When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face
without a word.
"Don't be afraid," he hastened to reassure her; "I engage to paint a
portrait you will like."
She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal,
and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face--not the
handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the
telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief
and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the
soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and
an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it.
Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that
dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from
Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior
possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie's, if, as
Gerald doubted, Charlie's offer had been anything more than facile
compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her
fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie's, he had the not disagreeable
spectacle of her pressing to her warm and rosy face an animal that
related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy
object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has
feelings.
It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval
jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture
of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him
of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons
bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom she, in taking his
loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought.
The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which
he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers,
besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of
feeling, rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to
the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death
of his last, Lucile's pet and his mother's, who had been his companion
until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage
of the Maltese variety.
Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours
watching the several components of one litter as they disported
themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon
one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of
character.
Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna,
sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and
brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald's
overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed
itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little
beast, interspersed with endearments of dim import, such as, "Diddums!
Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!" Estelle's did the same. There was no
difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog.
Aurora remarked later on that Busteretto couldn't be blamed for not
knowing which was his mother.
Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of
life and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he
could tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and
big dogs, but next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate
them. He twinkled when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet.
Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which
Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the
new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his
rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end
of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by
the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it
subtly right. You were flattered.
When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she
should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and
surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her
lap,--but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white
ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars
in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and
an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair.
Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a
return of suspicion.
"See here," she said, observing him narrowly, "there's no trick about
this, is there?"
"Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a
portrait entirely satisfactory as well as entirely resembling. It is
like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses,
and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know
you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant
me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see."
It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope.
One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings
because the light through its windows was the least variable. The
necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work
began.
Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily
through half-closed eyes.
"You have not one good feature," he said, as if thinking aloud.
"Oh!"--she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting
decided upon--"oh! is that the way you're going to pay me for keeping
still on a chair by the hour?"
"You have no eyebrows to speak of."
"What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only
they don't show up. They're fair, to match my hair."
"You are undershot."
"What's that?"
"Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper."
"Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too
perfect beauty."
As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he
quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was
crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced the word perfect
"_parfect_," he presumed that she was making herself look, for the
remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating
Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had
stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her
understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses
wounded him.
"Faultless features," he went on after a time, in commentary on his
earlier remark, "do not by any means always make a beautiful face,"
politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no
great misfortune.
Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of
those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good
conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him.
She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend.
She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was
mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even
more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and
ideas.
He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself
responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory
relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared,
without trace of envy, were 'way above her head.
Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old
World. She was "reading up" on these things. She was also "working at"
her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself
at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not
feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one time, she had
given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in
Europe.
Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She
came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup.
She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water,
explaining:
"I am trying to 'redooce.' This is good for what ails me, they say. But
I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me,
and she's that punctual! Clotilde, you're too punctual with this stuff.
You don't suppose I like it?"
"But think, Madame, of the sylph's form that it will give you!" replied
Clotilde, in respectably good English.
"I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss--no, I
won't launch on that name. It's Italo's sister, who has saved our lives
and become our greatest blessing."
Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at
all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat
head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a
different and better class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in
the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the
working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and
openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he
was glad to trust all the rest.
No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice
started telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not
what they called "own" brother and sister, but only half. Their father,
being left by the death of his wife with a young family on his hands,
had in feeble despair married the cook, become the father of one more
child, and died. Italo was that latest born. The children of the first
wife had then been taken by her folks, while their step-mother retained
her own chick, assisted from a distance by the prouder portion of the
family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an art instead,
and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz of
his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it.
He lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something
of his half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to
small ways of life, like himself.
Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized
his gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit.
"It must be," reflected Gerald, "that the fellow can stir up a laugh."
He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate
the idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his.
He fancied that _maldicenza_, gossip further spiced with
backbiting, would form the chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed
sharp ears, his opportunities for picking up knowledge of other people's
affairs were certainly unusual. He passed from house to house, playing
accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his
screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been
there.
Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves
in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a
distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an
individual. Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a
poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli
without a doubt the patronage of the wealthy American represented
success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision.
Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some
exhibition of Ceccherelli's _spirito_, or wit, and upon an evening
when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for
manifestations....
It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner
Gerald had artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that
Clotilde did not dine with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him
fear it. Highly as he was prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would,
with her making the fourth, have lost for him those points on account of
which he prized it. But he gathered that she found it more convenient to
take her meals in private. In rejoicing for himself, he rejoiced also
for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her doing, the dishes of
her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of her country
from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of the
strangers.
To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for
the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he
had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli
remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and
Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word
reached Gerald. Then he had the sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who
acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He got an outside view of himself,
stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was not to be wondered at
that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of temperament by his
vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the pianist's small
brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his
hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different
entourage.
