The Incomplete Amorist Part 29

Her easel was there, and her half-rubbed out drawing--No, that was not her drawing. It was a head, vaguely but very competently sketched, a likeness--no, a caricature--of Betty herself.

She looked round--one quick but quite sufficient look. The girl next her, and the one to that girl's right, were exchanging glances, and the exchange ceased just too late. Betty saw.

From then till the rest Betty did not look at the model. She looked, but furtively, at those two girls. When, at the rest-time, the model stretched and yawned and got off her throne and into a striped petticoat, most of the students took their "easy" on the stairs: among these the two.

Betty, who never lacked courage, took charcoal in hand and advanced quite boldly to the easel next to her own.

How she envied the quality of the drawing she saw there. But envy does not teach mercy. The little sketch that Betty left on the corner of the drawing was quite as faithful, and far more cruel, than the one on her own paper. Then she went on to the next easel. The few students who were chatting to the model looked curiously at her and giggled among themselves.

When the rest was over and the model had rea.s.sumed, quite easily and certainly, that pose of the uplifted arms which looked so difficult, the students trooped back and the two girls--Betty's enemies, as she bitterly felt--returned to their easels. They looked at their drawings, they looked at each other, and they looked at Betty. And when they looked at her they smiled.

"Well done!" the girl next her said softly. "For a tenderfoot you hit back fairly straight. I guess you'll do!"

"You're very kind," said Betty haughtily.

"Don't you get your quills up," said the girl. "I hit first, but you hit hardest. I don't know you,--but I want to."

She smiled so queer yet friendly a smile that Betty's haughtiness had to dissolve in an answering smile.

"My name's Betty Desmond," she said. "I wonder why you wanted to hit a man when he was down."

"My!" said the girl, "how was I to surmise about you being down? You looked dandy enough--fit to lick all creation."

"I've never been in a studio before," said Betty, fixing fresh paper.

"My!" said the girl again. "Turn the faucet off now. The model don't like us to whisper. Can't stand the draught."

So Betty was silent, working busily. But next day she was greeted with friendly nods and she had some one to speak to in the rest-intervals.

On the third day she was asked to a studio party by the girl who had fanned her on the stairs. "And bring your friend with you," she said.

But Betty's friend had a headache that day. Betty went alone and came home full of the party.

"She's got such a jolly studio," she said; "ever so high up,--and busts and casts and things. Everyone was so nice to me you can't think: it was just like what one hears of Girton Cocoa parties. We had tea--such weak tea, Paula, it could hardly crawl out of the teapot! We had it out of green basins. And the loveliest cakes! There were only two chairs, so some of us sat on the sommier and the rest on the floor."

"Were there any young men?" asked Paula.

"Two or three very, very young ones--they came late. But they might as well have been girls; there wasn't any flirting or nonsense of that sort, Paula. Don't you think _we_ might give a party--not now, but presently, when we know some more people? Do you think they'd like it?

Or would they think it a bore?"

"They'd love it, I should think." Paula looked round the room which already she loved. "And what did you all talk about?"

"Work," said Betty, "work and work and work and work and work: everyone talked about their work, and everyone else listened and watched for the chance to begin to talk about theirs. This is real life, my dear. I am so glad I'm beginning to know people. Miss Voscoe is very queer, but she's a dear. She's the one who caricatured me the first day. Oh, we shall do now, shan't we?"

"Yes," said the other, "you'll do now."

"I said 'we,'" Betty corrected softly.

"I meant we, of course," said Miss Conway.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONTRASTS.

Vernon's idea of a studio was a place to work in, a place where there should be room for all the tools of one's trade, and besides, a great s.p.a.ce to walk up and down in those moods that seize on all artists when their work will not come as they want it.

But when he gave tea-parties he had store of draperies to pull out from his carved cupboard, deeply coloured things embroidered in rich silk and heavy gold--Chinese, Burmese, j.a.panese, Russian.

He came in to-day with an armful of fair chrysanthemums, deftly set them in tall brazen jars, pulled out his draperies and arranged them swiftly. There was a screen to be hung with a Chinese mandarin's dress, where, on black, gold dragons writhed squarely among blue roses; the couch was covered by a red burnous with a gold border.

There were Persian praying mats to lay on the bare floor, kakemonos to be fastened with drawing pins on the bare walls. A tea cloth worked by Russian peasants lay under the tea-cups--two only--of yellow Chinese egg-sh.e.l.l ware. His tea-pot and cream-jug were Queen Anne silver, heirlooms at which he mocked. But he saw to it that they were kept bright.

He lighted the spirit-lamp.

"She was always confoundedly punctual," he said.

But to-day Lady St. Craye was not punctual. She arrived half an hour late, and the delay had given her host time to think about her.

He heard her voice in the courtyard at last--but the only window that looked that way was set high in the wall of the little corridor, and he could not see who it was to whom she was talking. And he wondered, because the inflection of her voice was English--not the exquisite imitation of the French inflexion which he had so often admired in her.

He opened the door and went to the stair head. The voices were coming up the steps.

"A caller," said Vernon, and added a word or two. However little you may be in love with a woman, two is better company than three.

The voices came up. He saw the golden brown s.h.i.+mmer of Lady St.

Craye's hat, and knew that it matched her hair and that there would be violets somewhere under the brim of it--violets that would make her eyes look violet too. She was coming up--a man just behind her. She came round the last turn, and the man was Temple.

"What an Alpine ascent!" she exclaimed, reaching up her hand so that Vernon drew her up the last three steps. "We have been hunting you together, on both the other staircases. Now that the chase is ended, won't you present your friend? And I'll bow to him as soon as I'm on firm ground!"

Vernon made the presentation and held the door open for Lady St. Craye to pa.s.s. As she did so Temple behind her raised eyebrows which said:

"Am I inconvenient? Shall I borrow a book or something and go?"

Vernon shook his head. It was annoying, but inevitable. He could only hope that Lady St. Craye also was disappointed.

"How punctual you are," he said. "Sit here, won't you?--I hadn't finished laying the table." He deliberately brought out four more cups. "What unnatural penetration you have, Temple! How did you find out that this is the day when I sit 'at home' and wait for people to come and buy my pictures?"

"And no one's come?" Lady St. Craye had sunk into the chair and was pulling off her gloves. "That's very disappointing. I thought I should meet dozens of clever and interesting people, and I only meet two."

Her brilliant smile made the words seem neither ba.n.a.l nor impertinent.

Vernon was pleased to note that he was not the only one who was disappointed.

"You are too kind," he said gravely.