The Dull Miss Archinard Part 14

"She is getting ready her pictures for the Champs de Mars. But, Hilda, Mr. Odd may come some morning."

"Oh yes. Some morning. I thought you always bicycled in the morning. I wish you _would_ come, it would be so nice to see you there!" she spoke with a gay and sudden warmth; "only you must tell me when to expect you.

My studio must be looking nicely and my model presentable."

"I will take Mr. Odd to-morrow," said Katherine, "he would never find his way."

"Thanks, that will be very jolly," said Odd, conscious that an unescorted visit would have been more so, yet wondering whether Hilda alone might not be more disconcerting than Hilda aided and abetted by her sister.

So the next morning he called for Katherine, and they walked to a veritable nest of _ateliers_ near the Place des Ternes, where they climbed interminable stairs to the very highest studio of all, and here, in very bare and business-like surroundings, they found Hilda. She left her easel to open the door to them. A red-haired woman was lying on a sofa in a far, dim corner, a vase of white flowers at her head. There was a big linen ap.r.o.n of butcher's blue over the black dress, and Hilda looked very neat, less pallid, too, than Odd had seen her look as yet.

Her skin had blue shadows under the chin and nose, and a blue shadow made a mystery beneath the long sweep of her eyebrows and about her beautiful eyes. But when she turned her head to the light, Odd saw that the lips were red and the cheeks freshly and faintly tinted.

He was surprised by the picture on the big easel; the teapot had not prepared him for it. A rather small picture, the figure flung to its graceful, lazy length, only a fourth life-size. It was a picture of elusive shadows, touched with warmer lights in its grays and greens. The woman's half-hidden face was exquisite in color. The sweep of her pale gown, half lost in demi-tint, lay over her like the folded wings of a tired moth. The white flowers stood like dreams in the dreamy atmosphere.

"Hilda, I can almost forgive you." Odd stood staring before the canvas; he had put on his eye-gla.s.s. "Really this atones."

"Isn't it wonderfully simple, wonderfully decorative?" said Katherine, "all those long, sleepy lines. My clever little Hilda!"

"My clever, clever little Hilda!" Odd repeated, turning to look at the young artist. Her eyes met his with their wide, sweet gaze that said nothing. Hilda was evidently only capable of saying things on canvas.

"It is lovely."

"You like it really?"

"I really think it is about as charming a picture as I have seen a woman do. So womanly too." Odd turned to Katherine, it was difficult not to merge Hilda in her art, not to talk about her talent as a thing apart from her personality: "She expresses herself, she doesn't imitate."

"Perhaps that is rather unwomanly," laughed Katherine: "a crawling imitativeness seems unfortunately characteristic. Certainly Hilda has none of it. She has inspired me with hopes for my s.e.x."

"Really cleverer than Madame Morisot," said Odd, looking back to the canvas, "delightful as she is! She could touch a few notes surely, gracefully; Hilda has got hold of a chord. Yes, Hilda, you are an artist. Have you any others?"

Hilda brought forward two. One was a small study of a branch of pink blossoms in a white porcelain vase; the other a woman in white standing at a window and looking out at the twilight. This last was, perhaps, the cleverest of the three; the lines of the woman's back, shoulder, _profil perdu_, astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful.

"You are fond of dreams and shadows, aren't you?"

"I haven't a very wide range, but one can only try to do the things one is fitted for. I like all sorts of pictures, but I like to paint demi-tints and twilights and soft lamplight effects."

"'Car nous voulons la nuance encor-- pas la couleur, rien que la nuance,'"

chanted Katharine. "Hilda lives in dreams and shadows, I think, Mr. Odd, so naturally she paints them. '_L'art c'est la nature, vue a travers un temperament_.' Excuse my spouting."

"So your temperament is a stuff that dreams are made of. Well, Hilda, make as many as you can. h.e.l.lo! is that another old friend I see?" On turning to Hilda he had caught sight of a dachshund--rather white about the muzzle, but very luminous and gentle of eye--stretching himself from a nap behind the little stove in the corner. He came toward them with a kindly wag of the tail.

