The success of "The Masked Circe" in last year's Royal Academy was
incontestable, not only for the intrinsic beauty of the picture, but
from the fact that the personal charms of a handsome woman were
perpetuated without compromising her features. Woman's vanity often
outruns her natural diffidence, and the consciousness of her great
beauty stifles the conscience of modesty.
Visitors to the Academy know the picture. Circe, seated on a throne,
with her back to a great circular mirror, presents a half-draped figure
of marvellous delicate colouring and beauty of outline. One hand holds
aloft a golden wine-goblet, and the other a tapering wand, while upon
the tesselated pavement before the dais purple grapes and yellow roses
have been strewn. The black hair of the daughter of Perseis falls in
profusion about her bare shoulders, and strays over her breast, but her
features are hidden by a half-mask of black silk. The lips, with their
_arc de cupidon_, are slightly parted, disclosing an even row of pearly
teeth, and giving an expression of reckless _diablerie_.
Of the thousands who have gazed upon it in admiration, none knows the
somewhat remarkable story connected with it. As I have been closely
associated with it, from the day it was outlined in charcoal, until the
evening it was packed in a crate and sent for the inspection of the
hanging committee, it is perhaps _apropos_ that I should relate the
narrative.
The studio of my old friend, Dick Carruthers, the man who painted it, is
on Campden Hill, Kensington, within a few hundred yards of where I
reside, and in the centre of an aesthetic artistic colony. We have been
chums for years, for on many occasions he has displayed his talent as a
black and white artist in illustrating my articles and stories in
various magazines. He is a popular painter, and as handsome a man as
ever had a picture "on the line."
Three years ago, when the prologue of this secret drama was enacted, he
was in the habit of coming over when the light had faded, to smoke a
cigarette and discuss art and literature with me. I was glad of a chat
after a hard day's work at my writing-table, but his companionship had
one drawback. He drivelled over a girl he loved, and was forever
suggesting that I might take her as a character and drag her into the
novel upon which I was engaged.
One day he drew a cabinet photograph carefully from his pocket, and
placed it upon the blotting-pad before me.
The girl he loved! Bah! I knew her, though I did not tell him so. She
was a dark-haired, pink-and-white beauty that flitted through artistic
Bohemia like a butterfly in a hothouse. The sight of the pictured face
brought back to me the memory of days long past--of a closed chapter in
my life's history. I remembered the first time I saw Ethel Broughton,
fully five years before. She wore a soiled pink wrapper, her satin
slippers were trodden down at heel, and she had a bottle of champagne at
her elbow. At that time her lover, grandiloquent and impecunious Mr.
Harry Oranmore, a bad but handsome actor, had been untrue to her, and
she, a third-rate actress, who had an _ingenue_ part at a Strand
theatre, was reviling him. I had been taken to her house and introduced
by a mutual friend, but she scarcely heeded me. Probably she was
thinking of Oranmore, for she clasped her slim fingers round her
suffering throat, and offered up an occasional sob, following it with a
silent but protracted draught from her glass.
The result of this interview was but natural. Dazzled by her beauty, I
sympathised with her, endeavoured to cheer her, and concluded by falling
violently in love with her. At that time I was writing numbers of
dramatic criticisms, and I confess I used what weight my opinions
possessed for the purpose of her advancement. It is needless to refer
to the smooth and uninterrupted course of our love. Suffice it to say
that we were both Bohemians, and that within a year I had the
satisfaction of sitting before the footlights, watching her make her
debut as "leading lady" at a West End theatre, and a few days later of
observing her photograph exhibited in shop windows among those of other
stage beauties.
But, alas! those halcyon days were all too brief. Suddenly the scales
fell from my eyes. A scene occurred between us--and we parted.
To think that sin should lie for years in the blood, just as arsenic
does in a corpse!
When I discovered that Dick Carruthers was wasting the very honest and
ardent emotions of his heart at this feverish fairy's shrine, I resolved
to take him aside, and, without admitting that I knew her, give him a
verbal drubbing. I did so, but he bit his moustache fiercely, and
turned upon me.
"She is charming," he said, "and I love her."
"Ah! I know the type--"
"You know nothing, old fellow!" he exclaimed, flushing angrily. "But"--
he shrugged his shoulders--"the prejudices of the world count for--what?
Nothing at all. The curse of the Philistine is his Philistinism."
"Very well, Dick, old chap, forget my words," I said. "I approach your
idol in the properly reverential spirit."
"You shall see her before long." His gaze grew bright, soft, and vague,
as one who catches glimpses of the floating garments of supernatural
mysteries. "Ah, she is lovely! Only an artist can appreciate her
beauty."
I saw that words were of no avail. Like Ulysses, he was living in the
paradise of Aeaea, heedless of everything under the spell she had cast
about him.
One night, not long after I had expressed my sentiments to him regarding
his infatuation, I entered his studio, and found his goddess seated by
the fire, with her shapely feet upon the fender, sipping kummel from a
tiny glass, and holding a lighted cigarette between her dainty fingers.
Dick flung down his palette, and came forward to introduce me. Her dark
eyes met mine, and we tacitly agreed not to recognise each other,
therefore we bowed as perfect strangers. As I seated myself, and she
poured me out a liqueur, I caught her glancing furtively at me under her
long lashes. She had grown even handsomer than when last I had seen
her, and was the picture of the romantic _Bohemienne_. Her dress was of
black gauze, through which the milky whiteness of her figure seemed to
shine. Yet, as she turned her beautiful face towards me, I was struck
by the complete effect of physical and moral frailty that she presented.
She expressed pleasure at meeting me, remarking that she had read my
last novel, and had been keenly interested in it.