“Yes, I see,” said Katharine, who was interested in what he said, and had momentarily forgotten his personality.
“That shows how awfully clever you are,” he answered with a silvery little laugh. “I know it’s far from clear. There’s a passage somewhere in one of Tolstoi’s novels— ‘Peace and War,’ I think it is — about the impossibility of expressing all one thinks. It ought to follow that the more means of expression a man has, the nearer he should get to expressing everything in him. But it doesn’t. There’s a fallacy somewhere in the idea. Most things — ideas, anything you choose to call them — are naturally expressible in a certain material — paint, wood, fiddle-strings, bronze and all that. Come and look at yourself now. You see I’ve restrained my mania for oils a few minutes. I’m trying to be conscientious.”
“I wish you would go on talking about expression,” said Katharine, rising and coming up to the easel. “It seems very much improved,” she added as she saw the drawing. “How fast you work!”
“There’s no such thing as time when things go right,” replied Crowdie. “Excuse me a moment. I’ll get something to paint with.”
He disappeared behind the curtain in the corner, to the out-built closet in which he kept his colours and brushes, and Katharine was left alone. She stood still for a few moments contemplating the growing likeness of herself. There was as yet hardly any colour in the sketch, no more, in fact, than he had rubbed on while she had watched him do it, when she had rested the first time. It was not easy to see what he had done since, and yet the whole effect was vastly improved. As she looked, the work itself, the fine pencil-line, the smudges of brown and the suggestions of colouring seemed all so slight as to be almost nothing — and yet she felt that her expression was there. She thought of her mother’s laborious and minutely accurate drawing, which never reached any such effect as this, and she realized the almost impossible gulf which lies between the artist and the amateur who has tried too late to become one — in whom the evidence of talent is made unrecognizable by an excess of conscientious but wholly misapplied labour. The amateur who has never studied at all may sometimes dash off a head with a few lines, which would be taken for the careless scrawling of a clever professional. But the amateur who, too late, attempts to perfect himself by sheer study and industry is almost certainly lost as an artist — a fact which is commonly interpreted to mean that art itself comes by inspiration, and that so-called genius needs no school; whereas it only means that if we go to school at all we must go at the scholar’s age and get the tools of expression, and learn to handle them, before we have anything especial to express.
“Still looking at it?” asked Crowdie, coming out of his sanctum with a large palette in his left hand, and a couple of brushes in his right. “Now I’m going to begin by spoiling it all.”
There were four or five big, butter-like squeezings of different colours on the smooth surface of the board. Crowdie stuck one of his brushes through the thumb-hole of the palette, and with the other mixed what he wanted, dabbing it into the paints and then daubing them all together. Katharine sat down once more.
“I thought painters always used palette-knives,” she said, watching him.
“Oh — anything answers the purpose. I sometimes paint with my fingers — but it’s awfully messy.”
“I should think so,” she laughed, taking her position again as he looked at her.
“Yes — thank you,” he said. “If you won’t mind looking at me for a minute or two, just at first. I want your eyes, please. After that you can look anywhere you like.”
“Do you always paint the eyes first?” asked Katharine, idly, for the sake of not relapsing into silence.
“Generally — especially if they’re looking straight out of the picture. Then they’re the principal thing, you know. They are like little holes — if you look steadily at them you can see the real person inside. That’s the reason why a portrait that looks at you, if it’s like at all, is so much more like than one that looks away.”
“How naturally you explain things!” exclaimed the young girl, becoming interested at once.
“Things are so natural,” answered the painter. “Everything is natural. That’s one of my brother-in-law’s maxims.”
“It sounds like a truism.”
“Everything that is true sounds like a truism — and is one. We know everything that’s true, and it all sounds old because we do know it all.”
“What an extraordinary way of putting it — to say that we know everything! But we don’t, you know!”
“Oh, yes, we do — as far as we ever can know at all. I don’t mean little peddling properties of petroleum and tricks with telephones — what they call science, you know. I mean about big things that don’t change — ideas.”
“Oh — about ideas. You mean right and wrong, and the future life and the soul, I suppose.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. In a hundred thousand ages we shall never get one inch further than we are now. A little bit more to the right, please — but go on looking at me a moment longer, if you’re not tired.”
“I’ve only just sat down again. But what you were saying — you meant to add that we know nothing, and that it’s all a perfectly boundless uncertainty.”
“Not at all. I think we know some things and shan’t lose them, and we don’t know some others and never shall.”
“What kind of things, for instance?” asked Katharine. “In the first place, there is a soul, and it is immortal.”
“Lucretius says that there is a soul, but that it isn’t immortal. There’s something, anyhow — something I can’t paint. People who deny the existence of the soul never tried to paint portraits, I believe.”
“You certainly have most original ideas.”
