Miss Snell began to apologize for interrupting the work almost before
she came in. The Painter, who grudgingly opened one half of the
folding-door wide enough to let her pass into the studio, was annoyed to
observe that, in spite of her apologies, she was loosening the furs
about her throat as if in preparation for a lengthy visit. Then for the
first time, behind her tall, black-draped figure, he caught sight of her
companion, who was shorter, and whose draperies were of a less ample
character--for Miss Snell, being tall and thin, resorted to voluminous
garments to conceal her slimness of person. A large plumed hat
accentuated, her sallowness and sharpness of feature, and her dark eyes,
set under heavy black brows, intensified her look of unhealthy pallor.
She was perfectly at her ease, and introduced her companion, Miss
Price, in a few words, explaining that the latter had come over for a
year or so to study, and was anxious to have the best advice about it.
"So I brought her straight here," Miss Snell announced, triumphantly.
Miss Price seemed a trifle overcome by the novelty of her surroundings,
but managed to say, in a high nasal voice, that she had already begun to
work at Julian's, but did not find it altogether satisfactory.
The Painter, looking at her indifferently, was roused to a sudden
interest by her face. Her features and complexion were certainly
pleasing, but the untidy mass of straggling hair topped by a battered
straw sailor hat diverted the attention of a casual observer from her
really unusual delicacy of feature and coloring. She was tall and slim,
although now she was dwarfed by Miss Snell's gaunt figure. A worn dress
and shabby green cape fastened at the neck by a button hanging
precariously on its last thread completed her very unsuitable winter
attire. Outside the great studio window a cold December twilight was
settling down over roofs covered with snow and icicles, and the Painter
shivered involuntarily as he noticed the insufficiency of her wraps for
such weather, and got up to stir the fire which glowed in the big stove.
In one corner his model waited patiently for the guests to depart, and
he now dismissed her for the day, eliciting faint protestations from
Miss Snell, who, however, was settling down comfortably in an easy-chair
by the fire, with an evident intention of staying indefinitely. Miss
Price's large, somewhat expressionless blue eyes were taking in the
whole studio, and the Painter could feel that she was distinctly
disappointed by her inspection. She had evidently anticipated something
much grander, and this bare room was not the ideal place she had fancied
the studio of a world-renowned painter would prove to be.
Bare painted walls, a peaked roof with a window reaching far overhead, a
polished floor, one or two chairs and a divan, the few necessary
implements of his profession, and many canvases faced to the wall, but
little or no bric-à-brac or delightful studio properties. The Painter
was also conscious that her inspection included him personally, and was
painfully aware that she was regarding him with the same feeling of
disappointment; she quite evidently thought him too young and
insignificant looking for a person of his reputation.
Miss Snell had not given him time to reply to Miss Price's remark about
her study at Julian's, but prattled on about her own work and the
unsurmountable difficulties that lay in the way of a woman's successful
career as a painter.
"I have been studying for years under ----," said Miss Snell, "and
really I have no time to lose. It will end by my simply going to him and
saying, quite frankly: 'Now, Monsieur ----, I have been in your atelier
for four years, and I can't afford to waste another minute. There are no
two ways about it. You positively must tell me how to do it. You really
must not keep me waiting any longer. I insist upon it.' How discouraging
it is!" she sighed. "It seems quite impossible to find any one who is
willing to give the necessary information."
Miss Price's wandering eyes had at last found a resting-place on a
large, half-finished canvas standing on an easel. Something attractive
in the pose and turn of her head made the Painter watch her as he lent a
feeble attention to Miss Snell's conversation.
Miss Price's lips were very red, and the clear freshness of extreme
youth bloomed in her cheeks; she was certainly charming. During one of
Miss Snell's rare pauses she spoke, and her thin high voice came with
rather a shock from between her full lips.
"May I look?" was her unnecessary question, for her eyes had never left
the canvas on the easel since they had first rested there. She rose as
she spoke, and went over to the painting.
