“‘Derrière chez mon pèreVive la rose.’Il y a un orangerVive ci, vive là!Il y a un oranger,Vive la rose et le lilas!”
“‘Derrière chez mon pèreVive la rose.’Il y a un orangerVive ci, vive là!Il y a un oranger,Vive la rose et le lilas!”
“I was afraid you would be late.”
“Why?” she asked, smiling, as she came to him across the great room.
“Women always are. But you are not a woman; you are an angel.”
He looked at her closely. The strong north light showed her smooth skin flawless.
“The white and rose is charming,” he said. “And I adore freckles. But your eyes are too deep; one can see that you have suffered. There is too much in them for the innocent baa-lamb picture I must paint.”
Her face fell. “I shan’t do then?”
“Dear child, you will,” he reassured her. “I shall paint your lashes and not your eyes. Your lashes and a curve of pink cheek. Now go behind that screen and put on the sprigged cotton frock you will find there, with a muslin fichu and a mob cap. I have a basket of wools here and a piece of tapestry. The sort of woman I have never painted is always doing needlework.”
Camille spent half the morning in the arrangement of the accessories that were, as he said, to suggest virtuous domesticity; then he settled the folds of the girl’s skirt, the turn of her head, her hands. At last, when he was satisfied, he went to his easel and began to work. Olive had never before realised how hard it is to keep quite still. The muscles of her neck ached and her face seemed to grow stiff and set; she felt her hands quivering.
Hours seemed to pass before his voice brokethe silence. “I have drawn it in,” he announced. “You can rest now. Come down and see some of my pictures.”
He showed her his “Salome,” a Hebrew mænad, whose scarlet, parted lips ached for the desert dreamer’s death; “Lucrezia Borgia,” slow-smiling, crowned with golden hair; and a rough charcoal study for Queen Eleanor.
“I seem to see you as Henry’s Rosamund,” he said. “I wonder—the haunting shadow of coming sorrow in blue eyes. You have suffered.”
“I am hungry,” she answered.
He looked at his watch. “Forgive me! It is past noon. Run away, child, and come back at two.”
The day seemed very long in spite of Camille’s easy kindness, and the girl shrank from the subsequent sitting at Varini’s.
“Why do you pose for those wretched boys?” grumbled the Prix de Rome man. “After this week you must come to me only. I must paint a Rosamund.”
At sunset she hurried down the hill to the Corso, and came by way of the corridor and garden to the pavilion. The porter took her into a dingy little lumber-filled passage and left her there. A soiled pink satin frock was laid ready for her on a broken chair. As she put it on she heard a babel of voices in the class-room beyond, and she felt something like stage-fright as she fumbled at the hooksand eyes; but a clock struck the hour presently, and she went in then and climbed on to the throne. At first she saw nothing, but after a while she was aware of a group of men who stood near the door regarding her.
“Carina.”
“Yes, a fine colour, but too thin.”
When the professor came in he made her sit in a carved chair, and gave her a fan to hold. The men moved about, choosing their places, and were silent until he left them with a gruff “Felice notte.” Olive noticed the lad who had been called in to Varini’s studio to see her; the boy who sat next him had a round, impudent face, and when presently she yawned he smiled at her.
“I will ask questions to keep you awake, but you must answer truly. Have you taken a fancy to anyone here?”
“I don’t dislike you or Mario.”
They rose simultaneously and bowed. “We are honoured. But why? Bembi here is a fine figure of a man.”
“Enough!” growled Bembi. “You talk too much.”
During the rest Olive went to look at the boys’ work; it was brilliantly impressionistic. The younger had evidently founded himself on Mario, and Mario was, perhaps, a genius.
They came and sat down, one on either side of her.
“Why are you pretending to be a model?”whispered Mario. “We can see you are not. Are you hiding from someone?”
She shook her head. “I am earning my bread,” she answered. “Be kind to me.”
“We will.” He patted her bare shoulder with the air of a grandfather, but his brown eyes sparkled.
