The Master-Christian Part 52

She had lifted a cl.u.s.ter of lilies from a vase to regroup them, and as her thoughts turned in this direction she bent her eyes upon their large white blooms meditatively, and a faint rose flush warmed her cheeks.

"Ce sont des fleurs etranges, Et traitresses, avec leurs airs de sceptres d'anges, De thyrses lumineux pour doigts de seraphins, Leurs parfums sont trop forts, tout ensemble, et trop fins."

"It is strange," she thought, "that I should have corresponded so many months with 'Gys Grandit' through my admiration for his books--and that he should turn out to be the son of poor Abbe Vergniaud! Cyrillon! It is a pretty name! And since we met--since that terrible scene in the church in Paris,--since he knew who I was, he has not written. And, and for his poor father's death . . . I suppose he thought it was sufficient to telegraph the news of the death to my uncle. But I am sorry he does not write to me any more!--I valued his letters--they were such brilliant essays on all the movements and politics of the time. It was just a little secret of mine;--it was pleasant to think I was in correspondence with such a genius. However, he has had so much to think of since then . . ." She set the lilies in their vase again, inhaling their delicious odour as she did so.

"The flowers of the saints and martyrs!" she said, "I do not wonder that the artists chose them for that purpose; they are so white-and pure-and pa.s.sionless . . ."

A slight crash disturbed her self-communion, and she hastened to see what had fallen. It was a small clay figure of "Eros",--a copy of a statuette found in the ruins of Pompeii. The nail supporting its bracket had given way. Angela had been rather fond of this little work of art, and as she knelt to pick up the fragments she was more vexed at the accident than she cared to own. She looked wistfully at the pretty moulded broken limbs of the little G.o.d as she put them all in a heap together.

"What a pity!" she murmured, "I am not at all superst.i.tious, yet I wish anything in the room had come to grief rather than this! It is not a good omen!"

She moved across the floor again and stood for a moment inert, one hand resting lightly on the amber silk draperies which veiled her picture.

"There was no truth at all in that rumour about Florian's 'Phillida';--'Pon-Pon,' as they call her," she thought, "She serves as a model to half the artists in Rome. Unfortunate creature. She is one of the most depraved and reckless of her cla.s.s, so I hear--and Florian is far too refined and fastidious to even recognise such a woman, outside his studio. The Marquis Fontenelle only wished to defend himself by trying to include another man in the charge of libertinage, when he himself was meditating the most perfidious designs on Sylvie.

Poor Fontenelle! One must try and think as kindly as possible of him now--he is dead. But I cannot think it was right of him to accuse my Florian!"

Just then she heard a soft knocking. It came from the door at the furthest end of the studio, one which communicated with a small stone courtyard, which in its turn opened out to a narrow street leading down to the Tiber. It was the entrance at which models presented themselves whenever Angela needed them.

"Angela!" called a melodious voice, which she recognised at once as the dearest to her in the world. "Angela!"

She hurried to the door but did not open it.

"Florian!" she said softly, putting her lips close to the panel, "Florian, caro mio! Why are you here?"

"I want to come in," said Florian, "I have news, Angela! I must see you!"

She hesitated a moment longer, and then she undid the bolt, and admitted him. He entered with a smiling and victorious air.

"I am all alone here," she said at once, before he could speak, "Father is at Frascati on some business--and my uncle the Cardinal is at the Vatican. Will you not come back later?"

For all answer, Florian took her in his arms with quite a reverent tenderness, and kissed her softly on brow and lips.

"No, I will stay!" he said, "I want to have you all to myself for a few minutes. I came to tell you, sweetest, that if I am to be the first to see your picture and pa.s.s judgment on it, I had better see it now, for I am going away to-morrow!"

"Going away!" echoed Angela, "Where?"

"To Naples," he answered, "Only for a little while. They have purchased my picture 'Phillida et les Roses' for one of the museums there, and they want me to see if I approve of the position in which it is to be placed. They also wish to honour me by a banquet or something of the kind--an absurdly unnecessary affair, but still I think it is perhaps advisable that I should go."

He spoke with an affectation of indifference, but any observer of him whose eyes were not blinded by affection, could have seen that he exhaled from himself an atmosphere of self-congratulation at the banquet proposition. Little honours impress little minds;--and a faint thrill of pain moved Angela as she saw him thus delighted with so poor and ordinary a compliment. In any other man it would have moved her to contempt, but in Florian--well!--she was only just a little sorry.

"Yes, perhaps it might look churlish of you not to accept," she said, putting away from her the insidious suggestion that perhaps if Florian loved her as much as he professed, an invitation to a banquet at Naples would have had no attraction for him as compared with being present at the first view of her picture on the morning she had herself appointed--"I think under the circ.u.mstances you had better not see the picture till you come back!"

"Now, Angela!" he exclaimed vexedly, "You know I will not consent to that! You have promised me that I shall be the first to see it--and here I am!"

"It should be seen by the morning light," said Angela, a touch of nervousness beginning to affect her equanimity,--"This light is pale and waning, though the afternoon is so clear. You cannot see the coloring to the best advantage!"

"Am I not a painter also?" asked Varillo playfully, putting his arm round her waist,--"And can I not guess the effect in the morning light as well as if I saw it? Come, Angela mia! Unveil the great prodigy!"

and he laughed,--"You began it before we were affianced;--think what patience I have had for nearly two years!"

Angela did not reply at once. Somehow, his light laugh jarred upon her.

