MISS Mason threw a large shovelful of coal on to the fire, then turned to Barnabas, who was sitting astride on a chair, his arms resting on its back, and looking at her with a slight twinkle of amusement in his eyes.
“It’s all very well for you to smile, Barnabas,” she said energetically, “but if my model hadn’t failed me, do you suppose for one moment that I should allow you to be sitting there wasting my morning, and incidentally wasting your own?”
“No waste, dear Aunt Olive,” said Barnabas imperturbably. He had calmly given her the title one day, and it had been adopted by the five other artists of the courtyard. It had pleased Miss Mason immensely, though she occasionally pretended to look upon it as an impertinence. “No waste, dear Aunt Olive. The enormous benefit I invariably derive from your conversation is of incalculably greater advantage to me than the time I should otherwise spend in dabbing paint on canvas. The canvas is always destroyed at the end of two hours, unless the subject happens to be a commission. Your conversation abides for ever engraven on my memory.”
“Barnabas, you’re a fool,” retorted Miss Mason. “Besides, if you were not here I should paint a still life.”
“Oranges against a green or blue earthenware jar—I know,” said Barnabas sorrowfully. “Dear aunt, cui bono? You have dozens of oranges already on canvas, to say nothing of the blue and green jars. You could paint them in your sleep. Why make another representation of them?”
“Don’t mock at my work,” said Miss Mason severely. “You have a lifetime before you, and can afford to waste mornings. I cannot. Remember my age.”
“I’ll try to do so, since you wish it,” returned Barnabas. “It is, however, the one thing I invariably forget.”
“Nonsense,” said Miss Mason. “However, if you won’t go, where is my knitting? I can’t sit entirely idle.”
She took a bundle of white woolwork from a side table. Two steel knitting-needles were stuck into it. She sat down in the big oak chair by the fire, and in a moment the needles were clicking busily. She looked more like one of the three Fates than ever. And somewhere away in a back street a scrap of humanity must have heard the clicking needles, and a thread of white wool must have stretched out invisibly to draw it towards the [Pg 120]hands that held them. Though at the moment Miss Mason knitted serenely unconscious of the fact.
Barnabas watched her in silence.
“For the poor?” he asked politely, after a couple of minutes.
“Babies,” said Miss Mason shortly. “They get little enough welcome, poor mites; but knowing that a white jacket with a bit of blue ribbon run through it is waiting for them, helps the mothers to look forward to their advent with a certain degree of pleasure. It’s curious, the effect of little things.”
“I should hardly have thought——” began Barnabas.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” interrupted Miss Mason. “You’ve never had a baby. Neither have I, for the matter of that.”
She looked up and caught Barnabas’ eyes fixed on her.
“Barnabas, you’re disgraceful!” she exclaimed. “I never know what I say when I begin to talk to you.”
“Therein lies the charm of your conversation,” he assured her. “It is always so unpremeditated.”
“Huh!” said Miss Mason, and she returned to her knitting.
She looked exactly the same as she had looked six months previously, except that there was a new and curious radiance about her eyes. They looked [Pg 121]as if they were absorbing happiness, and giving it forth again in actual light. Also her black dress had given place to a grey one.
The style being unprocurable at any modern shop, she had engaged a sewing-woman to make it for her. The woman was firmly persuaded that Miss Mason was quite mad, but finding her an extremely generous customer, she was perfectly ready to seam grey cashmere into any pattern Miss Mason might require. She had once gone so far as to announce that the costume was picturesque. Something in her manner as she made the statement had annoyed Miss Mason.
“Picturesque! Nothing of the kind!” Miss Mason had retorted. “It is serviceable and comfortable, and suited to a woman of my age. Some women of sixty make fools of themselves in a couple of yards of silk nineteen inches wide. I make a fool of myself in twelve yards of cashmere forty inches wide. That’s all the difference. But I prefer my own folly.” And the sewing-woman had retired crestfallen.
“I saw Paul yesterday,” remarked Barnabas after a moment.
“I like him,” said Miss Mason succinctly.
“So do I,” returned Barnabas. “He is so refreshingly clean. He always looks as if he had just completed a toilette in which baths, aromatic soap, and hair-brushes had played an important part.”
“Yet he manages to escape looking shiny,” said Miss Mason.
“We all take baths,” went on Barnabas thoughtfully; “at least, I hope so. But with the majority of people one has to take the fact of their scrupulous cleanliness more on faith than by sight. With Paul it is so extraordinarily apparent.”
“What is he doing at the moment?” asked Miss Mason.
“Painting the portrait of a certain Duchessa di Corleone. I happened to see the lady leaving the studio. She is remarkably beautiful. Paul has the devil’s own luck. I have to spend my time painting middle-aged women with hair groomed by their maids till they look like barbers’ blocks, or pink-cheeked girls with a perpetual smile.”