This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of
Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest.
"Italo says," she began, after a silence such as often fell while she
posed and he painted, "that Mr. Landini has the evil eye."
"What rubbish!"
"Glad to hear you say so. I don't believe there's any such thing,
myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to
prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini
whenever he comes near me."
"Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as effectually,
make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you not
to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should
think, Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little
individual corrupt your mind."
Fancying it teased him, she pursued, "What do you think he says besides?
That Mr. Landini's color isn't natural, but a juice, he says, a dye,
that he stains himself with."
"For the love of Heaven, why?"
"That's what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the sake
of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him
more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them
to look at him, then his eyes do the rest."
"I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and that you do not
allow this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards--"
"Don't be afraid. If I did, I shouldn't be having him to dinner, should
I? And he's coming to-night."
"Oh."
"Yes. Quite a party. You weren't asked, because we know you now. You
would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and
then you wouldn't have come."
"Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that."
"I sha'n't tell you. This much I will tell you, though--" she added with
the frankness usual to her, "I don't look forward to it much."
It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had
gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she
was ready.
She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed
into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade
gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than
blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky.
"Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?" he
said.
"Yes, yes," she remembered herself; "I will try to look pleasant. But I
feel cross."
"Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?"
"Oh, I made a fool of myself."
"That sounds serious. Was it?"
"Yes. No. Oh, I don't know. I don't suppose it was really serious....
But the whole thing has made me cross."
She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it,
that was evident.
"You see," she plunged without preamble into her confidence, "from the
beginning, I didn't want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any
number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was
different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt
telling me--or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out--that
yesterday was his birthday. I said, 'Come and celebrate with us!' I was
thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And
from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my
always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a
regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and
wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends
of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it
would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody
else's. I've no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don't mean
them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without
so much as making a face. It wasn't so bad, after all, everything went
all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn't having much
fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on
one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means
all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn't a bit my kind. And
last night, I don't mind telling you--" her voice dropped to a note
confidentially low, "with his compliments and incinerations, you'd
almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I
say, I wasn't having much fun. Then I don't know what got into me. They
were passing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one
of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent assortment
that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and
offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He
looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took
it--and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that
laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross."
"I shouldn't be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too."
"He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had
before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off!
I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in
laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had
dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said,
I cut in, short as pie-crust, 'Young man,' I said, 'if you aren't
careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?' And I meant
it."
Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his
teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way
of comment on what he had heard.
Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one
eager to make reparation for an injustice, "It's all right now! A
beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori's where my
dinner-set was bought--a plate, you know, to match the one that got
broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it
Mr. Landini's card, with such a nice message written on it. Don't you
think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening
Charlie Hunt came and was sweet as pie. We're just as good friends as
ever. I'm ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything
I said that didn't seem quite kind. He's all right. It's me that's
crochety.... Isn't that picture far enough along for you to let me see
it?"
"No, Mrs. Hawthorne."
"Will you let me see it when it's far enough along?"
"No."
"I think you're real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?"
"Does sitting bore you so much?"
"Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It's like taking a sea-voyage
with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in
the same number of years on land. I'm getting to feel I know you quite
well."
"Wasn't it clever of me to think of the portrait?"
"Go 'way! D'you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I'm
getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful' easy, don't you? But
you don't hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a
lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate--oh, how I
hate 'em! I hate 'em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you,
Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot
of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it,
you're one of the patientest persons I know. I'd take my chances with
you for a judge a lot sooner than I'd like to with loads of people who
aren't half so ready to call you a blame' fool."
"While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character,
what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. Hawthorne?" asked Gerald,
after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of
a compliment.
"Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose."
"Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before
my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are
barely more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the
three virtues, I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I
had. It can't be said I didn't suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I
smelled it, as it were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude,
its importance. It is simply amazing, bewildering, funny."
"For goodness' sake, what?" she cried, breathless with interest.
"I can't tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least mention of
it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none of
my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to
keep very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some
time; I am working on your mouth."
Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general
way known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received
of her at first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had
formed no idea of the ease and magnificence with which she got rid of
money.
In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed
to a little scene that almost daily repeated itself--a scene which he,
busy at his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if
he saw it, to think anything about.
Clotilde would come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great
modesty, and stand hesitating, like a person with a communication to
make, but not sufficient boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to
drop the pose, would excuse herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde
wanted. Clotilde would then approach and speak low,--not so low,
however, but that in spite of him messages and meanings were telegraphed
to Gerald's brain. The look itself of the unsealed envelopes in
Clotilde's hand was to Gerald's eye full of information. She would
sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to look at; but
Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, "You know I couldn't read it
if I wanted to." At the end of the murmured conference Aurora would say,
"Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? It's in my top drawer," and when
this had been brought, her dimpled hand would take from it and give to
Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a hundred francs, hardly
appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: "I'm afraid I haven't
enough. I shall have to make out a check."
