Chapter 7 No.7

"Manon Lescaut," Carrington repeated. He did not show any particular enthusiasm.

"Yes, Manon Lescaut. I see the thing. It would be really superb."

"You don't mean to say, my dear boy, that you are falling into anecdote? You are not going to degrade your canvas with painted literature?"

Carrington's voice betrayed some concern, for he took a friendly interest in my career.

"The title-a mere label-suggests it. But nothing of the sort. I am going to paint a portrait of Manon-and of her ilk."

"A portrait?"

"Yes; the portrait of a type."

Carrington smoked on, stretched comfortably in a chair. His feet were on another chair, and the broad soles of his slippers so displayed implied ease and intimacy.

"It will look like the portrait of an actress in character; a costume picture," he said, presently; "the label isn't suggestive to me."

"There will, I promise you, be no trace of commonplace realism in it. It will be Velasquez dashed with Watteau. Can you realize the modest flight of my imagination? Seriously, Carrington, I intend to paint a masterpiece. I intend to paint a woman who would sell her soul for pleasure-a conscienceless, fascinating egotist-a corrupt charmer-saved by a certain na?veté. The eighteenth century, in fact, en grisette."

"Manon rather redeemed herself at the end, if I remember rightly," Carrington observed.

"Or circumstances redeemed her, if you will. She had a heart, perhaps; it never made her uncomfortable. Her love was of the doubtful quality that flies out of the window as want comes in at the door. Oh! she was a sweet little scélérate. I shall paint the type-the little scélérate."

"Well, of course, everything would depend on the treatment."

"Everything. I am going to astonish you there, Carrington."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Carrington said, good-humouredly.

"I see already the golden gray of her dim white boudoir; the satins, the laces, the high-heeled shoes, the rigid little waist, and face of pretty depravity. The face is the thing-the key. Where find the face? I think of a trip to Paris on purpose. One sees the glancing creature-such as I have in my mind-there, now and then. I want a fresh pallor, and gay, lazy eyes-light-brown, not too large."

"I fancy I know of someone," Carrington said, meditatively. "Not that she's dans le caractère," he added: "not at all; anything but depraved. But-her face; you could select." Carrington mused. "The line of her cheek is, I remember, mockingly at variance with her staid innocence of look."

"Who is she? Manon could look innocent, you know-was so, after a fashion. I should like a touch of childish insouciance. Who is she, and how can I get her?"

"Well," said Carrington, taking his pipe from his lips and contemplating the fine colouring of the bowl, "she's a lady, for one thing."

"Oh, the devil!" I ejaculated; "that won't do!"

"Well, it might."

"Shouldn't fancy it. Ill at ease on her account, you know. How could one tell a lady that she was out of pose-must sit still? How could one pay her?"

"Very simple, if she's the real article."

"I never tried it," I demurred.

"Well"-Carrington had a soothing way of beginning a sentence-"you might see her, at least. Her father is a socialist; a very harmless and unnecessary one, but that accounts for her posing."

"Do the paternal unconventionalities countenance posing for the académie? That savors of a really disconcerting latitude."

"The académie? Dear me, no! Oh, no; Miss Jones is a model of the proprieties. One indeed can hardly connect her with even such mild nonconformity as her father's socialism. He was a parson; had religious scruples, and took to rather aimless humanitarianism and to very excellent bookbinding in Hampstead. He binds a lot of my books for me; and jolly good designing and tooling, too. You remember that Petrarch of mine. That's really how I came to know him. It was the artist in him that wrestled with and overthrew the parson. He seems a happy old chap; poor as Job's turkey and absorbed in his work. He has rather longish hair-wavy, and wears a leather belt and no collar." Carrington added: "That's the first socialistic declaration of independence-they fling their collars in the face of conventionality. But the belt and the lack of collar are the only noticeable traces socialism seems to have left on Mr. Jones, except that he lets his daughter make money by posing. He must know about the people, of course. She usually sits for women. But I can give you a recommendation."

I felt, to a certain extent, the same lack of enthusiasm that Carrington himself had shown at the announcement of my "label," but I thanked him, and said that I should be glad to see Miss Jones.

