“Don’t see the faintest resemblance,” he pronounced.
Oliver’s gesture implied that he would have torn his hair if he could have afforded it.
“Do you?” said Justin to his Echo.
“No!” said Echo, through her nose, with a clear, contemptuous little laugh that nettled Oliver.
But he didn’t guess how disappointed Echo was. Echo would have been gratified if Justin had perceived that undoubtedly existing resemblance. As it was, she was merely annoyed with Oliver for making the discovery. If Justin didn’t admire Laura’s hair, it was certainly not Oliver’s business to do so.... She didn’t like Oliver.... A wordy man....
But she was obliged to let him paint her. She had begun by being deaf to his persuasions, for she knew what sitting meant: she had always been the sacrifice of her merciless mates in the Rue Honorine when the model had fainted or left them in the lurch. But when Oliver appealed to Justin, and Justin opened his eyes at her, what was she to do?
Sit? Of course she must sit! It would be rather a lark. They were in for a spell of rain and he was sick of churches. He always enjoyed watching Oliver work, and besides, Oliver was so awfully keen to paint her. He thought she ought to be flattered. He would sit himself, like a shot, if his mug were any use to Oliver.
And so she sat for them, in Oliver’s big cool studio that had been a palace pleasure-room once upon a time. The rest of the building, even its name, had vanished out of memory, but this one room still stood, fair and lofty as Marina in the bagnio, amid the vile modern cubbies clustering against its three walls like barnacles upon a shell. The fourth was all windows and a great glass door that opened upon gardens. Its lintel was upheld by columns of pinkish stone, that writhed up in foliated spirals to a crazy capital of fruits and rams’ horns and ribands. In the summer, said Oliver, the vine outside came clambering in to put its tendrils and carved grapes to shame. The whitewashed walls were brilliant with Oliver’s canvases, but on the ceiling there were the flakes and peelings of a fresco, still witnessing that it had once been lovely, as a skeleton leaf cries out to you that once it was green. Laura, perched on her throne, would try to decipher the dim outlines, till Oliver called to her not to pucker her face: and then she would start and lose her pose and twinkle across at Justin, while Oliver swore like a cat in Italian and apologized mellifluously in English and arranged her again to suit his difficult taste. I am afraid she was not a good sitter. She was still enough, but Oliver complained that she would not look at him. He was certainly worth looking at, as he sat in the open doorway, his dark face darker against the light, and the overladen, fantastic column rising beside him. They had an odd air of belonging to the same century. Justin, indeed, had once declared that Oliver looked like an undissipated Medici; which did not quite please Oliver. He was young enough to deprecate the adjective. But despite his wild hair and dynamic neckerchiefs and all the other inevitable little affectations of his temperament and his trade, his good looks were undeniable, and it is possible that he did not often find his sitters unappreciative. But always Laura’s eyes went through him and over him and beyond him to the loggia where Justin lounged or read aloud to them in his shy precise sing-song, while the smoke of his smouldering pipe whorled upwards, to melt into the fine silvery rain that eddied past like ghosts of old Florence, or to the corner where Justin raked his way through Oliver’s stacked canvases and grunted out comments that set Oliver ablaze. And then Laura must jump down to see what it was all about and give her opinion, though Oliver took no notice of it, which nettled her, little as she liked him: and business would be delayed. Mrs. Cloud would come in with a basket and a Murillo’s melon-boy to carry it, and they would all picnic together on the throne. And afterwards, if the sun had come out, Justin would carry them off for a drive and no more painting would be done that day.
Nevertheless the picture progressed apace. Mrs. Cloud thought it very pretty and Justin was enthusiastic, though not sufficiently enthusiastic for Oliver, for nobody’s praise seemed to Oliver to do his work quite such discriminating justice as his own. Even Laura would have owned to a real admiration if Oliver had asked her. But Oliver did not ask her. Laura had protected Justin only too well. He had explained to Oliver in all good faith how well she sketched—oh, water-colour, he supposed, he didn’t really know—and Oliver, with all the water-colours of all the daughters and drawing-rooms of England in his mind’s eye, thought himself wise in evading the subject. His Hebe should not trip if he could help it. Naturally Laura observed his manœuvres. If she had had more faith in herself she would have been amused by them; as it was, she was humanly annoyed. She might have made up her mind to forgo her painting: she half believed she had; but it was another thing to be ignored, to sit a week watching some one else handling and mishandling the tools of your trade. Because, whatever conceit Oliver might have of himself, he could not draw. She could see all he did reflected in the mirror beside him and—he could not draw. She conceded him colour, an amazing colour; but he had no sense of discipline, of line ... and, shades of Ingres! how he was mangling the shoulder curve! However—this with a twist of her lip—she supposed he would cover it up nicely with drapery.
“Smile, please,” directed Oliver. And then, “Sweeter, my dear girl, sweeter. No, I don’t want your teeth.”