Celibates Part 3

'I shall look to your drawing many times before I allow you to begin painting. It will take you at least a couple of days to get it right.... Don't be afraid,' he said, glancing round; 'lots of them can't do as well as you. I shall be back about lunch time.'

The picture that Mildred had elected to copy was Reynolds's angel heads. She looked at the brown gold of their hair, and wondered what combination of umber and sienna would produce it. She studied the delicate bloom of their cheeks, and wondered what mysterious proportions of white, ochre, and carmine she would have to use to obtain it. The bright blue and grey of the eyes frightened her. She felt sure that such colour did not exist in the little tin tubes that lay in rows in the black j.a.panned box by her side. Already she despaired. But before she began to paint she would have to draw those heavenly faces in every feature. It was more difficult than sketching from nature. She could not follow the drawing, it seemed to escape her. It did not exist in lines which she could measure, which she could follow. It seemed to have grown out of the canvas rather than to have been placed there. The faces were leaned over--illusive foreshortenings which she could not hope to catch. The girl in front of her was making, it seemed to Mildred, a perfect copy. There seemed to be no difference, or very little, between her work and Reynolds's.

Mildred felt that she could copy the copy easier than she could the original.

But on the whole she got on better than she had expected, and it was not till she came to the fifth head, that she found she had drawn them all a little too large, and had not sufficient s.p.a.ce left on her canvas. This was a disappointment. There was nothing for it but to dust out her drawing and begin it all again. She grew absorbed in her work; she did not see the girl in front of her, nor the young man copying opposite; she did not notice their visits to each other's easels; she forgot everything in the pa.s.sion of drawing. Time went by without her perceiving it; she was startled by the sound of her master's voice and looked in glad surprise.

'How are you getting on?' he said.

'Very badly. Can't you see?'

'No, not so badly. Will you let me sit down? Will you give me your charcoal?'

'The first thing is to get the heads into their places on the canvas; don't think of detail; but of two or three points, the crown of the head, the point of the chin, the placing of the ear. If you get them exactly right the rest will come easily. You see there was not much to correct.' He worked on the drawing for some few minutes, and then getting up he said, 'But you'll want some lunch; it is one o'clock.

There's a refreshment room downstairs. Let me introduce you to Miss Laurence,' he said. The women bowed. 'You're doing an excellent copy, Miss Laurence.'

'Praise from you is praise indeed.'

'I would give anything to paint like that,' said Mildred.

'You've only just begun painting,' said Miss Laurence.

'Only a few months,' said Mildred.

'Miss Lawson does some very pretty sketches from nature,' said Mr.

Hoskin; 'this is her first attempt at copying.'

'I shall never get those colours,' said Mildred. 'You must tell me which you use.'

'Mr. Hoskin can tell you better than I. You can't have a better master.'

'Do you copy much here?' asked Mildred.

'I paint portraits when I can get them to do; when I can't, I come here and copy.... We're in the same boat,' she said, turning to Mr.

Hoskin. 'Mr. Hoskin paints beautiful landscapes as long as he can find customers; when he can't, he undertakes to copy a Turner.'

Mildred noticed the expression that pa.s.sed over her master's face. It quickly disappeared, and he said, 'Will you take Miss Lawson to the refreshment room, Miss Laurence? You're going there I suppose.'

'Yes, I'm going to the lunch-room, and shall be very glad to show Miss Lawson the way.'

And, in company with quite a number of students, they walked through the galleries. Mildred noticed that Miss Laurence's nose was hooked, that her feet were small, and that she wore brown-leather shoes.

Suddenly Miss Laurence said 'This way,' and she went through a door marked 'Students only.' Mr. Hoskin held the door open for her, they went down some stone steps looking on a courtyard. Mr. Hoskin said, 'I always think of Peter De Hooch when I go down these stairs. The contrast between its twilight and the brightness of the courtyard is quite in his manner.'

'And I always think how much I can afford to spend on my lunch,' said Elsie laughing.