“Why are some of the men so old, and why is some of the work so—”
“Bad.” Mario squinted at Bembi’s black, smudged drawing. “I will tell you. That bald man in the corner is seventy-two; painting is his amusement, and he loves models. He wants to marry Fortunata, but she won’t have him because he is toothless. Once, twenty-five years ago, he sold a watercolour for ten lire and he has never forgotten it.”
“Really because he is toothless?”
“Oh, he is mad too, and she is afraid of him. Cesare and I are the only ones here who will make you look human. It is a pity, as you are reallycarina.”
He patted her shoulder again and pinched her ear, and Cesare passed his arm about her waist. She struggled to free herself.
“Let her go!” cried the other men, and, flushed and dishevelled, she took refuge on the throne. The pose was resumed, and the room settled down to work again.
She kept very still, but after a while the tears that filled her eyes overflowed, ran downher cheeks, and dripped upon the hand that held the fan.
“I am sorry,” cried Mario.
“And I.”
“Forgive me.”
“And me.”
“I was amascalzone!”
“And I.”
“Forgive them for our sakes,” growled Bembi, “or they will cackle all night.”
Olive laughed a little in spite of herself, but she was very tired and they had hurt her. The marks of Cesare’s fingers showed red still on her wrist, and the lace of the short sleeve was torn.
Mario clattered out of the room presently, and came back with a glass of water for her. “I am really sorry,” he whispered as he gave it. “Do stop crying.”
After all they had not meant any harm. She was a little comforted, and the expressed contrition helped her.
“I shall be better soon,” she said gently.
When she got home to the apartment in Via Arco della Ciambella there were lies to be told about the lessons, the pupils, the hours. The fine edge of her exaltation was already blunted, and she sighed at the thought of her morning dreams; sighed and was glad; the first steps had not cost much after all, and she had earned five lire and fifteen soldi.
The lamp was lit in the little sitting-room,and Ser Giulia was there, cutting out a skirt on the table very carefully, in a tense silence that was broken only by the click of the scissors and the rustle of silk.
“I have lost confidence in myself,” she said as she fastened the shining lengths together with pins. “Thisisthe right side of the material, isn’t it, my dear? I can’t see.”
“Yes, this is right. Let me stitch the seams for you. Where is Signora Aurelia?”
“She has gone to bed. Her head ached. She—she does not complain, but I think she needs more sun and air than she can get here.”
Olive looked at her quickly. “You ought to go away and rest, both of you.”
“Our brother in Como would be glad to have us with him, but it is impossible at present. I paid our rent a few days ago—three months in advance.”
“I will go to the house-agent in the Piazza di Spagna to-morrow. It should not be difficult to get a tenant, and at the end of the time the furniture could be warehoused, or you could sell it.”
Ser Giulia hesitated. “What would you do then,figliuola mia?”
“Oh, I can take care of myself,” the girl said easily.
After the first week Olive went only to Camille’satelier. He was working hard at his “étude blanche,” but no one had been allowed to see it, except, of course, M’sieur le Directeur.
“I almost wish I had asked you to come always heavily veiled. The other men are all mad about you, and Gontrand tells me he wants you to give him sittings for the head of an oread, but he cannot have you. You are mine.”
“Is he a lean, black-bearded man?”
“Yes.”
“He spoke to me the other day as I was coming through the garden, and asked me if you were really painting a ‘jeune fille’ picture. I said you were painting a picture, and he would probably see it when you had your show in April.”
Camille laughed. “Good child! We must keep up the mystery.” He flung down his brushes. “I cannot work any more to-day. Will you come with me for a drive into the Campagna?”
She hesitated. “I am not sure—”
“Come as my little brother.” He tookoff his linen painting sleeves, and began to dabble his fingers in a pan of turpentine. “My little brother! Do you know that the Directeur thinks you are charming, and he wonders that I do not love you.”
“I am glad you do not,” she said, colouring. “If you did—”
He was lighting a cigarette. “If I did?” The little momentary flame of the match was reflected in his blue eyes.
“I should go away and not come back again.”
