Crowdie stepped backward from her, as she laid her hat and veil upon her
knee. He slowly twisted a bit of crayon between his fingers, as though
to help his thoughts, and he looked at her critically.
“How are you going to paint me?” she asked, regretting that she had
spoken so very coldly a moment earlier.
“That’s one of those delightful questions that sitters always ask,”
answered the artist, smiling a little. “That’s precisely what I’m asking
myself--how in the world am I going to paint you?”
“Oh--that isn’t what I meant! I meant--full face or side face, you
know.”
“Oh, yes,--of course. I was only laughing at myself. You have no idea
what an extraordinary change taking off your hat makes, Miss Lauderdale.
It would be awfully rude to talk to a lady about her face under ordinary
circumstances. In detail, I mean. But you must forgive me, because it’s
my profession.”
He moved about with sudden steps, stopping and gazing at her each time
that he obtained a new point of view.
“How does my hat make such a difference?” asked Katharine. “What sort of
difference?”
“It changes your whole expression. It’s quite right that it should. When
you have it on, one only sees the face--the head from the eyes
downwards--that means the human being from the perceptions downwards.
When you take your hat off, I see you from the intelligence upwards.”
“That would be true of any one.”
“No doubt. But the intelligence preponderates in your case, which is
what makes the contrast so strong.”
“I didn’t know I was as intelligent as all that!” Katharine laughed a
little at what she took for a piece of rather gross flattery.
“No,” answered Crowdie, thoughtfully. “That is your peculiar charm. Do
you mind the light in your eyes? Just to try the effect? So? Does that
tire you?”
He had changed the arrangement of some of the shades so as to throw a
strong glare in her face. She looked up and the white light gleamed like
fire in her grey eyes.
“I couldn’t stand it long,” she said. “Is it necessary?”
“Oh, no. Nothing is necessary. I’ll try it another way. So.” He moved
the shades again.
“What a funny speech!” exclaimed Katharine. “To say that nothing is
necessary--”
“It’s a very true speech. Nothing is the same as Pure Being in some
philosophies, and Pure Being is the only condition which is really
absolutely necessary. Now, would you mind letting me see you in perfect
profile? I’m sorry to bother you, but it’s only at first. When we’ve
made up our minds--if you’d just turn your head towards the fireplace, a
little more--a shade more, please--that’s it--one moment so--”
He stood quite still, gazing at her side face as though trying to fix it
in his memory in order to compare it with other aspects.
“I want to paint you every way at once,” he said. “May I ask--what do
you think, yourself, is the best view of your face?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Katharine, with a little laugh. “What
does Hester think? As it’s to be for her, we might consult her.”
“But she doesn’t know it’s for her--she thinks it’s for you.”
“We might ask her all the same, and take her advice. Isn’t she at home?”
“No,” answered Crowdie, after a moment’s hesitation. “I think she’s gone
out shopping.”
Katharine was not naturally suspicious, but there was something in the
way Crowdie hesitated about the apparently insignificant answer which
struck
[Illustration: “‘What have you decided?’ she enquired.”--Vol. I., p.
203.]
her as odd. She had made the suggestion because his mere presence was so
absurdly irritating to her that she longed for Hester’s company as an
alleviation. But it was evident that Crowdie did not want his wife at
that moment. He wanted to be alone with Katharine.
“You might send and find out,” said the young girl, mercilessly.
“I’m pretty sure she’s gone out,” Crowdie replied, moving up an easel
upon which was set a large piece of grey pasteboard. “Even if she is in,
she always has things to do at this time.”
He looked steadily at Katharine’s face and then made a quick stroke on
the pasteboard, then looked again and then made another stroke.
“What have you decided?” she enquired.
“Just as you are now, with your head a little on one side and that clear
look in your eyes--no--you were looking straight at me, but not in full
face. Think of what you were thinking about just when you looked.”
