III
IT was a little past noon on Saturday when Rose Temple went to Allestree’s studio accompanied by Aunt Hannah Colfax, a faithful old negro woman who had been devoted to her from childhood and now performed the dual duties of maid and duenna with all the complacence and shrewdness of her age and color.
Passing the quaint show-windows of Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop on the first floor, in which were displayed—in amazing medley—pewter cups, old line engravings, camel’s-hair shawls and horse-pistols, they ascended the long narrow flight of stairs to the rooms above. On reaching them, Aunt Hannah promptly ensconced herself and her knitting under the window on the landing, while Rose pushed aside the portière and entered the studio, unconsciously carrying with her some of the crisp out-of-door atmosphere from whence she came and of which, in her buoyant and radiant youth, she seemed a visible and triumphant embodiment.
“It’s perfectly angelic of me to come to-day, Robert,” she remarked, as she greeted him, “for I’m not in the mood for a sitting and, of course, I shall behave abominably.”
“And you wish me to be bowed in the dust with gratitude for your angelic determination to behave abominably?” he replied dryly, looking at her with all an artist’s perception of her beauty and a reluctant consciousness that the glow in her eyes and the color in her cheeks were purely responses to the keen winter air, and that neither had ever been inspired by his presence nor called into being by his words.
Meanwhile Rose moved unconsciously before the long mirror, and removing her hat, slightly and deftly rearranged her beautiful and luxuriant hair as she answered him. “Why not?” she said banteringly; “you can’t believe that any one likes to pose for an hour—even to be made into one of your delightful pictures—but I’ll try to behave beautifully if you’ll answer all my questions, instead of going on with your painting, with a cigarette between your teeth and with the face of a sphinx, as you did the other day!”
“When you asked a dozen questions I couldn’t answer!” Allestree was selecting his brushes andcontemplating the canvas on his easel with a despairing eye.
He had already outlined Rose’s figure and decided on the desired pose, but it seemed to him impossible to do justice to the exquisite charm of her beauty. It was a simple picture; he had endeavored to preserve what seemed to him the keynote of her personality, and had forborne to use any of those effects of brilliant color, rich draperies and elaborate accessories which a portrait painter commonly loves to lavish on a beautiful subject; instead, he had made her figure, with its superb poise, stand out in absolute simplicity. To Allestree she personified all the glorious possibilities of youth, with its buoyant hopes, its poignant truth, its magnificent faith in life, in the world, in itself. But when he looked from her to the canvas—where he had hoped to express something of all this—he felt deeply discouraged; his brush might be touched with the magic of a deep if unspoken passion, but it could never paint her as she appeared to him!
“I do not remember asking anything but the simplest questions,” she remarked, as she took her seat in the carved armchair which he had placed for her before a curtain of soft deep blue which seemed to suggest an April sky; “only you didn’twant to answer them. I warn you that I mean to be answered to-day! There’s nothing so abominable as your silences.”
Allestree smiled a little as he began to paint, with a slow and reluctant touch, feeling his way toward some achievement which might at least foreshadow success. “I fancied there was a virtue in silence; there’s a copy-book axiom to that effect,” he remarked; “besides, you would never come here at all punctually if you are not left in doubt on some mooted point. Mystery lures a woman as surely as magic.”
Rose gave him a reproachful glance. “And you think I like to sit here and listen to Mammy Hannah snore while you smoke and paint?” she said in a vexed tone, “for you always smoke and she always falls asleep.”
“Which is a special providence,” he retorted, “and the greatest virtue I ever met in a duenna.”
Without replying Rose looked absently around her, observing the details of his workshop more carefully than usual and noticing the harmonious effect of the colors, which he had grouped in his hangings. There was the high northern light concentrated on his subject, but beyond, in the corners, there were invitingly rich shadows, and here and there a bold, half finished sketch had beennailed to the walls. A well worn Turkey rug covered the portion of the floor occupied by his model, and a table in the window was set with a chafing-dish, a box of Egyptians and an odd shaped bronze tea-pot with some egg-shell cups which he had purchased in Japan. In a way Rose knew the history of everything in the room and almost the cost, but there was a touch of luxury about it which vaguely irritated her; it often seemed that Allestree was too well off to ever be a great artist,—he lacked the spur of necessity.
“Shall you paint for a living if you are ever poor?” she asked abruptly, resting her chin in her hand and contemplating him with a clear and impersonal gaze.
Allestree looked up, and observing the delicate hand with its tapering fingers and the jewelled chain which clasped her throat, smiled. “Shall you sing?” he asked, amused.
She sighed softly. “I wish that I might—and in opera too!” she replied, “I fear I should to-day but for father. You think me a very useless person, I see,” she added, smiling a little, “and perhaps I am. But isn’t it because I’ve had no chance? Girls are trained up in such an objectless way unless they are brought up to marry. Thank heaven, I escaped that; father is as innocentof such designs as a baby! But if I had been a boy I should have been given a profession, I should have had something to do instead of being expected merely to dress well and look ornamental!”