“Well, I do not,” he said heartily. “I care for you as St Francis did for his pet sparrow. So now put your hat on and I will go down and get avetturawith a good horse.”
He was a creature of moods, and so young in many ways that he appealed to the girl as Astorre had done, by the queer, pathetic little flaws in his manhood. Some days he worked incessantly from early morning until the light failed at his picture, but there were times when he seemed unable even to look at it. He made several studies in charcoal for “Rosamund.”
“It is an inspiration,” he said excitedly more than once. “The rose of the world that can only be reached by love—or hate—holding the clue.”
He had promised an American who had bought a picture of his the year before that he would do some work for him in Venice in thespring. “Very rash of me,” he said fractiously. “The ‘Jeune Fille’ would have been quite enough for me to show, and it is dreadful to have to leave it unfinished now.” And when Gontrand tried to persuade him to let him have Olive during his absence he was, as the girl phrased it, quite cross. “I have seen enough of that. Last year in the Salon St Elizabeth of Hungary, and Clytemnestra, and Malesherbe’svivandièrewere one and the same woman. Besides, oreads are nearly related to Bacchantes, Gontrand, and I am not going to allow my little sewing-girl to be mixed up with people of that sort.”
He made Olive promise not to sit for any of the other men at the Villa Medici.
“I shall work at Varini’s in the evenings,” she said. “And one of the men there wants me to come to his studio in the Via Margutta three mornings a week. He is a Baron von something.”
The Frenchman’s face lightened. “Oh, that German! I know him. I saw a landscape of his once. It looked as if several tubes of paint had got together and burst. What else will you do?”
“Rome, if you will lend me your Bædeker,” she answered. “I shall begin with A and work my way through Beatrice Cenci and the Borgo Nuovo to the Corsini Gallery and the Corso. Some of the letters may be rather dull. I am so glad Apollo comes now.”
He laughed. “M for Michelin. You will be sure to admire me when my turn comes.”
Olive was living alone now in a tall old house in Ripetta. The two kind women who had been her friends had left Rome and gone to stay with their brother at Como. It was evidently the best thing they could do, and the girl had assured them that she was quite well able to look after herself, but they had been only half convinced by her reasoning. She was English and she had done it before. “That is nothing,” Ser Giulia said. “You may catch a ball once, and the second time it may slip through your fingers. And sometimes Life is like the importunate widow and goes on asking until one gives what one should not.” She helped her to find a room, and eked out the furniture from her own little store. “Another saucepan, and a kettle, and a blanket. And if lessons fail you must come to us,figliuola mia. My brother’s house is large.”
The girl had answered her with a kiss, but though she loved them she was not altogether sorry to see them go. She could never tell them how she had earned the lire that paid the baker’s bill. The truth would hurt them, and she would not give them a moment’s pain if she could avoid it, but she was not good at lying. Even the very little white ones stuck in her throat, and she was relieved to be no longer under the necessity of uttering them.
The room she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, this place was home.
Camille went by a night train, and Olive began to “see Rome” on the following morning. She took the tram to the Piazza Venezia and walked from thence to the church of Santa Maria Ara Coeli.
The flight of steps to the west door is very long, and she climbed slowly, stopping once or twice to take breath and look back at the crowded roofs and many church domes of Rome, and at the green heights of the Janiculan hill beyond, with the bronze figure of Garibaldi on his horse, dominant, and very clear against the sky.
The cripple at the door lifted the heavy leather curtain for her and she put a soldo into his outstretched hand as she went in. The church seemed very still, very quiet, after the clamour of the streets. The acrid scent of incense was as the breath of spent prayer. Little yellow flames flickered in the shrine lamps before each altar, but it was early yet and for the moment no mass was being said. An old, white-haired monk was sweeping the worn pavement. He was swathed in ablue linen apron, and his rusty brown frock was tucked up about his ankles. A lean black cat followed him, mewing, and now and then he stopped his work to stroke it. There was a great stack of chairs by the door, and a few were scattered about the aisles and occupied by stray worshippers, women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads in deference to St Paul’s expressed wishes, two or three old men, and some peasants with their market baskets. A be-ribboned nurse carrying a baby had just come in to see the Sacro Bambino, and Olive followed them into the sacristy and saw the child laid down before the bedizened, red-cheeked wooden doll in the glass case. As they passed out again the monk who was in attendance gave Olive a coloured card with a prayer printed on the back. She heard him asking what was the matter with the little one. The woman lifted the lace veil from the tiny face and showed him the sightless eyes. He crossed himself. “Poveretto! Dio vi benedica!”
