“I positively decline to hear my future stepmother spoken of as a person!”
“I dare say the word flatters her. I’m telling all your mother’s old friends that we’ve got to cut the woman on principle.”
“The town will sit at her feet. You will yourself call upon her the day of her arrival.”
“Not unless I’m insane, Wayne Craighill! The newspapers everywhere are making us out the wickedest city in the world, and between stock gambling and poker and divorces and worse we’re undoubtedly going to the bad. It’s time for us old settlers to assert ourselves. This woman your father is going to marry may be perfectly respectable, but I decline to know her.”
With this declaration Mrs. Wingfield rejoined her charges who hovered discreetly in a far corner in the belief that she was lecturing Wayne Craighill upon his sins. Wayne had been touched by her kindness in speaking to him when other women in her own circle were cutting him; and the encounter left him brooding upon his father’s marriage.
He wondered whether his mother’s friends would really show any resentment at the coming of his father’s new wife. He had watched such cases before and was skeptical. His father was a man of far-reaching business interests, and while there were women like Mrs. Wingfield who were courageous enough themselves to support a sentiment, their husbands would counsel caution and advise against incurring the ill-will of a man of Colonel Craighill’s wealth and influence. He had the gallery to himself for a few minutes and sat down before one of the more important new portraits that he had particularly wished to see. He could not fix his mind upon it, but sat staring at the canvas.
A young woman had entered the hall and was moving slowly along the line studying the pictures with the greatest intentness. She was without hat or coat and carried in her hand a tablet and pencil. She quite obscured now the portrait at which he had been staring vacantly; it seemed, for an instant, before his eyes accommodated themselves to the intrusion of her interposed figure, that she had slipped into the canvas itself. The lady of the portrait, in her sumptuous evening toilet, was not, however, long to be confused with this girl in her plain cloth skirt and simple shirt-waist. She was studying the portrait critically, her head tilting now to one side, now to another, as she surveyed the great artist’s work. Her movements were swift and eager, and she made, he thought, an obeisance of reverence before the lady’s portrait; but she remained crouched upon one knee and upon the other held her tablet and sketched rapidly with her pencil. He had at first thought her an attachée of the gallery, but now he surmised that she was a student of the art school, rendering homage before a picture whose charm and technical perfection commanded her admiration. It was a worthy object for anyone’s homage, Wayne knew, as he surveyed it over the girl’s dark head. He sat very quiet, fearing that he might disturb her, glancing from the richly clad lady in the frame to her kneeling figure. Her shirt-waist was plain and of cheap material; the skirt disclosed a coarse shoe that had clearly been bought for service. Poor girls with ambitions in the arts did not appeal to him abstractly; there was never any chance of their getting anywhere. But he was, it cannot be denied, a man who rarely missed an opportunity where women are concerned. His adventures had been many and discreditable. He had tried his powers often and had the conceit of his successes. He was already seeking some excuse for addressing her.
Suddenly she rose, with a little hopeless sigh, crumpling the sketch in her fingers.
“Sargent didn’t do it either, the first time,” remarked Wayne.
“No,” she replied, her eyes wistfully upon the picture, “I suppose he didn’t.”