The Bond/Part 2/Chapter 9
IX
THE portrait was begun; and Isabel, having carried her point, became for a time extraordinarily sweet and docile. Three sittings a week having been conceded, she made no other demands on Basil's time, which he wished to de- vote, outside of work, to his wife. He made great efforts to divert Teresa, to induce her to go out, to make her take care of her health, which was re-established very slowly. She recognised his care of her gratefully, though almost dumbly, and tried at times to meet his wish, but an overwhelming lassitude of mind and body left her no energy of will. She wanted nothing except absolute peace and quiet, and Basil's keen desire that she should begin to live again interfered with her recovery. She began to feel that she should not get strong till she got away by herself, and at last expressed a wish to go at once to Europe. This was in March; but the dangers of the winter crossing for herself and Ronald, and her own physical weakness resulted in a joint veto of Basil and the doctor; and Teresa yielded passively. She lived on, therefore, in the apartment, seeing as few people as she could manage, not going out unless she was forced; disarming Basil's impatience at her persistent negation by her extreme gentleness. She ceased to talk about the dead baby to him, because she saw he thought her morbid. Sometimes she thought that Gerald Dallas would have understood her, but there was no one else. Everyone else tried to amuse her. Fairfax came a few times to see her, but the great change in her, and her evident lack of interest in him, discouraged his visits. There was only Major Ransome whom she was really willing to see. The Major's whole-souled acceptance of woman, as a weak creature who must be coddled and indulged in her unreasonableness—rather amusing, in view of the two strong-willed women who had married him—somewhat comforted Teresa. But after all the Major bored her. She did not want him or anyone else, not even for the tiny Ronald, whose extreme vitality made him a too exact copy of Basil. Basil was not too cheerful at this time, but he tried to be. His intensely positive nature made him unwilling to accept grief as Teresa did. He wanted to forget their misfortune, to find again their joy in life, and to supply it meantime by interests which seemed to Teresa factitious and feverish. He was working hard himself, and as a last resort he tried to get Teresa to think of her work again. But her first essay with the clay discouraged him. She modelled in secret, only showing it to him when it was done, a little statuette of the dead baby, as he lived in her thoughts: a tiny naked creature lying with relaxed limbs, its heavy-eyed, deep-lined face expressing all the pathos of life manqué. At Basil's almost weeping protest Teresa silently put away the little image, and did not touch her clay again.
••••••
Isabel, in the second portrait, instinctively wanted to have expressed her charm as a woman—the thing by which she had tried to attach Basil, and, as she knew, failed. She had chosen a dress of black velvet, which in the evening brought out wonderfully the intensity of her hair and eyes, and subdued her Spanish skin to ivory. But the harsh light of the studio denied her all charm of mystery and suggestion; even as the keen reality of Basil's nature had stripped their relation of the romance, the sentimentality, which she had striven to give it, and brought out its essential commonplace. After four sittings under the painter's cool gaze, it became apparent that the portrait would have nothing of what she wanted. With her usual impetuosity Isabel expressed her dissatisfaction.
"Basil, you are making me out an old hag! I won't be painted like that, I'm not like that, I'm not ugly! You are doing it on purpose! …"
Basil shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't paint pretty pictures," he said indifferently. "If you want to be done all rose-colour and illusion, you ought to go to one of the lady-painters. You said the other picture was ugly, too, and yet you liked it—or said you did."
"It was different—it was not brutal like this!"
"Perhaps you can't judge it very well, at this stage."
"Yes, I can see what you mean to make it—something that I would never in the world exhibit, or even hang up anywhere. Perhaps it's because it's so big and—pretentious."
"I thought that dress demanded a big canvas," said Basil ironically.
He laid down his palette and brushes carefully, definitively, and said:
"We won't go on with it."
"I didn't mean that," said Isabel quickly.
She was standing near him, holding up the sweeping velvet train with both hands, on which the diamonds glittered coldly.
"No, but I mean it," said Basil.
She looked at him, dropped her train, and moved to put one hand on his arm.
"Don't be silly, Basil, or sulky. I daresay I'm wrong, and it will come out all right. I know I oughtn't to criticise"
"No, it won't come out right. I was a fool to undertake it. I didn't want to do it. I can't do a pot-boiler of that size!"