"And her mother was French, too," he added, as a cogent afterthought. "That accounts for the rippled cheek-line." Miss Jones's cheek had evidently made an emphatic impression. Indeed, Carrington's enthusiasm seemed to wax on reflection, and, as interpreted by Miss Jones, my Manon became tangible.

"How's her colouring?" I asked.

"Pale; her mouth is red, very red; charming figure, nice hands; I remember them taking up the books-she was dusting the books. I've only seen her once or twice; but I noticed her, and she struck me as a type-of something."

The pale skin and red mouth rather pleased me, and it was arranged that Carrington should see Mr. Jones, and, if possible, make an appointment for Miss Jones to call on Monday afternoon at my studio.

Carrington had rooms next door, in the little court of artists' quarters in Chelsea.

Carrington wrote reviews and collected all sorts of expensive things, chiefly old books and Chinese porcelain. He and I had art-for-art sympathies, and, being lucky young men from a monetary point of view, we could indulge our propensities with a happy indifference to success.

I had painted now for a good many years, both in Paris and in London, and had a pleasant little reputation among people it was worth while to please, and a hearty and encouraging philistine opposition. I had even shocked Mrs. Grundy in an Academy picture which wasn't at all shocking and was very well painted, and I had aroused controversy in the pages of the Saturday Review.

I felt Manon Lescaut.

This epitome of the soullessness of the eighteenth century whirled in its satin frivolity through all my waking thoughts.

On Monday I awaited Miss Jones, fervently hoping that her face would do.

Punctual to the minute came the young lady's rap at my door. I ushered her in. She was rather small; and self-possessed, very. In the cut of her serge frock and the line of her little hat over her eyebrows I fancied I saw a touch of the mother's nationality. With a most business-like air she removed this hat, carefully replacing the pins in the holes they had already traversed, took off her coat (it was February), and turned to the light. She would do. Evident and delightful fact! I at once informed her of it. She asked if she should sit that morning. I said that, as I had sketches to make before deciding on pose and effect of light, the sooner she would enter upon her professional duties the better.

The gown I had already discovered-a trouvaille and genuinely of the epoch; an enticing pink silk with glowing shadows.

Miss Jones made no comment on the exquisite thing which I laid lovingly on her arm. She retired with a brisk, calm step behind the tall screen in the corner.

When she reappeared in the dress, the old whites of the muslins at elbows and breast falling and folding on a skin like milk, I felt my heart rise in a devout ejaculation of utter contentment. The Manon of my dreams stood before me. The expression certainly was wanting; I should have to compass it by analogy. My imagination had grasped it, and I should realize the type by the aid of Miss Jones's pale face, narrowing to a chin the French would call mutin, her curled lips and curiously set eyes, wide apart, and the brows that swept ever so slightly upward. The very way in which her fair hair grew in a little peak on the forehead, and curved silky and unrippled to a small knot placed high, fulfilled my aspirations, though the hair must be powdered and in it the vibrating black of a bow.

Miss Jones stood very well, conscientiously and with intelligence. Pose and effect were soon decided upon, and in a day or two I was regularly at work, delighting in it, and with a sensation of power and certainty I had rarely experienced.

Carrington came in quite frequently, and, looking from my canvas to Miss Jones, would pronounce the drawing wonderfully felt.

"Dégas wouldn't be ashamed of the line of the neck," he said. "The turn and lift of her head as she looks sideways in the mirror is really émouvant, life; good idea; in character; centred on herself; not bent on conquest and staring it at you. Manon had not that trait."

Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most posée, well-behaved young person.

One could not call her manner discreet; it was far too self-confident for that. Her silence was natural, not assumed. During the rests she would return to a book.

I asked her one day what she was reading. She replied, looking up with polite calm:

"'Donovan.'"

"Oh!" was all I could find in comment. It did rather surprise me in a girl whose eyes were set in that most appreciative way and whose father, as a socialistic bookbinder, might have inculcated more advanced literary tastes. Still, she was very young; this fact seemed emphasized by the innocent white the back of her neck presented to me as she returned to her reading.

When I came to painting, I found that my good luck accompanied me, and that inspiring sense of mastery. Effort, yes; but achievement followed it with a sort of inevitableness. I tasted the joys of the arduous facility which is the fruition of years of toil.