“Have I? But isn’t that true? I know it is. There’s something in every face that I can’t paint — that the greatest painter that ever lived can’t paint. And it’s not on account of the material, either. One can get just as near to it in black and white as in colours, — just near enough to suggest it, — and yet one can see it. I call it the ghost. I don’t know whether there are ghosts or not, but people say they’ve seen them. They are generally colourless, apparently, and don’t stay long. But did you ever notice, in all those stories, that people always recognize the ghost instantly if it’s that of a person they’ve known?”
“Yes. Now I think of it, that’s true,” said Katharine.
“Well, that’s why I call the recognizable something about the living person his ghost. It’s what we can’t get. Now, another thing. If one is told that the best portrait of some one whom one knows is a portrait of some one else instead, one isn’t much surprised. No, really — I’ve tried it, just to test the likeness. Most people say they are surprised, but they’re not. They fall into the trap in a moment, and tell you that they see that they were mistaken, but that it’s a strong resemblance. That couldn’t happen with a real person. It happens easily with a photograph — much more easily than with a picture. But with a real person it’s quite different, even though he may have changed immensely since you saw him — far beyond the difference between a good portrait and the sitter, so far as details are concerned. But the person — you recognize him at once. By what? By that something which we can’t catch in a picture. I call it the ghost — it’s a mere fancy, because people used to believe that a ghost was a visible soul.”
“How interesting!” exclaimed Katharine. “And it sounds true.”
“A thing must sound true to be interesting,” said Crowdie. “Excuse me a moment. I want another colour.”
He dived into the curtained recess, and Katharine watched the disagreeable undulation of his movements as he walked. She wondered why she was interested as soon as he talked, and repelled as soon as he was silent. Much of what he said was more or less paradoxical, she thought, and not altogether unlike the stuff talked by cynical young men who pick up startling phrases out of books, and change the subject when they
are asked to explain what they mean. But there was something more in what he said, and there was the way of saying it, and there was the weight a man’s sayings carry when he is a real master of one thing, no matter how remote from the subject of which he is speaking. Crowdie came back almost immediately with his paint.
“Your eyes are the colour of blue fox,” he remarked, dabbing on the palette with his brush.
“Are they? They’re a grey of some sort, I believe. But you were talking about the soul.”
“Yes, I know I was; but I’m glad I’ve done with it. I told you that language wasn’t my strong point.”
“Yes — but you may be able to say lots of interesting things, besides painting well.”
“Not compared with people who are good at talking. I’ve often been struck by that.”
He stopped speaking, and made one or two very careful strokes, concentrating his whole attention for the moment.
“Struck by what?” asked Katharine.
“By the enormous amount some men know as compared with what they can do. I believe that’s what I meant to say. It wasn’t particularly worth saying, after all. There — that’s better! Just one moment more, please. I know I’m tiring you to death, but I’m so interested—”
Again he executed a very fine detail.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Now we can talk. Don’t you want to move about a little? I don’t ask you to look at the thing — it’s a mere beginning of a sketch — it isn’t the picture, of course.”
“But I want to see it,” said Katharine.
“Oh, of course. But you won’t like it so much now as you did at first.”
Katharine saw at once that he was right, and that the painting was not in a stage to bear examination, but she looked at it, nevertheless, with a vague idea of learning something about the art by observing its processes. Crowdie stood at a little distance behind her, his palette and brushes still in his hand. Indeed, there was no place but the floor where he could have laid them down. She knew that he was there, and she was certain that he was looking at her. The strange nervousness and sense of repulsion came over her at once, but in her determination not to yield to anything which seemed so foolish, she continued to scrutinize the rough sketch on the easel. Crowdie, on his part, said nothing, as though fearing lest the sound of his voice should disturb the graceful lines of her figure as she stood there.
At last she moved and turned away, but not towards him. Suddenly, from feeling that he was looking at her, she felt that she could not meet his eyes. She knew just what they would be like, long, languishing and womanish, with their sweeping lashes, and they attracted her, though she did not wish to see them. She walked a few steps down the length of the great room, and she was sure that those eyes were following her. An intense and quite unaccustomed consciousness overcame her, though she was never what is called shy.
She was positively certain that his eyes were fixed on the back of her head, willing her to turn and look at him; but she would not. Then she saw that she was reaching the end of the room, and that, unless she stood there staring at the tapestries and embroideries, she must face him. She felt the blood rush suddenly to her throat and just under her ears, and she knew that she who rarely blushed at all was blushing violently. She either did not know or she forgot that a blush is as beautiful in most dark women as it is unbecoming and even painful to see in fair ones. She was only conscious that she had never, in all her many recollections, felt so utterly foolish, and angry with herself, and disgusted with the light, as she did at that moment. Just as she reached the wall, she heard his footstep, and supposing that he had changed his position, she turned at once with a deep sense of relief.
Crowdie was standing before his easel again, studying what he had done, as unconcernedly as though he had not noticed her odd behaviour.
“I feel flushed,” she said. “It must be very warm here.”
“Is it?” asked Crowdie. “I’ll open something. But if you’ve had enough of it for the first day, I can leave it as it is till the next sitting. Can you come to-morrow?”
“Yes. That is — no — I may have an engagement.” She laughed nervously as she thought of it.