He smiled, took out his cigarette-case—and her hand slipped from his arm—and began to smoke with quick, nervous exhalations of relief.
"I'm punished," he said. "I started the thing to please you, Isabel, and, worse still, for the money. I felt like a slave. I don't believe I could have finished it. You're perfectly right to dislike it. Good Lord, how glad I am you dislike it! Now, if you'll forgive me for being a bungler and wasting your time, we can forget it. Do forgive me, will you?"
"I really don't think I shall," said Isabel slowly, clasping and unclasping her nervous fingers. "I don't like to waste my time, as you say. And I think it's childish of you to be so piqued by a hasty word of mine"
"It isn't that, dear Isabel—it really isn't that, but something deeper—my conviction that I wasn't making a good thing of it, and couldn't. I haven't liked it from the start. I hadn't the mood for it. I couldn't see it. I didn't like that dress, for one thing"
"Then why didn't you say so? You know I would have taken any other"
"No, it was your choice, and I was trying to do this simply and solely for you, and that's the reason I've failed. I'm enough of an artist anyhow not to be able to do anything good except for myself. I shall know that another time."
There was a deep suppressed bitterness in his tone, which indicated more than his feeling about the picture. Isabel was silent for some moments. In her thoughts, as well as his, perhaps, the picture symbolised a deeper failure. She moved restlessly, walked away from the easel, trailing her rich dress carelessly over a brush that had fallen on the floor; she flushed, bit her lips, and finally said sharply:
"I shouldn't think you'd like to admit a failure like this without—without really trying to do as well as you can by it—and by me. I want you to go on—perhaps the mood will come—if not, I shan't reproach you—and I shall have got something out of it—some satisfaction"
"I can't," said Basil gently. "It's useless, it's only wasting your time—and my own. I couldn't let you pay me for a picture I thought bad. If I'm to do pot-boilers, they must be for people who honestly want bad things. For that you're too intelligent. Let's say no more about it, please."
"You will not, then, do what I ask, if only to please me?"
"I can't."
"Then you're brutally unkind to me."
Basil's face flushed darkly. In a flash of his quick temper he caught up a brush from the table and splashed two blue streaks across the face and neck in the portrait.
Isabel burst into tears. She went waveringly toward the divan, sank down on it, and wept hysterically into a cushion. Basil, with his back to her, stood silent, passionately resentful; his fingers, clenched in the pocket of his coat, crushed a handful of cigarettes to fragments. When Isabel, finding that she was not to be consoled, stopped crying and summoned the remnants of her pride, it was still some time before she could speak. Basil was still immobile, and there was no sign of softening in his attitude. Isabel, as quickly as possible, took the course which her instinct pointed out as the necessary one. The silence had become terrible to her.
"I was wrong," she said dully. "I have been, I am, wrong. I cannot get what I have wanted. And it is not your fault. I was wrong when I said you had been unkind to me. Perhaps you might have been kinder—perhaps—but I think you have done your best. You aren't exactly a kind person. One must—just make up one's mind to the—bitterness of it. One must see—one's own folly. I have seen it—oh, I have so tried not to see it. I couldn't bear to see it. Now I shan't try any more. I shall—accept it."
Her head sank. She smoothed the folds of her dress over her knees with a slow motion. Basil turned toward her a tired, tormented look. "Let us not talk any more to-day," he begged. "On my word, I'm done—absolutely done"
"Yes, I'm going now. … And I shall go away at once south somewhere, Florida, I think."
"You'll let me come and see you before you go."
"Oh, yes, I should like to see you once more. But no more scenes, Basil—I promise. Just a quiet talk—and then good-bye."
Her tone was dull and exhausted. She sat still, looking musingly at the floor, and Basil was about to go toward her when a knock sounded at the door. Basil opened. It was Teresa.
In the instant of greeting her, while he stood inwardly hesitating and blocking the view of the studio, Mrs. Perry rose and went quickly into the dressing-room. It did not take Basil more than five seconds to decide that he must let Teresa in, and he did so, flattering himself that his hesitation had not been noticed.
"You're surprised to see me, aren't you?" she said, smiling. "Are you busy? I thought, suddenly, I'd like to go out and dine to-night at one of our old haunts. Would you like it?"
