"The worst of it was the disappointment I had to inflict upon Mrs.
Maybough," he went on uneasily. "She was really hurt, and I don't
believe I convinced her after all that I simply and honestly couldn't
get the picture. I went to tell her this afternoon, and she seemed to
feel some sort of disparagement--I can't express it--in my giving it
up."
He stopped, and Cornelia asked, as if forced to say something, "Does
Charmian know?"
"I suppose she does, by this time," said Ludlow. He roused himself from
a moment of revery, and added, "But I didn't intend to oppress you with
this. I want to tell you something--else."
He drew a deep breath. She started forward where she sat, and looked
past him at the door, as if to see whether the way of escape was clear.
He went on: "I took Wetmore there with me yesterday, and I showed him
your sketches, and he thinks you might get one of them into the Academy
exhibition in the spring, after you've carried it a little farther."
She sank back in her chair. "Does he?" she asked listlessly, and she
thought, as of another person, how her heart would once have thrilled
at the hope of this.
"Yes. But I don't feel sure that it would be well," said Ludlow. "I
wanted to say, though, that I shall be glad to come and be of any
little use I can if you're going on with it."
"Oh, thank you," said Cornelia. She thought she was going to say
something more, but she stopped stiffly at that, and they both stood in
an embarrassment which neither could hide from the other. He repeated
his offer, in other terms, and she was able finally to thank him a
little more fitly, and to say that she should not forget his kind
offer; she should not forget all he had done for her, all the trouble
he had taken, and they parted with a vague alienation.
As we grow older, we are impatient of misunderstandings, of
disagreements; we make haste to have them explained; but while we are
young, life seems so spacious and so full of chances that we fetch a
large compass round about such things, and wait for favoring
fortuities, and hope for occasions precisely fit; we linger in
dangerous delays, and take risks that may be ruinous.
Cornelia went hack to her work at the Synthesis as before, but she
worked listlessly and aimlessly; the zest was gone, and the meaning.
She knew that for the past month she had drudged through the morning at
the Synthesis that she might free herself to the glad endeavor of the
afternoon at Charmian's studio with a good conscience. Ludlow's
criticism, even when it was harshest, was incentive and inspiration;
and her life was blank and dull on the old terms.
The arts have a logic of their own, which seems no logic at all to the
interests. Ludlow's world found it altogether fit and intelligible that
he should give up trying to paint Charmian if he had failed to get his
picture of her, and thought he could not get it. Mrs. Maybough's world
regarded it as a breach of contract for him not to do what he had
undertaken. She had more trouble to reconcile her friends to his
behavior than she had in justifying it to herself. Through Charmian she
had at least a second-hand appreciation of motives and principles that
were instantly satisfactory to the girl and to all her comrades at the
Synthesis; they accepted it as another proof of Ludlow's greatness that
he should frankly own he had missed his picture of her, and they
exalted Charmian as a partner in his merit, for being so impossible.
The arguments of Wetmore went for something with Mrs. Maybough, though
they were mainly admissions to the effect that Ludlow was more of a
crank than he had supposed, and would have to be humored in a case of
the kind; but it was chiefly the courage and friendship of Mrs. Westley
that availed. She enforced what she had to say in his behalf with the
invitation to her January Thursdays which she had brought. She had
brought it in person because she wished to beg Mrs. Maybough to let her
daughter come with her friend, Miss Saunders, and pour tea at the first
of the Thursdays.
"I got you off," she said to Ludlow, when they met, "but it was not
easy. She still thinks you ought to have let her see your last attempt,
and left her to decide whether it was good or not."
Mrs. Westley showed her amusement at this, but Ludlow answered gravely
that there was a certain reason in the position. "If she's disappointed
in not having any portrait, though," he added, "she had better take
Miss Saunders's."
"Do you really mean that?" Mrs. Westley asked, with more or less of
that incredulity concerning the performance of a woman which all the
sex feel, in spite of their boasting about one another. "Has she so
much talent?"
"Why not? Somebody has to have the talent."
This was like Wetmore's tone, and it made Mrs. Westley think of him.
"And do you believe she could get her picture into the exhibition?"
"Has Wetmore been talking to you about it?"
"Yes."
"I don't know," said Ludlow. "That was Wetmore's notion."
"And does she know about it?"
"I mentioned it to her."
"It would be a great thing for her if she could get her picture in--and
sell it."
"Yes," Ludlow dryly admitted. He wished he had never told Mrs. Westley
how Cornelia had earned the money for her studies at the Synthesis; he
resented the implication of her need, and Mrs. Westley vaguely felt
that she had somehow gone wrong. She made haste to retrieve her error
by suggesting, "Perhaps Miss Maybough would object, though."
"That's hardly thinkable." said Ludlow lightly. He would have gone away
without making Mrs. Westley due return for the trouble she had taken
for him with Mrs. Maybough, and she was so far vexed that she would
have let him go without telling him that she was going to have his
_protegee_ pour tea for her; she had fancied that this would have
pleased him.