As Olive left the sacristy a tall man came across the aisle towards her. It was Prince Tor di Rocca.
“This is a great pleasure,” he said. “But not to you, I am afraid. You are not glad to see me.”
“I am surprised. I—do you often come into churches?”
He laughed. “I sometimes follow womenin. I saw you coming up the steps just now. You are right in supposing that I am not devout. I want to speak to you. Shall we go out?”
She looked for a way of escape but saw none.
“If—very well,” she said rather helplessly.
The hunchback woman at the south door watched them expectantly as they came towards her, and she brightened as she saw the man’s hand go to his pocket. He threw her a piece of silver as they passed out. He was in a good humour, his fine lips smiling, a glinting zest in his insolent eyes. He thought he understood women, and he had in fact made a one-sided study of the sex. He had seen their ways of loving, he had listened to the beating of their hearts; but of their endurance, their long patience, their daily life he knew nothing. He was like a man who often wears a bunch of violets in his coat until they fade, and yet has never seen, or cared to see them, growing sparsely, small and sweet, half hidden in leaves on a mossy bank by the stream.
Women amused him. He was seldom much moved by them, and he pursued them without haste or flurry, treading delicately like Agag of old. He had little intrigues everywhere, in Florence, in Naples, in Rome. Young married women, girls walking demurely with their mothers. He liked to know that it was he who brought the colour to theircheeks and that their eyes sought him among the crowd of men standing outside Aragno’s in the Corso or on the steps of the club in the Via Tornabuoni. Very often the affair would be one of the eyes only, but sometimes it went farther. Filippo’s procedure varied. Sometimes he put advertisements in the personal column of the Popolo Romano, and sometimes he wrote notes. It was always very interesting while it lasted. Occasionally affairs overlapped, as when an appeal to F. to meet Norina once more in the Borghese appeared in print above F.’s request that the signorina in the pink hat would write to him at the Poste Restante.
Olive had nearly yielded to him in Florence, and then she had run away, she had sought safety in flight. Evidently then his battle had been nearly won. But she had reassembled her forces, and he saw that it would be all to fight over again, and that the issue was doubtful.
As they came into the little square piazza of the Capitol she turned to him. “What have you to say? I—I am in a hurry.”
“I am sorry for that, but if you are going anywhere I can walk with you, or we can take avetturaand drive together.”
She looked past him at the green shining figure of Marcus Aurelius on his horse riding between her and the sun, and said nothing.
“I shall enjoy being with you even if youare inclined to be silent. You are so good to look at.”
His brazen stare gave point to his words. Her face was no longer childish in its charm. It had lost the first roundness of youth, but had gained in expression. A soul seemed to be shining through the veil of flesh—white and rose-red flesh, divinely gilt with freckles—and fluttering in the troubled depths of her blue eyes. The nun-like simplicity of her grey dress pleased him: it did not detract from her; it left the eyes free to return to her face, to dwell upon her lips.
“Something has happened,” he said. “There is another man. Are you married?”
“No.”
“I only came to Rome yesterday. Strange that we should meet so soon. It seems that there is a Destiny that shapes our ends after all.”
“You do not believe in free will?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I do not think about such things.”
“Well,” she said impatiently. “Is that all you have to say? I suppose the Marchesa and Mamie are here too.”
He hesitated and seemed to lose some of his assurance. “No, we quarrelled. The girl is insupportable. She is engaged now to a lord of sorts, an Englishman, and they are still in Cairo.”