"Florian," she said at last, raising her truthful, beautiful eyes fully to his, "I do not think you quite understand! This picture has absorbed a great deal of my heart and soul--I have as it were, painted my own life blood into it--for I mean it to declare a truth and convey a lesson. It will either cover me with obloquy, or crown me with lasting fame. You speak jestingly, as if it were some toy with which I had amused myself these three years. Do you not believe that a woman's work may be as serious, as earnest, and strongly purposeful as a man's?"

Still clasping her round the waist, Florian drew her closer, and pressing her head against his breast, he looked down on her smiling.

"What sweet eyes you have!" he said, "The sweetest, the most trusting, the most childlike eyes I have ever seen! It would be impossible to paint such eyes, unless one's brushes were Raffaelle's, dipped in holy water. Not that I believe very much in holy water as a painter's medium! "He laughed,--he had a well-shaped mouth and was fond of smiling, in order that he might show his even pearly teeth, which contrasted becomingly with his dark moustache. "Yes, my Angela has beautiful eyes,--and such soft, pretty hair!" and he caressed it gently, "like little golden tendrils with a beam of the sunlight caught in it! Is not that a pretty compliment? I think I ought to have been a poet instead of a painter!"

"You are both," said Angela fondly, with a little sigh of rest and pleasure as she nestled in his arms--"You will be the greatest artist of your time when you paint large subjects instead of small ones."

His tender hold of her relaxed a little.

"You think 'Phillida et les Roses' a small subject?" he asked, with a touch of petulance in his tone, "Surely if a small study is perfect, it is better than a large one which is imperfect?"

"Of course it is!" replied the girl quickly--"By smallness I did not mean the size of the canvas,--I meant the character of the subject."

"There is nothing small in the beauty of woman!" declared Varillo, with an enthusiastic air--"Her form is divine! Her delicious flesh tints--her delicate curves--her amorous dimples--her exquisite seductiveness--combined with her touching weakness--these qualities make of woman the one,--the only subject for a painter's brush, when the painter is a man!"

Involuntarily Angela thought of "Pon-Pon," who had posed for the "Phillida," and a little s.h.i.+ver ran over her nerves like a sudden wind playing on the chords of an AEolian harp. Gently she withdrew herself from her lover's embrace.

"And when the painter is a woman, should the only subject for her brush be the physical beauty of man?" she asked.

Varillo gave an airy gesture of remonstrance.

"Carissima mia! You shock me! How can you suggest such a thing! The two s.e.xes differ in tastes and aspirations as absolutely as in form. Man is an unfettered creature,--he must have his liberty, even if it reaches license; woman is his dependent. That is Nature's law. Man is the conqueror--woman is his conquest! We cannot alter these things. That is one reason for the prejudice existing against woman's work--if it excels that of man, we consider it a kind of morbid growth--an unnatural protuberance on the face of the universe. In fact, it is a wrong balance of the intellectual forces, which in their action, should always remain on the side of man."

"But if man abuses his power, may it not be taken from him altogether?"

suggested Angela tranquilly, "If man, knowing that a life of self-indulgence destroys his intellectual capacity, still persists in that career, and woman, studying patiently to perfect herself, refuses to follow his example of vice, may it not happen that the intellectual forces may range themselves on the side of right rather than wrong, and invest woman with a certain supremacy in the end? It is a problem worth thinking of!"

Varillo looked sharply at her. Had she heard anything of his private life in Rome?--a life he kept carefully concealed from everyone who might be likely to report his little amus.e.m.e.nts at the Palazzo Sovrani?

A slight, very slight touch of shame p.r.i.c.ked him, as he noted the grace of her figure, the dainty poise of her head on her slim white throat--the almost royal air of dignity and sweetness which seemed to surround her,--there was no doubt whatever of her superiority to the women he generally consorted with, and for a moment he felt remorseful,--but he soon dismissed his brief compunction with a laugh.

"No, sweet Angela," he said gaily, "it is not worth thinking of!

Believe me! I will not enter into any such profound discussions with you. My present time is too short, and your attractions too many! Why did you slip out of my arms so unkindly just now? Surely you were not offended? Comeback! Come, and we will go up to the great picture as lovers should, together--entwined in each other's arms!--and you shall then draw the mysterious curtain,--or shall I?"

She still hesitated. Then after a pause, she came towards him once more, the soft colour alternately flus.h.i.+ng and paling her cheeks, as she laid her hand on his arm.

"You did not answer me," she said, "when I asked you just now if you believed that a woman's work could be as purposeful as a man's--sometimes indeed more so. You evaded the question. Why?"

"Did I evade it?" and Varillo took her hand in his own and kissed it,--"Dolcesza mia, I would not pain you for the world!"

A slight shadow clouded her face.

"You will not pain me," she answered, "except by not being true to yourself and to me. You know how I have worked,--you know how high I have set my ambition for your sake--to make myself more worthy of you; but if you do honestly think that a woman's work in art must always be inferior to a man's, no matter how ardently she studies--no matter even if she has so perfected herself in drawing, anatomy, and colouring as to be admitted the equal of men in these studies--if the result must, in your mind, be nevertheless beneath that of the masculine attainment, why say so,--because then--then--"

"Then what, my sweet philosopher?" asked Florian lightly, again kissing the hand he held.

She fixed her eyes fully on him. "Then," she replied slowly, "I should know you better--I should understand you more!"