But by one of those sudden flashes that seem to come from somewhere
without, he saw himself in the odious light in which she must see him,
and he turned in time. "Mrs. Westley, I think you have taken a great
deal more pains for me than I'm worth. It's difficult to care what such
a poor little Philistine as Mrs. Maybough--the mere figment of somebody
else's misgotten money--thinks of me. But she _is_ to be regarded, and
I know that you have looked after her in my interest; and it's very
kind of you, and very good--it's like you. If you've done it, though,
with the notion of my keeping on in portraits, or getting more
portraits to paint, I'm sorry, for I shall not try to do any. I'm not
fit for that kind of work. I don't say it because I despise the work,
but because I despise myself. I should always let some wretched
preoccupation of my own--some fancy, some whim--come between me and
what I see my sitter to be, and paint that."
"That is, you have some imagination," she began, in defence of him
against himself.
"No, no! There's scope for the greatest imagination, the most intense
feeling, in portraits. But I can't do that kind of thing, and I must
stick to my little sophistical fantasies, or my bald reports of nature.
But Miss Saunders, if she were not a woman--excuse me!----"
"Oh, I understand!"
"She could do it, and she will, if she keeps on. She could have a
career; she could be a painter of women's portraits. A man's idea of a
woman, it's interesting, of course, but it's never quite just; it's
never quite true; it can't be. Every woman knows that, but you go on
accepting men's notions of women, in literature and in art, as if they
were essentially, or anything but superficially, like women. I couldn't
get a picture of Miss Maybough because I was always making more or less
than there really was of her. You were speaking the other night at
Wetmore's, of the uncertain quality of her beauty, and the danger of
getting something else in," said Ludlow, suddenly grappling with the
fact, "and I was always doing that, or else leaving everything out. Her
beauty has no fixed impression. It ranges from something exquisite to
something grotesque; just as she ranges in character from the noblest
generosity to the most inconceivable absurdity. You never can know how
she will look or how she will behave. At least, _I_ couldn't. I was
always guessing at her; but Miss Saunders seemed to understand her. All
her studies of her are alike; the last might be taken for the first,
except that the handling is better. It's invariably the very person,
without being in the least photographic, as people call it, because it
is one woman's unclouded perception of another. The only question is
whether Miss Saunders can keep that saving simplicity. It may be
trained out of her, or she may be taught to put other things before it.
Wetmore felt the danger of that, when we looked at her sketches. I'm
not saying they're not full of faults; the technique is bad enough;
sometimes it's almost childish; but the root of the matter is there.
She knows what she sees, and she tells."
"Really?" said Mrs. Westley. "It _is_ hard for a woman to believe much
in women; we don't expect anything of each other yet. Should you like
her to paint me?"
"I?"
"I mean, do you think she could do it?"
"Not yet. She doesn't know enough of life, even if she knew enough of
art. She merely painted another girl."
"That is true," said Mrs. Westley with a sigh. She added impersonally;
"But if people only kept to what they knew, and didn't do what they
divined, there would be very little art or literature left, it seems to
me."
"Well, perhaps the less the better." said Ludlow, with a smile for the
absurdity he was reduced to. "What was left would certainty be the
best."
He felt as if his praise of Cornelia were somehow retrieval; as if it
would avail where he seemed otherwise so helpless, and would bring them
together on the old terms again. There was, indeed, nothing explicit in
their alienation, and when he saw Cornelia at Mrs. Westley's first
Thursday, he made his way to her at once, and asked her if she would
give him some tea, with the effect of having had a cup from her the day
before. He did not know whether to be pleased or not that she treated
their meeting as something uneventful, too, and made a little joke
about remembering that he liked his tea without sugar.
"I wasn't aware that you knew that," he said.
"Oh, yes; that is the way Charmian always made it for you; and
sometimes I made it."
"To be sure. It seems a great while ago. How are you getting on with
your picture?"
"I'm not getting on," said Cornelia, and she turned aside to make a cup
of tea for an old gentleman, who confessed that he liked a spoonful of
rum in his. General Westley had brought him up and presented him, and
he remained chatting with Cornelia, apparently in the fatuity that if
he talked trivially to her he would be the same as a young man. Ludlow
stayed, too, and when the old gentleman got away, he said, the same as
if there had been no interruption, "Why aren't you getting on?"
"Because I'm not doing anything to it."
"You ought to. I told you what Wetmore said of it."
"Yes; but I don't know how," said Cornelia, with a laugh that he liked;
it seemed an effect of pleasure in his presence at her elbow; though
from time to time she ignored him, and talked with other people who
came for tea. He noticed that she had begun to have a little society
manner of her own; he did not know whether he liked it or not. She wore
a very pretty dress, too; one he had not seen before.
"Will you let me show you how--as well as I can?"
"After I've asked you? Thank you!"
"I offered, once, before you asked."
"Oh!" said Cornelia, with her face aslant from him over her tea-cups.
"I thought you had forgotten that."
He winced, but he knew that he deserved the little scratch. He did not
try to exculpate himself, but he asked, "May I talk with Miss Maybough
about it?"