The Last Chronicle of Barset Part 91

And what is it has made them grey?"

"They say that hot rooms will do it."

"Hot rooms! No, Conway, it does not come from heated atmosphere. It comes from a cold heart, a chilled heart, a frozen heart, a heart that is all ice." She was getting out of the cloud into the heat now, and he could only hope that Miss Van Siever would come soon. "The world is beginning with you, Conway, and yet you are as old as I am.

It is ending with me, and yet I am as young as you are. But I do not know why I talk of all this. It is simply folly,--utter folly. I had not meant to speak of myself; but I did wish to say a few words to you of your own future. I suppose I may still speak to you as a friend?"

"I hope you will always do that."

"Nay,--I will make no such promise. That I will always have a friend's feeling for you, a friend's interest in your welfare, a friend's triumph in your success,--that I will promise. But friendly words, Conway, are sometimes misunderstood."

"Never by me," said he.

"No, not by you,--certainly not by you. I did not mean that. I did not expect that you should misinterpret them." Then she laughed hysterically,--a little low, gurgling, hysterical laugh; and after that she wiped her eyes, and then she smiled, and then she put her hand very gently upon his shoulder. "Thank G.o.d, Conway, we are quite safe there,--are we not?"

He had made a blunder, and it was necessary that he should correct it. His watch was lying in the trough of his easel, and he looked at it and wondered why Miss Van Siever was not there. He had tripped, and he must make a little struggle and recover his step. "As I said before, it shall never be misunderstood by me. I have never been vain enough to suppose for a moment that there was any other feeling,--not for a moment. You women can be so careful, while we men are always off our guard! A man loves because he cannot help it; but a woman has been careful, and answers him--with friendship. Perhaps I am wrong to say that I never thought of winning anything more; but I never think of winning more now." Why the mischief didn't Miss Van Siever come!

In another five minutes, despite himself, he would be on his knees, making a mock declaration, and she would be pouring forth the vial of her mock wrath, or giving him mock counsel as to the restraint of his pa.s.sion. He had gone through it all before, and was tired of it; but for his life he did not know how to help himself.

"Conway," said she, gravely, "how dare you address me in such language?"

"Of course it is very wrong; I know that."

"I'm not speaking of myself, now. I have learned to think so little of myself, as even to be indifferent to the feeling of the injury you are doing me. My life is a blank, and I almost think that nothing can hurt me further. I have not heart left enough to break; no, not enough to be broken. It is not of myself that I am thinking, when I ask you how you dare to address me in such language. Do you not know that it is an injury to another?"

"To what other?" asked Conway Dalrymple, whose mind was becoming rather confused, and who was not quite sure whether the other one was Mr. Dobbs Broughton, or somebody else.

"To that poor girl who is coming here now, who is devoted to you, and to whom, I do not doubt, you have uttered words which ought to have made it impossible for you to speak to me as you spoke not a moment since."

Things were becoming very grave and difficult. They would have been very grave, indeed, had not some G.o.d saved him by sending Miss Van Siever to his rescue at this moment. He was beginning to think what he would say in answer to the accusation now made, when his eager ear caught the sound of her step upon the stairs; and before the pause in the conversation which the circ.u.mstances admitted had given place to the necessity for further speech, Miss Van Siever had knocked at the door and had entered the room. He was rejoiced, and I think that Mrs. Broughton did not regret the interference. It is always well that these little dangerous scenes should be brought to sudden ends.

The last details of such romances, if drawn out to their natural conclusions, are apt to be uncomfortable, if not dull. She did not want him to go down on his knees, knowing that the getting up again is always awkward.

"Clara, I began to think you were never coming," said Mrs. Broughton, with her sweetest smile.

"I began to think so myself also," said Clara. "And I believe this must be the last sitting, or, at any rate, the last but one."

"Is anything the matter at home?" said Mrs. Broughton, clasping her hands together.

"Nothing very much; mamma asked me a question or two this morning, and I said I was coming here. Had she asked me why, I should have told her."

"But what did she ask? What did she say?"

"She does not always make herself very intelligible. She complains without telling you what she complains of. But she muttered something about artists which was not complimentary, and I suppose, therefore, that she has a suspicion. She stayed ever so late this morning, and we left the house together. She will ask some direct question to-night, or before long, and then there will be an end of it."

"Let us make the best of our time then," said Dalrymple; and the sitting was arranged; Miss Van Siever went down on her knees with her hammer in her hand, and the work began. Mrs. Broughton had twisted a turban round Clara's head, as she always did on these occasions, and a.s.sisted to arrange the drapery. She used to tell herself as she did so, that she was like Isaac, piling the f.a.gots for her own sacrifice.

Only Isaac had piled them in ignorance, and she piled them conscious of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the f.a.gots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman or of the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. Dobbs Broughton piles her f.a.gots.]