"I would, of all things," he cried fervently. "Come in, Mrs. Perry's been posing. I'm free now, and we'll have a walk first, if you feel up to it. Are you strong enough? How's the weather?"
"Cold, but nice. I'd like a short walk anyway—I feel almost energetic!"
She came into the room, loosening her furs. She was dressed in black, which she had worn ever since the baby's death, and her face was rather thinner and paler than before, though the frosty air had given her an unusual tinge of colour.
In passing she glanced at the portrait on the easel and stopped in surprise.
"Why, what have you done?" she cried.
Basil wished he could have got the picture out of sight, but said cheerfully:
"Spoilt it. Too bad, isn't it?"
Teresa studied the canvas.
"A fit of temper? Of course, I can't tell very well now, but perhaps you were too quick. Still, you can always take off that blue paint, can't you?"
"No. I was working on the face, and it's all gone. It was bad—the whole scheme of the thing. I felt from the beginning that it wouldn't do. Of course, I'm sorry to have muffed it. But it's a relief not to go on with it, when I see it's a failure."
He spoke volubly, moving about quickly, put- ting away his brushes and palette; and finally he took down the canvas and set it with its face to the wall. Teresa sat down on the divan, and they talked cursorily for some ten minutes. Mrs. Perry found some difficulty in dressing without a maid, and also she wanted to get rid of the marks of tears. In this she was hardly successful. Unfortunately she had no veil. When she came out finally, Teresa's first glance at her face resulted in a second quick scrutiny. The two women met conventionally. It was their first meeting for nearly a year, and whatever feeling of intimacy there had been between them had long since disappeared.
"Would you mind calling a cab for me?" Mrs. Perry said to Basil, after the first greeting to Teresa.
In her tone was a certain hint of imperiousness. Basil went out, with a naïve sense of escaping from an uncomfortable situation.
"Well, the picture has been judged a failure, you see," Mrs. Perry said rapidly, pulling on her gloves. "I'm so disappointed—I'd really set my heart on it. But I suppose there's no appeal. Artists have their ways of feeling about their work that ordinary mortals can't be expected to comprehend—isn't that true?"
"I suppose it is," Teresa said mechanically. "It's a pity. Have you wasted much time on it?"
"Four sittings—a good deal for a busy person like myself. But—I won't grumble any more."
"Basil will be sorrier than you, I'm sure. He hates to make failures."
"No—I don't believe he's very sorry. He wasn't interested in it. He'll never be a success as a portrait-painter, will he?"
Teresa smiled. "Not a worldly success, I fancy. But I don't believe he much wants to be."
"Oh, I daresay not. Only great painters were, weren't they? They all wanted to please a duke, or a king, or somebody. Of course, when a painter gets a big name, like Sargent or Whistler, he can have as many moods and whims as he likes; it only makes people run after him the more. I've heard so many stories about that Swedish man that painted everybody last year. He did about two portraits a week, and he said when he got back to Sweden that if he could have painted with his left hand he might have done two at once. He started pictures of all the De Morgan girls, and made love to one of them, and Papa de Morgan kicked him out of the house; but he insisted on being paid for all the pictures just the same, under threat of a law-suit, and got the money. And they got him to paint the King of Sweden, and he painted him looking half asleep and quite idiotic, not at all regal. Then one of the princesses sat to him, and he came quite drunk and slapped off the portrait in no time. That's what it is to be the fashion!"
Mrs. Perry laughed nervously. Her voice had a harshness characteristic of her in emotion. Teresa listened gravely, turning her muff in her hands. Her narrow eyes were coolly observant.
Basil came back and announced the cab, and Mrs. Perry nodded and said:
"Thank you. I'll send for my dress to-day. Don't bother to come down."
She advanced to shake hands with Teresa. "Good-bye—I haven't seen you for so long—I'm sorry—you're looking a little ill, aren't you? I'm awfully sorry. I shall be leaving directly for Florida, else I would come to see you. Good-bye—I hope we shall meet next fall, and you'll get strong and well meantime"
"Thank you—good-bye," Teresa said indifferently. She had risen—their eyes met on a level. … Mrs. Perry turned quickly and went out.