This apologetic theory was finally accepted. Dawes, the manager, whose surplus income had gone into the bank rather than into his liver, purchased the estate's interest, and on the proceeds Stanwood had now for five years been conducting his elaborate studio on Copley Square.
The completion of Miss Maitland's portrait was marked by one of the artist's characteristic functions. By any person in the ordinary walks of life it would have been called a tea, but Pelgram preferred to denominate it a private view. Every time he completed a work that he considered of real importance—relatively more often than modesty might have prescribed—he celebrated the birth of the masterpiece by one of these oddly termed baptisms in tannin. Possibly they were entitled to be called views, as the opus bravely challenged the tea table in popularity, and occasionally won by superior powers of endurance over a necessarily limited supply of edibles, but certainly the privacy was questionable, as to each one of them Stanwood invited nearly every one who might be expected to come.
Fortunately not a large proportion of these actually turned up. Some came because they were under obligations to the artist, and some because he was under obligations to them; some from vague curiosity, and others from sheer ignorance. Those who appeared at such a one as this, where the portrait of a young girl was displayed, were roughly limited to a few easily identified classes. There was centrally the young girl herself, and then there were the members of her family, all radiant except the purchaser of the picture, who customarily showed traces of sobriety and skepticism. There were one or two prospective patrons lured to the trap; some ephemeral sycophants, volunteer or mercenary; a few idle fellow artists who enjoyed seeing a colleague make what they considered to be an exhibition of himself; some inevitable people who went everywhere they were asked, especially when there was a prospect of something to eat; and a few puzzled and lonely-looking souls who could furnish no explanation of their attendance, did not stay very long, and never came a second time.
At this view the role of sycophants was to be played by two young girls who had taken up self-cultivation as a sort of fad, and had somehow become obsessed with the curious idea that art such as was found in Pelgram's studio could assist them in their commendable pursuit of culture. Their host was consequently delighted when, at an early hour, Miss Heatherton and Miss Long arrived, as they had promised to do. Their manifest adoration would produce an admirable spot light in which he might stand during the function, but more than that, he hoped that Helen herself would be impressed by the deep regard in which these fair disciples evidently held him and his work. Miss Heatherton was to pour the tea, and Miss Long was to distribute the thin lettuce sandwiches which formed its somewhat unsubstantial accompaniment.
Miss Heatherton's initial remark demonstrated the fact that, despite her plunge into what her family considered a dangerous part of Bohemia, she had managed to preserve intact her adherence to the traditional in conversational matters. When Pelgram escorted her to the tea table, she bleated a pathetic protest against his positive inhumanity in placing her where the great work was invisible.
"Oh, Mr. Pelgram, you are really cruel! Eleanor, don't you think he might have put me where I could sit and look at that beautiful portrait, and not down here at the other end of the room?"
Miss Long, a tall girl with large liquid eyes and a weak red mouth, languidly murmured a sympathetic assent, and their host smiled deprecatingly, but with an inward glow of satisfaction; such a remark was obviously not inspired by the exact truth, but it was nevertheless pleasant to hear.
"Ah, Miss Heatherton," he replied, "perhaps after all it is better as I have ordered it. For its little hour the picture should reign with its sovereignty unquestioned, while if you were near by—" he broke off meaningly, and Miss Long rewarded his compliment with a bovine glance of rapture, while Miss Heatherton looked modestly down at the teapot. Even to an unaesthetic person the arrangement seemed very good indeed, but rather for the more practical reason that the proximity of food and drink would very likely have distracted the attention of some of the more hungry visitors to such a degree that the work of art might have been comparatively ignored.
The next to arrive were Isabel Hurd and Wilkinson. Wilkinson had not been invited, but on hearing his cousin say that she was starting for the studio, he promptly announced that he would accompany her. He knew that Pelgram disliked him intensely, but he did not feel the slightest hesitation on that account in accepting the artist's hospitality, and in fact quite enjoyed the prospect of a dash into the enemy's country. To be sure, he saw little chance of loot except a trifling modification of his chronic afternoon hunger; but Isabel's society was desirable, and Pelgram appealed vividly to his sense of the ludicrous. His reception was all he could have hoped; his host greeted him with outward affability, but when he extended his hand from the black velvet cuff with the handkerchief tucked into it, his face expressed the hidden anguish of anticipated ridicule to such a degree that Wilkinson felt his visit already justified.
"It is very good of you to come," said the artist, with a forced smile.
"I had no idea you were interested in art."