The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 37

"Who got it?"

"The Honorable Parker Ridgway, R.A., P.Q., and I don't know but X.Y.Z.," roared Waller.

"I'd like to know how?" asked Watson, reaching over Fred's arm for the bottle of turpentine.

"That's what he did," snapped out Waller.

"Did what?"

"Knew how."

"But he doesn't know how," cried Munson from across the table. "I sat alongside of that fellow at the Ecole for two years. He can't draw, and never could. His flesh was beastly, his modelling worse, and his technique--a botch. You can see what color he uses," and he pointed to the palette Jack was trying to clean.

"Granted, my boy," said Waller. "I didn't say he could PAINT; I said he knew how to earn $4,000 in three months painting portraits."

"He never painted a portrait worth four cents. Why, I knew--"

"Dry up, Munson!" interrupted Jack. "Go on, Waller, tell us how he did it."

"By using some horse-sense and a little tact; getting in with the procession and bolding his cud up," retorted Waller, in a solemn tone.

"Give him room! Give him room!" cried Oliver, with a laugh, pouring a little dryer into his oil-cup. He loved to hear Waller talk. "He flings his words about as if they were chunks of coal," he would always say.

The great man wheeled his chair around and faced the room. Oliver's words had sounded like a challenge.

"Keep it up!--pound away," he cried, his face reddening. "I've watched Ridgway ever since he arrived here last spring, and I will give you his recipe for success. He didn't fall overboard into a second-rate club as soon as he got here and rub his brushes on his coat-sleeve to look artistic. Not much! He had his name put up at the Union; got Croney to cut his clothes, and Leary to make his hats, played croquet with the girls he knew, drove tandem--his brother-in-law's--and dined out every night in the week. Every day or two he would haul out one of his six-foot canvases, and give it a coat of bitumen. Always did this when some club swell was around who would tell about it."

"Did it with a sponge," muttered Munson. "Old trick of his!"

"Next thing he did," continued Waller, ignoring Munson's aside, "was to refuse a thousand-dollar commission offered by a vulgar real-estate man to paint a two-hundred-pound pink-silk sofa-cus.h.i.+on of a wife in a tight-fitting waist. This spread like the measles. It was the talk of the club, of dinner-tables and piazzas, and before sundown Ridgway's exclusiveness in taste and artistic instincts were established. Then he hunted up a pretty young married woman occupying the dead-centre of the sanctified social circle, went into spasms over her beauty--so cla.s.sic, such an exquisite outline; grew confidential with the husband at the club, and begged permission to make just a sketch only the size of his hand--wanted it for his head of Sappho, Berlin Exhibition. Next he rented a suite of rooms, crowded in a lot of borrowed tapestries, bra.s.s, Venetian chests, lamps and hangings; gave a tea--servants this time in livery--exhibited his Sappho; refused a big price for it from the husband; got orders instead for two half-lengths, $1,500 each, finished them in two weeks, declined more commissions on account of extreme fatigue; disappeared with the first frost and the best cottage people; booked three more full-lengths in New York--two to be painted in Paris and the other on his return in the spring; was followed to the steamer by a bevy of beauties, half-smothered in flowers, and disappeared in a halo of artistic glory just $4,000 in."

Fred broke out into a roar, in which the whole room joined.

"And you call that art, do you?" cried Munson, laying down his palette.

His face was flushed, his eyes snapping with indignation.

"I do, my babbling infant," retorted Waller. "I call it the art of making the most of your opportunities and putting your best foot foremost. That's a thing you fellows never seem to understand. You want to shuffle around in carpet-slippers, live in a garret, and wait until some money-bags climbs up your crazy staircases to discover you.

Ridgway puts his foot in a patent-leather pump and silk stocking, and never steps on a carpet that isn't two inches thick. Merchants, engineers, manufacturers, and even scientists, when they have anything to sell, go where there is somebody to buy; why shouldn't an artist?"

"Just like a fakir peddling cheap jewelry," said Stedman, in a low voice, sending a cloud of smoke to the ceiling.

"Or a bunco-man trading watches with a farmer," remarked Jack Bedford.

"What do you say, My Lord Tom-Noddy"--and he slapped Oliver on the back. The sobriquet was one of Jack's pet names for Oliver--all the Kennedy Square people were more or less aristocrats to Jack Bedford, the sign-painter--all except Oliver.

"I think Waller's about half-right, Jack. As far as Ridgway's work goes, you know and I know that there isn't one man or woman out of a hundred among his brother-in-law's friends who knows whether it's good or bad--that's the pity of it. If it's bad and they buy it, that's their fault for not knowing any better, not Ridgway's fault for doing the best he knows how. By silk stockings and pumps I suppose Waller means that Ridgway dressed himself like a gentleman, had his hair cut, and paid some attention to his finger-nails. That's why they were glad to see him. The day has gone by when a painter must affect a bob-tailed velveteen jacket, long hair, and a slouch hat to help him paint, just as the day has gone by when an artist is not an honored guest in any gentleman's house in town."