Katharine smiled. The thought had not been flattering to him. But she
did as he asked and met his eyes every time he glanced at her. He worked
rapidly, with quick, sure strokes, using a bit of brown chalk. Then he
took a long, new, black lead pencil, with a very fine point, from the
breast-pocket of his jacket, and very carefully made a few marks with
it. Instead of putting it back when he used the bit of pastel again, he
held the pencil in his teeth. It was long and stuck out on each side of
his bright red lips. Oddly enough, Katharine thought it made him look
like a cat with black whiskers, and the straight black line forced his
mouth into a wide grin. She even fancied that to increase the
resemblance his eyes looked green when he gazed at her intently, and
that the pupils were not quite round, but were turning into upright
slits. She looked away for a moment and almost smiled. His legs were a
little in-kneed, as those of a cat look when she stands up to reach
after anything. There was something feline even in his little feet,
which were short with a very high instep, and he wore low shoes of dark
russet leather.
“There is a smile in your eyes, but not in your face,” said Crowdie,
taking the pencil from between his teeth. “I suppose it’s rude to ask
you what you are thinking about?”
“Not at all,” answered Katharine. “I was thinking how funny you looked
with that pencil in your mouth.”
“Oh!” Crowdie laughed carelessly and went on with his work.
Katharine noticed that when he next wished to dispose of the pencil he
put it into his pocket. As he had chosen a position in which she must
look directly at him, she could not help observing all his movements,
while her thoughts went back to her own interests and to Ralston. It was
much more pleasant to think of John than of Crowdie.
“I’m discouraged already,” said Crowdie, suddenly, after a long silence,
during which he had worked rapidly. “But it’s only a first attempt at a
sketch. I want a lot of them before I begin to paint. Should you like to
rest a little?”
“Yes.”
Katharine rose and came forward to see what he had been doing. She felt
at once a little touch of disappointment and annoyance, which showed
that she was not altogether deficient in vanity, though of a pardonable
sort, considering what she saw. To her unpractised eye the sketch
presented a few brown smudges, through which a thin pencil-line ran here
and there.
“You don’t see any resemblance to yourself, I suppose,” said Crowdie,
with some amusement.
“Frankly--I hope I’m better looking than that,” laughed Katharine.
“You are. Sometimes you’re divinely beautiful.” His voice grew
exquisitely caressing.
Katharine was not pleased.
“I didn’t ask for impossible compliments,” she said coolly.
“Now look,” answered Crowdie, taking no notice of the little rebuke, and
touching the smudge with his fingers. “You mustn’t look too close, you
know. You must try and get the effect--not what you see, but what I
see.”
Without glancing at her face he quickly touched the sketch at many
points with his thumb, with his finger, with his bit of crayon, with his
needle-pointed lead pencil. Katharine watched him intently.
“Shut your eyes a little, so as not to see the details too distinctly,”
he said, still working.
The face began to stand out. There was very little in the sketch, but
there was the beginning of the expression.
“I begin to see something,” said Katharine, with increasing interest.
“Yes--look!”
He glanced at her for a moment. Then, holding the long pencil almost by
the end and standing well back from the pasteboard, he drew a single
line--the outline of the part of the face and head furthest from the
eye, as it were. It was so masterly, so simple, so faultless, and yet so
striking in its effect, that Katharine held her breath while the point
moved, and uttered an exclamation when it stopped.
“You are a great artist!”
Crowdie smiled.
“I didn’t ask for impossible compliments,” he said, repeating her own
words and imitating her tone, as he stepped back from the easel and
looked at what he had done. “She’s not so bad-looking, is she?” He
fumbled in his pocket and found two or three bits of coloured pastels
and rubbed a little of each upon the pasteboard with his fingers. “More
life-like, now. How do you like that?”
“It’s wonderful!”
“Wonderfully like?”
“How can I tell? I mean that it’s a wonderful performance. It’s not for
me to judge of the likeness.”
“Isn’t it? In spite of proverbs, we’re the only good judges of
ourselves--outwardly or inwardly. Will you sit down again, if you are
rested? Do you know, I’m almost inclined to dab a little paint on the
thing--it’s a lucky hit--or else you’re a very easy subject, which I
don’t believe.”
“And yet you were so discouraged a moment ago.”
“That’s always my way. I don’t know about other artists, of course. It’s
only amateurs that tell each other their sensations about their daubs.
