“I don’t think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural that a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that.”
“I don’t know why. I can understand that you specially should not like the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place would at any rate say that they did.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“What; for telling the truth? No, indeed.” He was standing opposite to his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that; and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose. “It will have been a prosperous picture to me,” he said at last, “if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious.”
“I am told that all you do is successful now—merely because you do it. That is the worst of success.”
“What is the worst of success?”
“That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining of which no merit is necessary.”
“I hope it may be so in my case. If it is not I shall have a very poor chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about my pictures.”
“I thought you were.”
“Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain it.”
“You have obtained it.”
“I am in the way to do so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain of that when one has drawn the prize.” Dalrymple was not a man without self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it easier to talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban was his difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within the last five minutes, that he would have long since said what he had to say had it not been for the turban. He had been painting all his life from living models—from women dressed up in this or that costume, to suit the necessities of his picture—but he had never made love to any of them. They had been simply models to him, and now he found that there was a difficulty. “Of that prize,” he said, “I have made myself tolerably sure; but as to the other prize, I do not know. I wonder whether I am to have that.” Of course Miss Van Siever understood well what was the prize of which he was speaking; and as she was a young woman with a will and purpose of her own, no doubt she was already prepared with an answer. But it was necessary that the question should be put to her in properly distinct terms. Conway Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in properly distinct terms at present. She did not choose to make any answer to his last words; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he had better go on with his work. “I am quite ready now,” said she.
“Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the canvas from top to bottom without a groan—without a single inner groan—if you will let me.”
“For heaven’s sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?”
“Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I come here. Clara—” Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, very weary, having been piling fagots with assiduity, till human nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to Clara’s seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognized the fact that the fault had been with himself. Mrs. Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen—having no doubt made a mistake as to three—and had told herself that with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been during the interval—what it is to have to pile up such fagots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.
“My friends,” said Mrs. Broughton, “this will not do. This is not working; this is not sitting.”
“Mr. Dalrymple has been explaining to me the precarious nature of an artist’s profession,” said Clara.
“It is not precarious with him,” said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, sententiously.
“Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera.”
“I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom.”
“And why?” said Mrs. Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in tragic horror.
“Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it.”
“And how little you care about her, too,” said Mrs. Broughton.
“She might take that as she liked.” After this there was another genuine sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been no episode. Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer
