“Step back here by this holly tree; this distance is needed to preserve the atmosphere,” said Ashton, guiding her by the sleeve into an alcove formed of holly and laurel bushes arranged to shelter an exquisite ivory statuette of Diana, the crescent, fillet, and bow being of rich gold.
“I have never before seen pictures so well hung,” said Brooke, glancing about as they waited for the crowd to move on, as it soon inevitably would, toward the banquet hall.
“A well-placed remark, Miss Brooke, sent straight home,” gurgled Ashton, plucking at his collar, which was too tight for his short neck. “I may say that I virtually hung these pictures, for I sent the Senator the man who did, you know. Before I forget it, the Bagby girls and the rest asked me to see you about arranging a benefit concert for that pretty little Julia Garth,—used to give such stunning musicales a year ago,—now old Garth is dead, and they’ve gone to no-put-together smash! Yes, not a cent! I’ve offered my studio for it, and they thought perhaps you’d give a picture to raffle,—just any little thing you’ve thrown off in a hurry will do.”
His words passed almost unheard, for while he was speaking the crowd parted and the entire painting became visible. Brooke, leaning forward, at first flushed, then grew white to the lips. The scene set before her was a bit in the depths of the park at Fontainebleau. A grassy path melted away in the distance between great sombre oaks that strengthened as they reached the foreground. At the foot of one of these sat a man, an artist, who had been sketching, for his implements lay on the sward before him. His whole position was of dejection, except the head, which was raised in a startled attitude. A little behind him stood a young woman, clad in the dainty summer dress of every day, ash-brown hair loosely caught up beneath a simple hat, paint box and luncheon basket slung from her shoulder. One hand rested on the gnarled oak trunk, the other, reaching across his shoulder, dropped into the man’s idle, listless hands a bunch of golden grapes, that in their ripeness carried sunlight with them. Graceful and charming as was the composition, it was the handling of the light wherein the magic lay. Sifting down between the leaves, the glow of early afternoon hovered about the girl’s bent head like a halo, and passing behind, fell upon the man’s upturned face, transfiguring it with a sort of holy joy, then focussed and was swallowed in the bunch of grapes.
A voice seemed calling in Brooke’s ears: “The last afternoon, when you all went sketching with the master, and after lunching in the woods you overtook the brotherhood of Clichy (as Lorenz’s coterie was called). Farther on and apart you found him alone, with head bent. You thought he was asleep and dropped the cool grapes in his hands, half as a trick, darting away again. Then good Madame Druz, the chaperon of the day, coming up, scolded you for ‘American imprudence,’ and finally that night you cried, half at her vulgar interpretation of a harmless act, and half because Lorenz never gave word or sign before your leaving. And because not a single flower of the mass that filled your railway carriage was from him, you let Lucy amuse herself all the way to Cherbourg by pelting officials with them at each station passed. He has painted you as you were!” cried the voice; “his face is as he might wish it to be.”
It required an effort on Brooke’s part not to cry out, “Hush! speak lower!” so real did the words seem.
“Good work, isn’t it?—though half a dozen of us here at home could do as well, if we had the atmosphere, you know,” said Ashton’s voice, sounding through the rush of waters that filled her ears. “The Senator boasts that he was the first to recognize the artist whom every one now applauds, and he paid a cool ten thousand for it, the man’s first important picture at that! The old man saw it in the new Salon, but it wasn’t for sale. ‘No, no, no,’ said the artist,—‘he had a superstition, a sentiment, a desire to keep it,’—but the Senator thought ‘Yes, yes, yes, the desire will decrease with time and—money,’ and so it did, for this fall, just as the Parkses were on the verge of leaving, the Senator doubled the first offer and Lorenz capitulated. Then, before the ‘brotherhood’ could borrow his ‘luck penny’ he disappeared somewhere in Normandy, they say, to study, out of the depressing sound of the pot-boiling of the Quarter. Half his friends were glad, Ridgeway wrote me, and the other half, being jealous, shrugged their shoulders and raised their eyes, groaning, ‘Another mad American!’
“I have it all down fine, you see, for the papers to-morrow,—great scheme! I had a Harvard chum that was, Tom Brownell, who won’t go the respectable pace his father set for him in finance, and has turned reporter, work it up. He wants news, and, plague it, it must be true or he won’t touch it. Of course I don’t appear in it, but all the credit is socially mine, you see.
“Why, come to think of it, Miss Brooke, I believe the girl looks a bit like you! Did you ever chance to see this man? But then, of course, so many charming women look alike in those stunning shirt-waist things, you know. What do you make of the name?”
Brooke wished that he might babble on as long as possible, that she might learn the painting by heart and try to fathom the peculiarity of the shaft of light, but as he stopped she said, almost without thought, “Eucharistia! why may it not be the girl’s name?”