The Painter pulled himself out of the cushions on the divan where he had
been lounging, and went over to push the big canvas into a better light.
Then he stood, while the girl gazed at it, saying nothing, and
apparently oblivious to everything but the work before him.
He was roused, not by Miss Price, who remained admiringly silent, but by
the enraptured Miss Snell, who had also risen, gathering furs and wraps
about her, and was now ecstatically voluble in her admiration. English
being insufficient for the occasion, she had to resort to French for the
expression of her enthusiasm.
The Painter said nothing, but watched the younger girl, who turned away
at last with a sigh of approbation. He was standing under the window,
leaning against a table littered with paints and brushes.
"Stay where you are!" exclaimed Miss Snell, excitedly. "Is he not
charming, Cora, in that half-light? You must let me paint you just so
some day--you must indeed." She clutched Miss Price and turned her
forcibly in his direction.
The Painter, confused by this unexpected onslaught, moved hastily away
and busied himself with a pretence of clearing the table.
"I--I should be delighted," he stammered, in his embarrassment, and he
caught Miss Price's eye, in which he fancied a smile was lurking.
"But you have not given Miss Price a word of advice about her work,"
said Miss Snell, as she fastened her wraps preparatory to departure. She
seemed quite oblivious to the fact that she had monopolized all the
conversation herself.
He turned politely to Miss Price, who murmured something about Julian's
being so badly ventilated, but gave him no clew as to her particular
branch of the profession. Miss Snell, however, supplied all details. It
seemed Miss Price was sharing Miss Snell's studio, having been sent over
by the Lynxville, Massachusetts, Sumner Prize Fund, for which she had
successfully competed, and which provided a meagre allowance for two
years' study abroad.
"She wants to paint heads," said Miss Snell; and in reply to a remark
about the great amount of study required to accomplish this desire,
surprised him by saying, "Oh, she only wants to paint them well enough
to teach, not well enough to sell."
"I'll drop in and see your work some afternoon," promised the Painter,
warmed by their evident intention of leaving; and he escorted them to
the landing, warning them against the dangerous steepness of his
stairway, which wound down in almost murky darkness.
Ten minutes later the centre panel of his door displayed a card bearing
these words: "At home only after six o'clock."
"I wonder I never thought of doing this before," he reflected, as he lit
a cigarette and strolled off to a neighboring restaurant; "I am always
out by that hour."
* * * * *
Several weeks elapsed before he saw Miss Price again, for he promptly
forgot his promise to visit her studio and inspect her work. His own
work was very absorbing just then, and the short winter days all too
brief for its accomplishment. He was struggling to complete the large
canvas that Miss Snell had so volubly admired during her visit, and it
really seemed to be progressing. But the weather changed suddenly from
frost to thaw, and he woke one morning to find little runnels of dirty
water coursing down his window and dismally dripping into the muddy
street below. It made him feel blue, and his big picture, which had
seemed so promising the day before, looked hopelessly bad in this new
mood. So he determined to take a day off, and, after his coffee,
strolled out into the Luxembourg Gardens. There the statues were green
with mouldy dampness, and the paths had somewhat the consistency of very
thin oatmeal porridge. Suddenly the sun came out brightly, and he found
a partially dry bench, where he sat down to brood upon the utter
worthlessness of things in general and the Luxembourg statuary in
particular. The sunny façade of the palace glittered in the brightness.
One of his own pictures hung in its gallery. "It is bad," he said to
himself, "hopelessly bad," and he gloomily felt the strongest proof of
its worthlessness was its popularity with the public. He would probably
go on thinking this until the weather or his mood changed.
