Katharine and Hester went up to the studio together, and Hester opened
the door.
“I’ve brought your sitter, Walter,” she said, announcing Katharine.
“I’ve come back with a reinforcement.”
“Oh, Miss Lauderdale, how do you do?” Crowdie came forward. “Do you know
Mr. Griggs?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yes, he was introduced to me last night,” explained Katharine in an
undertone, and bending her head graciously as the elderly man bowed from
a distance.
“Oh! that’s very nice,” observed Crowdie. “I didn’t know whether you had
met. I hate introducing people. They’re apt to remember it against one.
Griggs is an old friend, Miss Lauderdale.”
Katharine looked at the painter and thought he was less repulsive than
usual.
“I know,” she answered. “Do you really want me to sit this morning, Mr.
Crowdie? You know, we said Friday--”
“Of course I do! There’s your chair, all ready for you--just where it
was last time. And the thing--it isn’t a picture yet--is in the corner
here. Hester, dear, just help Miss Lauderdale to take off her hat, won’t
you?”
He crossed the room as he spoke, and began to wheel up the easel on
which Katharine’s portrait stood. Griggs said nothing, but watched the
two women as they stood together, trying to understand the very opposite
impressions they made upon him, and wondering with an excess of cynicism
which Crowdie thought the more beautiful. For his own part, he fancied
that he should prefer Hester’s face and Katharine’s character, as he
judged it from her appearance.
Presently Katharine seated herself, trying to assume the pose she had
taken at the first sitting. Crowdie disappeared behind the curtain in
search of paint and brushes, and Hester sat down on the edge of a huge
divan. As there was no chair except Katharine’s, Griggs seated himself
on the divan beside Mrs. Crowdie.
“There’s never more than one chair here,” she explained. “It’s for the
sitter, or the buyer, or the lion-hunter, according to the time of day.
Other people must sit on the divan or on the floor.”
“Yes,” answered Griggs. “I see.”
Katharine did not think the answer a very brilliant one for a man of
such reputation. Hitherto she had not had much experience of lions.
Crowdie came back with his palette and paints.
“That’s almost it,” he said, looking at Katharine. “A little more to the
left, I think--just the shade of a shadow!”
“So?” asked Katharine, turning her head a very little.
“Yes--only for a moment--while I look at you. Afterwards you needn’t
keep so very still.”
“Yes--I know. The same as last time.”
Meanwhile, Hester remembered that she had not yet asked Griggs to stay
to luncheon, though she had taken it for granted that he would.
“Won’t you stay and lunch with us?” she asked. “Miss Lauderdale says she
will, and I’ve told them to set a place for you. We shall be four. Do,
if you can!”
“You’re awfully kind, Mrs. Crowdie,” answered Griggs. “I wish I could. I
believe I have an engagement.”
“Oh, of course you have. But that’s no reason.” Hester spoke with great
conviction. “I daresay you made that particular engagement very much
against your will. At all events, you mean to stay, because you only say
you ‘believe’ you’re engaged. If you didn’t mean to stay, you would say
at once that you ‘had’ an engagement which you couldn’t break. Wouldn’t
you? Therefore you will.”
“That’s a remarkable piece of logic,” observed Griggs, smiling.
“Besides, you’re a lion just now, because you’ve been away so long. So
you can break as many engagements as you please--it won’t make any
difference.”
“There’s a plain and unadorned contempt for social rules in that, which
appeals to me. Thanks; if you’ll let me, I’ll stay.”
“Of course!” Hester laughed. “You see I’m married to a lion, so I know
just what lions do. Walter, Katharine and Mr. Griggs are going to stay
to luncheon.”
“I’m delighted,” answered Crowdie, from behind his easel. He was putting
in background with an enormous brush. “I say, Griggs--” he began again.
“Well?”
“Do you like Rockaways or Blue Points? I’m sure Hester has forgotten.”
