Chapter XIV

April was drawing to a close, and every evening the Professor said, "Have you heard from the Academy, my dear?" and sighed when she answered "No." She had begun to conclude that "The Sun's Last Rays" was rejected, and it distressed her to think of the money that she had laid out on the frame. Before the order for that frame was given, the price had been exhaustively debated at the supper-table; she knew that a good frame was a recommendation to a hanging committee--her father had argued that "an artist's work ought to stand on its own merits." In his demeanour now she read a reproach of her extravagance, and each time that he asked her if she had heard yet, it was a greater effort to her to reply.

At last, however--one evening when hope had almost died in her--the servant entered the room with a letter. The Professor lolled in the armchair smoking his pipe; Hilda was engrossed in a "new novel" from Turlington's--published in the previous spring--and Bee herself was sitting idle. Her thoughts flew to David Lee as she watched the girl advance towards her. She had withheld from her family the fact of her correspondence with the poet--withheld it, not because they would regard her friendship with him as an impropriety, but because they would consider she was making herself ridiculous--and she prayed that her father would not ask from whom the letter came. The handwriting relieved her anxiety, and the crest on the flap excited her. The next moment she pulled her varnishing ticket from the envelope.

"From the Academy, my dear?"

"Yes," she exclaimed, "I've got in!"

"What's that?" said Hilda, glancing up from the book. "Got in? Oh, have you--how nice!"

"What do they say?" inquired the old man. "Let me see!"

"It's a ticket for varnishing day," she said. "I wonder how I'm hung."

"Very odd," he remarked, "that they didn't send it you before." He read the ticket attentively, pursing his lips, and turned it over, as if a clue to the delay might be discovered at the back. "What did I tell you? I knew it would be all right. A pity you wasted such a lot on the frame now, eh, my dear?"

She could not perceive that the mistake was demonstrated, but his legitimate triumphs were so few that it would have been petty of her to grudge him an illusory one. "It must have been among the doubtfuls," she explained--"the pictures they didn't make up their minds about at once--that's why I didn't hear before."

"Of course," he said, "there are pictures that are put away to be examined again; the committee can't decide about them right off. Whether they are, taken eventually depends--er--depends on circumstances. They are called the 'doubtfuls.'" He returned her information to her with the air of letting her into a secret. "I expect they thought it a bit dull, you know--a bit dull. It's pretty--it's a pretty thing--but it wants more sunshine. It isn't bright enough. You haven't got the blaze of the gorse into it; that's what you've failed in--you haven't got the blaze of the gorse."

"It's eight o'clock in the evening," she said. "The title is 'The Sun's Last Rays.'"

The sunshine was paling from her spirits too. Extraordinary, she reflected, that it was possible for those who always meant well always to miss saying the things one wanted to hear. Both he and Hilda were genuinely pleased--she knew it--yet how flat the news had fallen! And neither of them had cried, "I wonder how you're hung!"

"Y-e-s, you don't convey the glory of summer, unfortunately; the thing isn't gay enough; there's no heat in it, no glare. That's what's the matter with it, my dear--there isn't the glare there should be. Now, to do justice to that scene, to paint it to advantage, you should have shown it on a scorching afternoon, under a vivid sky. The tramp on the seat should have been hot--mopping his forehead. There might even have been a touch of humour in the figure of the tramp. As it is, he only looks tired. You understand what I mean?"

"Oh yes," she murmured, "I understand. But that isn't the picture I wanted to do. I meant the wayfarer to look tired. I wanted to get what George Eliot called 'the sadness of a summer's evening' into it."

"Mopping his forehead with a red handkerchief, now, would be natural; and the red would liven the picture up. You might paint a red handkerchief in before the Academy opens, mightn't you? Think it over, my dear. A red handkerchief and a brighter light on the gorse would improve the thing wonderfully. It's a pity the man isn't more to the front, more important. He isn't prominent enough. That's where the fault lies really--the tramp isn't prominent enough."

Though it exasperated him to hear the ignorant try to criticise music, he never hesitated to dogmatise about the arts of which he knew nothing himself; and as she listened to him, the elation that had been born within her faded into lassitude. The fact that good news had come appeared to be already forgotten; her sister, having said, "How nice," was again immersed in the novel, and while her father discoursed didactically without once speculating how her picture had been hung, it seemed to Bee that her successes were always made an opportunity for homilies in her home rather than for rejoicing.

How her work had been hung, and how it would look, were doubts that filled her mind when she travelled to town on varnishing day. It was only in moments she even remembered that she was nearing the city that held David Lee. She knew the change that removal from the studio wrought in the aspect of a picture, and she crossed the great courtyard--as an exhibitor for the first time--with increasing nervousness. She went upstairs, and for a quarter of an hour wandered through the rooms in an unavailing search. Then she discovered her work, high in a corner, beside a picture of a child in a bright blue frock, playing with a puppy on a Brussels carpet. She stopped with a heart-quake. Though she had prepared herself to be disappointed, the shock sickened her. Surrounded by other pictures, also clashing with it in subject and treatment, and viewed in the harsh light of the Academy, her quiet landscape appeared to her insignificant and unfamiliar. She marvelled that there could have been hours when she was pleased with it; she stood rooted there, seeking the qualities that had endeared it to her. They had gone--everything had gone! It was the ghost of the landscape that she had painted that appalled her from the Academy walls. The ghost of it. She drooped drearily to a step-ladder and sat down. When she had recovered sufficiently to return to the picture, she put on a light varnish, which brought up the colour of the parts that had sunk in; but varnish could not brighten her mood, and she had little hope that "No. 790" would ever find a purchaser.

She had often reflected with a tremor that when David Lee went to the Academy, he might observe her work and recognise her name in the catalogue. In the novels that Hilda borrowed from Tuffington's the Academy was always revealing somebody's identity to someone else. "He moved to where the crowd was densest, and a minute later a half-cry escaped his lips. The scene that had never faded from his memory--the scene of their farewell--glowed upon the canvas. He knew that only one hand could have portrayed it--knew that the artist who had leapt to fame must be the trustful girl whom he had loved and lost!" Now that there was no danger of the work attracting Mr. Lee's notice, she wondered why she had feared its doing so; her misgiving that it might lead to his finding out the truth about her seemed ridiculous. She even parted regretfully with the prospect of arousing his admiration.

In the train, her despondence was deepened by the thought of having to give an account of the day's experiences when she arrived. While she could imagine nothing sweeter than to be approaching a home where affection was interpreted by tact, her soul fainted before the ordeal of detailing the disappointment to her father and Hilda. She knew that she would feel worse in the parlour than she did in the train, that, besides being dejected, she would be incensed. Whether things went well, or whether they went badly, she mused, it was an equal effort to have to talk about them if the listeners seized upon the trivial, and ignored the point--if they put faith in what they were meant to smile at, and were sceptical where they were asked to believe. How often she had gone home brimming with news, and no sooner imparted the first item than she wished fervently that she hadn't any at all!

The porters bawled "Becken'ampton," and she got out with a sigh, and made her way--dusty, unwilling, tired--towards the house. When she entered it, there were some letters lying on the hall table, and she saw one among them for herself from David. She picked it up, rejoicing; a flush warmed the whiteness of her cheeks, and she forgot she was fatigued. Her home-coming had been happier than she expected after all.