As she spoke her face lost a little of its vivid color and animation, but the slight pensiveness of her look seemed to Allestree to increase the poignancy of her spell; there was a subtle suggestion of that imaginative longing for the fulfilment of those vague youthful conceptions of happiness and life and love which stir in all young things, as the sap stirs in the trees in springtime and the bud forms under the leaves.
He did not immediately reply, but continued to work on the portrait before him which seemed to him more and more hopelessly colorless and lifeless compared with his model. “Perhaps my point of view is too concentrated to be of much value,” he said at length; “to me the mere fact of your existence seems enough to compensate for the loss of a good many more actively employed and earthly individuals who must be working out your privileged season as a lily of the field.”
She gave him a quick, slightly amazed look, and blushed. “You speak as though I were selected from the rubbish heap!” she exclaimedlaughing, “as though I profited by the misfortunes of others. I don’t know whether to regard it as a compliment or not!”
But Allestree was quite unmoved, absorbed indeed in his work. “Did I ever pay you a compliment, Rose?” he asked, after an instant, meeting her glance with one that was so eloquent of deeper feeling that she withdrew hers, vaguely alarmed.
“I don’t believe you ever did,” she replied hastily, with an instinctive desire to put off any suggestion of passion on his part, for much as she liked him and long as she had known him, Allestree was only a lay figure on her horizon; he had never stirred her heart, and she dreaded a break in that friendship which she dreamed of prolonging forever with a girl’s usual infatuated belief in the possibilities of such a friendship between a man and a woman. The channel into which their talk had unconsciously drifted so alarmed her indeed that she rose abruptly and went to the window and stood looking down into the street, her perfect profile and the soft upward sweep of her beautiful hair showing against the dark draperies which she had pushed aside, and moving the painter in turn to still deeper depths of artistic self-abasement.
“Robert,” she said suddenly, after a moment’s embarrassed silence, “who was that with you the other evening? Was it Mr. Fox?”
Allestree glanced up quickly, and then stooped to pick up a brush which had dropped to the floor. “Yes,” he said quietly, “how did you happen to recognize him?”
“I was not sure—but I’ve seen two or three pictures of him in the magazines and the weeklies. One can’t forget his head, do you think?” and she came slowly back to her chair, unconscious of the change in Allestree’s expression.
“Well, I never tried,” he confessed; “I’ve known William Fox all my life, and he’s my own first cousin besides. It’s rather odd,” he added, “by the way, that you never met him, but then you have been away from the city when he has been here.”
Rose regarded him thoughtfully, her composure fully restored. “He has a very remarkable face,” she observed, “and it is fine and pale like a bit of old ivory.”
“Oh, yes, all the women fall in love with him,” Allestree assented with impatient irony.
“Do they? That doesn’t sound interesting, but I should not believe it of his face, he doesn’t look like a lady’s man! Is it true—” she addedwith a moment’s hesitation—“that he has never loved any one but Margaret White?”
“It’s true that Margaret treated him abominably,” said Allestree bluntly; “she was engaged to him when they were both very young and threw him over to marry White.”
“What a singular choice,” Rose observed, “White has nothing attractive about him, and he is so selfish, so hard; they say he treats her badly.”
“He should—in poetic justice,” replied Allestree laughing, “for she married him for his money and his position. Fox was a poor man then with no prospects but his brains and, strange to say, Margaret underestimated their possibilities.”
“And yet she is very clever. Did he really feel it so much?” she added, her natural sympathy for a sentimental situation touched and strengthened by the remembrance of Fox’s clear-cut face, which had appeared to her vision cameo-like against the night.
“Now you are beginning to ask me your unanswerable questions,” he retorted smiling grimly, with a keen sense of annoyance that Fox could intrude so sharply into their talk. “I know he was very much in love with her then, but he is on good terms with them both now and—” hestopped abruptly; his quick ear had caught a step on the stairs accompanied by another sound which startled him with an impatient certainty of a surprise.
It was the tread of a large Scotch collie who lifted the portière on his nose and walked deliberately into the room. Allestree laid down his brush with a peculiarly exasperated expression.
“Well, Sandy,” he said, not unkindly, addressing the dog.
Rose turned and held out her hand. “What a beautiful creature,” she remarked; “who does he belong to? Who is coming?”
Her companion gave her an enigmatical glance, observing the collie as he approached and laid his head against her knee. The step on the stair had now reached the landing, and they heard Aunt Hannah’s chair scrape as she moved and her knitting needles rattled on the floor, for she had been startled out of a nap.
“Who is it?” Rose repeated, framing the question with her lips.
“Fox,” replied Allestree dryly, laying down his palette and lighting a cigarette; “he has an uncommonly retentive memory it appears.”
She glanced at him quickly, a suddenly illuminated understanding in her eyes, and blushedexquisitely, for she was still young enough to be easily embarrassed. At the same moment Fox pushed aside the portière and entered the room.
“Hello, Bobby,” he began, and then paused abruptly at the sight of Rose. “I fear I’m an intruder,” he added courteously.
