The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 24

I could not ignore the kind but firmly severe criticism implied; I could not but revolt from this Hebraistic onslaught.

"I don't admit a conscious moral aim in art," I said. "Art need only concern itself with being beautiful and interesting; the rest will follow. But a badly-painted picture certainly makes me feel wicked, and when I go to the National Gallery to have a look at the Velasquezes and Veroneses I feel the better for it."

"Velasquez?" Miss Jones repeated. "Ah, well, I prefer the old masters--I mean those who painted religious subjects as no one since has painted them. Why did not Velasquez, at least, as he could not rise to the ideal, paint beautiful people? I never have been able to care for mere ugliness, however cleverly copied."

I felt buffeted by her complacent crudity.

"Velasquez had no soul," she added.

"No soul! Why he paints life, character, soul, everything! Copied! What of his splendid decorativeness, his colour, his atmosphere?" My e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns left her calm unruffled.

"Ah, but all that doesn't make the world any better," she returned, really with an air of humouring a silly materialism; and as she went back to her pose she added, very kindly, for my face probably revealed my injured feelings:

"You see I have rather serious views of life."

"Miss Jones--really!" I laid down my palette. "I must beg of you to believe that I have, too--very serious."

Gently Miss Jones shook her head, looking, not at me, but down into the mirror. This effect of duty fulfilled, even in opposition, was most characteristic.

"I cannot believe it," she said, "else why, when you have facility, talent, and might employ them on a higher subject, do you paint a mere study of a vain young lady?"

This interpretation of Manon startled me, so lacking was it in comprehension.

"Manon Lescaut was more than a vain young lady, Miss Jones."

"Well," Miss Jones lifted her eyes for a moment to smile quietly, soothingly at me. "I am not imputing any wrong to Miss Manon Lescaut; I merely say that she is vain. A harmless vanity no doubt, but I have posed for other characters, you see!" Her smile was so charming in its very fatuity that the vision of her lovely face, vulgarized and unrecognizable in "Faith Conquers Fear," filled me with redoubled exasperation. Her misinterpretation of Manon stirred a certain deepening of that touch of discomfort--a sickly unpleasantness. I found myself flus.h.i.+ng.

Miss Jones's white hand--the hand that held the mirror with such beauty in taper finger-tips and turn of wrist--fell to her side, and she fixed her eyes on me with quite a troubled look.

"I am afraid I have hurt your feelings," she said; "I am very sorry. I always speak my mind out; I never think that it may hurt. It is very dull in me."

At these words I felt that unpleasant stir spring suddenly to a guilty misery. I felt, somehow, that I was a shameful hypocrite, and Miss Jones a priggish but most charming and most injured angel.

"Miss Jones," I said, much confused, "sincerity cannot really hurt me, and I always respect it. I am sorry, very sorry, that you see no more in my picture. I care for your good opinion" (this was certainly, in a sense, a lie, and yet, for the moment, that guilty consciousness upon me, I believed it), "and I hope that though my picture has not gained it, I, personally, may never forfeit it."

Still looking at me gravely, Miss Jones said:

"I don't think you ever will. That is a very manly, a very n.o.ble way of looking at it."

But the thought of Manon Lescaut now tormented me. I had finished the head; my preoccupation could not harm that; but this lovely face looking into the mirror, with soulless, happy eyes, seemed to slide a smile at me, a smile of malicious comprehension, a smile of _nous nous entendons_, a smile that made a b.u.t.t of Miss Jones's innocence and laughed with me at the joke.

I soon found myself rebelling against Manon's intrusion. I wished to a.s.sure her that we had nothing in common and that, in Miss Jones's innocence, I found no amusing element.

That evening Carrington came in. He wore a rather absorbed look, and only glanced at my picture. After absent replies to my desultory remarks, he suddenly said, from his chair:

"I walked home with Miss Jones this afternoon." Carrington, with his ultra-aesthetic sensibilities, must find Miss Jones even more jarring than I did, and his act implied a very kindly interest.

"That was nice of you," I observed, though at the mention of Miss Jones that piercing stab of shame again went through me, and my eyes unwillingly, guiltily sought the eyes of my smiling Manon.

"She was rather troubled about something she had said," Carrington pursued, ignoring my approbation, "about the picture. Of course she doesn't know anything about pictures."

"No," I murmured, "she doesn't."

"By Jove!" added Carrington, "that's the trouble. She doesn't understand anything!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean that she could never see certain things from our standpoint; she is as ignorant and as innocent as a baby. She's never read 'Manon Lescaut'--that came out _en pa.s.sant_--and, by Jove, you know, it _does_ seem a beastly shame! A girl like that! A snow-drop!"

Carrington cast a look of unmistakable resentment at my poor Manon.

"Well," I said, lamely--indeed I felt maimed--"how was I to know? And what am I to do?"

"Why, my dear fellow," and Carrington spoke with some fierceness, "you've nothing to do with it! _I'm_ to blame! I told you about her.

Said she had the type! Dull, blundering fool that I was not to have seen the shrieking incongruity! The rigidly upright soul of her! That girl couldn't tell a lie nor look one; and _Manon_!"

Carrington got up abruptly; evidently his disgust could not be borne in a quiescent att.i.tude.

"You said at the first that her face was innocent," I suggested, in a feeble effort to mitigate this self-scorn; "we neither of us misjudged the girl for a moment, though we overlooked her ignorance."

"Yes, and her ignorance makes all the difference. Another girl--as good, to all intents and purposes--might know and not object; but this one! I really believe it would half kill her!"

Carrington gave another savage glance at my unlucky picture, and his gaze lingered on it as he added:

"If it's kept from her, all's well--as well as a lie can be."

And then, if only for a moment, the Greek gained its triumph over this startling exhibition of Hebraism.

"It is a masterpiece!" said Carrington, slowly, adding abruptly as he went, "Good-night!"

But my night was very bad. Whatever Miss Jones might say or think, I _did_ take life seriously.

CHAPTER II

A few days followed in which Miss Jones showed herself to me in a sweet and softened mood, the mood that wishes to make amends for salutary harshness. My meekness under reproof had evidently won her approbation.

In the rests she talked to me. She gave me her opinions upon many subjects, and very admirable they were and very commonplace. One thing about Miss Jones, however, was not commonplace. She would certainly act up to her opinions. Her sense of duty was enormous; but she bore it pleasantly, albeit seriously. She had a keen _flair_ for responsibilities. I began to suspect that she had a.s.sumed my moral well-being as one of them.

Her priggishness was so unconscious--so sincere, if one may say so--that it staggered me. Her calmly complacent truisms confounded any subtleties by marching over them--utterly ignoring them. One could not argue with her, for she was so sublimely sure of herself that she made one doubt the divine right of good taste, and wonder if flat-footed stupidity were not right after all.

And, above all, however questionable her mental attributes might be, her moral worth was certainly awe-inspiring. The clear, metallic flawlessness of her conscience seemed to glare in one's eyes, and poor everyday manhood shrunk into itself, painfully aware of spots and fissures.

"Yes," Miss Jones said, leaning back in her incongruous robes; "yes, the longer I live the more I feel that, as Longfellow says:

"Life is real, life is _earnest_."