"I can't understand it."
"I can," said old Bowker, sadly; "if she's any thing like the head he's painted in his second picture--and I think from his manner it must be deuced like her--I can understand a man's doing any thing for such a woman. Did she strike you as being very lovely?"
"I couldn't see much of her that night, and she was deadly white and ill; but I didn't think her as good-looking as--some that I know."
"Geoff ought to know about this story that's afloat."
"I think he ought," said Charley. "I'll walk up to his place in a day or two, and see him about it."
"See him?" said Bowker. "Ah, all right! Yesterday was not your William's natal day."
[CHAPTER XIII.]
AT THE PRIVATE VIEW.
The grand epoch of the artistic year had arrived; the tremendous Fehmgericht--appointed to decide on the merits of some hundreds of struggling men, to stamp their efforts with approval or to blight them with rejection--had issued their sentence. The Hanging-Committee had gone through their labours and eaten their dinners; every inch of space on the walls in Trafalgar Square was duly covered; the successful men had received intimation of the "varnishing day," and to the rejected had been despatched a comforting missive, stating that the amount of space at the command of the Academy was so small, that, sooner than place their works in an objectionable position, the Council had determined to ask for their withdrawal. Out of this ordeal Geoffrey Ludlow had come splendidly. There had always been a notion that he would "do something;" but he had delayed so long--near the mark, but never reaching it--that the original belief in his talents had nearly faded out. Now, when realisation came, it came with tenfold force. The old boys--men of accepted name and fame--rejoiced with extra delight in his success because it was one in their own line, and without any giving in to the doctrines of the new school, which they hated with all their hearts. They liked the "Sic vos non vobis" best (for Geoffrey had sternly held to his title, and refused all Mr. Stompff's entreaties to give it a more popular character); they looked upon it as a more thoroughly legitimate piece of work. They allowed the excellences of the "Scylla and Charybdis," and, indeed, some of them were honest enough to prefer it, as a bit of real excellence in painting; but others objected to the pre-Raphaelite tendency to exalt the white face and the dead-gold hair into a realisation of beauty. But all were agreed that Geoffrey Ludlow had taken the grand step which was always anticipated from him, and that he was, out and away, the most promising man of the day: So Geoff was hung on the line, and received letters from half-a-dozen great names congratulating him on his success, and was in the seventh heaven of happiness, principally from the fact that in all this he saw a prospect of excellent revenue, of the acquisition of money and honour to be shared with a person then resident in Mr. Flexor's lodgings, soon to be mistress of his own home.
The kind Fates had also been propitious to Mr. Charles Potts, whose picture of "Gil Blas and the Archbishop" had been well placed in the North Room. Mr. Tidd's "Boadicea in her Chariot," ten feet by six, had been rejected; but his portrait of W. Bagglehole, Esq., vestry-clerk of St. Wabash, Little Britain, looked down from the ceiling of the large room and terrified the beholders.