Gerald's _flair_, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him
perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why
these transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour,
and acutely observed that they took place when they could, this being
when Estelle was out of the way. Clotilde also had _flair_.
After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly
understood what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the
letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held
one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of
Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a gratuity. Another
letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her
wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of work.
Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did
not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He
knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent
impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the
relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against these.
Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as belonging among the latter,
the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the _sposina_ and the
worried _padre di famiglia_ were going to be made glad by rich
crumbs from Aurora's board. But he could not help uneasiness for the
future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout,
should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence
should have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus....
Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to
hold to the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds.
Meanwhile Gerald could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good
things among her fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to
charity. He did not believe she gave away anything of her own, but she
loved to see Aurora give. After a life spent in a home where the lumps
of sugar were counted and the coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it
attracted her like wild, incredible romance.
It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had
it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people
gained,--money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that
came nearer to benefiting her when spent in that manner than in another.
Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good measure, offering all
the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not be expected to
have--or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by Gerald to
have--any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing be
drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a
ruin she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her,
Clotilde, to have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining
money from the millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward,
and offered it regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a
careful guiding of the dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on
any side that it was the payment of the unjust steward.
Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her
nose like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white
cheeks, for this business-like outlook and use of her position. It would
have been different if she had been a friend and gentleman.
* * * * *
The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On
Gerald's lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately
derisive of his work and the fun he was having.
No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that
produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one
to forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all
the same!... His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could
think it curious that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to
be indulged. Fortunately, a natural limit was set to this Capuan period.
He would come from the winter world into the room which the American
kept enervatingly warm, a pernicious practice. One could not deny,
however, that the body relaxed in it with a sense of well-being, after
steeling itself to resist the insidious Italian cold, exuding from damp
pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; that cold which is never,
if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against which clothing seems
ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood shrinks
away, and stagnates around the heart.
He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be
picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as
an old maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly
wiping paint off on his hair.
The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain
chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made
herself comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow
under them--blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently
forgot she was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her
opera-cloak over her shoulders, lest she take cold in her decollete; the
high fur collar made an effective background for her face. Then he would
fall to painting, and the hours of the forenoon would fly.
An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular.
Another amiable woman--soothing presences, both--would answer. Or he
would answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and
laughing, and throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to
labor. He would remain for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally
abundant. After it he would still linger in this house, bright and warm
with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as luxuriously soft as those
curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in ceiling frescos,
and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable women. In
full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in their
carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately
declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of
not accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella.
Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was
taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element
which he did not analyze merely to despise.
He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He
settled down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable
that the sitter also took on a faintly different air. Often at that
moment she would vaguely, purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would
smile in absolute reciprocity. They would not seize the opportunity for
more personal exchange of talk. All would go on as before. He had
nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could not have been said
before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch of magic
had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the
vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow
and steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which--one hardly knows
how to describe such a thing--was at the same time excitement.
Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up
all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could
split hairs and wander into every intricacy of argument with men and
artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom
truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened
to him to sigh for a world where nobody talked forever and ever.
What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the
veracious story of lives and emotions--not lamely, as words do, mingling
the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested
with you to understand.
Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent:
you had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the
farmer's wife, the children's ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs.
Hawthorne in silence and abstraction was allied to things august and
mysterious, things far removed from her own thoughts. These, while she
sat in her foolish jewels, unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with
her house, her dressmaker, the doings of her little set, gossip, the
personal affairs--who knows?--of the painter painting her. But,
profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. Hawthorne's essential manner of
being related her to those forces of the world which the ancient mind
figured in the shapes of women. There was something present in her of
the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, is ready
to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed,
one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties
irrational.
The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these
impressions of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like
a reflection received on the sensitive plate of his heart.
One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was
finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They
were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great,
bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond.
Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side,
with a smile like a faun's when a faun is Mephistophelian.
Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to
express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove.
Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring
so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of
difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had
from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its
progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the
same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald's bad opinion.
"My soul!" she murmured, really much moved.
Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as
Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets
celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families
may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an
immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward
the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and
fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors' as
they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour.
[Illustration: Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find
no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove]
In the days when La Grande Mademoiselle was painted as Minerva, Aurora's
portrait might have been called "Mrs. Hawthorne as Venus." The
expression of her face was as void of history as the fair goddess's. The
tender beam of pleasure lighting it suggested that she might that moment
have been awarded the apple. The portrait was, nevertheless, in a way,
"Aurora all over," as Estelle pronounced it; but an Aurora whose
imperfections had been smoothed out of existence, and with them her
humor; an Aurora whose good working complexion, as she called it, had
been turned to lilies and roses, her hair of mortal gold to immortal
sunshine, and those sagacious orbs of blue, which made friends for her
by their twinkle, into melting azure stars.