“Don’t paint them if you dislike doing it,” said Miss Mason.
“Dear Aunt Olive, I must.”
“No such thing. You have an excellent private income.”
“I grant you that. It is, however, not the point. I am a portrait painter. It is my métier. To be a portrait painter one must paint portraits. The two things are inseparable.”
“Paint models, then,” said Miss Mason. “Choose your subject.”
“It is not the same thing,” replied Barnabas gravely. “A model who is paid for sitting does not rank with a creature who pays one to immortalize their material features on canvas. To say I have a model coming to sit for me this morning is nothing. To say the Lady Mayoress of So-and-So comes to my study at eleven o’clock this morning is quite another matter. At first your fellow-artists say, ‘Pure swank on his part.’ But when eleven o’clock arrives, and with it the Lady Mayoress in a gold coach with four horses and velvet-breeched lackeys with cocked hats—why, then the whole thing assumes totally different proportions. I am regarded in a new light. I become a person of importance among my fellow-men. I gaze upon a double chin, boot-button eyes, and a smile that won’t come off, enduring mental torture thereby, in order that later I may strut from my studio with an air of swagger, and hear myself spoken of as ‘John Kirby, the portrait painter.’ And once more I ask you, how can one attain to the distinction of portrait painter if one does not paint portraits?”
“Barnabas, you’re ridiculous,” said Miss Mason. “You talk of nothing seriously, not even your art which you love. But if you could be serious for ten minutes, I’d like to ask you about a scheme I have in my mind.”
There was a little hesitancy in the last words. Barnabas looked up quickly.
“I’m attending,” he said gravely.
“You know,” said Miss Mason quietly, “that for a woman who spends as little as I do I am very rich.”
Barnabas nodded. “I thought you must have a good bit of money,” he said, glancing round the studio.
Miss Mason followed the direction of his glance.
“That was rather—what you would call a splurge—on my part,” said Miss Mason. “Fact is, I have about fifteen thousand a year. If I spend two in the year it will be all I shall do.”
“Yes,” said Barnabas gravely.
“Of course,” went on Miss Mason, growing gruffer as she became more in earnest, “I’ve told you how much I care for art. Suppose I inherited the love of it from my father. See now, it’s little use loving it if one doesn’t get the chance to work when one’s young—I mean as far as one’s own creation is concerned. Get a lot of pleasure dabbing paint on canvas, making pictures of oranges, and drawing charcoal heads. But the time’s past for me to do anything serious in that line. Glad you’re honest enough not to contradict me. Been thinking, though, that there must be others who would like the chance. Care so much myself, would like to help them.” She stopped.
“A ripping idea,” said Barnabas warmly.
“Thought,” went on Miss Mason, “that if five thousand pounds a year went for that purpose it’d be something—give twenty would-be artists the chance, anyhow. Each would-be artist to have an income of two hundred and fifty pounds for five [Pg 125]years while they are studying—longer if you thought well. Then another to take their place. Want them to be people who’d really care. Love the work. Want you to help me. Don’t rush the matter. If you can find the right people let me know. You’re a young man. Would like to appoint you as my executor in the scheme. You could carry on the work. Would like, though, to see it started.” Miss Mason looked anxiously at Barnabas. The little speech had cost her a great effort. It was the outcome of the thought of many weeks.
Barnabas met her look. “There’s nothing I should like better than to help you in the scheme,” he said warmly. “It’s fine. By Jingo! Twenty men to have their chance every five years. Think of it!”
“Am ready to include women too,” said Miss Mason, “as long as”—she continued, getting gruffer than ever—“they aren’t giving up other duties to it. Might find some women glad to have a chance too. Would have liked it myself. You go about among people. Can let me know later. Don’t rush it.”
“It’s fine,” said Barnabas again. “Aunt Olive, you’re a brick!”
The boyish compliment brought the colour to Miss Mason’s cheeks.
“Glad you like the idea,” she said.
A sudden gust of wind tore round the studio, and a torrential shower, half of sleet, half of hail, beat down upon the skylight.
“Abominable weather!” said Miss Mason, clicking her knitting-needles furiously. She did not even now guess how near to her the scrap of humanity had been drawn by the thread of white wool.
“We have much for which to be thankful,” began Barnabas piously, “a blazing fire, a roof——”
His further reflections were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“See who it is, will you?” said Miss Mason. “Sally is busy. If it is a beggar send him or her away. I don’t encourage them.”
Barnabas grinned broadly, knowing the untruth of the statement. He heaved himself off the chair and went towards the door.
There was a moment’s parley. Then he returned, followed by a small and weird figure. Its sex was indistinguishable. A man’s coat frayed and torn reached to the top of a pair of patched boots many sizes too large for the feet they covered, a man’s slouched hat hid nearly the whole of the face.
“It says it is a model,” announced Barnabas. “Its language is a mixture of French and broke............