The limpid grays seemed to me to equal Whistler's; the pinks-flaming in shadow, silvered in the light-suggested Velasquez to my happy young vanity; the warm whites, Chardin would have acknowledged; yet they were all my own, seen through my own eyes, not through the eyes of Chardin, Whistler, or Velasquez. The blacks sung emphatic or softened notes from the impertinent knot in the powdered hair to the bows on skirt and bodice. The rich empatement was a triumph of supple brush-work. I can praise it impudently for it was my masterpiece, and-well, I will keep to the consecutive recital.

Miss Jones showed no particular fellow-feeling for my work, and as, after a fashion, she, too, was responsible for it and had a right to be proud of it, this lack of interest rather irritated me.

Now and then, poised delicately on high heels and in her rustling robes, she would step up to my canvas, give it a pleasant but impassive look, and then turn away, resuming her chair and the perusal of her romance.

It really irked me after a time. However little value I might set upon her artistic acumen, this silence in my rose of pride pricked like a thorn.

Miss Jones's taste in painting might be as philistine as in literature, but her reserve aroused conjecture, and I became really anxious for an expression of opinion.

At last, one day, my curiosity burst forth:

"How do you like it?" I asked, while she stood contemplating my chef-d'?uvre with a brightly indifferent gaze. Miss Jones turned upon me her agate eyes-the eyelashes curled up at the corners, and it was difficult not to believe the eyes, too, roguish.

"I should think you had a great deal of talent," she said. "Have you studied long?"

Studied? It required some effort to adjust my thoughts to the standard implied; but perceiving a perhaps lofty conception of artistic attainment beneath the query, I replied:

"Well, an artist is never done learning, is he? And in the sense of having much to learn, I am still a student, no doubt."

"Ah, yes," Miss Jones replied.

She looked from my picture up at the sky-light, then round at the various studies, engravings, and photographs on the walls. This discursive glance was already familiar to me, and its flitting lightness whetted my curiosity as to possible non-committal depths beneath.

"Inspiration, now," Miss Jones pursued, surprising me a good deal, for she seldom carried on a subject unprompted, "that of course, is not dependent on study."

I felt in this remark something very derogatory to my Manon-an inspiration, and in the best sense, if ever anything was. Did Miss Jones not recognize the intellectual triumphs embodied in that presentment of frail woman-hood? I was certainly piqued, though I replied very good-humouredly:

"I had rather flattered myself that my picture could boast of that quality."

Miss Jones's glance now rested on me rather seriously.

"An inspired work of art should elevate the mind."

I could not for the life of me tell whether she was really rather clever or merely very banal and commonplace.

"I had hoped," I rejoined, politely, "that my picture-as a beautiful work of art-would also possess that faculty."

Miss Jones now looked at the clock, and remarked that it was time to pose. She mounted the low stand and I resumed my palette and brushes, feeling decidedly snubbed. Carrington sauntered in shortly after, his forefinger in a book and a pipe between his teeth. He apologized to Miss Jones for the latter, and wished to know if she objected. Miss Jones's smile retained all its unabashed clearness as she replied:

"It is a rather nasty smell, I think."

Poor Carrington, decidedly disconcerted, knocked out his pipe and laid it down, and Miss Jones, observing him affably while she retained her pose to perfection, added: "I have been brought up to disapprove of smoking, you see; papa doesn't believe in tobacco."

Miss Jones's aplomb was certainly enough to make any man feel awkward, and Carrington looked so as he came up beside me and examined my work.

"By Jove! Fletcher," he said, "the resemblance is astonishing-and the lack of resemblance. That's the triumph-the material likeness, the spiritual unlikeness."

Indeed, Miss Jones could lay no claim to the "inspiration" of my work; in intrinsic character the face of my pretty scélérate was in no way Miss Jones's.

"Charming, charming," and Carrington's eye, passing from my canvas, rested on Miss Jones.

"Which?" I asked, smiling, and, of course, in an undertone.

"It depends, my dear boy, on whether you ask me if I prefer Phryne or Priscilla-pagan or puritan; both are interesting types, and the contrast can be very effectually studied here in your picture and your model."

"Yet Priscilla lends herself wonderfully to be interpreted as Phryne."

"Or, rather, it is wonderful that you should have imagined Manon into that face."

In the next rest, when Carrington had gone, Miss Jones said:

"Mr. Carrington walked home with me yesterday. Papa thinks rather highly of him. It is a pity his life should be so pointless."

It began to be borne in upon me that Miss Jones had painfully serious ethical convictions.

"I suppose you mean from the socialistic standpoint," I said.

"Oh, no-not at all; I am not a socialist. Papa and I agree to differ upon that as upon many other questions. Socialism, I think, tends to revolt and license."

I did not pursue the subject of Carrington's pointlessness nor proffer a plea for socialism. I was beginning to wince rather before Miss Jones's frankness.

On the following day she again came and stood before my picture.

"I posed for Mr. Watkins, R.A., last year," she said. "The picture was in the Academy. Did you see it? It was beautiful."

The mere name of Mr. Watkins ("R.A.") made every drop of ?sthetic blood in my body curdle. A conscienceless old prater of the soap and salve school, with not as much idea of drawing or value as a two-year Julianite.

"I don't quite remember," I said, rather faintly; "what was-the picture called?"

"'Faith Conquers Fear,'" said Miss Jones. "I posed as a Christian maiden, you know, tied to a stake in the Roman amphitheatre and waiting martyrdom. The maiden was in a white robe, her hair hanging over her shoulders (perhaps you would not recognize me in this costume), looking up, her hands crossed on her breast. Before her stood a jibing Roman. One could see it all; the contrast between the base product of a vicious civilization and the noble maiden. One could read it all in their faces; hers supreme aspiration, his brutal hatred. It was superb. It made one want to cry."

Miss Jones, while speaking, looked so exceedingly beautiful that I almost forgot my dismay at her atrocious taste; for Watkins's "Faith Conquers Fear" had been one of the jokes of the year-a lamentably crude, pretentious presentation of a theatrical subject reproduced extensively in ladies' papers and fatally popular.

At the same moment, and as I looked from Miss Jones's gravely enrapt expression to Manon's seductive graces, I experienced a sensation of extreme discomfort.

"I think a picture should have high and noble aims," Miss Jones pursued, seeing that I remained silent, and evidently considering the time come when duty required her to speak and to speak freely. "A picture should leave one better for having seen it."

I could not ignore the kind but firmly severe criticism implied; I could not but revolt from this Hebraistic onslaught.

"I don't admit a conscious moral aim in art," I said. "Art need only concern itself with being beautiful and interesting; the rest will follow. But a badly-painted picture certainly makes me feel wicked, and when I go to the National Gallery to have a look at the Velasquezes and Veroneses I feel the better for it."

"Velasquez?" Miss Jones repeated. "Ah, well, I prefer the old masters-I mean those who painted religious subjects as no one since has painted them. Why did not Velasquez, at least, as he could not rise to the ideal, paint beautiful people? I never have been able to care for mere ugliness, however cleverly copied."

I felt buffeted by her complacent crudity.

"Velasquez had no soul," she added.

"No soul! Why he paints life, character, soul, everything! Copied! What of his splendid decorativeness, his colour, his atmosphere?" My ejaculations left her calm unruffled.

"Ah, but all that doesn't make the world any better," she returned, really with an air of humouring a silly materialism; and as she went back to her pose she added, very kindly, for my face probably revealed my injured feelings:

"You see I have rather serious views of life."

"Miss Jones-really!" I laid down my palette. "I must beg of you to believe that I have, too-very serious."

Gently Miss Jones shook her head, looking, not at me, but down into the mirror. This effect of duty fulfilled, even in opposition, was most characteristic.

"I cannot believe it," she said, "else why, when you have facility, talent, and might employ them on a higher subject, do you paint a mere study of a vain young lady?"

This interpretation of Manon startled me, so lacking was it in comprehension.

"Manon Lescaut was more than a vain young lady, Miss Jones."

