Part 24 (1/2)
Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it subtly right. You were flattered.
When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her lap,--but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars in her hair, a cl.u.s.ter of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair.
Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald's face, she had a return of suspicion.
”See here,” she said, observing him narrowly, ”there's no trick about this, is there?”
”Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a portrait entirely satisfactory as well as entirely resembling. It is like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see.”
It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope.
One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings because the light through its windows was the least variable. The necessary artist's baggage was brought over from Gerald's, and the work began.
Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily through half-closed eyes.
”You have not one good feature,” he said, as if thinking aloud.
”Oh!”--she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting decided upon--”oh! is that the way you're going to pay me for keeping still on a chair by the hour?”
”You have no eyebrows to speak of.”
”What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only they don't show up. They're fair, to match my hair.”
”You are undershot.”
”What's that?”
”Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper.”
”Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too perfect beauty.”
As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly s.h.i.+fted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. As she had p.r.o.nounced the word perfect ”_parfect_,” he presumed that she was making herself look, for the remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses wounded him.
”Faultless features,” he went on after a time, in commentary on his earlier remark, ”do not by any means always make a beautiful face,”
politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no great misfortune.
Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him.
She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend.
She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and ideas.
He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, without trace of envy, were 'way above her head.
Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old World. She was ”reading up” on these things. She was also ”working at”
her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one time, she had given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in Europe.
Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup.
She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, explaining:
”I am trying to 'redooce.' This is good for what ails me, they say. But I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me, and she's that punctual! Clotilde, you're too punctual with this stuff.