“So you have lost her too.”
“It was your fault that Edna gave me up. You owe me something for that. And you behaved badly to me again—afterwards.”
“I did not.”
He laughed enjoyingly. “I trusted you and you took advantage of a truce to run away.”
She moved away from him, but he followed her and kept at her side.
“I never asked you to trust me. I asked you to come the next day for an answer. You came and you had it.”
“I came and I had it,” he repeated. “Did the old woman give you my message?”
“That we should meet again?”
“That was not all. I said you would come to me one day sooner or later.”
They had paused at the top of the steps that lead down from the Capitol into the streets and are guarded by the gigantic figures of Castor and Pollux, great masses of discoloured marble set on pedestals on either side. It was twelve o’clock, and a black stream of hungry, desk-weary men poured out of the Capitoline offices. Many turned to look at the English girl as they hurried by, and one passing close to her muttered “bella” in her ear. She drew back as though she had been stung. Filippo laughed again.
“I only ask to be let alone,” she said. “Can’t you understand that you remind me ofthings I want to forget. I am ashamed, oh, can’t you understand!”
She left him and went to stand on the outskirts of the crowd that had collected in front of the cage in which the wolves are kept. Evidently she hoped that he would go on, but he meant to disappoint her, and when she went down the steps he was close beside her.
“Why are you so unkind to me?” he said, and as they crossed the road he held her arm.
She wrenched herself away, went up to thecarabiniere, who stood at the corner, and spoke to him. The man smiled tolerantly as he glanced from her to Filippo. “Signorina, I cannot help you.”
She passed on down the street, knowing that she was being followed, crossed the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and took a tram in the Piazza della Minerva. Tor di Rocca got in too and sat down opposite to her. The conductor turned to him first, and when she proffered her four soldi she found that he had paid for both. Her hand shook as she put the money back in her purse, and her colour rose. Filippo, quite at his ease, leisurely, openly observant of her, whistled “Lucia” softly to himself. Roses, roses all the way, and all for him, he thought amusedly. And yet she bore the ordeal well, betraying no restlessness, keeping her eyes unswervinglyfixed on the two lions of the advertisement of Chinina Migone pasted on the glass over his head. At the Ripetta bridge she got out. He followed, saw her go into a house farther down the street, and paused on the threshold to take the number before he went up the stairs after her. She heard him coming. He turned the handle of the door, but she had locked it and it held fast. He knocked once and called to her. Evidently he was not sure of her being within. There was another room on the same landing, and after a while he tried that.
“Are you in there?Carissima, you are wasting time. To-day or to-morrow, sooner or later. Why not to-day, and soon?”
A silence ensued. The girl had taken off her hat and thrown it down upon the table. She stood very still in the middle of the room listening, waiting for him to go away again. Her breath came quickly, and little pearls of sweat broke out upon her forehead. His persistence frightened her.
He waited for an answer, and receiving none, added, “Well, I will come again,” and so went away.
She stayed in until it was time to go to Varini’s. It was not far, but she was flushed and panting with the haste that she had made as she put on the faded blue silk dress that had been laid out ready for her on the one broken chair in the dressing-room. Rosinacame in to her presently from the professor’s studio. She wore a man’s tweed coat and a striped blanket wrapped about her, and she was smoking a cigarette.
“So you have come back to work here. Your signorino at the Villa Medici is away?”
“Only for a few days. He will not be gone long. The picture is not finished. How is Pasquina?”
Rosina had come over to her and was fastening the hooks of her bodice. “She is very well. How pretty you are.” She rearranged the laces at the girl’s breast and caught up a torn piece of the silk with a pin. “That is better. Have you been running? You seem hot.”
“Oh, Rosina, I have been frightened. A man followed me. I shall be afraid to go home to-night.”
The yellow-haired Trasteverina looked at her shrewdly. “He knows where you live? Have you only seen him once?”
“He—he came and tried my door. I am afraid of him.”