"Well," Miss Jones lifted her eyes for a moment to smile quietly, soothingly at me. "I am not imputing any wrong to Miss Manon Lescaut; I merely say that she is vain. A harmless vanity no doubt, but I have posed for other characters, you see!" Her smile was so charming in its very fatuity that the vision of her lovely face, vulgarized and unrecognizable in "Faith Conquers Fear," filled me with redoubled exasperation. Her misinterpretation of Manon stirred a certain deepening of that touch of discomfort-a sickly unpleasantness. I found myself flushing.

Miss Jones's white hand-the hand that held the mirror with such beauty in taper finger-tips and turn of wrist-fell to her side, and she fixed her eyes on me with quite a troubled look.

"I am afraid I have hurt your feelings," she said; "I am very sorry. I always speak my mind out; I never think that it may hurt. It is very dull in me."

At these words I felt that unpleasant stir spring suddenly to a guilty misery. I felt, somehow, that I was a shameful hypocrite, and Miss Jones a priggish but most charming and most injured angel.

"Miss Jones," I said, much confused, "sincerity cannot really hurt me, and I always respect it. I am sorry, very sorry, that you see no more in my picture. I care for your good opinion" (this was certainly, in a sense, a lie, and yet, for the moment, that guilty consciousness upon me, I believed it), "and I hope that though my picture has not gained it, I, personally, may never forfeit it."

Still looking at me gravely, Miss Jones said:

"I don't think you ever will. That is a very manly, a very noble way of looking at it."

But the thought of Manon Lescaut now tormented me. I had finished the head; my preoccupation could not harm that; but this lovely face looking into the mirror, with soulless, happy eyes, seemed to slide a smile at me, a smile of malicious comprehension, a smile of nous nous entendons, a smile that made a butt of Miss Jones's innocence and laughed with me at the joke.

I soon found myself rebelling against Manon's intrusion. I wished to assure her that we had nothing in common and that, in Miss Jones's innocence, I found no amusing element.

That evening Carrington came in. He wore a rather absorbed look, and only glanced at my picture. After absent replies to my desultory remarks, he suddenly said, from his chair:

"I walked home with Miss Jones this afternoon." Carrington, with his ultra-?sthetic sensibilities, must find Miss Jones even more jarring than I did, and his act implied a very kindly interest.

"That was nice of you," I observed, though at the mention of Miss Jones that piercing stab of shame again went through me, and my eyes unwillingly, guiltily sought the eyes of my smiling Manon.

"She was rather troubled about something she had said," Carrington pursued, ignoring my approbation, "about the picture. Of course she doesn't know anything about pictures."

"No," I murmured, "she doesn't."

"By Jove!" added Carrington, "that's the trouble. She doesn't understand anything!"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, I mean that she could never see certain things from our standpoint; she is as ignorant and as innocent as a baby. She's never read 'Manon Lescaut'-that came out en passant-and, by Jove, you know, it does seem a beastly shame! A girl like that! A snow-drop!"

Carrington cast a look of unmistakable resentment at my poor Manon.

"Well," I said, lamely-indeed I felt maimed-"how was I to know? And what am I to do?"

"Why, my dear fellow," and Carrington spoke with some fierceness, "you've nothing to do with it! I'm to blame! I told you about her. Said she had the type! Dull, blundering fool that I was not to have seen the shrieking incongruity! The rigidly upright soul of her! That girl couldn't tell a lie nor look one; and Manon!"

Carrington got up abruptly; evidently his disgust could not be borne in a quiescent attitude.

"You said at the first that her face was innocent," I suggested, in a feeble effort to mitigate this self-scorn; "we neither of us misjudged the girl for a moment, though we overlooked her ignorance."

"Yes, and her ignorance makes all the difference. Another girl-as good, to all intents and purposes-might know and not object; but this one! I really believe it would half kill her!"

Carrington gave another savage glance at my unlucky picture, and his gaze lingered on it as he added:

"If it's kept from her, all's well-as well as a lie can be."

And then, if only for a moment, the Greek gained its triumph over this startling exhibition of Hebraism.

"It is a masterpiece!" said Carrington, slowly, adding abruptly as he went, "Good-night!"

But my night was very bad. Whatever Miss Jones might say or think, I did take life seriously.

* * *