Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  It seemed to her as if he had come to render her a final judgment when his name was sent up to her room, that Saturday afternoon which ended the longest week of her life. She went down, and found him alone in the long parlor, and it was in keeping with her fantastic prepossession that he should begin, “I wonder how I shall say what I’ve come for?” as if he would fain have softened her sentence.

  He kept her hand a moment longer than he need; but he was not one of those disgusting people who hold your hand while they talk to you, and whom Cornelia hated. She did not now resent it, though she was sensible of having to take her hand from him.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, with hysterical flippancy. “If I did I would tell you.”

  He laughed, as if he liked her flippancy, and he said, “It’s very simple. In fact, that’s what makes it so difficult.”

  “Then you might practice on something hard first,” she suggested wildly. “How would the weather do?”

  “Yes, hasn’t it been beautiful?” said Ludlow, with an involuntary lapse into earnestness. “I was in the Park to-day for a little effect I wanted to get, and it was heartbreaking to leave the woods. I was away up in those forest depths that look wild in spite of the asphalt. If you haven’t been there, you must go some day while the autumn color lasts. I saw a lot of your Synthesis ladies painting there. I didn’t know but I might see you.”

  This was all very matter of fact. Cornelia took herself in hand, and shook herself out of her hallucination. “No, I don’t suppose it would be right for a person who was merely in the Preparatory to go sketching in the Park. And Charmian and I were very good to-day, and kept working away at our block hands as long as the light lasted.”

  “Ah, yes; Miss Maybough,” said Ludlow; then he paused absently a moment. “Do you think she is going to do much in art?”

  “How should I know?” returned Cornelia. She thought it rather odd he should recur to that after she had let him see she did not want to talk about Charmian’s art.

  “Because you know that you can do something yourself,” said Ludlow. “That is the only kind of people who can really know. The other sort of people can make clever guesses; they can’t know.”

  “And you believe that I can do something?” asked Cornelia, and a sudden revulsion of feeling sent the tears to her eyes. It was so sweet to be praised, believed in, after what she had been through. “But you haven’t seen anything of mine except those things — in the Fair House.”

  “Oh, yes, I have. I’ve seen the drawings you submitted at the Synthesis. I’ve just seen them. I may as well confess it: I asked to see them.”

  “You did! And — and — well?” she fluttered back.

  “It will take hard work.”

  “Oh, I know that!”

  “And it will take time.”

  “Yes, that is the worst of it. I don’t see how I can give the time.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Oh, because — I can’t very well be away from home.” She colored as she said this, for she could have been away from home well enough if she had the money. “I thought I would come and try it for one winter.”

  He said lightly, “Perhaps you’ll get so much interested that you’ll find you can take more time.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “Well, then, you must get in all the work you can this winter. Block hands are well enough, but they’re not the whole of art nor the whole preparation for it.”

  “Oh, I’ve joined the sketch class,” she said.

  “Yes, that’s well enough, too,” he assented. “But I want you to come and paint with me,” he suddenly added.

  “You? Me?” she gasped.

  “Yes,” he returned. “I’ll tell you what I mean. I’ve been asked to paint a lady. She’ll have to come to my place, and I want you to come with her, and see what you can do, too. I hope it doesn’t seem too extraordinary?” he broke off, at sight of the color in her face.

  “Oh, no,” said Cornelia. She wondered what Charmian would say if she knew this; she wondered what the Synthesis would say; the Synthesis held Mr. Ludlow in only less honor than the regular Synthesis instructors, and Mr. Ludlow had asked her to come and paint with him! She took shelter in the belief that Mrs. Burton must have put him up to it, somehow, but she ought to say something grateful, or at least something. She found herself stupidly and aimlessly asking, “Is it Mrs. Westley?” as if that had anything to do with the matter.

  “No; I don’t see why I didn’t tell you at once,” said Ludlow. “It’s your friend, Miss Maybough.”