Rosina nodded. “Si capisce!I will take care of you. I have met so manymascalzoniin twenty years that I have grown used to them. I will come home with you, and if any man so much as looks at us I will scratch his eyes out.”
Through the thin partition wall they heard the professor calling for his model. “I mustgo,” she said hurriedly, but as she passed out Olive caught at a fold of the enveloping blanket.
“Come here, I want you.” She flung her arms about the other girl’s neck and kissed her. “You are good! You are good!”
She went into the class room and climbed the throne as the men came clattering in to take their places. The professor posed her.
“So you have come back to us. Do not let them spoil you at the Villa Medici—your head a little higher—so.”
The first drawing in of the figure is not a thing to be taken lightly, and the silence was seldom broken at Varini’s on Monday evenings. The two boys, however, found it hard to repress the natural loquacity of their extreme youth.
“Al lavoro, Mario! What are you whispering about? Cesare,zitto!” Bembi stared at them. “Their chins are disappearing,” he said. “See their collars. Every day an inch higher.Dio mio!Is that the way to please women? I wear a flannel shirt and my neck is as bare as a plucked chicken, and yet I—” he stopped short.
Mario laughed. “Women are strange,” he admitted.
“Mad!” cried Cesare, and then as Bembi still smirked ineffably he appealed to Olive. “Do you admire fowls wrapped in flannel orin arrosto?”
When she came out she found Rosina waiting for her in the courtyard, a grey shadow with smooth fair hair shining in the moonlight. “The professor let me go at eight so I dressed and came out here,” she explained. “The dressing-room is full of dust and spider’s webs. I told the porter the other day that he ought to sweep it, but he only laughed at me and said Domeniddio made spiders long before he took a rib out of Adam’s side to whip a naughty world.”
“Who is the man?” she asked presently as they walked along together. “Do I know him?”
“I do not think so. He is not an artist.”
Rosina laid a hand upon her arm. “Is that he?” she said.
They had passed through one of the narrow streets that lead from the Corso towards the river and were come into the Ripetta.
A tall man was walking slowly along on the other side of the road. He did not seem to have noticed the two girls, and yet as he stopped to light a cigarette he was looking towards them. A tram came clanging up, the overhead wires emitting strange noises peculiar to themselves, the gong ringing sharply. Olive glanced up at the red painted triangle fixed to the lamp-post at the corner. “It will stop here. Quick! while it is between us. Perhaps he has not seen—”
They ran to her door and up the stairstogether. “It has only just gone on,” cried Rosina. “Have you got your key?”
She stayed on the landing while Olive went into the room and lit her candle. There was no sound in the house at all, no step upon the stair. As she peered down over the banisters into the darkness below she listened intently. The rustling of her skirt sounded loud in the stillness, but there was nothing else.
“He did not see us,” she said. “I shall go now. Lock your door.Felice notte, piccina.”
Camille, loitering on the terrace of the old garden of the Villa Medici, was quick to hear the creaking of the iron gate upon its hinges. His pale face brightened as he threw away his cigarette and he went down the path between the ilex trees to meet his model.
“You have come. Oh, I seem to have been years away.”
They went up the hill together. It was early yet, and the city was veiled in fine mist through which the river gleamed here and there with a sharpness of steel. The dome of St Peter’s was still dark against the greenish pallor of the morning sky.
“I am glad to be in Rome again. Venice is beautiful, but it does not inspire me. It has no associations for me. What do I care for the Doges, or for Titian’s fat, golden-haired women with their sore eyes—Caterina Cornaro and the rest. Rome is a crystal in which I seem to see faces of dear women, women who lived and loved and saw the sun set behind that rampart of low hills—Virginia, the Greek slave Acte, Agnes, Cecilia, who sang as she lay dying in her house over there in the Trasteverine quarter. Ah, I shall go awayand have the nostalgia of Rome to the end of my life.” He paused to light another cigarette. “Come and look at the picture. I have not dared to see it again myself since I came back last night.”
The door of hisatelierwas open; he clattered up the steep wooden stairs and she followed him. The canvas was set up on an easel facing the great north light. Camille went up to it and then backed away.