We don’t. But I’m always in a fit just before I’m going to succeed.”
Katharine said nothing as she went back to her seat, but the expression
he had just used chilled her suddenly. She had received a vivid
impression from the account Hester had given her of his recent attack,
and she had unconsciously associated the idea of a fit with his
ailment. Then she was amused at her own folly.
Crowdie looked at her keenly, then at his drawing, and then seemed to
contemplate a particular point at the top of her head. She was not
watching him, as she knew that he was not yet working again. There was
an odd look in his beautiful eyes which would not have pleased her, had
she seen it. He left the easel again and came towards her.
“Would you mind letting me arrange your hair a little?” he asked,
stopping beside her.
Katharine instinctively raised one hand to her head, and it unexpectedly
met his fingers, which were already about to touch her hair. The
sensation was so inexpressibly disagreeable to her that she started,
lowering her head as though to avoid him, and speaking sharply.
“Don’t!” she cried. “I can do it myself.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Crowdie, drawing back. “It’s the merest
trifle--but I don’t see how you can do it yourself. I didn’t know you
were so nervous, or I would have explained. Won’t you let me take the
end of my pencil and just lift your hair a little? It makes such a
difference in the outline.”
It struck Katharine that she was behaving very foolishly, and she sat up
straight in her chair.
“Of course,” she said, quite naturally. “Do it in any way you like.
I’ve a horror of being touched unexpectedly, that’s all. I suppose I
really am nervous.”
Which was not at all true in general, though as regards Crowdie it was
not half the truth.
“Thank you,” he answered, proceeding to move her hair, touching it very
delicately with his pointed white fingers. “It was stupid of me, but
most people don’t mind. There--if you only knew what a difference it
makes. Just a little bit more, if you’ll let me--on the other side. Now
let me look at you, please--yes--that’s just it.”
Katharine suffered intensely during those few moments. Something within
her, of which she had never been conscious before, but which was most
certainly a part of herself, seemed to rise up in fury, outraged and
insulted, against something in the man beside her, which filled her with
a vague terror and a positive disgust. While his soft and womanish
fingers touched her hair, she clasped her hands together till they hurt,
and repeated to herself with set lips that she was foolish and nervous
and unstrung. She could not help the sigh of relief which escaped her
lips when he had finished and went back to his easel. Perhaps he noticed
it. At all events he became intent on his work and said nothing for
fully five minutes.
During that time she looked at him and tried to solve the mystery of
her unaccountable sensations. She thought of what her mother had
said--that Crowdie was like a poisonous flower. He was so white and red
and soft, and the place was so still and warm, with its masses of rich
drapery that shut off every sound of life from without. And she thought
of what Miner had said--oddly enough, in exactly the same strain, that
he was like some strange tropical fruit--gone bad at the core. Fruit or
flower, or both, she thought. Either was apt enough.
The air was perfectly pure. It was only warm and still. Possibly there
was the slightest smell of turpentine, which is a clean smell and a
wholesome one. Whatever the perfumes might be which he occasionally
burned, they left no trace behind. And yet Katharine fancied they were
there--unholy, sweet, heavy, disquieting, offending that something which
in the young girl had never been offended before. The stillness seemed
too warm--the warmth too still--his face too white--his mouth was as
scarlet and as heavy as the blossom of the bright red calla lily. There
was something repulsively fascinating about it, as there is in a wound.
“You’re getting tired,” he said at last. “I’m not surprised. It must be
much harder to sit than to paint.”
“How did you know I was tired?” asked Katharine, moving from her
position, and looking at a piece of Persian embroidery on the opposite
wall.
“Your expression had changed when I spoke,” he said. “But it’s not at
all necessary to sit absolutely motionless as though you were being
photographed. It’s better to talk. The expression is like--” He stopped.
“Like what?” she asked, curious to hear a definition of what is said too
often to be undefinable.
“Well--I don’t know. Language isn’t my strong point, if I have any
strong point at all.”
“That’s an affectation, at all events!” laughed Katharine, becoming
herself again when not obliged to look at him fixedly.
“Is it? Well--affectation is a good word. Expression is not expression
when it’s an affected expression. It’s the tone of voice of the picture.