  Cornelia relieved her nerves with a laugh. “I wonder how she ever kept from telling it.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t know. I’ve only just got a letter from her mother, asking me to paint her, and I haven’t decided yet that I shall do it.”

  She thought that he wanted her to ask him why, and she asked, “What are you waiting for?”

  “For two reasons. Do you want the real reason first?” he asked, smiling at her.

  She laughed. “No, the unreal one!”

  “Well, I doubt whether Mrs. Maybough wrote to me of her own inspiration, entirely. I suspect that Wetmore and Plaisdell have been working the affair, and I don’t like that.”

  “Well?”

  “And I’m waiting for you to say whether I could do it. That’s the real reason.”

  “How should I know?”

  “I could make a picture of her,” he said, “but could I make a portrait? There is something in every one which holds the true likeness; if you don’t get at that, you don’t make a portrait, and you don’t give people their money’s worth. They haven’t proposed to buy merely a picture of you; they’ve proposed to buy a picture of a certain person; you may give them more, but you can’t honestly give them less; and if you don’t think you can give them that, then you had better not try. I should like to try for Miss Maybough’s likeness, and I’ll do that, at least, if you’ll try with me. The question is whether you would like to.”

  “Like to? It’s the greatest opportunity! Why, I hope I know what a chance it is, and I don’t know why you ask me to.”

  “I want to learn of you.”

  “If you talk that way I shall know you are making fun of me.”

  “Then I will talk some other way. I mean what I say. I want you to show me how to look at Miss Maybough. It sounds fantastic — —”

  “It sounds ridiculous. I shall not do anything of the kind.”

  “Very well, then, I shall not paint her.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that,” said Cornelia, but she did believe it a little, and she was daunted. She said, “Charmian would hate it.”

  “I don’t believe she would,” said Ludlow. “I don’t think she would mind being painted by half-a-dozen people at once. The more the better.”

  “That shows you don’t understand her,” Cornelia began.

  “Didn’t I tell you I didn’t understand her? Now, you see, you must. I should have overdone that trait in her. Of course there is something better than that.”

  “I don’t see how you could propose my painting her, too,” Cornelia relented, provisionally.

  Ludlow was daunted in his turn; he had not thought of that. It would be a little embarrassing, certainly, but he could not quite own this. He laughed and said, “I have a notion she will propose it herself, if you give her a chance.”

  “Oh,” said Cornelia, “if she does that, all well and good.”

  “Then I may say to her mother that I will make a try at the portrait?”

  “What have I to do with it?” Cornelia demanded, liking and not liking to have the decision seem left to her. “I shall have nothing to do with it if she doesn’t do it of her own accord.”

  “You may be sure that she shall not have even a suggestion of any kind,” said Ludlow, solemnly.

  “I shall know it if she does,” Cornelia retorted, not so solemnly, and they both laughed.

  While he stayed
and talked with her the affair had its reason and justification; it seemed very simple and natural; but when he went away it began to look difficult and absurd. It was something else she would have to keep secret, like that folly of the past; it cast a malign light upon Ludlow, and showed him less wise and less true than she had thought him. She must take back her consent; she must send for him, write to him, and do it; but she did not know how without seeming to blame him, and she wished to blame only herself. She let the evening go by, and she stood before the glass, putting up her hand to her back hair to extract the first dismantling hairpin, for a sleepless night, when a knock at her door was followed by the words, “He’s waitun’ in the parlor.” The door was opened and the Irish girl put a card in her hand.

  XXIV.

  The card was Ludlow’s, and the words, “Do see me, if you can, for a moment,” were scribbled on it.

  Cornelia ran down stairs. He was standing, hat in hand, under the leafy gas chandelier in the parlor, and he said at once, “I’ve come back to say it won’t do. You can’t come to paint Miss Maybough with me. It would be a trick. I wonder I ever thought of such a thing.”

  She broke out in a joyful laugh. “I knew you came for that.”

  He continued to accuse himself, to explain himself. He ended, “You must have been despising me!”

