Oliver hesitated for an instant, as he looked down into her eyes, wondering whether his brush could do justice to their depth. Then he glanced at her supple figure and white skin in contrast to the black velvet, its edge softened by the fall of lace, the dominant, insistent note of the red j.a.ponica in her blue-black hair, the flesh tones brilliant under the gas-jets. The color scheme was exactly what he had been looking for all winter--black, white, and a touch of red.
"I have never been so honored, Madame. Nothing could give me greater pleasure," he answered, with a dry smile. "May I escort your ladyship to the platform?" And he held out his hand and conducted her to the stand facing the big easel.
Then there followed a scene such as many of the Stone Mugs had not shared in since they left the Latin Quarter.
The Countess stood erect on the raised platform, with head up and slightly turned, the full glare of the gas-jets falling upon her neck and throat, made all the more brilliant by reason of the dark green walls of Fred"s studio, which formed the background behind her. One arm was partly raised, a lighted cigarette between her fingers; the other was lost in the folds of the velvet gown. She posed as naturally and as easily as if she had done nothing else all her life, and with a certain bravado and swing that enchanted everybody in the room.
One talent demanded of the artist members of the club when they sought admission, and insisted upon by the Committee, was the ability, possessed in a marked degree by Oliver, of making a rapid, telling sketch from life, and at night. So expert had most of the members become that many of their pictures made under the gas-light were as correct in their color-values as those done in the day-time. In this Oliver was past-master. Most of his own work had to be done under artificial light during the long years of his struggle.
The men--they were again on their feet--crowded closer, forming a circle about the easel. They saw that the subject appealed to Oliver, and they knew how much better he could paint when his heart was in his work. His picture of Margaret Grant in the Tam-o"-Shanter cap, the best portrait at the last exhibition, had proved that.
Oliver saw the interest shown in his work and put himself on his mettle. He felt that not only his own reputation, but the honor of the Stone Mugs, was at stake. He felt, too, a certain pride and confidence in the sureness of his touch--a touch that the woman he loved believed in--one she had really taught him herself, He began by blocking in with a bit of charcoal the salient points of the composition. Fred stood on his left hand holding a cigar-box filled with tubes of color, ready to unscrew their tops and pa.s.s them to Oliver as he needed them.
As the dark background of greenish black, under the vigorous strokes of his brush, began to relieve the flesh tones, and the coloring of the lips and the j.a.ponica in the hair took their places in the color-scheme, a murmur of applause ran through the room. No such piece of night-work had ever been painted since the club had come together, and certainly not before.
"A Fortuny, by thunder!" burst out Waller. He had been the first man to recognize Oliver"s talent in the old days and had always felt proud of his foresight.
For two hours Oliver stood before his canvas, the Countess resting now and then, floating over to the piano, as Simmons had done, running her fingers over its keys, or breaking out into Polish, Hungarian, or French songs at the pleasure of the room. During these rests Oliver turned the picture to the wall. He did not wish her to see it until it was finished. He was trying some brush tricks that Madge loved, some that she had learned in Couture"s atelier, and whose full effect could only be recognized in the finished work.
When the last touches of Oliver"s brush had been laid on the canvas, and the modest signature, O. H., as was the custom, had been affixed to its lower left-hand corner, he made a low salaam to the model and whirled the easel in front of her.
The cry of delight that escaped her lips was not only an expression of her pleasure, but it convinced every man in the club that the Countess"s technical knowledge of what const.i.tuted a work of art equalled her many other accomplishments. She sat looking at it with thoughtful, grave face, and her whole manner changed. She was no longer the woman who had so charmed the room. She was the connoisseur, the expert, the jury of last resort. Oliver watched her with absorbing interest as he sat wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Monsieur Horn," she said, slowly, as if weighing each word, "if you come to my country they will cover you all over with medals. I had no idea anyone in this new land could paint as you do. You are a master.
Permit me, Monsieur, to make you my obeisance--" and she dipped back on one foot and swept the floor with her skirts.
Oliver laughed, returned the bow with a mock flourish, and began rolling down his shirt-cuffs; a thrill quivering through him--that thrill only felt by a painter when he is conscious that some work of his brush has reached the high-water mark of his abilities. For only the artist in him had been at work. What stirred him was not the personality of the Countess--not her charm nor beauty but the harmony of the colors playing about her figure: the reflected lights in the blue-black of her hair; the soft tones of the velvet lost in the shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the j.a.ponica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips--red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through. The other side of her beautiful self--the side that lay hidden under her soft lashes and velvet touch, the side that could blaze and scorch and burn to cinders--that side Oliver had never once seen nor thought of.