“‘When love was the pearl of’ my ‘oyster,’ I used to prefer Blue
Points,” answered Griggs, meditatively.
“So does Walter,” said Mrs. Crowdie.
“Was that a quotation--or what?” asked Katharine, speaking to Crowdie in
an undertone.
“Swinburne,” answered the painter, indistinctly, for he had one of his
brushes between his teeth.
“Not that it makes any difference what a man eats,” observed Griggs in
the same thoughtful tone. “I once lived for five weeks on ship biscuit
and raw apples.”
“Good heavens!” laughed Hester. “Where was that? In a shipwreck?”
“No; in New York. It wasn’t bad. I used to eat a pound a day--there were
twelve to a pound of the white pilot-bread, and four apples.”
“Do you mean to say that you were deliberately starving yourself? What
for?”
“Oh, no! I had no money, and I wanted to write a book, so that I
couldn’t get anything for my work till it was done. It wasn’t like
little jobs that one’s paid for at once.”
“How funny!” exclaimed Hester. “Did you hear that, Walter?” she asked.
“Yes; but he’s done all sorts of things.”
“Were you ever as hard up as that, Walter?”
“Not for so long; but I’ve had my days. Haven’t I, Griggs? Do you
remember--in Paris--when we tried to make an omelet without eggs, by the
recipe out of the ‘Noble Booke of Cookerie,’ and I wanted to colour it
with yellow ochre, and you said it was poisonous? I’ve often thought
that if we’d had some saffron, it would have turned out better.”
“You cooked it too much,” answered Griggs, gravely. “It tasted like an
old binding of a book--all parchment and leathery. There’s nothing in
that recipe anyhow. You can’t make an omelet without eggs. I got hold of
the book again, and copied it out and persuaded the great man at
Voisin’s to try it. But he couldn’t do anything with it. It wasn’t much
better than ours.”
“I’m glad to know that,” said Crowdie. “I’ve often thought of it and
wondered whether we hadn’t made some mistake.”
Katharine was amused by what the two men said. She had supposed that a
famous painter and a well-known writer, who probably did not spend a
morning together more than two or three times a year, would talk
profoundly of literature and art. But it was interesting, nevertheless,
to hear them speak of little incidents which threw a side-light on their
former lives.
“Do people who succeed always have such a dreadfully hard time of it?”
she asked, addressing the question to both men.
“Oh, I suppose most of them do,” answered Crowdie, indifferently.
“‘Jordan’s a hard road to travel,’” observed Griggs, mechanically.
“Sing it, Walter--it is so funny!” suggested Hester.
“What?” asked the painter.
“‘Jordan’s a hard road’--”
“Oh, I can’t sing and paint. Besides, we’re driving Miss Lauderdale
distracted. Aren’t we, Miss Lauderdale?”
“Not at all. I like to hear you two talk--as you wouldn’t to a reporter,
for instance. Tell me something more about what you did in Paris. Did
you live together?”
“Oh, dear, no! Griggs was a sort of little great man already in those
days, and he used to stay at Meurice’s--except when he had no money, and
then he used to sleep in the Calais train--he got nearly ten hours in
that way--and he had a free pass--coming back to Paris in time for
breakfast. He got smashed once, and then he gave it up.”
“That’s pure invention, Crowdie,” said Griggs.
“Oh, I know it is. But it sounds well, and we always used to say it was
true because you were perpetually rushing backwards and forwards. Oh,
no, Miss Lauderdale--Griggs had begun to ‘arrive’ then, but I was only a
student. You don’t suppose we’re the same age, do you?”
“Oh, Walter!” exclaimed Hester, as though the suggestion were an insult.
“Yes, Griggs is--how old are you, Griggs? I’ve forgotten. About fifty,
aren’t you?”
“About fifty thousand, or thereabouts,” answered the literary man, with
a good-humoured smile.
Katharine looked at him, turning completely round, for he and Mrs.
