It was one of the distinctions of Mr. Claud Walsingham Popple that his
studio was never too much encumbered with the attributes of his art
to permit the installing, in one of its cushioned corners, of an
elaborately furnished tea-table flanked by the most varied seductions
in sandwiches and pastry.
Mr. Popple, like all great men, had at first had his ups and downs; but
his reputation had been permanently established by the verdict of a
wealthy patron who, returning from an excursion into other fields of
portraiture, had given it as the final fruit of his experience that
Popple was the only man who could "do pearls." To sitters for whom this
was of the first consequence it was another of the artist's merits
that he always subordinated art to elegance, in life as well as in his
portraits. The "messy" element of production was no more visible in
his expensively screened and tapestried studio than its results were
perceptible in his painting; and it was often said, in praise of his
work, that he was the only artist who kept his studio tidy enough for a
lady to sit to him in a new dress.
Mr. Popple, in fact, held that the personality of the artist should at
all times be dissembled behind that of the man. It was his opinion that
the essence of good-breeding lay in tossing off a picture as easily as
you lit a cigarette. Ralph Marvell had once said of him that when he
began a portrait he always turned back his cuffs and said: "Ladies
and gentlemen, you can see there's absolutely nothing here," and Mrs.
Fairford supplemented the description by defining his painting as
"chafing-dish" art. On a certain late afternoon of December, some four
years after Mr. Popple's first meeting with Miss Undine Spragg of Apex,
even the symbolic chafing-dish was nowhere visible in his studio; the
only evidence of its recent activity being the full-length portrait of
Mrs. Ralph Marvell, who, from her lofty easel and her heavily garlanded
frame, faced the doorway with the air of having been invited to
"receive" for Mr. Popple.
The artist himself, becomingly clad in mouse-coloured velveteen, had
just turned away from the picture to hover above the tea-cups; but his
place had been taken by the considerably broader bulk of Mr. Peter Van
Degen, who, tightly moulded into a coat of the latest cut, stood before
the portrait in the attitude of a first arrival.
"Yes, it's good--it's damn good, Popp; you've hit the hair off
ripplingly; but the pearls ain't big enough," he pronounced.
A slight laugh sounded from the raised dais behind the easel.
"Of course they're not! But it's not HIS fault, poor man; HE didn't give
them to me!" As she spoke Mrs. Ralph Marvell rose from a monumental gilt
arm-chair of pseudo-Venetian design and swept her long draperies to Van
Degen's side.
"He might, then--for the privilege of painting you!" the latter
rejoined, transferring his bulging stare from the counterfeit to the
original. His eyes rested on Mrs. Marvell's in what seemed a quick
exchange of understanding; then they passed on to a critical inspection
of her person. She was dressed for the sitting in something faint and
shining, above which the long curves of her neck looked dead white in
the cold light of the studio; and her hair, all a shadowless rosy gold,
was starred with a hard glitter of diamonds.
"The privilege of painting me? Mercy, _I_ have to pay for being painted!
He'll tell you he's giving me the picture--but what do you suppose this
cost?" She laid a finger-tip on her shimmering dress.
Van Degen's eye rested on her with cold enjoyment. "Does the price come
higher than the dress?"