The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 23

Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most _posee_, well-behaved young person.

One could not call her manner discreet; it was far too self-confident for that. Her silence was natural, not a.s.sumed. During the rests she would return to a book.

I asked her one day what she was reading. She replied, looking up with polite calm:

"'Donovan.'"

"Oh!" was all I could find in comment. It did rather surprise me in a girl whose eyes were set in that most appreciative way and whose father, as a socialistic bookbinder, might have inculcated more advanced literary tastes. Still, she was very young; this fact seemed emphasized by the innocent white the back of her neck presented to me as she returned to her reading.

When I came to painting, I found that my good luck accompanied me, and that inspiring sense of mastery. Effort, yes; but achievement followed it with a sort of inevitableness. I tasted the joys of the arduous facility which is the fruition of years of toil.

The limpid grays seemed to me to equal Whistler's; the pinks--flaming in shadow, silvered in the light--suggested Velasquez to my happy young vanity; the warm whites, Chardin would have acknowledged; yet they were all my own, seen through my own eyes, not through the eyes of Chardin, Whistler, or Velasquez. The blacks sung emphatic or softened notes from the impertinent knot in the powdered hair to the bows on skirt and bodice. The rich _empatement_ was a triumph of supple brush-work. I can praise it impudently for it was my masterpiece, and--well, I will keep to the consecutive recital.

Miss Jones showed no particular fellow-feeling for my work, and as, after a fas.h.i.+on, she, too, was responsible for it and had a right to be proud of it, this lack of interest rather irritated me.

Now and then, poised delicately on high heels and in her rustling robes, she would step up to my canvas, give it a pleasant but impa.s.sive look, and then turn away, resuming her chair and the perusal of her romance.

It really irked me after a time. However little value I might set upon her artistic ac.u.men, this silence in my rose of pride p.r.i.c.ked like a thorn.

Miss Jones's taste in painting might be as philistine as in literature, but her reserve aroused conjecture, and I became really anxious for an expression of opinion.

At last, one day, my curiosity burst forth:

"How do you like it?" I asked, while she stood contemplating my _chef-d'oeuvre_ with a brightly indifferent gaze. Miss Jones turned upon me her agate eyes--the eyelashes curled up at the corners, and it was difficult not to believe the eyes, too, roguish.

"I should think you had a great deal of talent," she said. "Have you studied long?"

Studied? It required some effort to adjust my thoughts to the standard implied; but perceiving a perhaps lofty conception of artistic attainment beneath the query, I replied:

"Well, an artist is never done learning, is he? And in the sense of having much to learn, I am still a student, no doubt."

"Ah, yes," Miss Jones replied.

She looked from my picture up at the sky-light, then round at the various studies, engravings, and photographs on the walls. This discursive glance was already familiar to me, and its flitting lightness whetted my curiosity as to possible non-committal depths beneath.

"Inspiration, now," Miss Jones pursued, surprising me a good deal, for she seldom carried on a subject unprompted, "that of course, is not dependent on study."

I felt in this remark something very derogatory to my Manon--an inspiration, and in the best sense, if ever anything was. Did Miss Jones not recognize the intellectual triumphs embodied in that presentment of frail woman-hood? I was certainly piqued, though I replied very good-humouredly:

"I had rather flattered myself that my picture could boast of that quality."

Miss Jones's glance now rested on me rather seriously.

"An inspired work of art should elevate the mind."

I could not for the life of me tell whether she was really rather clever or merely very ba.n.a.l and commonplace.

"I had hoped," I rejoined, politely, "that my picture--as a beautiful work of art--would also possess that faculty."

Miss Jones now looked at the clock, and remarked that it was time to pose. She mounted the low stand and I resumed my palette and brushes, feeling decidedly snubbed. Carrington sauntered in shortly after, his forefinger in a book and a pipe between his teeth. He apologized to Miss Jones for the latter, and wished to know if she objected. Miss Jones's smile retained all its unabashed clearness as she replied:

"It _is_ a rather nasty smell, I think."

Poor Carrington, decidedly disconcerted, knocked out his pipe and laid it down, and Miss Jones, observing him affably while she retained her pose to perfection, added: "I have been brought up to disapprove of smoking, you see; papa doesn't believe in tobacco."

Miss Jones's aplomb was certainly enough to make any man feel awkward, and Carrington looked so as he came up beside me and examined my work.

"By Jove! Fletcher," he said, "the resemblance is astonis.h.i.+ng--_and_ the lack of resemblance. That's the triumph--the material likeness, the spiritual unlikeness."

Indeed, Miss Jones could lay no claim to the "inspiration" of my work; in intrinsic character the face of my pretty _scelerate_ was in no way Miss Jones's.

"Charming, charming," and Carrington's eye, pa.s.sing from my canvas, rested on Miss Jones.

"Which?" I asked, smiling, and, of course, in an undertone.

"It depends, my dear boy, on whether you ask me if I prefer Phryne or Priscilla--pagan or puritan; both are interesting types, and the contrast can be very effectually studied here in your picture and your model."

"Yet Priscilla lends herself wonderfully to be interpreted as Phryne."

"Or, rather, it is wonderful that you should have imagined Manon into that face."

In the next rest, when Carrington had gone, Miss Jones said:

"Mr. Carrington walked home with me yesterday. Papa thinks rather highly of him. It is a pity his life should be so pointless."

It began to be borne in upon me that Miss Jones had painfully serious ethical convictions.

"I suppose you mean from the socialistic standpoint," I said.

"Oh, no--not at all; I am not a socialist. Papa and I agree to differ upon that as upon many other questions. Socialism, I think, tends to revolt and license."

I did not pursue the subject of Carrington's pointlessness nor proffer a plea for socialism. I was beginning to wince rather before Miss Jones's frankness.

On the following day she again came and stood before my picture.

"I posed for Mr. Watkins, R.A., last year," she said. "The picture was in the Academy. Did you see it? It was beautiful."

The mere name of Mr. Watkins ("R.A.") made every drop of aesthetic blood in my body curdle. A conscienceless old prater of the soap and salve school, with not as much idea of drawing or value as a two-year Julianite.

"I don't quite remember," I said, rather faintly; "what was--the picture called?"

"'Faith Conquers Fear,'" said Miss Jones. "I posed as a Christian maiden, you know, tied to a stake in the Roman amphitheatre and waiting martyrdom. The maiden was in a white robe, her hair hanging over her shoulders (perhaps you would not recognize me in this costume), looking up, her hands crossed on her breast. Before her stood a jibing Roman.

One could see it all; the contrast between the base product of a vicious civilization and the n.o.ble maiden. One could read it all in their faces; hers supreme aspiration, his brutal hatred. It was superb. It made one want to cry."

Miss Jones, while speaking, looked so exceedingly beautiful that I almost forgot my dismay at her atrocious taste; for Watkins's "Faith Conquers Fear" had been one of the jokes of the year--a lamentably crude, pretentious presentation of a theatrical subject reproduced extensively in ladies' papers and fatally popular.

At the same moment, and as I looked from Miss Jones's gravely enrapt expression to Manon's seductive graces, I experienced a sensation of extreme discomfort.

"I think a picture should have high and n.o.ble aims," Miss Jones pursued, seeing that I remained silent, and evidently considering the time come when duty required her to speak and to speak freely. "A picture should leave one better for having seen it."