As his eyes strayed from the palace, he glanced up a long vista between
leafless trees and muddy grass-plats. A familiar figure in a battered
straw hat and scanty green cloak was advancing in his direction; the
wind, blowing back the fringe of disfiguring short hair, disclosed a
pure unbroken line of delicate profile, strangely simple, and recalling
the profiles in Botticelli's lovely fresco in the Louvre. Miss Price,
for it was she, carried a painting-box, and under one arm a stretcher
that gave her infinite trouble whenever the wind caught it. As she
passed, the Painter half started up to join her, but she gave him such a
cold nod that his intention was nipped in the bud. He felt snubbed, and
sank back on his bench, taking a malicious pleasure in observing that,
womanlike, she ploughed through all the deepest puddles in her path,
making great splashes about the hem of her skirt, that fluttered out
behind her as she walked, for her hands were filled, and she had no
means of holding it up.
The Painter resented his snubbing. He was used to the most humble
deference from the art students of the quarter, who hung upon his
slightest word, and were grateful for every stray crumb of his
attention.
He now lost what little interest he had previously taken in his
surroundings. Just before him in a large open space reserved for the
boys to play handball was a broken sheet of glistening water reflecting
the blue sky, the trees rattled their branches about in the wind, and
now and then a tardy leaf fluttered down from where it had clung
desperately late into the winter. The gardens were almost deserted. It
was too early for the throng of beribboned nurses and howling infants
who usually haunt its benches. One or two pedestrians hurried across the
garden, evidently taking the route to make shortcuts to their
destinations, and not for the pleasure of lounging among its blustery
attractions.
After idling an hour on his bench, he went to breakfast with a friend
who chanced to live conveniently near, and where he made himself very
disagreeable by commenting unfavorably on the work in progress and
painting in particular. Then he brushed himself up and started off for
the rue Notre Dame des Champs, where Miss Snell's studio was situated.
It was one of a number huddled together in an old and rather dilapidated
building, and the porter at the entrance gave him minute directions as
to its exact location, but after stumbling up three flights of dark
stairs he had no trouble in finding it, for Miss Snell's name, preceded
by a number of initials, shone out from a door directly in front of him
as he reached the landing.
He knocked, and for several minutes there was a wild scurrying within
and a rattle and clash of crockery. Then Miss Snell appeared at the
door, and exclaimed, in delighted surprise:
"How _do_ you do? We had quite given you up."
She looked taller and longer than ever swathed in a blue painting-apron
and grasping her palette and brushes. She had to apologize for not
shaking hands with him, because her fingers were covered with paint that
had been hastily but ineffectually wiped off on a rag before she
answered his knock.
He murmured something about not coming before because of his work, but
she would not let him finish, saying, intensely,
"We know how precious every minute is to you."
Miss Price came reluctantly forward and shook hands; she had evidently
not been painting, for her fingers were quite clean. Short ragged hair
once more fell over her forehead, and the Painter felt a shock of
disappointment, and wondered why he had thought her so fine when she
passed him in the morning.
"I was just going to paint Cora," announced Miss Snell. "She is taking a
holiday this afternoon, and we were hunting for a pose when you
knocked."
"Don't let me interrupt you," he said, smiling. "Perhaps I can help."
Miss Snell was in a flutter at once, and protested that she should be
almost afraid to work while he was there.
"In that case I shall leave at once," he said; but his chair was
comfortable, and he made no motion to go.
"What a queer little place it is!" he reflected, as he looked about.
"All sorts of odds and ends stuck about helter-skelter, and the
house-keeping things trying to masquerade as bric-à-brac."
Cora Price looked decidedly sulky when she realized that the Painter
intended to stay, and seeing this he became rooted in his intention. He
wondered why she took this particular attitude towards him, and
concluded she was piqued because of his delay in calling. She acted like
a spoiled child, and caused Miss Snell, who was overcome by his
condescension in staying, no little embarrassment.
It was quite evident from her behavior that Miss Price was impressed
with her own importance as the beneficiary of the Lynxville Prize Fund,
and would require the greatest deference from her acquaintances in
consequence.
"Here, Cora, try this," said Miss Snell, planting a small three-legged
stool on a rickety model-stand.
"Might I make a suggestion?" said the Painter, coolly. "I should push
back all the hair on her forehead; it gives a finer line."
