Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 13

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Still in the strange state of mind where volition seemed to be absent, she came out of the dressing room. Only a vague question was in her thoughts, hinging on what he might think of her when he saw her. The gray flannel robe she had found and wrapped about her body was the only garment she wore.

Erskine stood beside his easel, on which he had placed a fresh canvas. He had donned a smeared smock and was mixing paints with a palette knife. Laying down his palette, he came toward her, his face now strangely pale, strangely remote and introspective.

“I’ve decided just how I want to place you,” he said. “Here, stand on this rug, with the red sofa behind. This lamp with the red silk shade will be beside you to illuminate the figure on that side with a delicate rosy tint, contrasting with the opalescent white of the opposite side. There. Now let me take the robe.”

For just an instant she clutched the robe closely about her. To surrender every protection for her body in the presence of a man not even her lover was a novel and suddenly shocking experience. But his quiet air of doing the accustomed, natural thing and his hands held out expectantly for her garment overcame her reluctance. After a moment she opened the robe, drew it off, and handed it to him.

A sudden shrinking came over her. She stood before him half huddled, one arm drawn across her body at the confluence of her thighs, the other as if seeking to conceal her small breasts, the attitude of a woman confused and shamed.

Erskine clapped his hands softly.

“Perfect!” he cried. “Perfect! Don’t move—hold that!”

He brought a scarlet scarf with fringed edges. “Here—I want you to hold this in your lower hand—trail it thus, down along your hip and thigh across the floor at your feet. So. It counterpoints the red lamp and provides a touch of drama—as if the woman is surprised in the intimacy of her bath. Remember that pose; fix it in your mind! I’ll paint fast—I promise that I’ll paint very fast——”

Holding the scarf gave her something to do and she gained confidence. She kept the pose and somewhat hazily reflected that nudity, after all, is not so unnatural to a woman ... she is at her most effective in that state, and she knows it.

He returned to his easel and for a moment looked at her intensely, as if he would fix her image in his mind forever.

“I shall call it Odalisque!” he exclaimed, and began rapidly to sketch on his canvas.

Very quickly he took up his palette and began to paint. He seemed imbued by a kind of fury that surprised her. The room was warm, and she saw the sweat beading out on his forehead. Even in her nudity she felt a dampness beneath her arms and under her breasts from the warmth, but she steadfastly withheld from movement.

After a time the pose became tiring, but he spoke to her continually, praising her figure, her patience, her intelligence when she obeyed his wishes and showed her understanding by slight shifts of feet, body, or head. She knew he was flattering her, but she found it pleasing to have him gaze upon her and speak of her form as if it were a vision from heaven.

Gone was her alarm and confusion. She was only interested, now that her instinctive shrinking had passed, in being a good model, in giving him what he desired for the painting. She tried to feel his joy, to share companionship with him in the creation they were bringing into being together, and to a degree she did succeed in this, though her arms began to ache, and her back also, from her long-held position.

She wondered what kind of an abstraction he was making of her simple white female body, and now as she grew fatigued she did not greatly care. Perhaps she would not even understand it, but she could say to herself at least that she had posed for an artist who was mad about her form. A little fillip to life. She tried to continue in this reckless light mood, but it grew less light, then faded under the soggy weariness of her flesh.

For the first time now she observed the expression of his face. She was struck by it. He seemed transformed, his expression resembling that of a man in profound suffering. His mouth was half open, the lines from the corners of the nostrils deepened in a strange, almost sinister manner, in his eyeballs was a glare like that of a madman ... or something else.

It almost frightened her.

“Erskine, Erskine!” she cried out. “I can’t! I’m too tired to do any more.”

In the act of putting on a brush stroke he paused, gazed at her as if uncomprehending, the wild glare still in his eyes. Then he completed the stroke, and the expression smoothed itself from his face.

“Of course, darling,” he said. “I’ve overworked you. Forgive me——”

He put down the palette and brush and drew the smock over his head.

She straightened, rubbing her aching arms and bending her back. The gray robe was thrown over a chair and she took it up. Strange how quickly the habits of the model take possession. She seemed to have lost all self-consciousness toward him, no more than drawing the robe over her shoulders and loosely about her.

“Can I see the painting now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said in a voice strangely heavy. “It’s not finished by any means—we’ll have to complete it later.”

She went over and gazed at the canvas, and gave a startled gasp.

“Why—it looks like me!” she cried.

She beheld a swirling of subtle and subdued hues of red, a cloudlike nimbus of color, and in the midst of it, as if shrinking from the gaze yet by the same act inviting it, a white female body—herself. It was her body, idealized only a little, the slim hips and thighs, the sloping shoulders, the softness of the small breasts with their delicate nipples, every sign and symbol of her sex made manifest and evident. And it was her face ... recognizably her face, the greenish eyes, the hollowed cheeks, the arrogant nose, the dark hair with its widow’s peak, even its little streak of gray.

“It is you,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“But—I thought you painted only abstractions——”

“Some subjects merit being painted exactly as I see them.”

She felt stunned, somehow apprehensive and helpless.

“I—I didn’t know you were going to do that kind of a painting ...”

“It’s a triumph, isn’t it?” he asked.

Half mechanically she gave a little nod.

“Thank you for it,” he said in a low voice.

She recognized the voice ... that kind of a voice. As if mesmerized, she felt herself drawn into his arms. The gray robe slid from her shoulders to the floor and a hand cupped her naked buttocks, drawing her thin body hard against him, the fabric of his shirt front almost bruising her tender breasts.

She felt him tremble violently, and her gasp was smothered by his lips on hers. A long kiss. A hard, burning, searching, lingering kiss. The rum, or the warmth, or some other thing created a vast thudding of drumbeats in her ears. Trouble faded in the chaos of her mind. An enormous lushness crept over her, draining her of every thought save a blind urgency of instinct. She was ready, naked in his arms, expecting, the mysterious starchiness gone suddenly out of her, as if already she had fallen willingly from some stupid estate. In frantic capitulation she responded to his kiss, pressing her body to him, closer, harder.

All at once he released her and stepped back.

“There ...” he said, in a voice half muffled, as if something were finished.

Dazed, not understanding, she stood looking at him, naked and alone, her arms still half open as when he stepped from them.

He gazed back at her, all the passion, the look of suffering washed clean from his face.

“Go dress now, dear,” he said. “I’ll take you to your hotel.”

She could not believe it. Her eyes still fixed on him with an almost fearful question in them, she bent her knees, groping on the floor for the robe. Trailing it behind her, dizzy, her heart still pounding, she stumbled to the dressing room.