence.
She saw the artist in him dominant, and she exulted for
his sake. It was to her delicious to be the medium of
his inspiration, delicious and fit and sweetly acceptable.
And they had agreed upon a charming pose.
Presently Kendal lowered his brush impatiently. "Talk
to me a little," he said resentfully, ignoring his usual
preference that she should not talk because what she said
had always power to weaken the concentration of his
energy. "There is a little muteness about the lips. Am
I very unreasonable? But you don't know what a difficult
creature you are."
She threw up her chin in one of her bewitching ways and
laughed. "I wouldn't be too simple," she returned. She
looked at him with the light of her laughter still in
her eyes, and went on: "I know I must be difficult
--tremendously difficult; because I, whom you see as an
individual, am so many people. Phases of character have
an attraction for me--I wear one to-day and another
to-morrow. It is very flippant, but you see I am honest
about it. And it must make me difficult to paint, for it
can be only by accident that I am the same person twice."
Without answering Kendal made two or three rapid strokes.
"That's better," he said, as if to himself. "Go on talking,
please. What did you say?"
"It doesn't seem to matter much," she answered, with a
little pout. "I said 'Baa, baa, black sheep, have you
any wool?'"
"No, you didn't," returned Kendal as they laughed together.
"You said something about being like Cleopatra, a creature
of infinite variety, didn't you? About having a great
many disguises--" absently. "But--"
Kendal fell into the absorbed silence of his work again,
leaving the sentence unfinished. He looked up at her with
a long, close, almost intimate scrutiny, under which and
his careless words she blushed hotly.
"Then I hope you have chosen my most becoming disguise,"
she cried imperiously, jumping up. "Now, if you please,
I will see."
She stood beside the canvas with her eyes upon his face,
waiting for a sign from him. He, feeling, without knowing
definitely why, that a critical moment had come between
them, rose and stepped back a pace or two, involuntarily
pulling himself together to meet what she might say.
"Yes, you may look," he said, seeing that she would not
turn her head without his word; and waited.
Elfrida took three or four steps beyond the easel and
faced it. In the first instant of her gaze her face grew
radiant. "Ah," she said softly, "how unconscionably you
must hare flattered me! I can't be so pretty as that."
A look of relief shot across Kendal's face. "I'm glad
you like it," he said briefly. "It's a capital pose."
The first thing that could possibly be observed, about
the portrait was its almost dramatic loveliness. The head
was turned a little, and the eyes regarded something
distant, with a half wishful, half deprecating dreaminess.
The lips were plaintively courageous, and the line of
the lifted chin and throat helped the pathetic eyes and
annihilated the heaviness of the other features. It was
as if the face made an expressive effort to subdue a
vitality which might otherwise have been aggressive; but
while the full value of this effect of spiritual pose
was caught and rendered, Kendal had done his work in a
vibrant significant chord of color that strove for the
personal force beneath it and brought it out.
Elfrida dropped into the nearest chair, clasped her knees
in her hands, and bending forward, earnestly regarded
the canvas with a silence that presently became perceptible.
It seemed to Kendal at first, as he stood talking to her
of its technicalities, that she tested the worth of every
stroke; then he became aware that she was otherwise
occupied, and that she did not hear him. He paused and
stepped over to where, standing behind her chair, he
shared her point of view. Even the exaltation of his
success did not prevent his impatient wonder why his
relation with this girl must always be so uncomfortable.
Then as he stood in silence looking with her, it seemed
that he saw with her, and the thing that he had done
revealed itself to him for the first time fully,
convincingly, with no appeal. He looked at it with curious,
painful interest, but without remorse, even in the
knowledge that she saw it too, and suffered. He realized
exultingly that he had done better work than he thought
--he might repent later, but for the moment he could feel
nothing but that. As to the girl before him, she was
simply the source and the reason of it--he was particularly
glad he had happened to come across her.
He had echoed her talk of disguises, and his words embodied
the unconscious perception under which he worked. He had
selected a disguise, and, as she wished, a becoming one.
But he had not used it fairly, seriously. He had thrown
it over her face like a veil, if anything could be a veil
which rather revealed than hid, rather emphasized than
softened, the human secret of the face underneath. He
realized now that he had been guided by a broader
perception, by deeper instincts, in painting that. It
was the real Elfrida.
There was still a moment before she spoke. He wondered
vaguely how she would take it, and he was conscious of
an anxiety to get it over. At last she rose and faced
him, with one hand, that trembled, resting on the back
of the chair. Her face wore a look that was almost
profound, and there was an acknowledgment in it, a degree
of submission, which startled him.
"So that is how you have read me," she said, looking
again at the portrait "Oh, I do not find fault; I would
like to, but I dare not. I am not sure enough that you
are wrong--no, I am too sure that you are right. I am,
indeed, very much preoccupied with myself. I have always
been--I shall always be. Don't think I shall reform after
this moral shock as people do in books. I am what I am.
But I acknowledge that an egotist doesn't make an agreeable
picture, however charmingly you apologize for her. It is
a personality of stone, isn't it?--implacable, unchangeable.
I've often felt that."
Kendal was incapable of denying a word of what she said.
"If it is any comfort to you to know it," he ventured,
"hardly any one will see in it what you--and I--see."
"Yes," she said, with a smile, "that's true. I shan't
mind its going to the Academy."
She sat down again and looked fixedly at the picture,
her chin propped in her hand. "Don't you feel," she said,
looking up at him with a little childish gesture of
confidence, "as if you had stolen something from me?"
"Yes," Kendal declared honestly, "I do. I've taken
something you didn't intend me to have."
"Well, I give it you--it is yours quite freely and
ungrudgingly. Don't feel that way any more. You have a
right to your divination," she Added bravely.
