He was already at work, turning from the texture of the rounded throat which occupied him before she came in, to the more serious problem of the nuances of expression in the face. It was a whim of his, based partly upon a cautiousness, of which he was hardly aware, that she should not see the portrait in its earlier stages, and she had made a great concession of this. As it grew before him, out of his consciousness, under his hand, he became more and more aware that he would prefer to postpone her seeing it, for reasons which he would not pause to define.
Certainly they were not connected with any sense of having failed to do justice to his subject. Kendal felt an exulting mastery over it which was the most intoxicating sensation his work had ever brought him. He had, as he painted, a silent, brooding triumph in his manipulation, in his control. He gave himself up to the delight of his insight, the power of his reproduction, and to the intense satisfaction of knowing that out of the two there grew something of more than usually keen intrinsic interest within the wide creed of his art. He worked with every nerve tense upon his conception of what he saw, which so excluded other considerations that now and then, in answer to some word of hers that distracted him, he spoke to her almost roughly. At which Elfrida, with a little smile of forgiving comprehension, obediently kept silence.
She saw the artist in him dominant, and she exulted for his sake. It was to her delicious to be the medium of his inspiration, delicious and fit and sweetly acceptable.
And they had agreed upon a charming pose.
Presently Kendal lowered his brush impatiently. "Talk to me a little," he said resentfully, ignoring his usual preference that she should not talk because what she said had always power to weaken the concentration of his energy. "There is a little muteness about the lips. Am I very unreasonable? But you don"t know what a difficult creature you are."
She threw up her chin in one of her bewitching ways and laughed. "I wouldn"t be too simple," she returned. She looked at him with the light of her laughter still in her eyes, and went on: "I know I must be difficult --tremendously difficult; because I, whom you see as an individual, am so many people. Phases of character have an attraction for me--I wear one to-day and another to-morrow. It is very flippant, but you see I am honest about it. And it must make me difficult to paint, for it can be only by accident that I am the same person twice."
Without answering Kendal made two or three rapid strokes.
"That"s better," he said, as if to himself. "Go on talking, please. What did you say?"
"It doesn"t seem to matter much," she answered, with a little pout. "I said "Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?""
"No, you didn"t," returned Kendal as they laughed together.
"You said something about being like Cleopatra, a creature of infinite variety, didn"t you? About having a great many disguises--" absently. "But--"
Kendal fell into the absorbed silence of his work again, leaving the sentence unfinished. He looked up at her with a long, close, almost intimate scrutiny, under which and his careless words she blushed hotly.
"Then I hope you have chosen my most becoming disguise,"
she cried imperiously, jumping up. "Now, if you please, I will see."
She stood beside the canvas with her eyes upon his face, waiting for a sign from him. He, feeling, without knowing definitely why, that a critical moment had come between them, rose and stepped back a pace or two, involuntarily pulling himself together to meet what she might say.
"Yes, you may look," he said, seeing that she would not turn her head without his word; and waited.
Elfrida took three or four steps beyond the easel and faced it. In the first instant of her gaze her face grew radiant. "Ah," she said softly, "how unconscionably you must hare flattered me! I can"t be so pretty as that."
A look of relief shot across Kendal"s face. "I"m glad you like it," he said briefly. "It"s a capital pose."
The first thing that could possibly be observed, about the portrait was its almost dramatic loveliness. The head was turned a little, and the eyes regarded something distant, with a half wishful, half deprecating dreaminess.
The lips were plaintively courageous, and the line of the lifted chin and throat helped the pathetic eyes and annihilated the heaviness of the other features. It was as if the face made an expressive effort to subdue a vitality which might otherwise have been aggressive; but while the full value of this effect of spiritual pose was caught and rendered, Kendal had done his work in a vibrant significant chord of color that strove for the personal force beneath it and brought it out.
Elfrida dropped into the nearest chair, clasped her knees in her hands, and bending forward, earnestly regarded the canvas with a silence that presently became perceptible.
