Katherine’s engagement was generally known, and Mrs. Pope reproached herself for having failed to draw Mr. Odd’s attention before this to the work of his future sister.
“Oh no; she is altogether too distinguished a little person to give away her pictures. That was in the Champs de Mars last year. I bought it. The two others sold as well. I believe she sells most of her things; for high prices, too. Always the way, you know; a starving genius is allowed to starve, but material success comes to a pretty girl who doesn’t need it. Katherine is so well known in Paris that Hilda’s public was already made for her; there was no waiting for the appreciation that is her due. Her work is certainly charming.”
Peter felt a growing sense of anxiety. He could not share Mrs. Pope’s feeling of easy pleasantness. Hilda did need it. Certainly there was nothing pathetic in doing what she liked best and making money at it. Yet he wondered just how far Hilda’s earnings helped the family; kept the butcher and baker at bay. With a new keenness of conjecture he thought of the black serge dress; somewhere about Hilda’s artistic indifference there might well lurk a tragic element. Did she not really care to wear the amethyst velvets that her earnings perhaps went to provide? The vague distress that had never left him since his first disappointment at the Embassy dinner, that the afternoon’s discovery at the atelier had sharpened, now became acute.
“I always think it such a pretty compensation of Providence,” said Mrs. Pope, gracefully anxious to please, “that all the talent that Hilda Archinard expresses, puts on her canvas, is more personal in Katherine; is part of herself as it were, like a perfume about her.”
“Yes,” said Odd rather dully, not particularly pleased with the comparison.
“She is such a brilliant girl,” Mrs. Pope added, “such a splendid character. I can’t tell you how it delighted me to hear that Katherine had at last found the rare some one who could really appreciate her. It strengthened my pet theory of the fundamental fitness of things.”
“Yes,” Odd repeated, so vaguely that Mrs. Pope hurriedly wondered if she had been guilty of bad taste, and changed the subject.
When Peter reached the Archinards’ at half-past six that evening, he found the Captain and Mrs. Archinard alone in the drawing-room.
“Hilda not in yet?” he asked. His anxiety was so oppressive that he really could not forbear opening the old subject of grievance. Indeed, Odd fancied that in Mrs. Archinard’s jeremiads there was an element of maternal solicitude. That Hilda should voluntarily immolate herself, have no pretty dresses, show herself nowhere—these facts perhaps moved Mrs. Archinard as much as her own neglected condition. At least, so Peter charitably hoped, feeling almost cruel as he deliberately broached the painful subject.
Mrs. Archinard now gave a dismal sigh, and the Captain shook his head impatiently as he put down Le Temps.