Maisie hesitated a little. She even felt uncomfortable.
‘We’re going over to France a month sooner because of it. I shall get the idea sketched out here and work it up at Kami’s.’
Dick’s heart stood still, and he came very near to being disgusted with his queen who could do no wrong. ‘Just when I thought I had made some headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It’s too maddening!’
There was no possibility of arguing, for the red-haired girl was in the studio. Dick could only look unutterable reproach.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘and I think you make a mistake. But what’s the idea of your new picture?’
‘I took it from a book.’
‘That’s bad, to begin with. Books aren’t the places for pictures. And——’
‘It’s this,’ said the red-haired girl behind him. ‘I was reading it to Maisie the other day from The City of Dreadful Night. D’you know the book?’
‘A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken her fancy?’
‘The description of the Melancolia—
‘Her folded wings as of a mighty eagle,
But all too impotent to lift the regal
Robustness of her earth-born strength and pride.
And here again. (Maisie, get the tea, dear.)
‘The forehead charged with baleful thoughts and dreams,
The household bunch of keys, the housewife’s gown,
Voluminous indented, and yet rigid
As though a shell of burnished metal frigid,
Her feet thick-shod to tread all weakness down.’
There was no attempt to conceal the scorn of the lazy voice. Dick winced.
‘But that has been done already by an obscure artist by the name of Durer,’ said he. ‘How does the poem run?—
‘Three centuries and threescore years ago,
With phantasies of his peculiar thought.
You might as well try to rewrite Hamlet. It will be a waste of time.
‘No, it won’t,’ said Maisie, putting down the teacups with a clatter to reassure herself. ‘And I mean to do it. Can’t you see what a beautiful thing it would make?’
‘How in perdition can one do work when one hasn’t had the proper training? Any fool can get a notion. It needs training to drive the thing through,—training and conviction; not rushing after the first fancy.’ Dick spoke between his teeth.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Maisie. ‘I think I can do it.’
Again the voice of the girl behind him—
‘Baffled and beaten back, she works on still;
Weary and sick of soul, she works the more.
Sustained by her indomitable will,
The hands shall fashion, and the brain shall pore,
And all her sorrow shall be turned to labour——
I fancy Maisie means to embody herself in the picture.’
‘Sitting on a throne of rejected pictures? No, I shan’t, dear. The notion in itself has fascinated me.—Of course you don’t care for fancy heads, Dick. I don’t think you could do them. You like blood and bones.’
‘That’s a direct challenge. If you can do a Melancolia that isn’t merely a sorrowful female head, I can do a better one; and I will, too. What d’you know about Melacolias?’ Dick firmly believed that he was even then tasting three-quarters of all the sorrow in the world.
‘She was a woman,’ said Maisie, ‘and she suffered a great deal,—till she could suffer no more. Then she began to laugh at it all, and then I painted her and sent her to the Salon.’
The red-haired girl rose up and left the room, laughing.
Dick looked at Maisie humbly and hopelessly.
‘Never mind about the picture,’ he said. ‘Are you really going back to Kami’s for a month before your time?’
‘I must, if I want to get the picture done.’
‘And that’s all you want?’
‘Of course. Don’t be stupid, Dick.’
‘You haven’t the power. You have only the ideas—the ideas and the little cheap impulses. How you could have kept at your work for ten years steadily is a mystery to me. So you are really going,—a month before you need?’
‘I must do my work.’
‘Your work—bah! … No, I didn’t mean that. It’s all right, dear. Of course you must do your work, and—I think I’ll say good-bye for this week.’
‘Won’t you even stay for tea?
‘No, thank you. Have I your leave to go, dear? There’s nothing more you particularly want me to do, and the line-work doesn’t matter.’
‘I wish you could stay, and then we could talk over my picture. If only one single picture’s a success, it draws attention to all the others. I know some of my work is good, if only people could see. And you needn’t have been so rude about it.’
‘I’m sorry. We’ll talk the Melancolia over some one of the other Sundays. There are four more—yes, one, two, three, four—before you go. Good-bye, Maisie.’
Maisie stood by the studio window, thinking, till the red-haired girl returned, a little white at the corners of her lips.
‘Dick’s gone off,’ said Maisie. ‘Just when I wanted to talk about the picture. Isn’t it selfish of him?’
Her companion opened her lips as if to speak, shut them again, and went on reading The City of Dreadful Night.
Dick was in the Park, walking round and round a tree that he had chosen as his confidante for many Sundays past. He was swearing audibly, and when he found that the infirmities of the English tongue hemmed in his rage, he sought consolation in Arabic, which is expressly designed for the use of the afflicted. He was not pleased with the reward of his patient service; nor was he pleased with himself; and it was long before he arrived at the proposition that the queen could do no wrong.
‘It’s a losing game,’ he said. ‘I’m worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn’t the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She’s cursed with the curse of Reuben. She won’t do line-work, because it means real work; and yet she’s stronger than I am. I’ll make her understand that I can beat her on her own Melancolia. Even then she wouldn’t care. She says I can only do blood and bones. I don’t believe she has blood in her veins. All the same I lover her; and I must go on loving her; and if I can humble her inordinate vanity I will. I’ll do a Melancolia that shall be something like a Melancolia—“the Melancolia that transcends all wit.” I’ll do it at once, con—bless her.’
He discovered that the notion would not come to order, and that he could not free his mind for an hour from the thought of Maisie’s departure. He took very small interest in her rough studies for the Melancolia when she showed them next week. The Sundays were racing past, and the time was at hand when all the church bells in London could not ring Maisie back to him. Once or twice he said something to Binkie about ‘hermaphroditic futilities,’ but the little