“The afternoon will do quite as well, if you prefer it. Any time before three o’clock. The light is bad after that.”
“I think the day after to-morrow would be better, if you don’t mind. At the same hour, if you like.”
“By all means. And thank you, for sitting so patiently. It’s not every one who does. I suppose I mustn’t offer to help you with your hat.”
“Thanks, I can easily manage it,” answered Katharine, careful, however, to speak in her ordinary tone of voice. “If you had a looking-glass anywhere—” She looked about for one.
“There’s one in my paint room, if you don’t mind.”
He led the way to the curtain behind which he had disappeared in search of his colours, and held it up. There was an open door into the little room — which was larger than Katharine had expected — and a dressing-table and mirror stood in the large bow-window that was built out over the yard. Crowdie stood holding the curtain back while she tied her veil and ran the long pin through her hat. It did not take more than a minute, and she passed out again.
“That’s a beautiful arrangement,” she said. “A looking-glass would spoil the studio.”
“Yes,” he answered, as he walked towards the door by her side. “You see there isn’t an object but stuffs and cushions in the place, and a chair for you — and my easels — all colour. I want nothing that has shape except what is human, and I like that as perfect as possible.”
“Give my love to Hester,” said Katharine, as she went out. “Oh, don’t come down; I know the way.”
He followed her, of course, and let her out himself. It was past twelve o’clock, and she felt the sun on her shoulders as she turned to the right up Lafayette Place, and she breathed the sparkling air with a sense of wild delight. It was so fresh and pure, and somehow she felt as though she had been in a contaminating atmosphere during the last three quarters of an hour.
CHAPTER XI.
ALEXANDER LAUDERDALE JUNIOR was a man of regular ways, as has been seen, and of sternly regular affections, so far as he could be said to have any at all. Most people were rather afraid of him. In the Trust Company which occupied his attention he was the executive member, and it was generally admitted that it owed something of its exceptional importance to his superior powers of administration, his cast-iron probity and his cold energy in enforcing regulations. The headquarters of the Company were in a magnificent granite building, on the second floor at the front, and Alexander Junior sat all day long in a spotless and speckless office, behind a highly polished table and before highly polished bookcases, upon which the light fell in the daytime through the most expensive and highly polished plate glass windows, and on winter afternoons from glittering electric brackets and chandeliers. He himself was not less perfect and highly polished in appearance than his surroundings. He was like one of those beautiful models of machinery which work silently and accurately all day long, apparently for the mere satisfaction of feeling their own wheels and cranks go round, behind the show window of the shop where the patent is owned, producing nothing, indeed, save a keen delight in the soul of the admiring mechanician.
He was perfect in his way. It was enough to catch one glimpse of him, as he sat in his office, to be sure that the Trust Company could be trusted, that the widow’s portion should yield her the small but regular interest which comforts the afflicted, and that the property of the squealing and still cradle-ridden orphan was silently rolling up, to be a joy to him when he should be old enough to squander it. The Trust Company was not a new institution. It had been founded in the dark ages of New York history, by just such men as Alexander Junior, and just such men had made it what it now was. Indeed, the primeval Lauderdale, whom Charlotte Slayback called Alexander the Great, had been connected with it before he died, his Scotch birth being counted
to him for righteousness, though his speech was imputed to him for sin. Neither of his sons had, however, had anything to do with it, nor his sons’ sons, but his great-grandson, Alexander the Safe, was predestined from his childhood to be the very man wanted by the Company, and when he was come to years of even greater discretion than he had shown as a small boy, which was saying much, he was formally installed behind the plate glass and the very shiny furniture of the office he had occupied ever since. With the appearance of his name on the Company’s reports the business increased, for in the public mind all Lauderdales were as one man, and that one man was Robert the Rich, who had never been connected with any speculation, and who was commonly said to own half New York. Acute persons will see that there must have been some exaggeration about the latter statement, but as a mere expression it did not lack force, and pleased the popular mind. It mattered little that New York should have enough halves to be distributed amongst a considerable number of very rich men, of whom precisely the same thing was said. Robert the Rich was a very rich man, and he must have his half like his fellow rich men.
Alexander Junior had no more claim upon his uncle’s fortune than Mrs. Ralston. His father was one of Robert’s brothers and hers had been the other. Nor was Robert the Rich in any way constrained to leave any money to any of his relations, nor to any one in particular in the whole wide world, seeing that he had made it himself, and was childless and answerable to no man for his acts. But it was probable that he would divide a large part of it between his living brother, the philanthropist, and the daughter of his dead brother Ralph — the soldier of the family, who had been killed at Chancellorsville. Now as it was certain that the philanthropist, for his part, if he had control of what came to him, would forthwith attempt to buy the Central Park as an airing ground for pauper idiots, or do something equally though charitably outrageous, the chances were that his portion — if he got any — would be placed in trust, or that it would be paid him as income by his son, if the latter were selected to manage the fortune. This was what most people expected, and it was certainly what Alexander Junior hoped.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 670