  “I despised myself. But I had made up my mind to tell Charmian all about it. There’s no need to do that, now it’s all over.”

  “But it isn’t all over for me,” said Ludlow gloomily. “I went straight home from here, and wrote to Mrs. Maybough that I would paint her daughter, and now I’m in for it.”

  He looked so acutely miserable that Cornelia gave way to a laugh, which had the effect of raising his fallen spirits, and making him laugh, too. They sat down together and began to talk the affair all over again.

  Some of the boarders who were at the theatre came in before he rose to go.

  Cornelia followed him out into the hall. “Then there is nothing for me to do about it?”

  “No, nothing,” he said, “unless you want to take the commission off my hands, and paint the picture alone.” He tried to look gloomy again, but he smiled.

  Every one slept late at Mrs. Montgomery’s on Sunday morning; all sects united in this observance of the day; in fact you could not get breakfast till nine. Cornelia opened her door somewhat later even than this, and started at the sight of Charmian Maybough standing there, with her hand raised in act to knock. They exchanged little shrieks of alarm.

  “Did I scare you? Well, it’s worth it, and you’ll say so when you know what’s happened. Go right back in!” Charmian pushed Cornelia back and shut the door. “You needn’t try to guess, and I won’t ask you to. But it’s simply this: Mr. Ludlow is going to paint me. What do you think of that? Though I sha’n’t expect you to say at once. But it’s so. Mamma wrote to him several days ago, but she kept the whole affair from me till she knew he would do it, and he only sent his answer last night after dinner.” Charmian sat down on the side of the bed with the effect of intending to take all the time that was needed for the full sensation. “And now, while you’re absorbing the great central fact, I will ask if you have any idea why I have rushed down here this morning before you were up, or mamma either, to interview you?”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Cornelia.

  “You don’t happen to have an olive or a cracker any where about? I don’t need them for illustration, but I haven’t had any breakfast, yet.”

  “There are some ginger-snaps in the bureau box right before you,” said Cornelia from the window-sill.

  “Ginger-snaps will do, in an extreme case like this,” said Charmian, and she left her place long enough to search the bureau box. “What little ones!” she sighed. “But no matter; I can eat them all.” She returned to her seat on Cornelia’s bed with the paper bag which she had found, in her hand. “Well, I have thought it perfectly out, and all you have to do is to give your consent; and if you knew how much valuable sleep I had lost, thinking it out, you would consent at once. You know that the sittings will have to be at his studio, and that I shall have to have somebody go with me.” Cornelia was silent, and Charmian urged, “You know that much, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Cornelia allowed.

  “Well, then, you know I could have mamma go, but it would bore her; or I could have a maid go, but that would bore me; and so I’ve decided to have you go.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes; and don’t say you can’t till you know what you’re talking about. It’ll take all your afternoons for a week or a fortnight, and you’ll think you can’t give the time. But I’ll tell you how you can, and more too; how you can give the whole winter, if it takes him that long to paint me; but they say he paints very rapidly, and gets his picture at a dash, or else doesn’t get it at all; and it’s neither more nor less than this: I’m going to get him to let you paint me at the same time? What do you think of that?”

  All our motives are mixed, and it was not pure conscience which now wrought in Cornelia. It was pride, too, and a certain resentment that Charmian should assume authority to make Mr. Ludlow do this or that. For an instant she questioned whether he had not broken faith with her, and got Charmian to propose this; then she knew that it could not have been. She said coldly, “I can’t do it.”

  “What! Not when I’ve come down here before breakfast to ask you? Why can’t you?” Charmian wailed.

  “Because Mr. Ludlow was here last night, and asked me to do it.”

  “He did? Then I am the happiest girl in the world! Let me embrace you, Cornelia!”

