April was drawing to a close, and every evening the Professor said,
"Have you heard from the Academy, my dear?" and sighed when she answered
"No." She had begun to conclude that "The Sun's Last Rays" was rejected,
and it distressed her to think of the money that she had laid out on the
frame. Before the order for that frame was given, the price had been
exhaustively debated at the supper-table; she knew that a good frame was
a recommendation to a hanging committee--her father had argued that "an
artist's work ought to stand on its own merits." In his demeanour now
she read a reproach of her extravagance, and each time that he asked her
if she had heard yet, it was a greater effort to her to reply.
At last, however--one evening when hope had almost died in her--the
servant entered the room with a letter. The Professor lolled in the
armchair smoking his pipe; Hilda was engrossed in a "new novel" from
Turlington's--published in the previous spring--and Bee herself was
sitting idle. Her thoughts flew to David Lee as she watched the girl
advance towards her. She had withheld from her family the fact of her
correspondence with the poet--withheld it, not because they would regard
her friendship with him as an impropriety, but because they would
consider she was making herself ridiculous--and she prayed that her
father would not ask from whom the letter came. The handwriting relieved
her anxiety, and the crest on the flap excited her. The next moment she
pulled her varnishing ticket from the envelope.
"From the Academy, my dear?"
"Yes," she exclaimed, "I've got in!"
"What's that?" said Hilda, glancing up from the book. "Got in? Oh, have
you--how nice!"
"What do they say?" inquired the old man. "Let me see!"
"It's a ticket for varnishing day," she said. "I wonder how I'm hung."
"Very odd," he remarked, "that they didn't send it you before." He read
the ticket attentively, pursing his lips, and turned it over, as if a
clue to the delay might be discovered at the back. "What did I tell you?
I knew it would be all right. A pity you wasted such a lot on the frame
now, eh, my dear?"
She could not perceive that the mistake was demonstrated, but his
legitimate triumphs were so few that it would have been petty of her to
grudge him an illusory one. "It must have been among the doubtfuls,"
she explained--"the pictures they didn't make up their minds about at
once--that's why I didn't hear before."
"Of course," he said, "there are pictures that are put away to be
examined again; the committee can't decide about them right off. Whether
they are, taken eventually depends--er--depends on circumstances. They
are called the 'doubtfuls.'" He returned her information to her with the
air of letting her into a secret. "I expect they thought it a bit dull,
you know--a bit dull. It's pretty--it's a pretty thing--but it wants
more sunshine. It isn't bright enough. You haven't got the blaze of the
gorse into it; that's what you've failed in--you haven't got the blaze
of the gorse."
"It's eight o'clock in the evening," she said. "The title is 'The Sun's
Last Rays.'"
The sunshine was paling from her spirits too. Extraordinary, she
reflected, that it was possible for those who always meant well always
to miss saying the things one wanted to hear. Both he and Hilda were
genuinely pleased--she knew it--yet how flat the news had fallen! And
neither of them had cried, "I wonder how you're hung!"
"Y-e-s, you don't convey the glory of summer, unfortunately; the thing
isn't gay enough; there's no heat in it, no glare. That's what's the
matter with it, my dear--there isn't the glare there should be. Now,
to do justice to that scene, to paint it to advantage, you should have
shown it on a scorching afternoon, under a vivid sky. The tramp on the
seat should have been hot--mopping his forehead. There might even have
been a touch of humour in the figure of the tramp. As it is, he only
looks tired. You understand what I mean?"
"Oh yes," she murmured, "I understand. But that isn't the picture I
wanted to do. I meant the wayfarer to look tired. I wanted to get what
George Eliot called 'the sadness of a summer's evening' into it."
"Mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief, now, would be natural;
and the red would liven the picture up. You might paint a red
handkerchief in before the Academy opens, mightn't you? Think it over,
my dear. A red handkerchief and a brighter light on the gorse would
improve the thing wonderfully. It's a pity the man isn't more to the
front, more important. He isn't prominent enough. That's where the fault
lies really--the tramp isn't prominent enough."
Though it exasperated him to hear the ignorant try to criticise music,
he never hesitated to dogmatise about the arts of which he knew nothing
himself; and as she listened to him, the elation that had been born
within her faded into lassitude. The fact that good news had come
appeared to be already forgotten; her sister, having said, "How nice,"
was again immersed in the novel, and while her father discoursed
didactically without once speculating how her picture had been hung, it
seemed to Bee that her successes were always made an opportunity for
homilies in her home rather than for rejoicing.
How her work had been hung, and how it would look, were doubts that
filled her mind when she travelled to town on varnishing day. It was
only in moments she even remembered that she was nearing the city that
held David Lee. She knew the change that removal from the studio wrought
in the aspect of a picture, and she crossed the great courtyard--as an
exhibitor for the first time--with increasing nervousness. She went
upstairs, and for a quarter of an hour wandered through the rooms in
an unavailing search. Then she discovered her work, high in a corner,
beside a picture of a child in a bright blue frock, playing with a puppy
on a Brussels carpet. She stopped with a heart-quake. Though she had
prepared herself to be disappointed, the shock sickened her. Surrounded
by other pictures, also clashing with it in subject and treatment, and
viewed in the harsh light of the Academy, her quiet landscape appeared
to her insignificant and unfamiliar. She marvelled that there could have
been hours when she was pleased with it; she stood rooted there, seeking
the qualities that had endeared it to her. They had gone--everything
had gone! It was the ghost of the landscape that she had painted that
appalled her from the Academy walls. The ghost of it. She drooped
drearily to a step-ladder and sat down. When she had recovered
sufficiently to return to the picture, she put on a light varnish, which
brought up the colour of the parts that had sunk in; but varnish could
not brighten her mood, and she had little hope that "No. 790" would ever
find a purchaser.
She had often reflected with a tremor that when David Lee went to
the Academy, he might observe her work and recognise her name in the
catalogue. In the novels that Hilda borrowed from Tuffington's the
Academy was always revealing somebody's identity to someone else. "He
moved to where the crowd was densest, and a minute later a half-cry
escaped his lips. The scene that had never faded from his memory--the
scene of their farewell--glowed upon the canvas. He knew that only one
hand could have portrayed it--knew that the artist who had leapt to fame
must be the trustful girl whom he had loved and lost!" Now that there
was no danger of the work attracting Mr. Lee's notice, she wondered
why she had feared its doing so; her misgiving that it might lead to
his finding out the truth about her seemed ridiculous. She even parted
regretfully with the prospect of arousing his admiration.
In the train, her despondence was deepened by the thought of having
to give an account of the day's experiences when she arrived. While
she could imagine nothing sweeter than to be approaching a home where
affection was interpreted by tact, her soul fainted before the ordeal
of detailing the disappointment to her father and Hilda. She knew that
she would feel worse in the parlour than she did in the train, that,
besides being dejected, she would be incensed. Whether things went well,
or whether they went badly, she mused, it was an equal effort to have to
talk about them if the listeners seized upon the trivial, and ignored
the point--if they put faith in what they were meant to smile at, and
were sceptical where they were asked to believe. How often she had gone
home brimming with news, and no sooner imparted the first item than she
wished fervently that she hadn't any at all!
The porters bawled "Becken'ampton," and she got out with a sigh, and
made her way--dusty, unwilling, tired--towards the house. When she
entered it, there were some letters lying on the hall table, and she
saw one among them for herself from David. She picked it up, rejoicing;
a flush warmed the whiteness of her cheeks, and she forgot she was
fatigued. Her home-coming had been happier than she expected after all.