This may have been because, while his fingers worked on, his thoughts were somewhere else, and that he saw another face as he mixed his colors, and not that of the siren before him. Or it may have been that, as he looked into the eyes of the Countess, he saw too deeply into the whirlpool of pa.s.sion and pain which made up the undercurrent in this beautiful woman"s strange life.
Not so the others. Many of whom were the most serious-minded of men where women were concerned. Crug--who, to quote Waller, had drifted into a state of mind bordering on lunacy--was so completely taken off his feet that he again led her ladyship by her finger-tips to the piano, and, with his hand on his heart, and his eyes upraised, begged her to sing for him some of the songs of her native land and in the tongue of her own people; the Countess complying so graciously and singing with such consummate taste and skill, throwing her soul into every line, that the men soon broke out in rounds of applause, crowding about her with the eagerness of bees around a hive--all except Waller and Oliver, who sat apart, quietly watching her out of the corners of their eyes.
The portrait was forgotten now; so were the sketches and tiles, and the work of the evening. So was everything else but the woman who dominated the room. She kept her seat on the piano-stool, the centre of the group, as a queen of the ballet sits on a painted throne, flashing her eyes from one to the other, wheeling about to dash off an air from some unknown opera--unknown to those who listened--laying her lighted cigarette on the music-rack as she played, and whirling back again to tell some anecdote of the composer who wrote it, or some incident connected with its production in Vienna or Warsaw or St.
Petersburg--the club echoing her every whim.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the staid and sober-minded Stone Mugs, under these conditions, completely lost their heads, and that when Oliver picked up an empty beer-mug, the symbol of the club used in all ceremonies, and began filling it with the names of the members which he had written on slips of paper, preparatory to the drawing of the lottery for the picture which he had just finished--every meeting-night a lottery was drawn, the lucky winner possessing the picture of the evening--Crug and Munson should have simultaneously sprung to their feet, and, waving their hands over their heads, have proposed, in one and the same breath, that "Our distinguished visitor" should have the privilege of adding her own name to those in Oliver"s mug--the picture to be her own individual property should her patronymic be the first to be drawn from its open mouth.
Waller started to his feet to object, and the words of protest were half out of his mouth when Oliver stopped him. A woman was always a woman to Oliver, no matter what her past or present station in life might be. It was her s.e.x that kept him loyal when any discourtesy was involved.
"Keep still, old man," he whispered. "They"ve gone crazy, but we can"t help it. Get on your feet and vote."
When the sound of the "ayes" adopting Crug and Munson"s motion had died away, Oliver inscribed her initials upon a small piece of paper, dropped it in the mug, held it high above the lady"s head, and asked her to reach up her dainty fingers and pick out the name of the lucky possessor of "The Woman in Black," as the picture had now been christened. The white arm went up, the jewelled fingers felt about nervously among the little ballots, and then the Countess held up a twisted bit of paper.
A burst of applause filled the room. The sc.r.a.p of paper bore the initials of the Countess! "The Woman in Black" was her property.
But the most extraordinary part by far of the evening"s performance was still to come.
When the hour of midnight had arrived--the hour of dispersal, a rule rarely broken--the Countess called to Bianchi and directed him to go out into the hall and bring in her long black stockings and stout shoes, which she had taken off outside Fred"s door, and which she had left hanging on a nail.
I can see her now--for I, too, was leaning over the same table, Oliver beside me, watching this most extraordinary woman of another world, a woman who had been the idol of almost every capital in Europe, and whom I knew (although Oliver did not) had been quietly conducted out of some of them between dark and daylight--I can see her now, I say, sitting on the piano-stool, facing the group, the long, black silk stockings that Bianchi had brought her in her hands. I remember just the way in which, after loosening her dainty, red-heeled slippers, she swept aside her skirts, unfastened her garters, and, with the same unconsciousness and ease with which she would have slipped a pair of rubbers over a pair of shoes, drew the long black stockings over her flesh-colored ones, refastening the garters again, talking all the time, first to one and then the other; pausing only to accentuate some sentence with a wave of her shoe or stocking or cigarette, as the action suited the words.
That the group about her was composed solely of men made not the slightest difference. She was only trying to save those precious, flesh-colored silk stockings that concealed her white skin from the slush and snow of the streets. As to turning her back to her hosts during this little change of toilet--that was the last thing that entered her head. She would as soon have stepped into a closet to put on her gloves.
And then again, why should she be ashamed of her ankles and her well-turned instep and dainty toes, as compact in their silk covering as peas in a pod! She might have been, perhaps, in some one of the satin-lined drawing-rooms around Madison Square or Irving Place, but not here, breathing the blue smoke of a dozen pipes and among her own kind--the kind she had known and loved and charmed all her life.