Allestree smiled grimly and presented him to Miss Temple. “On the contrary, I think you got the time pretty closely,” he remarked ironically.
Fox laughed. “Guilty!” he exclaimed with perfect good humor; “down Sandy!” he added sharply to his collie; “you’ve bewitched the dog, Miss Temple; he rarely makes friends with strangers.”
“Then I appreciate all the more his advances,” she replied smiling, “a dog always knows a friend.”
“And an honest man,” said Fox; “I’m free to confess that I don’t trust one who dislikes dogs.”
“Every man has his crank,” remarked Allestree, walking to and fro before his easel, “and if you begin on dogs with William there’s no end.”
Rose laughed, glancing from Allestree’s slightly vexed countenance to the serenity on the brow of his cousin, who had seated himselfon the edge of an elaborate brass-bound chest which was one of the studio properties. “I can sympathize, Mr. Fox,” she said; “we’ve always had dogs.”
Fox gave her one of his brilliant inscrutable looks. “I entirely agree with Lamartine, Miss Temple,” he replied; “when a man is unhappy God gives him a dog.”
“Good Lord, Billy, are you making a bid for our sympathy?” exclaimed Allestree with exasperation.
Both Fox and Rose laughed merrily.
“He’s only quoting the modern classics,” she replied gayly.
“What I should like to know is how he gets out of school in the middle of the day,” said Allestree dryly; “for a man who is supposed to be a leader, he manages to desert at the most remarkable moments. One of the party whips told me the other day that Fox was as hard to trail as a comet.”
“Nothing of the sort,” replied Fox, with indolent amusement; “we adjourned over, last night, until Monday, and I came around here as usual to sit for my portrait.”
Allestree bit his lip, conscious that his irritability was thrown into sharp relief by his cousin’simperturbable good humor, and resenting, with a sting of premonition, the effect of Fox’s pose upon Rose Temple. He was not a dull man and could not close his eyes to the fact that she had apparently come to life, been revivified and animated by Fox’s entrance, and he knew well enough the interest that the touch of romance in his past history added to his cousin’s brilliant personality. However, it was useless to sulk at the inevitable misfortune which had destroyed his hour with Rose, and he turned his attention to hospitality.
“Will you make tea for us, Rose, if I set the kettle boiling?” he asked, as he drew forward the table, “I’ve got some cakes in the cupboard and a few sandwiches.”
“Why, of course; it will be delightful,” she assented readily, rising from her chair to help him find the tea caddy. “I’m eternally indebted, Mr. Fox; he’s going to let me off a half-hour’s posing,” she added, smiling over her shoulder at him.
He laughed, moving over apparently to study the half outlined portrait on the easel, but really enjoying the sight of the graceful figure bending over the table, and her delicate hands engaged in opening the caddy and measuring the tea into Allestree’s old tea-pot. As she did so the light from the window fell vividly on her bright head,and the exquisite details of her profile, the curve of her cheek and chin, the thick lashed white eyelids, the short upper lip, the little pink ear, all engaged Fox’s critical and appreciative eye. Like most men who are forced to live in bachelor apartments, he felt keenly the domesticity of the little scene and the touch of gracious femininity which her presence lent to the tea-table. There was a charm, too, in her unconsciousness, and he was almost sorry when she finally turned with a steaming cup in her hands.
“You’ll have to take lemon,” she said, “for Robert never has cream unless it’s sour, but do you take sugar?”
“He takes three lumps to a cup,” interposed Allestree bluntly; “but he’ll probably deny it—he’s a politician.”
Fox laughed. “And in the house of my friends!” he said; “but that is only acoup d’étaton his part,” he added, “to keep me from asking for his last lump, Miss Temple; I saw him looking for more just now.”
“We’ll draw lots for it, Robert,” said Rose gayly, taking her seat at the table and smiling across at Fox from pure pleasure in the little unconventional picnic.
But Allestree’s attention had been arrested bysomething in the street below, and he interrupted them with a gesture of despair. “Mrs. Osborne is coming!” he announced with a grimace.
Rose glanced hastily at the clock. “Oh, I must be going,” she exclaimed; “I had no idea it was so late!” and she rose hurriedly and reached for her hat.
Allestree murmured something uncomplimentary to his approaching visitor, and Fox set down his cup of tea. The first tremor of an earthquake shock could scarcely have broken up the little group more abruptly. Rose had put on her hat and adjusted her filmy veil, and it was Fox who helped her with her coat and her furs. Allestree, instead, threw a cloth over the picture on the easel.
Rose held out her hand. “Good-by,” she said with a charming smile; “I know I’m a trying model, but you’re a perfect angel of patience, Robert.”
As she spoke there was a frou-frou of skirts in the hall, and Lily Osborne came slowly and gracefully through the portière. She was a handsome woman with an abundance of reddish gold hair and long black eyes which had the effect of having no white, a peculiarity possessed by Rachel and also, we are told, by the devil.
The two women bowed stiffly and Rose slipped out, attended by Fox and Sandy, leaving Allestree to devour his chagrin and receive his accomplished visitor.