"Why, of course!" said Miss Snell. "I wonder we never thought of that
before. Cora dear, you are much better with your hair back."
Cora said nothing, but the Botticelli profile glowered ominously against
a background of sage-green which Miss Snell was elaborately draping
behind it.
"If I might advise again," the Painter said, "I would take that down and
paint her quite simply against the gray wall."
Miss Snell was quite willing to adopt every suggestion. She produced her
materials and a fresh canvas, and began making a careful drawing, which,
as it progressed, filled the Painter's soul with awe.
"I feel awfully like trying it myself," he said, after watching her for
a few moments. "Can I have a bit of canvas?"
"Take anything," exclaimed Miss Snell; and he helped himself, refusing
the easel which she wanted to force upon him, and propping his little
stretcher up on a chair. Miss Snell stopped her drawing to watch him
commence. It made her rather nervous to see how much paint he squeezed
out on the palette; it seemed to her a reckless prodigality.
He eyed her assortment of brushes dubiously, selecting three from the
draggled limp collection.
Cora was certainly a fine subject, in spite of her sulkiness, and he
grew absorbed in his work, and painted away, with Miss Snell at his
elbow making little staccato remarks of admiration as the sketch
progressed. Suddenly he jumped up, realizing how long he had kept the
young model.
"Dear me," he cried, "you must be exhausted!" and he ran to help her
down from the model-stand.
She did look tired, and Miss Snell suggested tea, which he stayed to
share. Cora became less and less sulky, and when at last he remembered
that he had come to see her work, she produced it with less
unwillingness than he had expected.
He was rather floored by her productions. As far as he could judge from
what she showed him, she was hopelessly without talent, and he could
only wonder which of these remarkably bad studies had won for her the
Lynxville Sumner Prize Fund.
He tried to give her some advice, and was thanked when she put her
things away.
Then they all looked at his sketch, which Miss Snell pronounced "too
charming," and Cora plainly thought did not do her justice.
"I wish you would pose a few times for me, Miss Price," he said, before
leaving. "I should like very much to paint you, and it would be doing me
a great favor."
The girl did not respond to this request with any eagerness. He fancied
he could see she was feeling huffy again at his meagre praise of her
work.
Miss Snell, however, did not allow her to answer, but rapturously
promised that Cora should sit as often as he liked, and paid no
attention to the girl's protest that she had no time to spare.
"This has been simply in-spiring!" said Miss Snell, as she bade him
good-bye, and he left very enthusiastic about Cora's profile, and with
his hand covered with paint from Miss Snell's door-knob.
* * * * *
In spite of Miss Snell's assurance that Cora would pose, the Painter was
convinced that she would not, if a suitable excuse could be invented.
Feeling this, he wrote her a most civil note about it. The answer came
promptly, and did not surprise him.
She was very sorry indeed, but she had no leisure hours at her disposal,
and although she felt honored, she really could not do it. This was
written on flimsy paper, in a big unformed handwriting, and it caused
him to betake himself once more to Miss Snell's studio, where he found
her alone--Cora was at Julian's.
She promised to beg Cora to pose, and accepted an invitation for them to
breakfast with him in his studio on the following Sunday morning.
He carefully explained to her that his whole winter's work depended upon
Cora's posing for him. He half meant it, having been seized with the
notion that her type was what he needed to realize a cherished ideal,
and he told this to Miss Snell, and enlarged upon it until he left her
rooted in the conviction that he was hopelessly in love with Cora--a
fact she imparted to that young woman on her return from Julian's.
Cora listened very placidly, and expressed no astonishment. He was not
the first by any means; other people had been in love with her in
Lynxville, Massachusetts, and she confided the details of several of
these love-affairs to Miss Snell's sympathetic ears during the evening.
Meanwhile, the Painter did nothing, and a fresh canvas stood on his
easel when the girls arrived for breakfast on Sunday morning. The big
unfinished painting was turned to the wall; he had lost all interest in
it.
