December Love Part 44

"Well, Americans never get like that. They are too practical."

"And not romantic--do you mean?" she said, not without irony.

"They can be romantic, but they save themselves from disaster with their practical sense. I hope I put it right."

She smiled at him.

"You speak very good English. What do you think of this?"

"But I have seen her!" he said.

They had come to the easel on which was the half-finished portrait of Cora, staring across her empty gla.s.s.

"She goes to the Cafe Royal."

He looked again at Miss Van Tuyn.

"Do you ever go there?" he asked gravely.

"No, never," she said with calm simplicity, returning his gaze.

"Well she--that woman--sits there alone just like that. She has a purpose. She is waiting for someone to come in who will come some night. And she knows that, and will wait, like a dog before a hole which contains something he intends to kill. This Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin is very clever. He is more than a painter; he is an understander."

"Ah!" she said, intimately pleased by this remark. "You do appreciate him! Garstin is great because he paints not merely for the eye that looks for a sort of painted photograph, but for the eye that demands a summing up of character."

Arabian looked sideways at her.

"What is that--of character, mademoiselle?"

"A summing up! That is a presentation of the sum total of the character."

"Oh, yes."

He looked again at Cora.

"One knows what she is by that," he said.

Then, standing still, he looked rapidly all round the studio, glancing first at one portrait then at another, with eyes which despite their l.u.s.trous softness, seemed to make a sort of prey of whatever they lighted on.

"But they are all women and all of a certain world!" he said, almost suspiciously. "Why is that?"

"Garstin is pa.s.sing through a phase just now. He paints from the Cafe Royal."

"Oh!"

He paused, and his brown face took on a look of rather hard meditation.

"Does he never paint what they call decent people?" he inquired. "One may occasionally spend an hour at the Cafe Royal--especially if one is not English--without belonging to the _bas-fonds_. I do not know whether Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin understands that."

"Of course he does," she said, instantly grasping the meaning of his hesitation. "But there is one portrait--of a man--which I don't think you have looked at."

"Where?"

"On that big easel with its back to us. If you want a decent person"--she spoke with a slightly ironical intonation--"go and see what Garstin can do with decency."

"I will."

And he walked over to the side of the room opposite to the grand piano, and went to stand in front of the easel she had indicated. She stood where she was and watched him. For two or three minutes he looked at the picture in silence, and she thought his expression had become slightly hostile. His audacious and rather thick lips were set together firmly, almost too firmly. His splendid figure supple, athletic and harmonious, looked almost rigid. She wondered what he was feeling, whether he disliked the portrait of the judge of the Criminal Court at which he was looking. Finally he said:

"I think Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin is a humorist. Do not you?"

"But--why?"

"To put this gentleman in the midst of all the law breakers."

Miss Van Tuyn crossed the room and joined him in front of the picture, which showed the judge seated in his wig and robes.

"And that is not all," added Arabian. "This man's business is to judge others, naughty people who do G.o.d knows what, and, it seems, have to be punished sometimes. Is it not?"

"Yes, to be sure."

"But Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin when painting him is saying to himself all the time, 'And he is naughty, too! And who is going to put on wig and red clothes and tell him he, too, deserves a few months of prison?' Now is not that true, mademoiselle? Is not that man bad underneath the judge's skin? And has not Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin found this out, and does not he use all his cleverness to show it?"

Miss Van Tuyn looked at Arabian with a stronger interest than any she had shown yet. It was quite true. Garstin had a peculiar faculty for getting at the lower parts of a character and for bringing it to the surface in his portraits. Perhaps in the exercise of this faculty he showed his ingrained cynicism, sometimes even his malice. Arabian had, it seemed, immediately discovered the painter's predominant quality as a psychologist of the brush.

"You are quite right," she said. "One feels that someone ought to judge that judge."

"That is more than a portrait of one man," said Arabian. "It is a portrait of the world's hypocrisy."

In saying this his usually soft voice suddenly took on an almost biting tone.

"The question is," he added, "whether one wishes to be painted as bad when perhaps one is not so bad. Many people, I think, might fear to be painted by this very famous Mr. d.i.c.k Garstin."

"Would you be afraid to be painted by him?" she said.

He cast a sharp glance at her with eyes which looked suddenly vigilant.

"I did not say that."

"He'll be furious if you refuse."

"I see he is accustomed generally to have what he wishes."

"Yes. And he would make a magnificent thing of you. I am certain of that."

She saw vanity looking out of his eyes, and her vanity felt suddenly almost strangely at home with it.

"It is a compliment, I know, that he should wish to paint me," said Arabian. "But why does he?"