“Well?”
He was smiling. “It is good,” he said. “I shall work on it to-day and to-morrow. Get ready now while I prepare my palette.”
He looked at her critically as she took her place. The change in her was indefinable, but he was aware of it. She seemed to be listening.
“Do you feel a draught from the door?” he asked presently.
“No, but I should like it shut.”
“Nerves. You need a tonic and probably a change of air and scene. There is nothing the matter?”
She shook her head. Camille was kind, but he could not help her. He could not make the earth open and swallow Tor di Rocca, and sometimes she felt that nothing less than that would satisfy her, and that such a summary ending would contribute greatly to her peace of mind.
She had not seen the Prince for two daysand she was beginning to hope that he had gone away, but she was not yet able to feel free of him. Rosina had come home with her every night from Varini’s. Once he had followed them, and twice he had come up the stairs and knocked at the door. There had been hours when she had been safe from him, but she had not known them, and the strain, the constant pricking fear of him, was telling upon her. Every day youth and strength and hope seemed to be slipping away and leaving her less able to do and to endure. She dared not look forward, as Camille did, to the end of life. He would die in his bed, full of years and honour, a great artist, a master, the president of many societies, but she—
Sometimes, as she stood facing the semi-circle of men at Varini’s, and listened to the busy scratching of charcoal on paper, to Bembi’s heavy breathing, and to the ticking of the clock, she wondered if she had done wrong in taking this way of bread earning. Certainly there could be no turning back. The step, once taken, was irrevocable. If artists employed her she would go on, but she could get no other work if this failed. If this failed there must be another struggle between flesh and spirit, and this time it would be decisive—one or other must prevail. Though she dreaded it she knew it was inevitable.
Meanwhile Camille stood in need of her ministrations. He had arranged to show hiswork on the fifteenth of April, and now he seemed to regard that date as thrice accursed. Often when she came in the morning she would find him prowling restlessly to and fro, or sitting with his head in his hands staring gloomily at the parquet flooring and sighing like a furnace.
“I hate having to invite people who do not know anything, who cannot tell an etching from an oil,” he said irritably. “I cannot suffer their ridiculous comments gladly. I would rather have six teeth pulled out than hear my Aholibah called pretty.Pretty!”
“They cannot say anything wrong about the picture of me,” she said. “It is splendid. M’sieur le Directeur says so, and I am sure it is. And your Venice sketches look so well on the screen.”
“You must be there,” he moaned. “If you are not there I shall burst into tears and run away.” Then he laughed. “I am always like this. You should see me in Paris on the eve of the opening of the Salon. A pitiable wreck! I had no angel to console me there.”
He kissed her hands with unusual fervour.
The girl had not really meant to come at first, but she yielded to his persuasions. “I will look after the food and drink then,” she said, and she spent herself on the decoration of the tea-table. They went to Aragno’s together in the morning to get cakes and bonbons.
“What flowers?”
She chose mimosa, and he bought a great mass of the fragrant golden boughs, and a bunch of violets for her.
Camille knew a good many people in Rome, and all those he had asked came. The Prix de Rome men were the first arrivals. They came in a body, and on the stroke of the hour named on the invitation cards. Camille watched their faces eagerly as they crowded in and came to a stand before his picture; they knew, and if they approved he cared little for the verdict of all Rome.
Gontrand was the first to break rather a long silence.
“Delicious!” he cried. “It is a triumph.”
Camille flushed with pleasure as the others echoed him.
“The scheme of whites,” “The fine quality,” “So pure.”
One after the other they went across the room to talk to the model, who stood by the tea-table waiting to serve them.
“You are wonderful, mademoiselle. If only you would sit for me I might hope to achieve something too.”
“When M’sieur Michelin has done with me,” she said. “You like the picture?”
“It is adorable—as you are.”
Other people were coming now. Camille stayed by the door to receive them while his friend Gontrand showed the drawings in theportfolio, explained the Campagna sketches, and handed plates of cake and sweets. When Olive made fresh tea he brought her more sliced lemons from the lumber room, where Rosina was washing the cups.