That sounds wild, but it means something. A speech in print hasn’t the
expression it has when it’s well spoken. A photograph is a speech in
print. It’s the truth done by machinery. It’s often striking at first
sight, but you get tired of it, because what’s there is all there--and
what is not there isn’t even suggested, though you know it exists.”
“Yes, I see,” said Katharine, who was interested in what he said, and
had momentarily forgotten his personality.
“That shows how awfully clever you are,” he answered with a silvery
little laugh. “I know it’s far from clear. There’s a passage somewhere
in one of Tolstoi’s novels--‘Peace and War,’ I think it is--about the
impossibility of expressing all one thinks. It ought to follow that the
more means of expression a man has, the nearer he should get to
expressing everything in him. But it doesn’t. There’s a fallacy
somewhere in the idea. Most things--ideas, anything you choose to call
them--are naturally expressible in a certain material--paint, wood,
fiddle-strings, bronze and all that. Come and look at yourself now. You
see I’ve restrained my mania for oils a few minutes. I’m trying to be
conscientious.”
“I wish you would go on talking about expression,” said Katharine,
rising and coming up to the easel. “It seems very much improved,” she
added as she saw the drawing. “How fast you work!”
“There’s no such thing as time when things go right,” replied Crowdie.
“Excuse me a moment. I’ll get something to paint with.”
He disappeared behind the curtain in the corner, to the out-built closet
in which he kept his colours and brushes, and Katharine was left alone.
She stood still for a few moments contemplating the growing likeness of
herself. There was as yet hardly any colour in the sketch, no more, in
fact, than he had rubbed on while she had watched him do it, when she
had rested the first time. It was not easy to see what he had done
since, and yet the whole effect was vastly improved. As she looked, the
work itself, the fine pencil-line, the smudges of brown and the
suggestions of colouring seemed all so slight as to be almost
nothing--and yet she felt that her expression was there. She thought of
her mother’s laborious and minutely accurate drawing, which never
reached any such effect as this, and she realized the almost impossible
gulf which lies between the artist and the amateur who has tried too
late to become one--in whom the evidence of talent is made
unrecognizable by an excess of conscientious but wholly misapplied
labour. The amateur who has never studied at all may sometimes dash off
a head with a few lines, which would be taken for the careless scrawling
of a clever professional. But the amateur who, too late, attempts to
perfect himself by sheer study and industry is almost certainly lost as
an artist--a fact which is commonly interpreted to mean that art itself
comes by inspiration, and that so-called genius needs no school; whereas
it only means that if we go to school at all we must go at the scholar’s
age and get the tools of expression, and learn to handle them, before we
have anything especial to express.
“Still looking at it?” asked Crowdie, coming out of his sanctum with a
large palette in his left hand, and a couple of brushes in his right.
“Now I’m going to begin by spoiling it all.”
There were four or five big, butter-like squeezings of different colours
on the smooth surface of the board. Crowdie stuck one of his brushes
through the thumb-hole of the palette, and with the other mixed what he
wanted, dabbing it into the paints and then daubing them all together.
Katharine sat down once more.
“I thought painters always used palette-knives,” she said, watching him.
“Oh--anything answers the purpose. I sometimes paint with my
fingers--but it’s awfully messy.”
“I should think so,” she laughed, taking her position again as he looked
at her.
“Yes--thank you,” he said. “If you won’t mind looking at me for a minute
or two, just at first. I want your eyes, please. After that you can look
anywhere you like.”
“Do you always paint the eyes first?” asked Katharine, idly, for the
sake of not relapsing into silence.
“Generally--especially if they’re looking straight out of the picture.
Then they’re the principal thing, you know. They are like little
holes--if you look steadily at them you can see the real person inside.
That’s the reason why a portrait that looks at you, if it’s like at all,
is so much more like than one that looks away.”
“How naturally you explain things!” exclaimed the young girl, becoming
interested at once.
“Things are so natural,” answered the painter. “Everything is natural.
That’s one of my brother-in-law’s maxims.”
“It sounds like a truism.”
“Everything that is true sounds like a truism--and is one. We know
everything that’s true, and it all sounds old because we do know it
all.”