  “Don’t be — disgusting!” said Cornelia, but she felt that Charmian was generously glad of the honor done her, and that she had wronged her by suspecting her of a wish to show power over Mr. Ludlow. “I told him I couldn’t, and I can’t, because it would have seemed to be making use of you, and — and — you wouldn’t like it, and I wouldn’t like it in your place, and — I wouldn’t do it. And I should have to tell you that he proposed it, and that you would perfectly hate it.”

  “When it was the very first thing I thought of? Let me embrace you again, Cornelia Saunders, you adorable wooden image! Why his proposing it makes it perfectly divine, and relieves me of all responsibility. Oh, I would come down here every day before breakfast a whole week, for a moment like this! Then it’s all settled; and we will send him word that we will begin to-morrow afternoon. Let’s discuss the character you will do me in. I want you to paint me in character — both of you — something allegorical or mythical. Or perhaps you’re hungry, too! And I’ve eaten every one of the snaps.”

  “No, I can’t do it,” Cornelia still protested; but the reasons why she could not, seemed to have escaped her, or to have turned into mere excuses. In fact, since Charmian had proposed it, and seemed to wish it, they were really no longer reasons. Cornelia alleged them again with a sense of their fatuity. She did not finally assent; she did not finally refuse; but she felt that she was very weak.

  “I see what you’re thinking about,” said Charmian, “but you needn’t be afraid. I shall not show anything out. I shall be a perfect — tomb.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Cornelia, with a vexation heightened by the sense of her own insincerity.

  “Oh, you know what. But from this time forth I don’t. It will be glorious not to let myself realize it. I shall just sit and think up conundrums, and not hear, or see, or dream anything. Yes, I can do it, and it will be splendid practice. This is the way I shall look.” She took a pose in Cornelia’s one chair, and put on an air of impenetrable mystery, which she relinquished a moment to explain, “Of course this back is rather too stiff and straight; I shall be more crouching.” She pushed a ginger-snap between her lips, and chewed enigmatically upon it. “See?” she said.

  “Now, look here, Charmian Maybough,” said Cornelia sternly, “if you ever mention that again, or allude to it the least in the world — —”

  “Do
n’t I say I won’t?” demanded Charmian, jumping up. “That will be the whole fun of it. From the very first moment, till I’m framed and hung in a good light, I’m going to be mum, through and through, and if you don’t speak of him, I sha’n’t, except as a fellow-artist.”

  “What a simpleton!” said Cornelia. She laughed in spite of her vexation. “I’m not obliged to let what you think trouble me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Your thinking it doesn’t make it so.”

  “No — —”

  “But if you let him see — —”

  “The whole idea is not to let him see! That’s what I shall do it all for. Good-by!”

  She put the paper bag down on the bureau for the greater convenience of embracing Cornelia.

  “Why don’t you stay and have breakfast with me?” Cornelia asked. “You’ll be sick.”

  “Breakfast? And ruin everything! I would rather never have any breakfast!” She took up the paper bag again, and explored it with an eager hand, while she stared absently at Cornelia. “Ah! I thought there was one left! What mites of things.” She put the last ginger-snap into her mouth, and with a flying kiss to Cornelia as she passed, she flashed out of the door, and down the stairs.

  XXV.

  After all, Ludlow decided that he would paint Charmian in her own studio, with the accessories of her peculiar pose in life about her; they were factitious, but they were genuine expressions of her character; he could not realize her so well away from there.

  The first afternoon was given to trying her in this light and that, and studying her from different points. She wished to stand before her easel, in her Synthesis working-dress, with her palette on her thumb, and a brush in her other hand. He said finally, “Why not?” and Cornelia made a tentative sketch of her.

  At the end of the afternoon he waited while the girl was putting on her hat in Charmian’s room, where she smiled into the glass at Charmian’s face over her shoulder, thinking of the intense fidelity her friend had shown throughout to her promise of unconsciousness.

  “Didn’t I do it magnificently?” Charmian demanded. “It almost killed me; but I meant to do it if it did kill me; and now his offering to see you aboard the car shows that he is determined to do it, too, if it kills him. I call it masterly.”