"When I fancy doing a thing I am good for nothing else," he explained to
Cora, after she had promised him a few sittings. "So you are really
saving me from idleness by posing."
Cora laughed, and was silent. The Painter blessed her for not being
talkative; her nasal voice irritated him, although her beautiful
features were a constant delight.
Miss Snell had succeeded in permanently eliminating the disfiguring
bang, and her charming profile was left unmarred.
"I want to paint you just as you are," he said, and noticing that she
looked rather disdainfully at her shabby black cashmere, added, "The
black of your dress could not be better."
"We thought," said Miss Snell, deprecatingly, "that you might like a
costume. We could easily arrange one."
"Not in the least necessary," said the Painter. "I have set my heart on
painting her just as she is."
The girls were disappointed in his want of taste. They had had visions
of a creation in which two Liberty scarfs and a velveteen table cover
were combined in a felicitous harmony of color.
"When can I have the first sitting?" he asked.
"Tuesday, I think," said Miss Snell, reflectively.
"Heavens!" thought the Painter. "Is Miss Snell coming with her?" And the
possibility kept him in a state of nervousness until Tuesday afternoon,
when Cora appeared, accompanied by the inevitable Miss Snell.
It turned out, however, that the latter could not stay. She would call
for Cora later; just now her afternoons were occupied. She was doing a
pastel portrait in the Champs Elysées quarter, so she reluctantly left,
to the Painter's great relief.
He did not make himself very agreeable during the sittings which
followed. He was apt to get absorbed in his work and to forget to say
anything. Then Miss Snell would appear to fetch her friend, and he would
apologize for being so dull, and Cora would remark that she enjoyed
sitting quietly, it rested her after the noise and confusion at
Julian's.
"If she talked much I could not paint her, her voice is so irritating,"
he confided to a friend who was curious and asked all sorts of questions
about his new sitter.
The work went well but slowly, for Cora sat only twice a week. She felt
obliged to devote the rest of her time to study, as she was living on
the prize fund, and she even had qualms of conscience about the two
afternoons she gave up to the sittings.
During all this time Miss Snell continued to weave chapters of romance
about Cora and the Painter, and the girls talked things over after each
sitting when they were alone together.
Spring had appeared very early in the year, and the public gardens and
boulevards were richly green. Chestnut-trees blossomed and gaudy
flower-beds bloomed in every square. The Salons opened, and were
thronged with an enthusiastic public, although the papers as usual
denounced them as being the poorest exhibitions ever given.
The Painter had sent nothing, being completely absorbed in finishing
Cora's portrait, to the utter exclusion of everything else.
Cora did the exhibitions faithfully. It was one of the duties she owed
to the Lynxville fund, and which she diligently carried out. The Painter
bothered and confused her by many things; he persistently admired all
the pictures she liked least, and praised all those she did not care
for. She turned pale with suppressed indignation when he differed from
her opinion, and resented his sweeping contempt of her criticisms.
On the strength of a remittance from the prize fund, and in honor of the
season, she discarded the sailor hat for a vivid ready-made creation
smacking strongly of the Bon Marché. The weather was warm, and Cora wore
mitts, which the Painter thought unpardonable in a city where gloves are
particularly cheap. The mitts were probably fashionable in Lynxville,
Massachusetts. Miss Snell, who rustled about in stiff black silk and
bugles, seemed quite oblivious to her friend's want of taste; she was
all excitement, for her pastel portrait--by some hideous mistake--had
been accepted and hung in one of the exhibitions, and the girls went
together on varnishing-day to see it. There they met the Painter
prowling aimlessly about, and Miss Snell was delighted to note his
devotion to Cora. It was a strong proof of his attachment to her, she
thought. The truth was he felt obliged to be civil after her kindness in
posing. He wished he could repay her in some fashion, but since his
first visit to Miss Snell's she had never offered to show him her work
again, or asked his advice in any way, and he felt a delicacy about
offering his services as a teacher when she gave him so little
encouragement. He fancied, too, that she did not take much interest in
his work, and knew she did not appreciate his portrait of her, which was
by far the best thing he had ever done.