Crowdie were sitting on the divan behind her. She thought his face was
old, especially the eyes and the upper part, but his figure had the
sinewy elasticity of youth even as he sat there, bending forward, with
his hands folded on his knees. She wished she might be with him alone
for a while, for she longed to make him talk about himself.
“You always seemed the same age, to me, even then,” said Crowdie.
“Does Mr. Crowdie mean that you were never young, Mr. Griggs?” asked
Katharine, who had resumed her pose and was facing the artist.
“We neither of us mean anything,” said Crowdie, with a soft laugh.
“That’s reassuring!” exclaimed Katharine, a little annoyed, for Crowdie
laughed as though he knew more about Griggs than he could or would tell.
“I believe it’s the truth,” said Griggs himself. “We don’t mean anything
especial, except a little chaff. It’s so nice to be idiotic and not to
have to make speeches.”
“I hate speeches,” said Katharine. “But what I began by asking was this.
Must people necessarily have a very hard time in order to succeed at
anything? You’re both successful men--you ought to know.”
“They say that the wives of great men have the hardest time,” said
Griggs. “What do you think, Mrs. Crowdie?”
“Be reasonable!” exclaimed Hester. “Answer Miss Lauderdale’s
question--if any one can, you can.”
“It depends--” answered Griggs, thoughtfully. “Christopher Columbus--”
“Oh, I don’t mean Christopher Columbus, nor any one like him!” Katharine
laughed, but a little impatiently. “I mean modern people, like you two.”
“Oh--modern people. I see.” Mr. Griggs spoke in a very absent tone.
“Don’t be so hopelessly dull, Griggs!” protested Crowdie. “You’re here
to amuse Miss Lauderdale.”
“Yes--I know I am. I was thinking just then. Please don’t think me rude,
Miss Lauderdale. You asked rather a big question.”
“Oh--I didn’t mean to put you to the trouble of thinking--”
“By the bye, Miss Lauderdale,” interrupted Crowdie, “you’re all in black
to-day, and on Wednesday you were in grey. It makes a good deal of
difference, you know, if we are to go on. Which is to be in the picture?
We must decide now, if you don’t mind.”
“What a fellow you are, Crowdie!” exclaimed Griggs.
“I’ll have it black, if it’s the same to you,” said Katharine, answering
the painter’s question.
“What are you abusing me for, Griggs?” asked Crowdie, looking round his
easel.
“For interrupting. You always do. Miss Lauderdale asked me a question,
and you sprang at me like a fiery and untamed wild-cat because I didn’t
answer it--and then you interrupt and begin to talk about dress.”
“I didn’t suppose you had finished thinking already,” answered Crowdie,
calmly. “It generally takes you longer. All right. Go ahead. The
curtain’s up! The anchor’s weighed--all sorts of things! I’m listening.
Miss Lauderdale, if you could look at me for one moment--”
“There you go again!” exclaimed Griggs.
“Bless your old heart, man--I’m working, and you’re doing nothing. I
have the right of way. Haven’t I, Miss Lauderdale?”
“Of course,” answered Katharine. “But I want to hear Mr. Griggs--”
“‘Griggs on Struggles’--it sounds like the title of a law book,”
observed Crowdie.
“You seem playful this morning,” said Griggs. “What makes you so
terribly pleasant?”
“The sight of you, my dear fellow, writhing under Miss Lauderdale’s
questions.”
“Doesn’t Mr. Griggs like to be asked general questions?” enquired
Katharine, innocently.
“It’s not that, Miss Lauderdale,” said Griggs, answering her question.
“It’s not that. I’m a fidgety old person, I suppose, and I don’t like to
answer at random, and your question is a very big one. Not as a matter
of fact. It’s perfectly easy to say yes, or no, just as one feels about
it, or according to one’s own experience. In that way, I should be
inclined to say that it’s a matter of accident and
circumstances--whether men who succeed have to go through many material
difficulties or not. You don’t hear much of all those who struggle and
never succeed, or who are heard of for a moment and then sink. They’re
by far the most numerous. Lots of successful men have never been poor,
if that’s what you mean by hard times--even in art and literature.
