At last he broached the question of painting the Colonel: it was now
very late in the season--there would be little time before the general
dispersal. He said they must make the most of it; the great thing was to
begin; then in the autumn, with the resumption of their London life,
they could go forward. Mrs. Capadose objected to this that she really
could not consent to accept another present of such value. Lyon had
given her the portrait of herself of old, and he had seen what they had
had the indelicacy to do with it. Now he had offered her this beautiful
memorial of the child--beautiful it would evidently be when it was
finished, if he could ever satisfy himself; a precious possession which
they would cherish for ever. But his generosity must stop there--they
couldn't be so tremendously 'beholden' to him. They couldn't order the
picture--of course he would understand that, without her explaining: it
was a luxury beyond their reach, for they knew the great prices he
received. Besides, what had they ever done--what above all had _she_
ever done, that he should overload them with benefits? No, he was too
dreadfully good; it was really impossible that Clement should sit. Lyon
listened to her without protest, without interruption, while he bent
forward at his work, and at last he said: 'Well, if you won't take it
why not let him sit for me for my own pleasure and profit? Let it be a
favour, a service I ask of him. It will do me a lot of good to paint him
and the picture will remain in my hands.'
'How will it do you a lot of good?' Mrs. Capadose asked.
'Why, he's such a rare model--such an interesting subject. He has such
an expressive face. It will teach me no end of things.'
'Expressive of what?' said Mrs. Capadose.
'Why, of his nature.'
'And do you want to paint his nature?'
'Of course I do. That's what a great portrait gives you, and I shall
make the Colonel's a great one. It will put me up high. So you see my
request is eminently interested.'
'How can you be higher than you are?'
'Oh, I'm insatiable! Do consent,' said Lyon.
'Well, his nature is very noble,' Mrs. Capadose remarked.
'Ah, trust me, I shall bring it out!' Lyon exclaimed, feeling a little
ashamed of himself.
Mrs. Capadose said before she went away that her husband would probably
comply with his invitation, but she added, 'Nothing would induce me to
let you pry into _me_ that way!'
'Oh, you,' Lyon laughed--'I could do you in the dark!'
The Colonel shortly afterwards placed his leisure at the painter's
disposal and by the end of July had paid him several visits. Lyon was
disappointed neither in the quality of his sitter nor in the degree to
which he himself rose to the occasion; he felt really confident that he
should produce a fine thing. He was in the humour; he was charmed with
his _motif_ and deeply interested in his problem. The only point that
troubled him was the idea that when he should send his picture to the
Academy he should not be able to give the title, for the catalogue,
simply as 'The Liar.' However, it little mattered, for he had now
determined that this character should be perceptible even to the meanest
intelligence--as overtopping as it had become to his own sense in the
living man. As he saw nothing else in the Colonel to-day, so he gave
himself up to the joy of painting nothing else. How he did it he could
not have told you, but it seemed to him that the mystery of how to do it
was revealed to him afresh every time he sat down to his work. It was in
the eyes and it was in the mouth, it was in every line of the face and
every fact of the attitude, in the indentation of the chin, in the way
the hair was planted, the moustache was twisted, the smile came and
went, the breath rose and fell. It was in the way he looked out at a
bamboozled world in short--the way he would look out for ever. There
were half a dozen portraits in Europe that Lyon rated as supreme; he
regarded them as immortal, for they were as perfectly preserved as they
were consummately painted. It was to this small exemplary group that he
aspired to annex the canvas on which he was now engaged. One of the
productions that helped to compose it was the magnificent Moroni of the
National Gallery--the young tailor, in the white jacket, at his board
with his shears. The Colonel was not a tailor, nor was Moroni's model,
unlike many tailors, a liar; but as regards the masterly clearness with
which the individual should be rendered his work would be on the same
line as that. He had to a degree in which he had rarely had it before
the satisfaction of feeling life grow and grow under his brush. The
Colonel, as it turned out, liked to sit and he liked to talk while he
was sitting: which was very fortunate, as his talk largely constituted
Lyon's inspiration. Lyon put into practice that idea of drawing him out
which he had been nursing for so many weeks: he could not possibly have
been in a better relation to him for the purpose. He encouraged,
beguiled, excited him, manifested an unfathomable credulity, and his
only interruptions were when the Colonel did not respond to it. He had
his intermissions, his hours of sterility, and then Lyon felt that the
picture also languished. The higher his companion soared, the more
gyrations he executed, in the blue, the better he painted; he couldn't
make his flights long enough. He lashed him on when he flagged; his
apprehension became great at moments that the Colonel would discover his
game. But he never did, apparently; he basked and expanded in the fine
steady light of the painter's attention. In this way the picture grew
very fast; it was astonishing what a short business it was, compared
with the little girl's. By the fifth of August it was pretty well
finished: that was the date of the last sitting the Colonel was for the
present able to give, as he was leaving town the next day with his wife.