It seemed to Kendal at first, as he stood talking to her of its technicalities, that she tested the worth of every stroke; then he became aware that she was otherwise occupied, and that she did not hear him. He paused and stepped over to where, standing behind her chair, he shared her point of view. Even the exaltation of his success did not prevent his impatient wonder why his relation with this girl must always be so uncomfortable.
Then as he stood in silence looking with her, it seemed that he saw with her, and the thing that he had done revealed itself to him for the first time fully, convincingly, with no appeal. He looked at it with curious, painful interest, but without remorse, even in the knowledge that she saw it too, and suffered. He realized exultingly that he had done better work than he thought --he might repent later, but for the moment he could feel nothing but that. As to the girl before him, she was simply the source and the reason of it--he was particularly glad he had happened to come across her.
He had echoed her talk of disguises, and his words embodied the unconscious perception under which he worked. He had selected a disguise, and, as she wished, a becoming one.
But he had not used it fairly, seriously. He had thrown it over her face like a veil, if anything could be a veil which rather revealed than hid, rather emphasized than softened, the human secret of the face underneath. He realized now that he had been guided by a broader perception, by deeper instincts, in painting that. It was the real Elfrida.
There was still a moment before she spoke. He wondered vaguely how she would take it, and he was conscious of an anxiety to get it over. At last she rose and faced him, with one hand, that trembled, resting on the back of the chair. Her face wore a look that was almost profound, and there was an acknowledgment in it, a degree of submission, which startled him.
"So that is how you have read me," she said, looking again at the portrait "Oh, I do not find fault; I would like to, but I dare not. I am not sure enough that you are wrong--no, I am too sure that you are right. I am, indeed, very much preoccupied with myself. I have always been--I shall always be. Don"t think I shall reform after this moral shock as people do in books. I am what I am.
But I acknowledge that an egotist doesn"t make an agreeable picture, however charmingly you apologize for her. It is a personality of stone, isn"t it?--implacable, unchangeable.
I"ve often felt that."
Kendal was incapable of denying a word of what she said.
"If it is any comfort to you to know it," he ventured, "hardly any one will see in it what you--and I--see."
"Yes," she said, with a smile, "that"s true. I shan"t mind its going to the Academy."
She sat down again and looked fixedly at the picture, her chin propped in her hand. "Don"t you feel," she said, looking up at him with a little childish gesture of confidence, "as if you had stolen something from me?"
"Yes," Kendal declared honestly, "I do. I"ve taken something you didn"t intend me to have."
"Well, I give it you--it is yours quite freely and ungrudgingly. Don"t feel that way any more. You have a right to your divination," she Added bravely.
"I would not withhold it if I could. Only--I hope you find _something_ good in it. I think, myself, there is something."
Her look was a direct interrogation, and Kendal flinched before it. "Dear creature," he murmured, "you are very true to yourself."
"And to you," she pleaded, "always to you too. Has there ever been anything but the clearest honesty between us?
Ah, my friend, that is valuable--there are so few people who inspire it."
She had risen again, and he found himself shame-facedly holding her hand. His conscience roused itself and smote him mightily. Had there always been this absolute single-mindedness between them?
"You make it necessary for me to tell you," he said slowly, "that there is one thing between us you do not know. I saw you at Cheynemouth on the stage."
"I know you did," she smiled at him. "Janet Cardiff let it out, by accident I suppose you came, like Mr. Cardiff, because you--disapproved. Then why didn"t you remonstrate with me? I"ve often wondered." Elfrida spoke softly, dreamily. Her happiness seemed very near. Her self-surrender was so perfect and his understanding, as it always had been, so sweet, that the illusion of the moment was cruelly perfect She raised her eyes to Kendal"s with an abandonment of tenderness in them that quickened his heart-beats, man that he was.
"Tell me, do _you_ want me to give it up--my book--last night I finished it--my ambition?"