“What an extraordinary way of putting it--to say that we know
everything! But we don’t, you know!”
“Oh, yes, we do--as far as we ever can know at all. I don’t mean little
peddling properties of petroleum and tricks with telephones--what they
call science, you know. I mean about big things that don’t
change--ideas.”
“Oh--about ideas. You mean right and wrong, and the future life and the
soul, I suppose.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. In a hundred thousand ages we shall
never get one inch further than we are now. A little bit more to the
right, please--but go on looking at me a moment longer, if you’re not
tired.”
“I’ve only just sat down again. But what you were saying--you meant to
add that we know nothing, and that it’s all a perfectly boundless
uncertainty.”
“Not at all. I think we know some things and shan’t lose them, and we
don’t know some others and never shall.”
“What kind of things, for instance?” asked Katharine. “In the first
place, there is a soul, and it is immortal.”
“Lucretius says that there is a soul, but that it isn’t immortal.
There’s something, anyhow--something I can’t paint. People who deny the
existence of the soul never tried to paint portraits, I believe.”
“You certainly have most original ideas.”
“Have I? But isn’t that true? I know it is. There’s something in every
face that I can’t paint--that the greatest painter that ever lived can’t
paint. And it’s not on account of the material, either. One can get just
as near to it in black and white as in colours,--just near enough to
suggest it,--and yet one can see it. I call it the ghost. I don’t know
whether there are ghosts or not, but people say they’ve seen them. They
are generally colourless, apparently, and don’t stay long. But did you
ever notice, in all those stories, that people always recognize the
ghost instantly if it’s that of a person they’ve known?”
“Yes. Now I think of it, that’s true,” said Katharine.
“Well, that’s why I call the recognizable something about the living
person his ghost. It’s what we can’t get. Now, another thing. If one is
told that the best portrait of some one whom one knows is a portrait of
some one else instead, one isn’t much surprised. No, really--I’ve tried
it, just to test the likeness. Most people say they are surprised, but
they’re not. They fall into the trap in a moment, and tell you that they
see that they were mistaken, but that it’s a strong resemblance. That
couldn’t happen with a real person. It happens easily with a
photograph--much more easily than with a picture. But with a real person
it’s quite different, even though he may have changed immensely since
you saw him--far beyond the difference between a good portrait and the
sitter, so far as details are concerned. But the person--you recognize
him at once. By what? By that something which we can’t catch in a
picture. I call it the ghost--it’s a mere fancy, because people used to
believe that a ghost was a visible soul.”
“How interesting!” exclaimed Katharine. “And it sounds true.”
“A thing must sound true to be interesting,” said Crowdie. “Excuse me a
moment. I want another colour.”
He dived into the curtained recess, and Katharine watched the
disagreeable undulation of his movements as he walked. She wondered why
she was interested as soon as he talked, and repelled as soon as he was
silent. Much of what he said was more or less paradoxical, she thought,
and not altogether unlike the stuff talked by cynical young men who pick
up startling phrases out of books, and change the subject when they are
asked to explain what they mean. But there was something more in what he
said, and there was the way of saying it, and there was the weight a
man’s sayings carry when he is a real master of one thing, no matter how
remote from the subject of which he is speaking. Crowdie came back
almost immediately with his paint.
“Your eyes are the colour of blue fox,” he remarked, dabbing on the
palette with his brush.
“Are they? They’re a grey of some sort, I believe. But you were talking
about the soul.”
“Yes, I know I was; but I’m glad I’ve done with it. I told you that
language wasn’t my strong point.”
“Yes--but you may be able to say lots of interesting things, besides
painting well.”
“Not compared with people who are good at talking. I’ve often been
struck by that.”
He stopped speaking, and made one or two very careful strokes,
concentrating his whole attention for the moment.
“Struck by what?” asked Katharine.
“By the enormous amount some men know as compared with what they can do.
I believe that’s what I meant to say. It wasn’t particularly worth
saying, after all. There--that’s better! Just one moment more, please.