Her lack of judgment vexed him, for he knew the value of his work, and
every day his fellow-painters trooped in to see it, and were loud in
their praises. It would certainly be the _clou_ of any exhibition in
which it might be placed.
During one sitting Cora ventured to remark that she thought it a pity he
did not intend to make the portrait more complete, and suggested the
addition of various accessories which in her opinion would very much
improve it.
"It's by far the most complete thing I have ever done," he said. "I
sha'n't touch it again," and he flung down his brushes in a fit of
temper.
She looked at him contemptuously, and putting on her hat, left the
studio without another word; and for several weeks he did not see her
again.
Then he met her in the street, and begged her to come and pose for a
head in his big picture, which he had taken up once more. His apologies
were so abject that she consented, but she ceased to be punctual, and he
never could feel quite sure that she would keep her appointments.
Sometimes he would wait a whole afternoon in vain, and one day when she
failed to appear at the promised hour he shut up his office and strolled
down to the Seine. There he caught sight of her with a gay party who
were about to embark on one of the little steamers that ply up and down
the river.
He shook his fist at her from the quay where he stood, and watched her
and her party step into the boat from the pier.
"She thinks little enough of the Lynxville Prize Fund when she wants an
outing," he said to himself, scornfully.
After fretting a little over his wasted afternoon, he forgot all about
her, and set to work with other models. Then he left Paris for the
summer.
* * * * *
A few hours after his return, early in the fall, there came a knock at
his door. He had been admiring Cora's portrait, which to his fresh eye
looked exceptionally good.
Miss Snell, with eyes red and tearful, stood on his door-mat when he
answered the tap.
"Poor dear Cora," she said, had received a notice from the Lynxville
committee that they did not consider her work sufficiently promising to
continue the fund another year.
"She will have to go home," sobbed Miss Snell, but said: "I am forced to
admit that Cora has wasted a good deal of time this summer. She is so
young, and needs a little distraction, now and then," and she appealed
to the Painter for confirmation of this undoubted fact.
He was absent-minded, but assented to all she said. In his heart he
thought it a fortunate thing that the prize fund should be withdrawn.
One female art student the less: he grew pleased with the idea. Cora had
ceased to interest him as an individual, and he considered her only as
one of an obnoxious class.
"I thought you ought to be the first to know about it," said Miss Snell,
confidentially, "because you might have some plan for keeping her over
here." Miss Snell looked unutterable things that she did not dare to put
into words.
She made the Painter feel uncomfortable, she looked so knowing, and he
became loud in his advice to send Cora home at once.
"Pack her off," he cried. "She is wasting time and money by staying. She
never had a particle of talent, and the sooner she goes back to
Lynxville the better."
Miss Snell shrank from his vehemence, and wished she had not insisted
upon coming to consult him. She had assured Cora that the merest hint
would bring matters to a crisis. Cora would imagine that she had bungled
matters terribly, and she was mortified at the thought of returning with
the news of a repulse.
As soon as she had gone, the Painter felt sorry he had been so hasty. He
had bundled her unceremoniously out of the studio, pleading important
work.
He called twice in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, but the porter would
never let him pass her lodge, and he at last realized that she had been
given orders to that effect. A judicious tip extracted from her the fact
that Miss Price expected to leave for America the following Saturday,
and, armed with an immense bouquet, he betook himself to the St. Lazare
station at the hour for the departure of the Havre express.
He arrived with only a minute to spare before the guard's whistle was
answered by the mosquitolike pipe that sets the train in motion.
The Botticelli profile was very haughty and cold. Miss Snell was there,
of course, bathed in tears. He had just time enough to hand in his huge
bouquet through the open window before the train started. He caught one
glimpse of an angry face within, when suddenly his great nosegay came
flying out of the compartment, and striking him full in the face, spread
its shattered paper and loosened flowers all over the platform at his
feet.