One talent demanded of the artist members of the club when they sought admission, and insisted upon by the Committee, was the ability, possessed in a marked degree by Oliver, of making a rapid, telling sketch from life, and at night. So expert had most of the members become that many of their pictures made under the gas-light were as correct in their color-values as those done in the day-time. In this Oliver was past-master. Most of his own work had to be done under artificial light during the long years of his struggle.
The men--they were again on their feet--crowded closer, forming a circle about the easel. They saw that the subject appealed to Oliver, and they knew how much better he could paint when his heart was in his work. His picture of Margaret Grant in the Tam-o'-Shanter cap, the best portrait at the last exhibition, had proved that.
Oliver saw the interest shown in his work and put himself on his mettle. He felt that not only his own reputation, but the honor of the Stone Mugs, was at stake. He felt, too, a certain pride and confidence in the sureness of his touch--a touch that the woman he loved believed in--one she had really taught him herself, He began by blocking in with a bit of charcoal the salient points of the composition. Fred stood on his left hand holding a cigar-box filled with tubes of color, ready to unscrew their tops and pass them to Oliver as he needed them.
As the dark background of greenish black, under the vigorous strokes of his brush, began to relieve the flesh tones, and the coloring of the lips and the japonica in the hair took their places in the color-scheme, a murmur of applause ran through the room.
No such piece of night-work had ever been painted since the club had come together, and certainly not before.
"A Fortuny, by thunder!" burst out Waller. He had been the first man to recognize Oliver's talent in the old days and had always felt proud of his foresight.
For two hours Oliver stood before his canvas, the Countess resting now and then, floating over to the piano, as Simmons had done, running her fingers over its keys, or breaking out into Polish, Hungarian, or French songs at the pleasure of the room. During these rests Oliver turned the picture to the wall. He did not wish her to see it until it was finished. He was trying some brush tricks that Madge loved, some that she had learned in Couture's atelier, and whose full effect could only be recognized in the finished work.
When the last touches of Oliver's brush had been laid on the canvas, and the modest signature, O. H., as was the custom, had been affixed to its lower left-hand corner, he made a low salaam to the model and whirled the easel in front of her.
The cry of delight that escaped her lips was not only an expression of her pleasure, but it convinced every man in the club that the Countess's technical knowledge of what constituted a work of art equalled her many other accomplishments. She sat looking at it with thoughtful, grave face, and her whole manner changed. She was no longer the woman who had so charmed the room. She was the connoisseur, the expert, the jury of last resort. Oliver watched her with absorbing interest as he sat wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Monsieur Horn," she said, slowly, as if weighing each word, "if you come to my country they will cover you all over with medals. I had no idea anyone in this new land could paint as you do. You are a master. Permit me, Monsieur, to make you my obeisance--" and she dipped back on one foot and swept the floor with her skirts.
Oliver laughed, returned the bow with a mock flourish, and began rolling down his shirt-cuffs; a thrill quivering through him--that thrill only felt by a painter when he is conscious that some work of his brush has reached the high-water mark of his abilities.
For only the artist in him had been at work.
What stirred him was not the personality of the Countess--not her charm nor beauty but the harmony of the colors playing about her figure: the reflected lights in the blue-black of her hair; the soft tones of the velvet lost in the shadows of the floor, and melting into the walls behind her; the high lights on the bare shoulder and arms divided by the severe band of black; the subdued grays in the fall of lace uniting the flesh tones and the bodice; and, more than all, the ringing note of red sung by the japonica tucked in her hair and which found its only echo in the red of her lips--red as a slashed pomegranate with the white seed-teeth showing through. The other side of her beautiful self--the side that lay hidden under her soft lashes and velvet touch, the side that could blaze and scorch and burn to cinders--that side Oliver had never once seen nor thought of.
This may have been because, while his fingers worked on, his thoughts were somewhere else, and that he saw another face as he mixed his colors, and not that of the siren before him. Or it may have been that, as he looked into the eyes of the Countess, he saw too deeply into the whirlpool of passion and pain which made up the undercurrent in this beautiful woman's strange life.
Not so the others. Many of whom were the most serious-minded of men where women were concerned.