Michael Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Chaucer, Montaigne, Goethe,
Byron--you can name any number who never went through anything like what
nine students out of ten in Paris, for instance, suffer cheerfully. It
certainly does not follow that because a man is great he must have
starved at one time or another. The very greatest seem, as a rule, to
have had fairly comfortable homes with everything they could need,
unless they had extravagant tastes. That’s the material view of the
question. The answer is reasonable enough. It’s a disadvantage to begin
very poor, because energy is used up in fighting poverty which might be
used in attacking intellectual difficulties. No doubt the average man,
whose faculties are not extraordinary to begin with, may develop them
wonderfully, and even be very successful--from sheer necessity, sheer
hunger; when, if he were comfortably off, he would do nothing in the
world but lie on his back in the sunshine, and smoke a pipe, and
criticise other people. But to a man who
[Illustration: “‘That’s good, Crowdie,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s
distinctly good.’”--Vol. II., p. 189.]
is naturally so highly gifted that he would produce good work under any
circumstances, poverty is a drawback.”
“You didn’t know what you were going to get, Miss Lauderdale, when you
prevailed on Griggs to answer a serious question,” said Crowdie, as
Griggs paused a moment. “He’s a didactic old bird, when he mounts his
hobby.”
“There’s something wrong about that metaphor, Crowdie,” observed Griggs.
“Bird mounting hobby--you know.”
“Did you never see a crow on a cow’s back?” enquired Crowdie, unmoved.
“Or on a sheep? It’s funny when he gets his claws caught in the wool.”
“Go on, please, Mr. Griggs,” said Katharine. “It’s very interesting.
What’s the other side of the question?”
“Oh--I don’t know!” Griggs rose abruptly from his seat and began to pace
the room. “It’s lots of things, I suppose. Things we don’t understand
and never shall--in this world.”
“But in the other world, perhaps,” suggested Crowdie, with a smile which
Katharine did not like.
“The other world is the inside of this one,” said Griggs, coming up to
the easel and looking at the painting. “That’s good, Crowdie,” he said,
thoughtfully. “It’s distinctly good. I mean that it’s like, that’s all.
Of course, I don’t know anything about painting--that’s your business.”
“Of course it is,” answered Crowdie; “I didn’t ask you to criticise. But
I’m glad if you think it’s like.”
“Yes. Don’t mind my telling you, Crowdie--Miss Lauderdale, I hope you’ll
forgive me--there’s a slight irregularity in the pupil of Miss
Lauderdale’s right eye--it isn’t exactly round. It affects the
expression. Do you see?”
“I never noticed it,” said Katharine in surprise.
“By Jove--you’re right!” exclaimed Crowdie. “What eyes you have,
Griggs!”
“It doesn’t affect your sight in the least,” said Griggs, “and nobody
would notice it, but it affects the expression all the same.”
“You saw it at once,” remarked Katharine.
“Oh--Griggs sees everything,” answered Crowdie. “He probably observed
the fact last night when he was introduced to you, and has been thinking
about it ever since.”
“Now you’ve interrupted him again,” said Katharine. “Do sit down again,
Mr. Griggs, and go on with what you were saying--about the other side of
the question.”
“The question of success?”
“Yes--and difficulties--and all that.”