The painter had, besides, glorified every detail of the setting: the
rich fabric of the dress, the creamy feathers of the fan, even the roses
of the breast-knot. The pearls and diamonds he had amused himself with
making larger than they were, and filled these with a winking fire,
those with a lambent luster. But Gerald had no mind when he indulged in
satire to be gross. The whole was dainty, as shimmering as a
soap-bubble, and of a fineness that rightly commended it to lovers of
beautiful surfaces.
"I don't care," burst from Aurora, as if in reply to an inaudible
criticism, "I just love it! I don't care if it is flattered. I could hug
you for it, Gerald Fane. I think it's perfectly lovely. It's going to be
a solid satisfaction. By and by, when my double chin has caught up with
me, and I'm a homely old thing, and nobody knows what I did look like in
my prime, I'll have this to show them. By that time, with my brain
weakening, I hope I shall have come to thinking it was as like me as two
peas. There's some reason for living now."
Every caller was taken to see the portrait, and heard Mrs. Hawthorne's
opinion of the talented artist. The majority of visitors candidly shared
her admiration, though not one woman among them can have failed to say
to herself that the portrait was flattered. But with a portrait of
oneself to have executed, who would not prefer the brush that makes
beautiful?
Interest spread in the painter, whose work few even of the Florentines
knew except from hearsay. No one who saw Mrs. Hawthorne's portrait was
very clearly aware--such is fame!--that it was for Fane a departure.
Until it came to Leslie. She stood a long time before the painting, then
exclaimed:
"What a joke!"
But she was inclined to take the same view as Mrs. Hawthorne, that when
he could paint like that it was a pity Gerald should not do it oftener,
to build up a reputation and fill his purse. She only would have advised
him not to go quite so far another time in the same direction.
* * * * *
As Gerald, the portrait finished, came no more to the house, fairly as
if modesty could not have endured the compliments showered upon him,
Aurora with a communication to make had to square herself before her
desk in the room of the red flowers and painstakingly pen a note.
Aurora, when taking pains, wrote the cleanest, clearest, most
characterless hand that was ever seen outside of a school copy-book, and
took pride in it. Aurora's language, when she applied herself to
composition, lost the last vestige of color and life. She wrote:
"My dear Mr. Fane:
"You have not been to see us for a long time, and so I am
obliged to write what I have to say. It is that our friends
_cannot say enough_ in praise of your portrait of me, and
Mrs. Bixby, an American who is staying at the pension Trollope,
wants to have one just like it--one, of course, I mean, as much
like her as that is like me, but not a bit more. But before she
decides she wants to know what it will cost. And that brings me
to the question, What is the price of my picture? Please, let me
beg you to make it _a figure I shall not blush to pay_ for
such a _fine piece of work_. Make it a price that agrees
with my estimate of the picture rather than your _very
modest_ one. I shall be glad, you ought to know, to pay
anything you say. You couldn't, if you tried, make it seem too
much for me to pay for _such a fine piece of work_. I have
got up in the middle of the night and gone down to look at it
with a candle, and stood till I began to sneeze, I like it so
much, though I know it's too good-looking. So please set a good
price on it and not _make me feel mean_ taking it. Then
I'll tell Mrs. Bixby what I paid. She's got plenty of money, and
even if she beats you down, it will be better if she knows I
paid a big price. You have such a wonderful talent it ought to
make your fortune, and so it will by and by. Don't forget that
we are always glad to see you and that you haven't been for
quite a while.
"Yours sincerely,
"Aurora Hawthorne.
"P.S. What do you think Busteretto did? He saw me pouring some
water into a bowl and imagined I was going to give him a bath.
So he went to hide under the grate. Then of course he had to
have a bath, which he wouldn't have had to otherwise. He sends
much love.
"Another P.S. I meant to tell you we have got a box for the
veglione (I hope that is the way to spell it) on the last night
of the Carnival. We have only asked the Fosses so far, and we
want you to be sure to save that night to come with us."
Gerald, having read, sat down and wrote, with a disregard to the
delicacy of his hair-lines and the shading of his down-strokes that
would have furnished a poor example to anybody:
"The portrait, my dear Mrs. Hawthorne, is a gift, for which I
will not even accept thanks, as it is, your kind opinion
notwithstanding, absolutely without value. One sole point of
interest it has, that of a future curiosity--the only thing of
the kind that will have been painted in his whole lifetime by
"Your devoted friend,
"G. F.
"Shall I find you at home this evening?"