"I would not withhold it if I could. Only--I hope you
find _something_ good in it. I think, myself, there is
something."
Her look was a direct interrogation, and Kendal flinched
before it. "Dear creature," he murmured, "you are very
true to yourself."
"And to you," she pleaded, "always to you too. Has there
ever been anything but the clearest honesty between us?
Ah, my friend, that is valuable--there are so few people
who inspire it."
She had risen again, and he found himself shame-facedly
holding her hand. His conscience roused itself and smote
him mightily. Had there always been this absolute
single-mindedness between them?
"You make it necessary for me to tell you," he said
slowly, "that there is one thing between us you do not
know. I saw you at Cheynemouth on the stage."
"I know you did," she smiled at him. "Janet Cardiff let
it out, by accident I suppose you came, like Mr. Cardiff,
because you--disapproved. Then why didn't you remonstrate
with me? I've often wondered." Elfrida spoke softly,
dreamily. Her happiness seemed very near. Her self-surrender
was so perfect and his understanding, as it always had
been, so sweet, that the illusion of the moment was
cruelly perfect She raised her eyes to Kendal's with an
abandonment of tenderness in them that quickened his
heart-beats, man that he was.
"Tell me, do _you_ want me to give it up--my book--last
night I finished it--my ambition?"
She was ready with her sacrifice or for the instant; she
believed herself to be, and it was not wholly without an
effort that he put it away. On the pretence of picking
up his palette knife he relinquished her hand.
"It is not a matter upon which I have permitted myself
a definite opinion," he said, more coldly than he intended,
"but for your own sake I should advise it."
For her own sake! The room seemed full of the echo of
his words. A blank look crossed the girl's face; she
turned instinctively away from him and picked up her hat.
She put it on and buttoned her gloves without the faintest
knowledge of what she was doing; her senses were wholly
occupied with the comprehension of the collapse that had
taken place within her. It was the single moment of her
life when she differed, in any important way, from the
girl Kendal had painted. Her self-consciousness was a
wreck, she no longer controlled it; it tossed at the
mercy of her emotion. Her face was very white and painfully
empty, her eyes wandered uncertainly around the room,
unwilling above all things to meet Kendal's again. She
had forgotten about the portrait.
"I will go, then," she said simply, without looking at
him, and this time, with a flash, Kendal comprehended
again. He held the door open for her mutely, with the
keenest pang his pleasant life had ever brought him, and
she passed out and down the dingy stairs.
On the first landing she paused and turned. "I will never
be different," she said aloud, as if he were still beside
her, "I will never be different!" She unbuttoned one of
her gloves and fingered the curious silver ring that
gleamed uncertainly on her hand in the shabby light of
the staircase. The alternative within it, the alternative
like a bit of brown sugar, offered itself very suggestively
at the moment. She looked around her at the dingy place
she stood in, and in imagination threw herself across
the lowest step. Even at that miserable moment she was
aware of the strong, the artistic, the effective thing
to do. "And when he came down he might tread on me," she
said to herself, with a little shudder. "I wish I had
the courage. But no--it might hurt, after all. I am a
coward, too."
She had an overwhelming realization of impotence in every
direction. It came upon her like a burden; under it she
grew sick and faint. At the door she stumbled, and she
was hardly sure of her steps to her cab, which was drawn
up by the curbstone, and in which she presently went
blindly home.
By ten o'clock that night she had herself, in a manner,
in hand again. Her eyes were still wide and bitter, and
the baffled, uncomprehending look had not quite gone out
of them, but a line or two of cynical acceptance had
drawn themselves round her lips. She had sat so long and
so quietly regarding the situation that she became
conscious of the physical discomfort of stiffened limbs.
She leaned back in her chair and put her feet on another,
and lighted a cigarette.
"No, Buddha," she said, as if to a confessor, "don't
think it of me. It was a lie, a pose to tempt him on. I
would never have given it up--never! It is more to me
--I am _almost_ sure--than he is. It is part of my soul,
Buddha, and my love for him--oh, I cannot tell!"
She threw the cigarette away from her and stared at the
smiling image with heavy eyes in silence. Then she went
on:
"But I always tell you everything, little bronze god,
and I won't keep back even this. There was a moment when
I would have let him take me in his arms and hold me
close, close to him. And I wish he had--I should have
had it to remember. Bah! why is my face hot! I might as
well be ashamed of wanting my dinner!"
Again she dropped into silence, and when next she spoke
her whole face had hardened.
"But no! He thinks that he has read me finally, that he
has done with me, that I no longer count! He will marry
some red-and-white cow of an Englishwoman who will accept
herself in the light of a reproductive agent and do her
duty by him accordingly. As I would not--no! Good heavens,
no! So perhaps it is as well, for I will go on loving
him, of course, and some day he will come back to me, in
his shackles, and together, whatever we do, we will make
no vulgar mess of it. In the meantime, Buddha, I will
smile, like you.
"And there is always this, which is the best of me. You
agree, don't you, that it is the best of me?" She fingered
the manuscript in her lap. "All my power, all my joy,
the quintessence of my life! I think I shall be angry if
it has a common success, if the people like it too well.
I only want recognition for it--recognition and
acknowledgment and admission. I want George Meredith to
ask to be introduced to me!" She made rather a pitiful
effort to smile. "And that, Buddha, is what will happen."
Mechanically she lighted another cigarette and turned
over her first rough pages--a copy had gone to
Rattray--looking for passages she had wrought most to
her satisfaction. They left her cold as she read them,
but she was not unaware that the reason of this lay
elsewhere; and when she went to bed she put the packet
under her pillow and slept a little better for the comfort
of it.