A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette. Charlotte M. Brame
Your lips have the most exquisite curve. The form of your face, its coloring, your hair, are all simply perfect!"
"You shall paint my picture!" cried Doris, joyously, changing her mood. "You need ask no consent but mine!"
CHAPTER XIII
"FAITHLESS AND DEBONAIR."
"Doris, you must not do it. I cannot bear it!"
"I don't see what difference it makes to you, Earle, and you have no right to interfere, and do it I surely shall."
Thus Doris and Earle on the theme of portrait painting.
Gregory Leslie was too astute a man, too experienced, to take his wandering naiad at her word, and paint her picture, asking no consent but her own. Never had a girl so puzzled him. Her rare beauty, found in so remote and rural a district; her delicate hands, soft, cultured tones, exquisite, high-bred grace, in contrast with her very common, simple, if tasteful, dress: and then her words, so odd – either purest innocence and simplicity, or curious art in wickedness. Who and what was the young enchantress? Then, too, her smile, the turn of her neck, her way evoked constantly some shadowy reminiscence, some picture set far back and grown dim in the gallery of his memory, but surely there. Again and again he strove to catch the fleeing likeness, but at once, with the effort, it was gone.
"If you want to paint me, begin!" said Doris, child-like.
"Pardon. It would inconvenience you to stand here; the sketch even would take time. It must be a work of care. I shall do better if I have your permission to accompany you home. Also I must ask your parents' consent."
"They don't mind!" cried Doris, petulantly, after some little hesitation. "I am only a farmer's daughter." She flushed with bitter vexation at the thought, but seeing the artist immovable in his purpose, added: "I live at Brackenside, it is not far; you can easily come there."
"If you will permit," said Gregory, with courtesy.
"You can come. I have no objection," said Doris, with the air of a princess.
She picked up her basket, and moved away with the grace, the proud bearing of "the daughter of a hundred earls."
Gregory Leslie marveled more and more. As an artist, he was enraptured; as a man, he was puzzled by this new Daphne.
Doris, seemingly forgetting her new cavalier, yet taking a rapid side look at him, considered that he was very handsome, if getting a little gray; also, that his air was that of a man of the world, a dash of the picturesque added to the culture of cities.
She wished Earle would meet them, and go into a spasm of jealousy. But Earle was spared that experience, and only Mark, Patty, and Mattie Brace were at the farm-house, to be dazzled with the beauty's conquest.
Arrived at the gate, Doris turned with proud humility to her escort.
"This is my home. I do not like it. Most people think the place pretty."
"It is a paradise!" said Leslie, enthusiastically.
"Then it must have a serpent in it," quoth Doris.
"I hope not," said Leslie.
"It has. I have felt it bite!"
Mark Brace, with natural courtesy, came from the door to meet them.
"This is an artist that I met at the knoll," said Doris, calmly. "He is looking for subjects for pictures. I think he mentioned his name was Mr. Leslie, and he wishes to paint me."
"Wants a picture of you, my darling!" said honest Mark, his face lighting with a smile. "Then he shows his good taste. Walk in, sir; walk in. Let us ask my wife."
He led the way into the cool, neat, quaint kitchen-room, hated of Doris' soul, but to the artist a study most excellent.
Then did the artist look at the Brace family in deepest wonder. Mark had called the wood-nymph "my darling," and asserted a father's right; and yet not one line or trace of Mark was in this dainty maid.
Leslie turned to study Patty, who had made her courtesy and taken the basket of berries – dark, strong, plump, tidy, intelligent, kindly, plain. Not a particle of Patty in this aristocratic young beauty, who called her "mother" in a slighting tone.
Then, in despair, he fixed his eyes on Mattie Brace – brown, earnest, honest, dark, sad eyes, good, calm – just as little like the pearl-and-gold beauty as the others.
Meanwhile Mark and Patty eyed each other.
"I want to speak to you a minute, Mark," said Patty; and the pair retired to the dairy.
Doris flushed angrily, and drummed on the window-sill.
"Behold a mystery!" said Gregory Leslie to himself.
"Mark," said Patty, in the safe retirement of the milk-pans, "this needs considering. Doris is not our own. To have her picture painted and exhibited in London to all the great folk, may be the last thing her mother would desire: and her mother is yet living, as the money comes always the same way."
"I declare, Patty, I never thought of that."
"And yet, if Doris has set her heart on it, she'll have it done – you see," added Patty.
"True," said Mark. "And people will hardly think of seeking resemblances to middle-aged people in a sort of fancy picture. Better let it be done under our eye, Patty."
"I suppose so, since we cannot hinder its doing."
They returned to the kitchen.
"We have no objection, if you wish to make the picture, sir," said Mark.
"I should think not. I had settled that," said Doris.
"In return for your kindness," said the artist to Patty, "I will make a small portrait of her for your parlor."
So one sitting was given then and there, and others were arranged for.
When Earle came that evening he heard all the story, and then, being with Doris in the garden, they fell out over it, beginning as set forth in the opening of this chapter.
"I cannot and will not have another man gazing at you, studying your every look, carrying your face in his soul."
"If you are to begin by being jealous," said Doris, delighted, "I might as well know. I enjoy jealousy as a proof of love, and as amusing me, but I like admiration, and I mean to have it all my life. If ever I go to London, I expect to have London at my feet. Besides, if you mean to sing me, for all the world, why cannot Mr. Leslie paint me. You say Poetry and Art should wait at the feet of Beauty. Now they shall!"
It ended by truce, and Doris agreed that Earle should be present at every sitting. This calmed Earle, and rejoiced her. She thought it would be charming to pit poet and artist one against the other.
But the sittings did not thus fall out. Earle grew much interested, and he and Gregory took a hearty liking for each other. Gregory admired Doris as a beauty, but his experienced eye detected the lacking loveliness of her soul. Besides, he had no love but art, and his heart shrined one sacred pervading memory. Daily, as he painted, that haunting reminiscence of some long-ago-seen face, or painted portrait, grew upon him. He looked at Doris and searched the past. One day he cried out, as he painted:
"I have it!"
"What have you?" demanded Doris, curiously.
"A face, a name, that you constantly brought to mind in a shadowy way – that you resembled."
"Man or woman?" demanded Doris, eagerly.
"A man."
She was disappointed. She had hoped to hear of some reigning belle of society.
"Was he handsome?" she asked, less interested.
"Remarkably so. How else, if your face was like his?"
"But how can it be like a stranger I never heard of?"
"A coincidence – a freak of nature," said Leslie, slowly.
"And what was he like?" demanded Doris.
"Faithless and debonair! False, false and fair, like all his