The men turned to the left top to go to their room, the women turned to the right to go to theirs.

'This way,' said Miss Laurence, and she opened a gla.s.s door, and Mildred found herself in what looked like an eating-house of the poorer sort. There was a counter where tea and coffee and rolls and b.u.t.ter were sold. Plates of beef and ham could be had there, too. The students paid for their food at the counter, and carried it to the tables.

'I can still afford a plate of beef,' said Miss Laurence, 'but I don't know how long I shall be able to if things go on as they've been going. But you don't know what it is to want money,' and in a rapid glance Miss Laurence roughly calculated the price of Mildred's clothes.

A tall, rather handsome girl, with dark coa.r.s.e hair and a face lit up by round grey eyes, entered.

'So you are here, Elsie,' and she stared at Mildred.

'Let me introduce you to Miss Lawson. Miss Lawson, Miss Cissy Clive.'

'I'm as hungry as a hawk,' Cissy said, and she selected the plate on which there was most beef.

'I haven't seen you here before, Miss Lawson. Is this your first day?'

'Yes, this is my first day.'

They took their food to the nearest table and Elsie asked Cissy if she had finished her copy of Etty's 'Bather.' Cissy told how the old gentleman in charge of the gallery had read her a lecture on the subject. He did not like to see such pictures copied, especially by young women. Copies of such pictures attracted visitors. But Cissy had insisted, and he had put her and the picture into a little room off the main gallery, where she could pursue her nefarious work unperceived.

The girls laughed heartily. Elsie asked for whom Cissy was making the copy.

'For a friend of Freddy's--a very rich fellow. Herbert is going to get him to give me a commission for a set of nude figures. Freddy has just come back from Monte Carlo. He has lost all his money.... He says he's "stony" and doesn't know how he'll pull through.'

'Was he here this morning?'

'He ran in for a moment to see me.... I'm dining with him to-night.'

You're not at home, then?'

'No, I forgot to tell you, I'm staying with you, so be careful not to give me away if you should meet mother. Freddy will be back this afternoon. I'll get him to ask you if you'll come.'

'I promised to go out with Walter to-night.'

'You can put him off. Say that you've some work to finish--some black and white.'

'Then he'd want to come round to the studio. I don't like to put him off.'

'As you like.... It'll be a very jolly dinner. Johnny and Herbert are coming. But I daresay Freddy'll ask Walter. He'll do anything I ask him.'

When lunch was over Cissy and Elsie took each other's arms and went upstairs together. Mildred heard Cissy ask who she was.

Elsie whispered, 'A pupil of Ralph's. You shouldn't have talked so openly before her.'

'So his name is Ralph,' Mildred said to herself, and thought that she liked the name.

IV.

Mildred soon began to perceive and to understand the intimate life of the galleries, a strange life full of its special idiosyncrasies.

There were t.i.tled ladies who came with their maids and commanded respect from the keeper of the gallery, and there was a lady with bright yellow hair who occasioned him much anxiety. For she allowed visitors not only to enter into conversation with her, but if they pleased her fancy she would walk about the galleries with them and take them out to lunch. There was an old man who copied Hogarth, he was madly in love with a young woman who copied Rossetti. But she was in love with an academy student who patronised all the girls and spent his time in correcting their drawings. A little further away was another old man who copied Turner. By a special permission he came at eight o'clock, two hours before the galleries were open. It was said that with a tree from one picture, a foreground from another, a piece of distance from a third, a sky from a fourth, he had made a picture which had taken in the Academicians, and had been hung in Burlington House as an original work by Crome. Most of his work was done before the students entered the galleries; he did very little after ten o'clock; he pottered round from easel to easel chattering; but he never imparted the least of his secrets. He knew how to evade questions, and after ten minutes' cross-examination he would say 'Good morning,' and leave the student no wiser than he was before. A legend was in circulation that to imitate Turner's rough surfaces he covered his canvas with plaster of Paris and glazed upon it.