Lyon was amply content--he saw his way so clear: he should be able to do
at his convenience what remained, with or without his friend's
attendance. At any rate, as there was no hurry, he would let the thing
stand over till his own return to London, in November, when he would
come back to it with a fresh eye. On the Colonel's asking him if his
wife might come and see it the next day, if she should find a
minute--this was so greatly her desire--Lyon begged as a special favour
that she would wait: he was so far from satisfied as yet. This was the
repetition of a proposal Mrs. Capadose had made on the occasion of his
last visit to her, and he had then asked for a delay--declared that he
was by no means content. He was really delighted, and he was again a
little ashamed of himself.
By the fifth of August the weather was very warm, and on that day, while
the Colonel sat straight and gossiped, Lyon opened for the sake of
ventilation a little subsidiary door which led directly from his studio
into the garden and sometimes served as an entrance and an exit for
models and for visitors of the humbler sort, and as a passage for
canvases, frames, packing-boxes and other professional gear. The main
entrance was through the house and his own apartments, and this approach
had the charming effect of admitting you first to a high gallery, from
which a crooked picturesque staircase enabled you to descend to the
wide, decorated, encumbered room. The view of this room, beneath them,
with all its artistic ingenuities and the objects of value that Lyon had
collected, never failed to elicit exclamations of delight from persons
stepping into the gallery. The way from the garden was plainer and at
once more practicable and more private. Lyon's domain, in St. John's
Wood, was not vast, but when the door stood open of a summer's day it
offered a glimpse of flowers and trees, you smelt something sweet and
you heard the birds. On this particular morning the side-door had been
found convenient by an unannounced visitor, a youngish woman who stood
in the room before the Colonel perceived her and whom he perceived
before she was noticed by his friend. She was very quiet, and she looked
from one of the men to the other. 'Oh, dear, here's another!' Lyon
exclaimed, as soon as his eyes rested on her. She belonged, in fact, to
a somewhat importunate class--the model in search of employment, and she
explained that she had ventured to come straight in, that way, because
very often when she went to call upon gentlemen the servants played her
tricks, turned her off and wouldn't take in her name.
'But how did you get into the garden?' Lyon asked.
'The gate was open, sir--the servants' gate. The butcher's cart was
there.'
'The butcher ought to have closed it,' said Lyon.
'Then you don't require me, sir?' the lady continued.
Lyon went on with his painting; he had given her a sharp look at first,
but now his eyes lighted on her no more. The Colonel, however, examined
her with interest. She was a person of whom you could scarcely say
whether being young she looked old or old she looked young; she had at
any rate evidently rounded several of the corners of life and had a face
that was rosy but that somehow failed to suggest freshness. Nevertheless
she was pretty and even looked as if at one time she might have sat for
the complexion. She wore a hat with many feathers, a dress with many
bugles, long black gloves, encircled with silver bracelets, and very bad
shoes. There was something about her that was not exactly of the
governess out of place nor completely of the actress seeking an
engagement, but that savoured of an interrupted profession or even of a
blighted career. She was rather soiled and tarnished, and after she had
been in the room a few moments the air, or at any rate the nostril,
became acquainted with a certain alcoholic waft. She was unpractised in
the _h_, and when Lyon at last thanked her and said he didn't want
her--he was doing nothing for which she could be useful--she replied
with rather a wounded manner, 'Well, you know you _'ave_ 'ad me!'
'I don't remember you,' Lyon answered.
'Well, I daresay the people that saw your pictures do! I haven't much
time, but I thought I would look in.'
'I am much obliged to you.'
'If ever you should require me, if you just send me a postcard----'
'I never send postcards,' said Lyon.
'Oh well, I should value a private letter! Anything to Miss Geraldine,
Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting 'ill----'
'Very good; I'll remember,' said Lyon.