VIII
THE PICTURE
Just how it came about Milly never remembered, but in the weeks that followed it was arranged that Jack should do the Russian lady's portrait. Milly flattered herself at the time that she had produced this result. Madame Saratoff came rarely to the hotel after she was installed in her old manoir, but she often drove to the beach for her bath and took Milly home with her for luncheon. And Jack would join them late in the long afternoon for tea. On one of these occasions the affair was settled.
Bragdon decided to do the figure out of doors in a corner of the ruined garden wall with a clustering festoon of purple creeper above and a narrow slit of sea in the distant background. Against the gray and green and purple of the wall he placed Madame Saratoff, who was tall, with a supple, bony figure. It was for him a daring and difficult composition. The first afternoon, while the figure was being lined in with charcoal, Milly was much excited. She tried to keep quite still, but Madame Saratoff persisted in making little jokes and impertinent comments upon the artist. She did not seem to feel the importance of the event. Milly thought to herself, "How wonderful if he should do a really stunning picture and have it in the Salon next season!" and she said to herself, "Portrait of the Baroness Saratoff by John Archer Bragdon." That would be a start towards fame!
But the start was scarcely perceptible those first days. Milly could make nothing of the blurred canvas and was depressed. Jack seemed more intent on watching the lithe figure, with the mottled flesh tones, the steel-blue eyes, the mocking mouth than in putting brush to canvas. When Milly complained of his dawdling, the Baroness remarked with a curl of her lips,—
"How do you expect an artist to work with his wife hanging over his brushes and counting every stroke?"
Milly pretended to be hurt and ran off to the other end of the garden. She asked her husband on their way back if she were really in the way, and though he laughed at her question and considered the Russian woman's remark as merely one of her rather feline jokes, Milly did not come the next day. She said the baby was sick, and needed her attention. It was several days before she returned to the manoir, and then because Jack made a point of it. She was astonished at the progress which he had made. The picture had suddenly leaped into life.
"See!" the Russian remarked, indicating the canvas with a slow sweep of her long, thin fingers. "The painter has done all that without his wife's help."
Milly resented the joke. But it was true that in these few days the picture had grown surprisingly: the pose of the tall figure, the background was all firmly worked in, and he had begun to define the features,—the perilous part. Already something of the subtle mockery of the Russian woman's expression was there. Milly turned away. For the first time she felt outside her husband's world and in the way. Presently, in spite of the Baroness's protests, she took little Paul Saratoff to the beach. When her husband came in at the hotel just in time for dinner and expressed surprise that she had not returned to the manoir for him, she said coldly,—