After a while, when Mrs. Broughton had piled the f.a.gots as high as she could pile them, she got up from her seat and prepared to leave the room. Much of the piling consisted, of course, in her own absence during a portion of these sittings. "Conway," she said, as she went, "if this is to be the last sitting, or the last but one, you should make the most of it." Then she threw upon him a very peculiar glance over the head of the kneeling Jael, and withdrew. Jael, who in those moments would be thinking more of the fatigue of her position than of anything else, did not at all take home to herself the peculiar meaning of her friend's words. Conway Dalrymple understood them thoroughly, and thought that he might as well take the advice given to him. He had made up his mind to propose to Miss Van Siever, and why should he not do so now? He went on with his brush for a couple of minutes without saying a word, working as well as he could work, and then resolved that he would at once begin the other task. "Miss Van Siever," he said, "I'm afraid you are tired?"

"Not more than usually tired. It is fatiguing to be slaying Sisera by the hour together. I do get to hate this block." The block was the dummy by which the form of Sisera was supposed to be typified.

"Another sitting will about finish it," said he, "so that you need not positively distress yourself now. Will you rest yourself for a minute or two?" He had already perceived that the att.i.tude in which Clara was posed before him was not one in which an offer of marriage could be received and replied to with advantage.

"Thank you, I am not tired yet," said Clara, not changing the fixed glance of national wrath with which she regarded her wooden Sisera as she held her hammer on high.

"But I am. There; we will rest for a moment." Dalrymple was aware that Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, though she was very a.s.siduous in piling her f.a.gots, never piled them for long together. If he did not make haste she would be back upon them before he could get his word spoken. When he put down his brush, and got up from his chair, and stretched out his arm as a man does when he ceases for a moment from his work, Clara of course got up also, and seated herself. She was used to her turban and her drapery, and therefore thought not of it at all; and he also was used to it, seeing her in it two or three times a week; but now that he intended to accomplish a special purpose, the turban and the drapery seemed to be in the way. "I do so hope you will like the picture," he said, as he was thinking of this.

"I don't think I shall. But you will understand that it is natural that a girl should not like herself in such a portraiture as that."

"I don't know why. I can understand that you specially should not like the picture; but I think that most women in London in your place would at any rate say that they did."

"Are you angry with me?"

"What; for telling the truth? No, indeed." He was standing opposite to his easel, looking at the canvas, shifting his head about so as to change the lights, and observing critically this blemish and that; and yet he was all the while thinking how he had best carry out his purpose. "It will have been a prosperous picture to me," he said at last, "if it leads to the success of which I am ambitious."

"I am told that all you do is successful now,--merely because you do it. That is the worst of success."

"What is the worst of success?"

"That when won by merit it leads to further success, for the gaining of which no merit is necessary."

"I hope it may be so in my case. If it is not I shall have a very poor chance. Clara, I think you must know that I am not talking about my pictures."

"I thought you were."

"Indeed I am not. As for success in my profession, far as I am from thinking I merit it, I feel tolerably certain that I shall obtain it."

"You have obtained it."

"I am in the way to do so. Perhaps one out of ten struggling artists is successful, and for him the profession is very charming. It is certainly a sad feeling that there is so much of chance in the distribution of the prizes. It is a lottery. But one cannot complain of that when one has drawn the prize." Dalrymple was not a man without self-possession, nor was he readily abashed, but he found it easier to talk of his possession than to make his offer. The turban was his difficulty. He had told himself over and over again within the last five minutes, that he would have long since said what he had to say had it not been for the turban. He had been painting all his life from living models,--from women dressed up in this or that costume, to suit the necessities of his picture,--but he had never made love to any of them. They had been simply models to him, and now he found that there was a difficulty. "Of that prize," he said, "I have made myself tolerably sure; but as to the other prize, I do not know. I wonder whether I am to have that." Of course Miss Van Siever understood well what was the prize of which he was speaking; and as she was a young woman with a will and purpose of her own, no doubt she was already prepared with an answer. But it was necessary that the question should be put to her in properly distinct terms. Conway Dalrymple certainly had not put his question in properly distinct terms at present. She did not choose to make any answer to his last words; and therefore simply suggested that as time was pressing he had better go on with his work. "I am quite ready now," said she.

"Stop half a moment. How much more you are thinking of the picture than I am! I do not care twopence for the picture. I will slit the canvas from top to bottom without a groan,--without a single inner groan,--if you will let me."

"For heaven's sake do nothing of the kind! Why should you?"

"Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I come here. Clara--" Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, very weary, having been piling f.a.gots with a.s.siduity, till human nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognized the fact that the fault had been with himself. Mrs. Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen,--having no doubt made a mistake as to three,--and had told herself that with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been during the interval,--what it is to have to pile up such f.a.gots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.

"My friends," said Mrs. Broughton, "this will not do. This is not working; this is not sitting."

"Mr. Dalrymple has been explaining to me the precarious nature of an artist's profession," said Clara.

"It is not precarious with him," said Mrs. Dobbs Broughton, sententiously.

"Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera."

"I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom."

"And why?" said Mrs. Broughton, putting up her hands to heaven in tragic horror.