第209章

'Just to show you that it is not for the sake of the picture that I come here. Clara--' Then the door was opened, and Isaac appeared, nature could pile no more. Conway Dalrymple, who had made his way almost up to Clara's seat, turned round sharply towards his easel, in anger, at having been disturbed. He should have been more grateful for all that his Isaac had done for him, and have recognised the fact that the fault had been with himself. Mrs Broughton had been twelve minutes out of the room. She had counted them to be fifteen--having no doubt made a mistake as to three--and had told herself that with such a one as Conway Dalrymple, with so much of the work ready done to his hand for him, fifteen minutes should have been amply sufficient. When we reflect what her own thoughts must have been during the interval--what it is to have to pile up such fagots as those, how she was, as it were, giving away a fresh morsel of her own heart during each minute that she allowed Clara and Conway Dalrymple to remain together, it cannot surprise us that her eyes should have become dizzy, and that she should not have counted the minutes with accurate correctness. Dalrymple turned to his picture angrily, but Miss Van Siever kept her seat and did not show the slightest emotion.

'My friends,' said Mrs Broughton, 'this will not do. This is not working; this is not sitting.'

'Mr Dalrymple had been explaining to me the precarious nature of an artist's profession,' said Clara.

'It is not precarious with him,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton, sententiously.

'Not in a general way, perhaps; but to prove the truth of his words he was going to treat Jael worse than Jael treats Sisera.'

'I was going to slit the picture from the top to the bottom.'

'And why?' said Mrs Broughton, putting her hands to heaven in tragic horror.

'Just to show Miss Van Siever how little I care about it.'

'And how little you care about her, too,' said Mrs Broughton.

'She might take that as she like.' After this there was another genuine sitting, and the real work went on as though there had been no episode.

Jael fixed her face, and held her hammer as though her mind and heart were solely bent on seeming to be slaying Sisera. Dalrymple turned his eyes from the canvas to the model, and from the model to the canvas, working with his hand all the while, as though that last pathetic 'Clara' had never been uttered; and Mrs Dobbs Broughton reclined on a sofa, looking at them and thinking of her own singularly romantic position, till her mind was filled with a poetic frenzy. In one moment she resolved that she would hate Clara as a woman was never hated by woman; and then there were daggers, and poison-cups, and strangling cords in her eye. In the next she was as firmly determined that she would love Mrs Conway Dalrymple as woman was never loved by woman; and then she saw herself kneeling by a cradle, and tenderly nursing a baby, of which Conway was to be the father and Clara the mother. And so she went to sleep.

For some time Dalrymple did not observe this; but at last there was a little sound--even the ill-nature of Miss Demolines could hardly have called it a snore--and he became aware that for practical purposes he and Miss Van Siever were again alone together. 'Clara,' he said in a whisper. Mrs Broughton instantly aroused herself from her slumbers, and rubbed her eyes. 'Dear, dear, dear,' she said, 'I declare it's past one.

I'm afraid I must turn you both out. One more sitting, I suppose, will finish it, Conway?'

'Yes, one more,' said he. It was always understood that he and Clara should not leave the house together, and therefore he remained painting when she left the room. 'And now, Conway,' said Mrs Broughton, 'Isuppose that all is over?'

'I don't know what you mean by being all over.'

'No--of course not. You look at it in another light, no doubt.

Everything is beginning for you. But you must pardon me, for my heart is distracted--distracted--distracted!' Then she sat down upon the floor, and burst into tears. What was he to do? He thought that the woman should either give him up altogether, or not give him up. All this fuss about it was irrational! He would not have made love to Clara Van Siever in her room if she had not told him to do so!

'Maria,' he said, in a very grave voice, 'any sacrifice that is required on my part on your behalf I am ready to make.'

'No sir; the sacrifices shall all be made by me. It is the part of a woman to be ever sacrificial!' Poor Mrs Dobbs Broughton! 'You shall give up nothing. The world is at your feet, and you shall have everything--youth, beauty, wealth, station, love--love; friendship also, if you will accept it from one so poor, so broken, so secluded as I shall be.' At each of the last words there had been a desperate sob;and as she was still crouching in the middle of the room, looking up into Dalrymple's face while he stood over her, the scene was one which had much in it that transcended the doings of everyday life, much that would be ever memorable, and much, I have no doubt, that was thoroughly enjoyed by the principal actor. As for Conway Dalrymple, he was so second-rate a personage in the whole thing, that it mattered little whether he enjoyed it or not. I don't think he did enjoy it. 'And now, Conway,' she said, 'I will give you some advice. And when in after-days you shall remember this interview, and reflect how that advice was given you--with what solemnity.'--here she clasped both her hands together--'I think that you will follow it. Clara Van Siever will now become your wife.'

'I do not know that at all,' said Dalrymple.

'Clara Van Siever will now become your wife,' repeated Mrs Broughton in a louder voice, impatient of opposition. 'Love her. Cleave to her. Make her flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. But rule her! Yes, rule her! Let her be your second self, but not your first self. Rule her!

Love her. Cleave to her. Do not leave her alone, to feed on her own thoughts as I have done--as I have been forced to do. Now go. No, Conway, not a word; I will not hear a word. You must go, or I must.'

Then she rose quickly from her lowly attitude, and prepared herself for a dart to the door. It was better by far that he should go, and so he went.

An American when he has spent a pleasant day will tell you that he has had a 'good time'. I think that Mrs Dobbs Broughton, if she had ever spoken the truth of that day's employment would have acknowledged that she had had a 'good time'. I think that she enjoyed her morning's work.

But as for Conway Dalrymple, I doubt whether he did enjoy his morning's work. 'A man may have too much of this sort of thing, and then he becomes very sick of his cake.' Such was the nature of his thoughts as he returned to his own abode.