The Pioneer Women Trilogy: The Coast of Bohemia, Dr. Breen's Practice & Annie Kilburn. William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
no," said Cornelia. She wondered what Charmian would say if she knew this; she wondered what the Synthesis would say; the Synthesis held Mr. Ludlow in only less honor than the regular Synthesis instructors, and Mr. Ludlow had asked her to come and paint with him! She took shelter in the belief that Mrs. Burton must have put him up to it, somehow, but she ought to say something grateful, or at least something. She found herself stupidly and aimlessly asking, "Is it Mrs. Westley?" as if that had anything to do with the matter.
"No; I don't see why I didn't tell you at once," said Ludlow. "It's your friend, Miss Maybough."
Cornelia relieved her nerves with a laugh. "I wonder how she ever kept from telling it."
"Perhaps she didn't know. I've only just got a letter from her mother, asking me to paint her, and I haven't decided yet that I shall do it."
She thought that he wanted her to ask him why, and she asked, "What are you waiting for?"
"For two reasons. Do you want the real reason first?" he asked, smiling at her.
She laughed. "No, the unreal one!"
"Well, I doubt whether Mrs. Maybough wrote to me of her own inspiration, entirely. I suspect that Wetmore and Plaisdell have been working the affair, and I don't like that."
"Well?"
"And I'm waiting for you to say whether I could do it. That's the real reason."
"How should I know?"
"I could make a picture of her," he said, "but could I make a portrait? There is something in every one which holds the true likeness; if you don't get at that, you don't make a portrait, and you don't give people their money's worth. They haven't proposed to buy merely a picture of you; they've proposed to buy a picture of a certain person; you may give them more, but you can't honestly give them less; and if you don't think you can give them that, then you had better not try. I should like to try for Miss Maybough's likeness, and I'll do that, at least, if you'll try with me. The question is whether you would like to."
"Like to? It's the greatest opportunity! Why, I hope I know what a chance it is, and I don't know why you ask me to."
"I want to learn of you."
"If you talk that way I shall know you are making fun of me."
"Then I will talk some other way. I mean what I say. I want you to show me how to look at Miss Maybough. It sounds fantastic——"
"It sounds ridiculous. I shall not do anything of the kind."
"Very well, then, I shall not paint her."
"You don't expect me to believe that," said Cornelia, but she did believe it a little, and she was daunted. She said, "Charmian would hate it."
"I don't believe she would," said Ludlow. "I don't think she would mind being painted by half-a-dozen people at once. The more the better."
"That shows you don't understand her," Cornelia began.
"Didn't I tell you I didn't understand her? Now, you see, you must. I should have overdone that trait in her. Of course there is something better than that."
"I don't see how you could propose my painting her, too," Cornelia relented, provisionally.
Ludlow was daunted in his turn; he had not thought of that. It would be a little embarrassing, certainly, but he could not quite own this. He laughed and said, "I have a notion she will propose it herself, if you give her a chance."
"Oh," said Cornelia, "if she does that, all well and good."
"Then I may say to her mother that I will make a try at the portrait?"
"What have I to do with it?" Cornelia demanded, liking and not liking to have the decision seem left to her. "I shall have nothing to do with it if she doesn't do it of her own accord."
"You may be sure that she shall not have even a suggestion of any kind," said Ludlow, solemnly.
"I shall know it if she does," Cornelia retorted, not so solemnly, and they both laughed.
While he stayed and talked with her the affair had its reason and justification; it seemed very simple and natural; but when he went away it began to look difficult and absurd. It was something else she would have to keep secret, like that folly of the past; it cast a malign light upon Ludlow, and showed him less wise and less true than she had thought him. She must take back her consent; she must send for him, write to him, and do it; but she did not know how without seeming to blame him, and she wished to blame only herself. She let the evening go by, and she stood before the glass, putting up her hand to her back hair to extract the first dismantling hairpin, for a sleepless night, when a knock at her door was followed by the words, "He's waitun' in the parlor." The door was opened and the Irish girl put a card in her hand.
XXIV
The card was Ludlow's, and the words, "Do see me, if you can, for a moment," were scribbled on it.
Cornelia ran down stairs. He was standing, hat in hand, under the leafy gas chandelier in the parlor, and he said at once, "I've come back to say it won't do. You can't come to paint Miss Maybough with me. It would be a trick. I wonder I ever thought of such a thing."
She broke out in a joyful laugh. "I knew you came for that."
He continued to accuse himself, to explain himself. He ended, "You must have been despising me!"
"I despised myself. But I had made up my mind to tell Charmian all about it. There's no need to do that, now it's all over."
"But it isn't all over for me," said Ludlow gloomily. "I went straight home from here, and wrote to Mrs. Maybough that I would paint her daughter, and now I'm in for it."
He looked so acutely miserable that Cornelia gave way to a laugh, which had the effect of raising his fallen spirits, and making him laugh, too. They sat down together and began to talk the affair all over again.
Some of the boarders who were at the theatre came in before he rose to go.
Cornelia followed him out into the hall. "Then there is nothing for me to do about it?"
"No, nothing," he said, "unless you want to take the commission off my hands, and paint the picture alone." He tried to look gloomy again, but he smiled.
Every one slept late at Mrs. Montgomery's on Sunday morning; all sects united in this observance of the day; in fact you could not get breakfast till nine. Cornelia opened her door somewhat later even than this, and started at the sight of Charmian Maybough standing there, with her hand raised in act to knock. They exchanged little shrieks of alarm.
"Did I scare you? Well, it's worth it, and you'll say so when you know what's happened. Go right back in!" Charmian pushed Cornelia back and shut the door. "You needn't try to guess, and I won't ask you to. But it's simply this: Mr. Ludlow is going to paint me. What do you think of that? Though I sha'n't expect you to say at once. But it's so. Mamma wrote to him several days ago, but she kept the whole affair from me till she knew he would do it, and he only sent his answer last night after dinner." Charmian sat down on the side of the bed with the effect of intending to take all the time that was needed for the full sensation. "And now, while you're absorbing the great central fact, I will ask if you have any idea why I have rushed down here this morning before you were up, or mamma either, to interview you?"
"No, I haven't," said Cornelia.
"You don't happen to have an olive or a cracker any where about? I don't need them for illustration, but I haven't had any breakfast, yet."
"There are some ginger-snaps in the bureau box right before you," said Cornelia from the window-sill.
"Ginger-snaps will do, in an extreme case like this," said Charmian, and she left her place long enough to search