“I am useful but not disinterested. Persuade Camille to let you sit for me.”
“But you will not be here in the summer,” she said wistfully.
“Coffee, madame? These cakes are not very sweet. Yes, I was M’sieur Michelin’s model. Yes, it is a beautiful picture.”
The crowd thinned towards six o’clock, and there was no one now at the far end of the room but a man who seemed to be looking at the sketches on the screen. Olive thought she might take a cup of tea herself, and she was pouring it out when he turned and came towards her. It was Tor di Rocca.
“Ah,” he said smilingly, “the girl in Michelin’s picture reminded me of you, but I did not realise that you were indeed the ‘Jeune Fille.’ I have been away from Rome these last few days. Have you missed me?”
His hot brown eyes lingered over her.
“Don’t.”
“I should like a cup of coffee.”
Her hand shook so as she gave it to him that much was spilled on the floor. She had pitied him once; he remembered that as he saw how she shrank from him. “Michelinhas been more fortunate than I have,” he said deliberately.
“I beg your pardon.”
“You seem to be at home here.”
“I suppose you must follow the bent of your mind.”
“I suppose I must,” he agreed as he stood aside to let her pass. She had defied him that night in Florence. “Never!” she had said. And now he saw that she smiled at Camille as she went by him into the further room, and the old bad blood stirred in him and he ached with a fierce jealousy.
She had denied him. “Never!” she had said.
As he joined the group of men by the door Gontrand turned to him. “Ah, Prince, have you heard that Michelin has already sold his picture?”
“I am not surprised,” the Italian answered suavely. “If I was rich—but I am not. Who is the happy man?”
“That stout grey-haired American who left half an hour since. Did you notice him? He is Vandervelde, the great millionaire art collector.”
“May one ask the price?”
“Eight thousand francs,” answered Camille. He looked tired, but his blue eyes were very bright. “I am glad, and yet I shall be sorry to part with it.”
“You will still have the charming original,” the Prince said not quite pleasantly.
There was a sudden silence. The men all waited for Camille’s answer. Beyond, in the next room, they heard the two girls splashing the water, clattering the cups and plates.
The young Frenchman paused in the act of striking a match. He looked surprised. “But this is the original. I have made no copy.”
“I meant—” The Prince stopped short. After all, he thought, he goes well who goes slowly.
Camille was waiting. “You meant?”
Tor di Rocca had had time to think. “Nothing,” he said sweetly.
Silence was again ensuing but Gontrand flung himself into the breach.
“The Duchess said she wanted her daughter’s portrait painted.”
“She said the same to me.”
“Are you going to do it?”
Camille suppressed a yawn. “I don’t know.Qui vivra verra.”
He was glad when they were all gone, Gontrand and Tor di Rocca and the rest, and he could stretch himself and sigh, and sing at the top of his voice:
“‘Nicholas, je vais me pendreQu’est-ce que tu vas dire de cela?Si vous vous pendez ou v’vous pendez pasÇa m’est ben egal, Mam’zelle.Si vous vous pendez ou v’vous pendez pasOh, laissez moi planter mes chous!’”
“‘Nicholas, je vais me pendreQu’est-ce que tu vas dire de cela?Si vous vous pendez ou v’vous pendez pasÇa m’est ben egal, Mam’zelle.Si vous vous pendez ou v’vous pendez pasOh, laissez moi planter mes chous!’”
When Olive came out of the inner room presently he told her that he had sold the “Jeune Fille.” “The Duchess has nearly commissioned me to paint her Mélanie. It went off well, don’t you think so? Come at nine to-morrow.”
“Yes, if you want me. Good-night, M’sieur Camille,” she said. “Are you coming, Rosina?”
“Why do you wait for her?” he asked curiously. “I should not have thought you had much in common.”
“She is my friend. She knows I do not care to be alone.”
When Olive came to theatelieron the following morning Camille was not there, but the door was open and he had left a note on the table for her.