"Bravo, Tom-Noddy!" shouted Jack and Fred in a breath. "Drink, you dear old pressed brick. Put your nose into this!" and Fred held a mug of beer to Oliver's lips.

Oliver laid down his sheaf of brushes--buried his nose in the cool rim of the stone mug, the only beverage the club permitted, and was about to continue his talk, when his eye rested on Bianchi, who was standing in the open door, his hand upraised so as to bespeak silence.

"Here--you beautiful, bald-headed old burgomaster!" shouted Oliver.

"Get into your ruff right away. Been waiting half an hour for you and--"

Bianchi put his fingers to his lips with a whispered hush, knit his brow, and pointed significantly behind him. Every eye turned, and a breathless silence fell upon the group, followed by a sc.r.a.ping of chairs on the floor as each man sprang to his feet.

Bianchi's surprise had arrived!

CHAPTER XXI

"THE WOMAN IN BLACK"

In the doorway, immediately behind Bianchi and looking over the little man's head, stood a woman of perhaps forty years of age in full evening toilet. About her head was wound a black lace scarf, and hanging from her beautiful shoulders, half-concealing a figure of marvellous symmetry, was a long black cloak, open at the throat, trimmed with fur, and lined with watermelon pink silk. Tucked in her hair was a red j.a.ponica. She was courtesying to the room with all the poise and graciousness of a prima donna saluting an audience.

Oliver sprang for his coat and was about to cram his arms into the sleeves, when she cried:

"Oh, please don't! I wish I could wear a coat myself, so that I could take it off and paint. Oh! the smell of the lovely pipes! It's heavenly, and it's so like home. Really," and she looked about her, "this is the only place I have seen in America that I can breathe in.

I've heard of you all winter and I so wanted to come. I would not give dear Bianchi any rest till he brought me. Oh! I'm so glad to be here."

Oliver and the others were still standing, looking in amazement at the new-corner. One of the unwritten laws of the club was that no woman should ever enter its doors, a law that until this moment had never been broken.

While she was speaking Bianchi stepped back, and took the tips of the woman's fingers within his own. When she had finished he thrust out one foot and, with the bow of an impresario introducing a new songstress, said:

"Gentlemen of the Stone Mugs, I have the honor of presenting you to the Countess Kovalski."

Again the woman courtesied, sweeping the floor with her black velvet skirt, broke out into a laugh, handed her cloak and scarf to Bianchi, who threw them over the shoulders of the lay figure, and moved toward the table, Fred, as host, drawing out a chair for her.

"Oh!--what lovely beginnings--" she continued, examining the sketches with her lorgnette, after the members had made their salutations, "Let me make one. I studied two years with Achenbach. You did not know that Bianchi, did you? There are so many things you do not know, you lovely man." She was as much at home as if she had been there every evening of her life.

Still, with the same joyous self-contained air she settled herself in Fred's proffered chair, picked up one of Jack's brushes, reached over his shoulder, and with a "please-hold-still, thank you," scooped up a little yellow ochre from his palette, and unloaded it on a corner of a tile. Then, stripping off her bracelets, she piled them in a heap before her, selected a Greek coin dangling from the end of one of them, propped it up on the table and began to paint; the men, all of whom were too astonished to resume their work, crowding about her, watching the play of her brush; a brush so masterful in its technique that before the picture was finished the room broke out in unrestrained applause.

During all this time she was talking in German to Crug, or in French to Waller, only stopping to light a fresh cigarette which she took from a jewelled case and laid beside her. She could, no doubt, have as easily lapsed into Russian, Choctaw, or Chinese had there been any such strange people about.

When the men had resumed their customary seats and the room had once more settled to work--it had only been a question of s.e.x that had destroyed the equilibrium, a question no longer of value now that the fair intruder could really PAINT--Oliver bent over her and said in his most gallant manner:

"If the Countess Kovalski will be gracious enough to excuse Bianchi (he had never left her elbow) I will try and make a burgomaster of him.

Perhaps you will help me tie this around his neck," and he held out the white ruff. He had put on his coat despite her protest.

"What, dear Bianchi in a ruff! Oh! how perfectly charming! That's really just what he looks like. I've always told him that Rembrandt ought to have seen him. Come, you sweet man, hold up your beautiful Dutch face."

As she spoke she caught the ruff from Oliver's hand and stretched out her bare arms toward Blanch.

"No, I'm not going to pose now," protested the Pole, pus.h.i.+ng back her hands. "You can get me any time. Take the Countess, Horn. She'd make a stunner."

"Yes! Yes! Please do," she laughed, springing from her seat and clapping her hands with all the gayety and joyousness of a child over some expected pleasure.