CHAPTER XXI.
In each household there was rumour of war and discussion of plans, and the nervous tension was already great. In Lafayette Place, the exceedingly unfashionable and somewhat remote corner where the Crowdies dwelt in one of the half-dozen habitable houses there situated, there was considerable disturbance. Walter Crowdie and his wife were in the studio, alone together, talking about it all. Crowdie had received a communication from his brother-in-law, telling him of Alexander’s contemplated attack and enquiring as to Crowdie’s opinion, more as a matter of form than because he expected any interference or needed any help.
Hester Crowdie was a nervously organized woman, almost insanely in love with her husband. She had one of those pale, delicate, passionate faces which are not easily forgotten, and which seem to bear the sign of an unusual destiny in each line and shade of expression. She had much of the hereditary beauty of the Lauderdales, but the regularity of her features was not what struck the eye first. She was slight, but graceful as a doe, alternately quick and then indolent as an Oriental woman, strong, yet liable to what seemed inexplicable fatigue and weakness which overtook her without warning, and often sensitive as a fine instrument to every changing influence about her, yet constant as steel in her idolizing love for her husband.
To do him justice, he seemed to return all she felt for him in an almost like degree. They were well-nigh inseparable, and she spent every moment of the day with him which she could spare from her very slight social and household duties, when he himself was not occupied with a sitter.
The studio was a vast room occupying the whole upper story of the house, and lighted from above as well as by windows, the latter being generally closed. It contained a barbaric wealth of rich Eastern carpets, stuffs, and embroideries, which covered the walls and the huge divans, and were draped about the chimney-piece. There was an old-fashioned high-backed chair for Crowdie’s sitters, and there were generally at least two easels in the room, having unfinished canvases upon them. But there was nothing else—not a sketch, not a bit of a plaster cast, not the least object of metal. There were none of those more or less cheap weapons with which artists are fond of decorating their studios, there were no vases, no plants, no objects, in short, but the easels, the one chair, and the rich materials hung upon the walls, spread upon the divans, covering the heaps of soft cushions. Even the high door which gave access to the room from the narrow landing was masked by a great embroidery. Crowdie kept all his paints and brushes in a large closet, cut off by a curtain, and built out, balcony-like, over the yard at the back of the house.
Hester Crowdie lay among the cushions on one of the enormous divans. She was dressed in black, and the garment—which was neither gown nor tea-gown, nor yet a frock—followed closely the lines of grace in which her bodily beauty ran, from her throat to her slender feet. One bloodless hand lay upon the dark folds, the other was pressed almost out of sight in the yielding coils of her rich brown hair; she supported her head, resting upon her elbow, and watching her husband.
Crowdie was standing before an easel near by, palette and brushes in hand, touching the canvas from time to time, mechanically rather than with any serious intention of doing anything to the picture.
“I don’t see why your brother takes the trouble to write,” he said. “It may be a sort of formality. He must know that I’d be dead against the Lauderdales in anything. They all detest me, and I hate them every one, with all my heart.”
“So do I,” answered Hester. “I hate them all—except Katharine. But you don’t hate her, either, Walter.”
“Oh—Katharine? No—not exactly. She’s too good-looking to be hated. But she can’t bear me.”