“Delightfully vague--‘all that’! I can only give you an idea of what I
mean. The question of success involves its own value, and the ultimate
happiness of mankind. Do you see how big it is? It goes through
everything, and it has no end. What is success? Getting ahead of other
people, I suppose. But in what direction? In the direction of one’s own
happiness, presumably. Every one has a prime and innate right to be
happy. Ideas about happiness differ. With most people it’s a matter of
taste and inherited proclivities. All schemes for making all mankind
happy in one direction must fail. A man is happy when he feels that he
has succeeded--the sportsman when he has killed his game, the parson
when he believes he has saved a soul. We can’t all be parsons, nor all
good shots. There must be variety. Happiness is success, in each
variety, and nothing else. I mean, of course, belief in one’s own
success, with a reasonable amount of acknowledgment. It’s of much less
consequence to Crowdie, for instance, what you think, or I think, or
Mrs. Crowdie thinks about that picture, than it is to himself. But our
opinion has a certain value for him. With an amateur, public opinion is
everything, or nearly everything. With a good professional it is quite
secondary, because he knows much better than the public can, whether his
work is good or bad. He himself is his world--the public is only his
weather, fine one day and rainy the next. He prefers his world in fine
weather, but even when it rains he would not exchange it for any other.
He’s his own king, kingdom and court. He’s his own enemy, his own
conqueror, and his own captive--slave is a better word. In the course of
time he may even become perfectly indifferent to the weather in his
world--that is, to the public. And if he can believe that he is doing a
good work, and if he can keep inside his own world, he will probably be
happy.”
“But if he goes beyond it?” asked Katharine.
“He will probably be killed--body or soul, or both,” said Griggs, with a
queer change of tone.
“It seems to me, that you exclude women altogether from your paradise,”
observed Mrs. Crowdie, with a laugh.
“And amateurs,” said her husband. “It’s to be a professional paradise
for men--no admittance except on business. No one who hasn’t had a
picture on the line need apply. Special hell for minor poets. Crowns of
glory may be had on application at the desk--fit not guaranteed in cases
of swelled head--”
“Don’t be vulgar, Crowdie,” interrupted Griggs.
“Is ‘swelled head’ vulgar, Miss Lauderdale?” enquired the painter.
“It sounds like something horrid--mumps, or that sort of thing. What
does it mean?”
“It means a bad case of conceit. It’s a good New York expression. I
wonder you haven’t heard it. Go on about the professional persons,
Griggs. I’m not half good enough to chaff you. I wish Frank Miner were
here. He’s the literary man in the family.”
“Little Frank Miner--the brother of the three Miss Miners?” asked
Griggs.
“Yes--looks a well-dressed cock sparrow--always in a good humour--don’t
you know him?”
“Of course I do--the brother of the three Miss Miners,” said Griggs,
meditatively. “Does he write? I didn’t know.” Crowdie laughed, and
Hester smiled.
“Such is fame!” exclaimed Crowdie. “But then, literary men never seem to
have heard of each other.”
“No,” answered Griggs. “By the bye, Crowdie, have you heard anything of
Chang-Li-Ho lately?”
“Chang-Li-Ho? Who on earth is he? A Chinese laundryman?”
“No,” replied Griggs, unmoved. “He’s the greatest painter in the Chinese
Empire. But then, you painters never seem to have heard of one another.”
“By Jove! that’s not fair, Griggs! Is he to be in the professional
heaven, too?”
“I suppose so. There’ll probably be more Chinamen than New Yorkers
there. They know a great deal more about art.”
“You’re getting deucedly sarcastic, Griggs,” observed Crowdie. “You’d
better tell Miss Lauderdale more about the life to come. Your hobby
can’t be tired yet, and if you ride him industriously, it will soon be
time for luncheon.”
“We’d better have it at once if you two are going to quarrel,” suggested
Hester, with a laugh.
“Oh, we never quarrel,” answered Crowdie. “Besides, I’ve got no soul,
Griggs says, and he sold his own to the printer’s devil ages ago--so
that the life to come is a perfectly safe subject.”
“What do you mean by saying that Walter has no soul?” asked Hester,
looking up quickly at Griggs.
“My dear lady,” he answered, “please don’t be so terribly angry with me.
In the first place, I said it in fun; and secondly, it’s quite true; and
thirdly, it’s very lucky for him that he has none.”
“Are you joking now, or are you unintentionally funny?” asked Crowdie.
