December Love Part 43

He now directed the two pin-points of light to the new visitor, stared at him with almost cruel severity, and yet with a curiously inward look, frowning and lifting his long pursed lips, till the upper lip was pressed against the bottom of his beaked nose.

"Are you going to allow me to paint you?" he said. "That's what I'm after. I should like to do a head and bust of you. I could make something of it--something--yes!"

He still stared with concentrated attention, and suddenly a faint whistle came from his lips. Without removing his eyes from Arabian he whistled several times a little tune of five notes, like the song of a thrush. Arabian meanwhile returned his gaze rather doubtfully, slightly smiling.

"Ever been painted?" said Garstin at last.

"No, never. Once I have sat to a sculptor for the figure. But that was when I was very young. I was something of an athlete as a boy."

"I should say so," said Garstin. "Well, what do you think, eh?"

Miss Van Tuyn had sat down on the sofa again, and was lighting another cigarette. She looked at the two men with interest. She now knew that what Garstin had done he had really done for himself, not for her. As he had said, he did not paint for the pleasure of others, but only for reasons of his own. Apparently he would never gratify her vanity. But he gratified something else in her, her genuine love of talent and the ruthlessness of talent. There was really something of the great man in Garstin, and she appreciated it. She admired him more than she liked him. Even in her frequent irritation against him she knew what he genuinely was. At this moment something in her was sharply disappointed.

But something else in her was curiously satisfied.

In reply to Garstin's question Arabian asked another question.

"You wish to make a portrait of me?"

"I do--in oils."

"Will it take long?"

"I couldn't say. I might be a week over it, or less, or more. I shall want you every day."

"And when it is done?" said Arabian. "What happens to it?"

"If it's up to the mark--my mark--I shall want to exhibit it."

Arabian said nothing for a moment. He seemed to be thinking rather seriously, and presently his large eyes turned towards Miss Van Tuyn for an instant, almost, she thought, as if they wished to consult her, to read in her eyes something which might help him to a decision. She felt that the man was flattered by Garstin's request, but she felt also that something--she did not know what--held him back from granting it. And again she wondered about him.

What was he? She could not divine. She looked at him and felt that she was looking at a book not one of whose pages she could read. And yet she thought he had what is sometimes called an "open" face. There was nothing sly in the expression of his eyes. They met other eyes steadily, sometimes with a sort of frank audacity, sometimes with--apparently--an almost pleading wistfulness.

Finally, as if coming to a conclusion as to what he considered it wise to do for the moment, Arabian said:

"Excuse me, but are these pictures which I see portraits painted by you?"

"Every one of them," said Garstin, rather roughly and impatiently.

"Will you allow me to look at them?"

"They're there to be looked at."

Again Arabian glanced at Miss Van Tuyn. She got up from the sofa quickly.

"I will show Mr. Arabian the pictures," she said.

She had noticed the cloud lowering on Garstin's face and knew that he was irritated by Arabian's hesitation. As Garstin had once said to her he could be "sensitive," although his manners were often rough, and his face was what is usually called a "hard" face. And he was quite unaccustomed to meet with any resistance, even with any hesitation, when he was disposed to paint anyone, man or woman. Besides, the fact of Arabian's arrival at the studio had naturally led Garstin to expect compliance with his wish already expressed at the Cafe Royal. He was now obviously in a surly temper, and Miss Van Tuyn knew from experience that when resisted he was quite capable of an explosion. How, she wondered, would Arabian face an outburst from Garstin? She could not tell. But she thought it wise if possible to avoid anything disagreeable. So she came forward smiling.

"That will be very kind," said Arabian, in his soft and warm voice, and with his marked but charming foreign accent. "I am not expert in these matters."

Garstin pushed up his lips in a sort of sneer. Miss Van Tuyn sent him a look, and for once he heeded a wish of hers.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said. "Have a good stare at my stuff, and if you don't like it--why, d.a.m.n it, you're free to say so."

Miss Van Tuyn's look had sent him away down the stairs to the ground floor studio. Arabian had not missed her message, but he was apparently quite impa.s.sive, and did not show that he had noticed the painter's ill humour.

For the first time Miss Van Tuyn was quite alone with the living bronze.

"Do you know much about pictures?" she asked him.

"Not very much," he answered, with a long, soft look at her. "I have only one way to judge them."

"And what way is that?"

"If they are portraits, I mean."

"Yes?"

"I judge them by their humanity. One does not want to be made worse than one is in a picture."

"I'm afraid you won't like d.i.c.k Garstin's work," she said decisively.

She was rather disappointed. Had this audaciously handsome man a cult for the pretty-pretty?

"Let us see!" he replied, smiling.

He looked round the big studio. As he did so she noticed that he had an extraordinarily quick and all-seeing glance, and realized that in some way, in some direction, he must be clever, even exceptionally clever.

There were some eight to ten portraits in the studio, a few finished, others half finished or only just begun. Arabian went first to stand before the finished portrait of a girl of about eighteen, whose face was already plainly marked--blurred, not sharpened--by vice. Her youth seemed obscured by a faint fog of vice--as if she had projected it, and was slightly withdrawn behind it. Arabian looked at her in silence. Miss Van Tuyn watched him, standing back, not quite level with him. And she saw on his face an expression that suggested to her a man contemplating something he was very much at home with.

"That is a bad girl!" was his only comment, as he moved on to the next picture.

This was also the portrait of a woman, but of a woman well on in life, an elderly and battered siren of the streets, wrecked by men and by drink. Only the head and bust were shown, a withered head crowning a bust which had sunken in. There was an old pink hat set awry on the head. From beneath it escaped coa.r.s.e wisps of almost orange-coloured hair. The dull, small eyes were deep-set under brows which looked feverish. A livid spot of red glowed almost like a torch-end on each high cheek-bone. The mouth had fallen open.

Arabian examined this tragedy, which was one of Garstin's finest bits of work in Miss Van Tuyn's estimation, with careful and close attention, but without showing the faintest symptom of either pity or disgust.

"In my opinion that is well painted," was his comment. "They do get to be like that. And then they starve. And that is because they have no brains."

"Garstin swears that woman must once have been very beautiful," said Miss Van Tuyn.

"Oh--quite possible," said Arabian.

"Well, I can't conceive it."

He turned and gave her a long, steady look, full of softness and ardour.

"It would be very sad if you could," he said. "Excuse me, but are you American?"

"Yes."