I know I’m tiring you to death, but I’m so interested--”
Again he executed a very fine detail.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Now we can talk. Don’t you want to move about a
little? I don’t ask you to look at the thing--it’s a mere beginning of a
sketch--it isn’t the picture, of course.”
“But I want to see it,” said Katharine.
“Oh, of course. But you won’t like it so much now as you did at first.”
Katharine saw at once that he was right, and that the painting was not
in a stage to bear examination, but she looked at it, nevertheless, with
a vague idea of learning something about the art by observing its
processes. Crowdie stood at a little distance behind her, his palette
and brushes still in his hand. Indeed, there was no place but the floor
where he could have laid them down. She knew that he was there, and she
was certain that he was looking at her. The strange nervousness and
sense of repulsion came over her at once, but in her determination not
to yield to anything which seemed so foolish, she continued to
scrutinize the rough sketch on the easel. Crowdie, on his part, said
nothing, as though fearing lest the sound of his voice should disturb
the graceful lines of her figure as she stood there.
At last she moved and turned away, but not towards him. Suddenly, from
feeling that he was looking at her, she felt that she could not meet
his eyes. She knew just what they would be like, long, languishing and
womanish, with their sweeping lashes, and they attracted her, though she
did not wish to see them. She walked a few steps down the length of the
great room, and she was sure that those eyes were following her. An
intense and quite unaccustomed consciousness overcame her, though she
was never what is called shy.
She was positively certain that his eyes were fixed on the back of her
head, willing her to turn and look at him; but she would not. Then she
saw that she was reaching the end of the room, and that, unless she
stood there staring at the tapestries and embroideries, she must face
him. She felt the blood rush suddenly to her throat and just under her
ears, and she knew that she who rarely blushed at all was blushing
violently. She either did not know or she forgot that a blush is as
beautiful in most dark women as it is unbecoming and even painful to see
in fair ones. She was only conscious that she had never, in all her many
recollections, felt so utterly foolish, and angry with herself, and
disgusted with the light, as she did at that moment. Just as she reached
the wall, she heard his footstep, and supposing that he had changed his
position, she turned at once with a deep sense of relief.
Crowdie was standing before his easel again, studying what he had done,
as unconcernedly as though he had not noticed her odd behaviour.
“I feel flushed,” she said. “It must be very warm here.”
“Is it?” asked Crowdie. “I’ll open something. But if you’ve had enough
of it for the first day, I can leave it as it is till the next sitting.
Can you come to-morrow?”
“Yes. That is--no--I may have an engagement.” She laughed nervously as
she thought of it.
“The afternoon will do quite as well, if you prefer it. Any time before
three o’clock. The light is bad after that.”
“I think the day after to-morrow would be better, if you don’t mind. At
the same hour, if you like.”
“By all means. And thank you, for sitting so patiently. It’s not every
one who does. I suppose I mustn’t offer to help you with your hat.”
“Thanks, I can easily manage it,” answered Katharine, careful, however,
to speak in her ordinary tone of voice. “If you had a looking-glass
anywhere--” She looked about for one.
“There’s one in my paint room, if you don’t mind.”
He led the way to the curtain behind which he had disappeared in search
of his colours, and held it up. There was an open door into the little
room--which was larger than Katharine had expected--and a dressing-table
and mirror stood in the large bow-window that was built out over the
yard. Crowdie stood holding the curtain back while she tied her veil and
ran the long pin through her hat. It did not take more than a minute,
and she passed out again.
“That’s a beautiful arrangement,” she said. “A looking-glass would spoil
the studio.”
“Yes,” he answered, as he walked towards the door by her side. “You see
there isn’t an object but stuffs and cushions in the place, and a chair
for you--and my easels--all colour. I want nothing that has shape except
what is human, and I like that as perfect as possible.”
“Give my love to Hester,” said Katharine, as she went out. “Oh, don’t
come down; I know the way.”
He followed her, of course, and let her out himself. It was past twelve
o’clock, and she felt the sun on her shoulders as she turned to the
right up Lafayette Place, and she breathed the sparkling air with a
sense of wild delight. It was so fresh and pure, and somehow she felt as
though she had been in a contaminating atmosphere during the last three
quarters of an hour.