“I don’t think it’s very funny to be talking about people having no
souls,” said Katharine.
“Do you think every one has a soul, Miss Lauderdale?” asked Griggs,
beginning to walk about again.
“Yes--of course. Don’t you?”
Griggs looked at her a moment in silence, as though he were hesitating
as to what he should say.
“Can you see the soul, as you did the defect in my eyes?” asked
Katharine, smiling.
“Sometimes--sometimes one almost fancies that one might.”
“And what do you see in mine, may I ask? A defect?”
He was quite near to her. She looked up at him earnestly with her pure
girl’s eyes, wide, grey and honest. The fresh pallor of her skin was
thrown into relief by the black she wore, and her features by the rich
stuff which covered the high back of the chair. There was a deeper
interest in her expression than Griggs often saw in the faces of those
with whom he talked, but it was not that which fascinated him. There was
something suggestive of holy things, of innocent suffering, of the
romance of a virgin martyr--something which, perhaps, took him back to
strange sights he had seen in his youth.
He stood looking down into her eyes, a gaunt, world-worn fighter of
fifty years, with a strong, ugly, determined but yet kindly face--the
face of a man who has passed beyond a certain barrier which few men ever
reach at all.
Crowdie dropped his hand, holding his brush, and gazing at the two in
silent and genuine delight. The contrast was wonderful, he thought. He
would have given much to paint them as they were before him, with their
expressions--with the very thoughts of which the look in each face was
born. Whatever Crowdie might be at heart, he was an artist first.
And Hester watched them, too, accustomed to notice whatever struck her
husband’s attention. A very different nature was hers from any of the
three--one reserved for an unusual destiny, and with something of fate’s
shadowy painting already in all her outward self--passionate, first, and
having, also, many qualities of mercy and cruelty at passion’s command,
but not having anything of the keen insight into the world spiritual,
and material, which in varied measure belonged to each of the others.
“And what defect do you see in my soul?” asked Katharine, her exquisite
lips just parting in a smile.
“Forgive me!” exclaimed Griggs, as though roused from a reverie. “I
didn’t realize that I was staring at you.” He was an oddly natural man
at certain times. Katharine almost laughed.
“I didn’t realize it either,” she answered. “I was too much interested
in what I thought you were going to say.”
“He’s a very clever fellow, Miss Lauderdale,” said Crowdie, going on
with his painting. “But you’ll turn his head completely. To be so much
interested--not in what he has said, or is saying, or even is going to
say, but just in what you think he possibly may say--it’s amazing!
Griggs, you’re not half enough nattered! But then, you’re so spoilt!”
“Yes--in my old age, people are spoiling me.” Griggs smiled rather
sourly. “I can’t read souls, Miss Lauderdale,” he continued. “But if I
could, I should rather read yours than most books. It has something to
say.”
“It’s impossible to be more vague, I’m sure,” observed Crowdie.
“It’s impossible to be more flattering,” said Katharine, quietly. “Thank
you, Mr. Griggs.”
She was beginning to be tired of Crowdie’s observations upon what Griggs
said--possibly because she was beginning to like Griggs himself more
than she had expected.
“I didn’t mean to be either vague or flattering. It’s servile to be the
one and weak to be the other. I said what I thought. Do you call it
flattery to paint a beautiful portrait of Miss Lauderdale?”
“Not unless I make it more beautiful than she is,” answered the painter.
“You can’t.”
“That’s decisive, at all events,” laughed Crowdie. “Not but that I agree
with you, entirely.”
“Oh, I don’t mean it as you do,” answered Griggs. “That would be
flattery--exactly what I don’t mean. Miss Lauderdale is perfectly well
aware that you’re a great portrait painter and that she is not
altogether the most beautiful young lady living at the present moment.
You mean flesh and blood and eyes and hair. I don’t. I mean all that
flesh and blood and eyes and hair don’t mean, and never can mean.”
