I had to stop and think. Why, of course I’d known her: a silent handsome girl, showy yet ineffective, whom I had seen without seeing the winter that society had capitulated to Vard. Still looking at the crayon, I tried to trace some connection between the Miss Vard I recalled and the grave young seraph of Lillo’s sketch. Had the Vards bewitched him? By what masterstroke of suggestion had he been beguiled into drawing the terrible father as a barber’s block, the commonplace daughter as this memorable creature?
“You don’t remember much about her? No, I suppose not. She was a quiet girl and nobody noticed her much, even when—” he paused with a smile—“you were all asking Vard to dine.”
I winced. Yes, it was true—we had all asked Vard to dine. It was some comfort to think that fate had made him expiate our weakness.
Lillo put the sketch on the mantel-shelf and drew his arm-chair to the fire.
“It’s cold to-night. Take another cigar, old man; and some whiskey? There ought to be a bottle and some glasses in that cupboard behind you... help yourself...”
II
About Vard’s portrait? (he began.) Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a queer story, and most people wouldn’t see anything in it. My enemies might say it was a roundabout way of explaining a failure; but you know better than that. Mrs. Mellish was right. Between me and Vard there could be no question of failure. The man was made for me—I felt that the first time I clapped eyes on him. I could hardly keep from asking him to sit to me on the spot; but somehow one couldn’t ask favors of the fellow. I sat still and prayed he’d come to me, though; for I was looking for something big for the next Salon. It was twelve years ago—the last time I was out ere—and I was ravenous for an opportunity. I had the feeling—do you writer-fellows have it too?—that there was something tremendous in me if it could only be got out; and I felt Vard was the Moses to strike the rock. There were vulgar reasons, too, that made me hunger for a victim. I’d been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There’d been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to follow it up with a rousing big thing at the next Salon. Then the critics had been insinuating that I could do only Spanish things—I suppose I had overdone the castanet business; it’s a nursery-disease we all go through—and I wanted to show that I had plenty more shot in my locker. Don’t you get up every morning meaning to prove you’re equal to Balzac or Thackeray? That’s the way I felt then; only give me a chance, I wanted to shout out to them; and I saw at once that Vard was my chance.
I had come over from Paris in the autumn to paint Mrs. Clingsborough, and I met Vard and his daughter at one of the first dinners I went to. After that I could think of nothing but that man’s head. What a type! I raked up all the details of his scandalous history; and there were enough to fill an encyclopaedia. The papers were full of him just then; he was mud from head to foot; it was about the time of the big viaduct steal, and irreproachable citizens were forming ineffectual leagues to put him down. And all the time one kept meeting him at dinners—that was the beauty of it! Once I remember seeing him next to the Bishop’s wife; I’ve got a little sketch of that duet somewhere... Well, he was simply magnificent, a born ruler; what a splendid condottiere he would have made, in gold armor, with a griffin grinning on his casque! You remember those drawings of Leonardo’s, where the knight’s face and the outline of his helmet combine in one monstrous saurian profile? He always reminded me of that...
But how was I to get at him?—One day it occurred to me to try talking to Miss Vard. She was a monosyllabic person, who didn’t seem to see an inch beyond the last remark one had made; but suddenly I found myself blurting out, “I wonder if you know how extraordinarily paintable your father is?” and you should have seen the change that came over her. Her eyes lit up and she looked—well, as I’ve tried to make her look there. (He glanced up at the sketch.) Yes, she said, wasn’t her father splendid, and didn’t I think him one of the handsomest men I’d ever seen?
That rather staggered me, I confess; I couldn’t think her capable of joking on such a subject, yet it seemed impossible that she should be speaking seriously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked at Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile thrown back, the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow high white forehead. The girl worshipped him.