She was ready with her sacrifice or for the instant; she believed herself to be, and it was not wholly without an effort that he put it away. On the pretence of picking up his palette knife he relinquished her hand.
"It is not a matter upon which I have permitted myself a definite opinion," he said, more coldly than he intended, "but for your own sake I should advise it."
For her own sake! The room seemed full of the echo of his words. A blank look crossed the girl"s face; she turned instinctively away from him and picked up her hat.
She put it on and b.u.t.toned her gloves without the faintest knowledge of what she was doing; her senses were wholly occupied with the comprehension of the collapse that had taken place within her. It was the single moment of her life when she differed, in any important way, from the girl Kendal had painted. Her self-consciousness was a wreck, she no longer controlled it; it tossed at the mercy of her emotion. Her face was very white and painfully empty, her eyes wandered uncertainly around the room, unwilling above all things to meet Kendal"s again. She had forgotten about the portrait.
"I will go, then," she said simply, without looking at him, and this time, with a flash, Kendal comprehended again. He held the door open for her mutely, with the keenest pang his pleasant life had ever brought him, and she pa.s.sed out and down the dingy stairs.
On the first landing she paused and turned. "I will never be different," she said aloud, as if he were still beside her, "I will never be different!" She unb.u.t.toned one of her gloves and fingered the curious silver ring that gleamed uncertainly on her hand in the shabby light of the staircase. The alternative within it, the alternative like a bit of brown sugar, offered itself very suggestively at the moment. She looked around her at the dingy place she stood in, and in imagination threw herself across the lowest step. Even at that miserable moment she was aware of the strong, the artistic, the effective thing to do. "And when he came down he might tread on me," she said to herself, with a little shudder. "I wish I had the courage. But no--it might hurt, after all. I am a coward, too."
She had an overwhelming realization of impotence in every direction. It came upon her like a burden; under it she grew sick and faint. At the door she stumbled, and she was hardly sure of her steps to her cab, which was drawn up by the curbstone, and in which she presently went blindly home.
By ten o"clock that night she had herself, in a manner, in hand again. Her eyes were still wide and bitter, and the baffled, uncomprehending look had not quite gone out of them, but a line or two of cynical acceptance had drawn themselves round her lips. She had sat so long and so quietly regarding the situation that she became conscious of the physical discomfort of stiffened limbs.
She leaned back in her chair and put her feet on another, and lighted a cigarette.
"No, Buddha," she said, as if to a confessor, "don"t think it of me. It was a lie, a pose to tempt him on. I would never have given it up--never! It is more to me --I am _almost_ sure--than he is. It is part of my soul, Buddha, and my love for him--oh, I cannot tell!"
She threw the cigarette away from her and stared at the smiling image with heavy eyes in silence. Then she went on:
"But I always tell you everything, little bronze G.o.d, and I won"t keep back even this. There was a moment when I would have let him take me in his arms and hold me close, close to him. And I wish he had--I should have had it to remember. Bah! why is my face hot! I might as well be ashamed of wanting my dinner!"
Again she dropped into silence, and when next she spoke her whole face had hardened.
"But no! He thinks that he has read me finally, that he has done with me, that I no longer count! He will marry some red-and-white cow of an Englishwoman who will accept herself in the light of a reproductive agent and do her duty by him accordingly. As I would not--no! Good heavens, no! So perhaps it is as well, for I will go on loving him, of course, and some day he will come back to me, in his shackles, and together, whatever we do, we will make no vulgar mess of it. In the meantime, Buddha, I will smile, like you.
"And there is always this, which is the best of me. You agree, don"t you, that it is the best of me?" She fingered the ma.n.u.script in her lap. "All my power, all my joy, the quintessence of my life! I think I shall be angry if it has a common success, if the people like it too well.
I only want recognition for it--recognition and acknowledgment and admission. I want George Meredith to ask to be introduced to me!" She made rather a pitiful effort to smile. "And that, Buddha, is what will happen."