We alighted almost in front of a quaint building which looked like an excrescence—a wart—on the visage of a dilapidated chapel. Laura led the way up a garden in size somewhat larger than a postage-stamp, where two heartseases, sole invaders of the desolate gravel, tried to blink golden eyes through a canopy of dust. The door was opened by a youth who mingled an air of proprietorship with the aspect of a waiter at a third-rate café. He waved a hand to rooms, or rather cabins, on the right, through which Laura led me. Cabin the first contained a dining table and a fossil piano utilised as shelf for sundries and sideboard; cabin the second, apparently a sleeping chamber, held a bed, dressing table, and a diminutive bracket on which might have stood a hand basin; while cabin the third—little more than a wooden box papered with promiscuous remnants of a decorator's stock—stored a plank upraised by volunteer legs enlisted from haphazard sources, a basin, a bottle of cloudy water, and a cracked wall mirror.
There Laura slipped off her walking shoes, and announced her intention to make a change of toilette.
I forthwith escaped through the further door, and found myself in a large, bare room, facing a middle-aged man, who was evidently the dancing master, M. Dupres.
I explained my presence and my interest in the ballet.
"I am accompanying my cousin, Miss Lorimer"—this was the stage name by which she was known—"in order to paint the pose of one of my sitters. I want more vibrating actuality, and hope to sketch it here."
"Mais certainement—of course. Ze beauty of ze human form is never so fine as when it moves to my vish. You vill see."
Laura entered in a short, fan-pleated frock with black silk knickerbockers, and lacy frills shrouding the knees. Her silken hose and shiny pumps make her already graceful as she chasséd by way of experiment across the bare boards from the orange-toothed piano at one end to the camp chairs at the other. The ballet-master made his way to a small conservatory—a hospital for effete bulbs and straggling, deformed geraniums—and snatching up a watering-can laid the dust which already began to thicken the air.
Then operations began. To me they were deeply interesting, because Betty's face and form were continually before my eyes, and the one thing wanting to make my work a chef-d'œuvre was, I hoped, on the verge of discovery. Laura placed herself in an attitude, glanced at her instructor, who had armed himself with a fiddle, and with its first tones commenced a series of evolutions. Sketch-book in hand, I followed her movements, now noting a six-step shuffle straight a-down the length of the boards; now sketching the action of her arms, which, balancing that of the feet, swayed inversely with every bend of the knees. Then came an etherealised milkmaid step that might have been termed an arm akimbo gallop had not the two wrists been pressed abnormally forward against the waist, with their pink palms glowing outwards. In this pose poor Laura's limbs looked obdurate as sawdust, while Betty's had bent like wax to the will of the modeller. Meanwhile, the fiddle fluttered, and the master now and then exemplified the grace of any particular attitude he desired. You could observe his beautiful build, the symmetry of every movement, despite the impediment of two gouty-looking feet encased in cloth-covered boots of original design. His features were certainly distinguished, and the trimness of his prematurely blanched hair made a curious contrast to the general dilapidation of the surroundings. His poses, one quickly following the other, were all picturesque. With every turn of the head, or bend of a knee, or stretch of an arm, some fresh revelation of physical equipoise delighted the eye.
Laura went through various new movements of a Spanish Carmen-like fandango with head uplifted and a bravura pout of the chin, after which we preceded her through the dressing-room, where she was left to readjust her walking dress. A sense of disappointment weighed on me. All these attitudes, all these evolutions I had seen in their perfection through the medium of Betty. No grace of motion could equal hers, no actuality portrayed by another could be half as exquisite as even the baldest reminiscence of her.
On the wall of the little bed-chamber where M. Dupres courteously accompanied me were many photographs, faded but still recognisable, of himself dressed in tights or other theatrical frippery. He took evident pleasure in watching my appreciation of the curious attitudes in which—to show off in their fullest perfection the lithe muscles and magnificent symmetry of his agile frame—he had been portrayed.