“Soul,” suggested Crowdie. “I was talking about that to Miss Lauderdale
the last time she sat for me--that was on Wednesday, wasn’t it--the day
before yesterday? It seems like last year, for some reason or other.
Yes, I know what you mean. You needn’t get into such a state of frenzied
excitement.”
“I appeal to you, Mrs. Crowdie--was I talking excitedly?”
“A little,” answered Hester, who was incapable of disagreeing with her
husband.
“Oh--well--I daresay,” said Griggs. “It hasn’t been my weakness in life
to get excited, though.” He laughed.
“Walter always makes you talk, Mr. Griggs,” answered Mrs. Crowdie.
“A great deal too much. I think I shall be rude, and not stay to
luncheon, after all.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Crowdie. “Don’t go in for being young and
eccentric--the ‘man of genius’ style, who runs in and out like a hen in
a thunder-storm, and is in everybody’s way when he’s not wanted and
can’t be found when people want him. You’ve outgrown that sort of
absurdity long ago.”
Katharine would have liked to see Griggs’ face at that moment, but he
was behind her again. There was something in the relation of the two
men which she found it hard to understand. Crowdie was much younger than
Griggs--fourteen or fifteen years, she fancied, and Griggs did not seem
to be at all the kind of man with whom people would naturally be
familiar or take liberties, to use the common phrase. Yet they talked
together like a couple of schoolboys. She should not have thought,
either, that they could be mutually attracted. Yet they appeared to have
many ideas in common, and to understand each other wonderfully well.
Crowdie was evidently not repulsive to Griggs as he was to many men she
knew--to Bright and Miner, for instance--and the two had undoubtedly
been very intimate in former days. Nevertheless, it was strange to hear
the younger man, who was little more than a youth in appearance,
comparing the celebrated Paul Griggs to a hen in a thunder-storm, and
still stranger to see that Griggs did not resent it at all. An older
woman might have unjustly suspected that the elderly man of letters was
in love with Hester Crowdie, but such an idea could never have crossed
Katharine’s mind. In that respect she was singularly unsophisticated.
She had been accustomed to see her beautiful mother surrounded and
courted by men of all ages, and she knew that her mother was utterly
indifferent to them except in so far as she liked to be admired. In some
books, men fall in love with married women, and Katharine had always
been told that those were bad books, and had accepted the fact without
question and without interest.
But in ordinary matters she was keen of perception. It struck her that
there was some bond or link between the two men, and it seemed strange
to her that there should be--as strange as though she had seen an old
wolf playing amicably with a little rabbit. She thought of the two
animals in connection with the two men.
While she had been thinking, Hester and Griggs had been talking together
in lower tones, on the divan, and Crowdie had been painting
industriously.
“It’s time for luncheon,” said Mrs. Crowdie. “Mr. Griggs says he really
must go away very early, and perhaps, if Katharine will stay, she will
let you paint for another quarter of an hour afterward.”
“I wish you would!” answered Crowdie, with alacrity. “The snow-light is
so soft--you see the snow lies on the skylight like a blanket.”
Katharine looked up at the glass roof, turning her head far back, for it
was immediately overhead. When she dropped her eyes she saw that Griggs
was looking at her again, but he turned away instantly. She had no
sensation of unpleasantness, as she always had when she met Crowdie’s
womanish glance; but she wondered about the man and his past.
Hester was just leaving the studio, going downstairs to be sure that
luncheon was ready, and Crowdie had disappeared behind his curtain to
put his palette and brushes out of sight, as usual. Katharine was alone
with Griggs for a few moments. They stood together, looking at the
portrait.
“How long have you known Mr. Crowdie?” she asked, yielding to an
irresistible impulse.
“Crowdie?” repeated Griggs. “Oh--a long time--fifteen or sixteen years,
I should think. That’s going to be a very good portrait, Miss
Lauderdale--one of his best. And Crowdie, at his best, is first rate.”