After all it was but a question of economy. Broadway was a slough of mud and slush, and neither she nor Bianchi had the price of a carriage to spare.
Oliver watched her until the whole comedy was complete; then, picking up his wet sketch and handing it with the greatest care to Bianchi, who was to conduct her ladyship to her lodgings, he placed the long black cloak with the fur-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and watermelon-colored silk lining about her beautiful, bare shoulders, and, with the whole club following and waving their hands good-night, our young gentleman bowed her out and downstairs with all the deference and respect he would have shown the highest lady in the land.
CHAPTER XXII
"MARGARET GRANT--TOP FLOOR"
One spring morning, some time after the visit of the Countess to the club and the painting of her portrait by Oliver--the incident had become the talk of the studios before the week was out--Oliver sat in his own rooms on the top floor, drinking his coffee--the coffee he had boiled himself. The janitor had just slipped two letters through a slit in the door. Both lay on the floor within reach of his hand. One was from his mother, bearing the postmark of his native city; the other was from a prominent picture-dealer on Broadway, with a gallery and big window looking out on the street.
Oliver broke the seal of his mother"s letter, and moved his chair so that the light from the overhead skylight would fall on its pages.
It read as follows:
"My Darling Boy: Your father goes to you to-morrow. Mr. Cobb was here last night with a letter from some gentleman of means with whom he has been corresponding. They want to see the motor, so your father and Nathan leave on the early train.
"This man"s continued kindness is a constant surprise to me. I have always thought it was he who prevented the mortgage from being foreclosed, but I never knew until yesterday that he had written his name under my own the second time the note was to be renewed, and that he has kept it there ever since. I cannot speak of this to him, nor must you, if you see him, for poor old Mr. Steiger told me in confidence. I am the more glad now that we have always paid the interest on the note. The next payment, which you have just sent me, due on the first of the month, is now in my bureau-drawer ready for the bank, but I will not have to use it now.
"Whether the mortgage can ever be paid off I do not know, for the farm is ruined, I fear. Mr. Mowbray"s cousin, who drove over last week to see what was left of the plantations in that section, writes me that there is nothing remaining of your grandfather"s place but the bare ground and the house. All the fences have been burned and many of the beautiful trees cut down for firewood. The Government still occupies the house and one of the outbuildings, although most of the hospital stores have been moved away. The last half-year"s rent which was held back, owing to some new ruling from Washington, came, I am thankful to say, two days ago in a check from the paymaster here, owing to Mr.
Cobb"s intercession. He never loses an opportunity to praise you for what you did for that poor young soldier, and Mr. Steiger told me that when those in authority heard from Mr. Cobb which Mrs. Horn it was, they ordered the rent paid at once. He is always doing just such kindnesses for us. But for this rental I don"t know how we would have been able to live and take care of those dependent upon us. We little knew, my son, when we both strove so hard to save the farm that it would really be our only support. This rent, however, will soon cease and I tremble for the future. I can only pray my Heavenly Father that something will come out of this visit to New York. It is our only hope now.
"Don"t lose sight of your father for a moment, my son. He is not well and gets easily fatigued, and although he is greatly elated over his promised success, as we all are--and he certainly deserves to be--I think you will see a great change in him these last few months. I would not have consented to his going had not Nathan gone with him. Nathan insists upon paying the expenses of the trip; he says it is only fair that he should, as your father has given him an interest in the motor.
I earnestly hope for some results, for I shall have no peace until the whole amount of the mortgage is paid back to the bank and you and Mr.
Cobb are released from the burden, so heavy on you, my boy.
"There is no other news to tell you. Sue Clayton brought her boy in to-day. He is a sweet little fellow and has Sue"s eyes. She has named him John Clayton, after her father. They have made another attempt to find the Colonel"s body on the battle-field, but without success. I am afraid it will never be recovered.
"Lavinia sends her love. She has been much better lately. Her army hospital work has weighed upon her, I think. Three years was too long.
"I have the last newspaper notices of your academy picture pinned on my cushion, and I show them to everybody who comes in. They always delight me. You have had a hard fight, my son, but you are winning now. No one rejoices more than I do in your success. As you said in your last letter, the times have really changed. They certainly have for me.
Sorrow and suffering have made me see many things in a different light these last few years.
"Malachi and Hannah are well, but the old man seems quite feeble at times.
"Your loving mother,
"Sallie T. Horn."
Dear lady, with your soft white hair and deep brown eyes that have so often looked into mine! How dreary were those long days of hate and misery! How wise and helpful you were to every living soul who sought your aid, friend and foe alike. Your great heart sheltered and comforted them all.