第50章 A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN(3)

And, to Potter's intense relief, she grasped the young girl's arm and hurried her away, their figures the next moment vanishing in the tangled shrubbery.

Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped limbs into the water and regaining the other side. Here he quickly half dried himself with some sun-warmed leaves and baked mosses, hurried on his clothes, and hastened off in the opposite direction to the path taken by them, yet with such circuitous skill and speed that he reached the great gateway without encountering anybody. A brisk walk brought him to the station in time to catch a stopping train, and in half an hour he was speeding miles away from Domesday Park and his half-forgotten episode.

. . . . . .

Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the abbey. "I don't see why I mayn't sketch things I see about me," said the young lady impatiently. "Of course, I understand that I must go through the rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the difference between working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a STUDY, and sketching a full or half length in the open air with the wonderful illusion of light and shade and distance--and grouping and combining them all--that one knows and feels makes a picture. The real picture one makes is already in one's self."

"For goodness' sake, Lottie, don't go on again with your usual absurdities. Since you are bent on being an artist, and your Popper has consented and put you under the most expensive master in Paris, the least you can do is to follow the rules. And I dare say he only wanted you to 'sink the shop' in company. It's such horrid bad form for you artistic people to be always dragging out your sketch-books. What would you say if your Popper came over here, and began to examine every lady's dress in society to see what material it was, just because he was a big dry-goods dealer in America?"

The young girl, accustomed to her aunt's extravagances, made no reply. But that night she consulted her sketch, and was so far convinced of her own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and wanted the vivification of color.

When she returned to Paris she began--still secretly--a larger study in oils. She worked upon it in her own room every moment she could spare from her studio practice, unknown to her professor. It absorbed her existence; she grew thin and pale. When it was finished, and only then, she showed it tremblingly to her master.

He stood silent, in profound astonishment. The easel before him showed a foreground of tangled luxuriance, from which stretched a sheet of water like a darkened mirror, while through parted reeds on its glossy surface arose the half-submerged figure of a river god, exquisite in contour, yet whose delicate outlines were almost a vision by the crowning illusion of light, shadow, and atmosphere.

"It is a beautiful copy, mademoiselle, and I forgive you breaking my rules," he said, drawing a long breath. "But I cannot now recall the original picture."

"It's no copy of a picture, professor," said the young girl timidly, and she disclosed her secret. "It was the only perfect statue there," she added diffidently; "but I think it wanted--something."

"True," said the professor abstractedly. "Where the elbow rests there should be a half-inverted urn flowing with water; but the drawing of that shoulder is so perfect--as is YOUR study of it--that one guesses the missing forearm one cannot see, which clasped it. Beautiful! beautiful!"

Suddenly he stopped, and turned his eyes almost searchingly on hers.

"You say you have never drawn from the human model, mademoiselle?"

"Never," said the young girl innocently.

"True," murmured the professor again. "These are the classic ideal measurements. There are no limbs like those now. Yet it is wonderful! And this gem, you say, is in England?"

"Yes."

"Good! I am going there in a few days. I shall make a pilgrimage to see it. Until then, mademoiselle, I beg you to break as many of my rules as you like."

Three weeks later she found the professor one morning standing before her picture in her private studio. "You have returned from England," she said joyfully.

"I have," said the professor gravely.

"You have seen the original subject?" she said timidly.

"I have NOT. I have not seen it, mademoiselle," he said, gazing at her mildly through his glasses, "because it does not exist, and never existed."

The young girl turned pale.