"Is this Palamon or Arcite?"

A change came over Hilda's face.

"That is Palamon; poor old Palamon. Arcite fulfilled his character by dying first."

"And Darwin and Spencer?"

"Dead, too; Spencer was run over."

"Poor old Palamon! Poor old dog!" Odd had lifted the dog in his arms, and was scratching the silky smooth ears as only a dog-lover knows how.

Palamon's head slowly turned to one side in an ecstasy of appreciation.

Odd looked down at Hilda. Katherine was behind him. "Poor Palamon, 'allone, withouten any companye.'" Hilda's eyes met his in a sad, startled look, then she dropped them to Palamon, who was now putting out his tongue towards Odd's face with grateful emotion.

"Yes," she said gently, putting her hand caressingly on the dog's head; her slim, cold fingers just brushed Odd's; "yes, poor Palamon." She was silent, and there was silence behind them, for Katherine, with her usual good-humored tact, was examining the picture. The model on the sofa stretched her arms and yawned a long, sc.r.a.ping yawn. Palamon gave a short, brisk bark, and looked quickly and suspiciously round the studio.

Both Odd and Hilda laughed.

"But not 'allone,' after all," said Odd. "Is he a great deal with you?

That is a different kind of company, but Palamon is the gainer."

"We mustn't judge Palamon by our own standards," smiled Hilda, "though highly civilized dogs like him don't show many social instincts towards their own kind. He did miss Arcite though, at first, I am sure; but he certainly is not lonely. I bring him here with me, and when I am at home he is always in my room. I think all the walking he gets is good for him. You see in what good condition he is."

Palamon still showing signs of restlessness over the yawn, Odd put him down. He was evidently on cordial terms with the model, for he trotted affably toward her, standing with a lazy, smiling wave of the tail before her, while she addressed him with discreetly low-toned, whispering warmth as "_Mon chou! Mon bijou! Mon pet.i.t lapin a la sauce blanche!_"

"Don't you get very tired working here all day?" Odd asked.

"Sometimes. But anything worth doing makes one tired, doesn't it?"

"You take your art very seriously, Hilda?"

"Sometimes--yes--I take it seriously." Hilda smiled her slight, reserved smile.

"Well, I can't blame you; you really have something to say."

"Hilda, I am afraid we are becoming _de trop_. I must carry you off, Mr.

Odd. Hilda's moments are golden."

"That is a sisterly exaggeration," said Hilda. Had all her personality gone into her pictures? was she a self-centred little egotist? Odd wondered, as he and Katherine walked away together. Katherine's warmly human qualities seemed particularly consoling after the chill of the abstract one felt in Hilda's studio.

CHAPTER IV

"Peter, she is a nice, a clever, a delightful girl," said Mary Apswith.

Mrs. Apswith sat in a bright little salon overlooking the Rue de la Paix. For her holiday week of shopping Peter's hotel was not central enough, but Peter himself was at her command from morning till night. He stood before her now, his back to the flaming logs in the fireplace, looking alternately down at his boots and up at his sister. Peter's face wore an amused but pleasant smile. Katherine must certainly be nice, clever, and delightful, to have won Mary, usually so slow in friends.h.i.+p.

"Whether she is deep--deeply good, I mean--I don't know; one can't tell.

But, at all events, she is sincere to the core." Mary had called on the Archinards some days ago, and had seen Katherine every day since then.

Mary's stateliness had not become buxom. The fine lines of her face had lost their former touch of heaviness. Her gray hair--grayer than Peter's--and fresh skin gave her a look of merely perfected maturity.

Life had gone well with her; everybody said that; yet Mary knew the sadness of life. She had lost two of her babies, and sorrow had softened, ripened her. The Mary of ten years ago had not had that tender look in her eyes, those lines of sympathetic sensibility about the lips. Her decisively friendly sentence was followed by a little sigh of disapprobation.

"As for Hilda!"

"As for Hilda?"