The Penalty | Page 9

had been
dear friends and unutterably necessary companions in joy and sorrow.
To Wilmot a little encouragement was a great thing, a foundation upon
which to undertake pyramids. Having intruded upon Barbara's working
hours without being scolded, Wilmot began to picture for himself a
delightful life of intruding upon them every day. He hoped that if she
was really working, she would not actually send him away, but let him
sit in the deep chair by the fire and wait till she was through, and ready
for talk and play. As much almost as he loved her, he hated her
ambitions, if only because they interfered with him, and because he
found it impossible to take them seriously. Her work seemed
surprisingly good to him--not surprisingly good for a genuine sculptor
who exhibited in salons, but for a girl of his own class whom he had
always known. In this estimate he did not do Barbara justice. She had a
fine natural talent and she had been well trained. People who knew
what they were talking about, shock-headed young fellows with
neighboring studios, prophesied great things for her, partly because she
was beautiful, and partly because her work, as far as she had gone in it,
was really good. What she lacked, they said, was inspiration,
experience, and knowledge of life. When these things came to her in

due time, her technique would be quite equal to expressing them.
Wilmot's dream of being much in Barbara's studio proved negotiable
only as a dream. Barbara began a fountain for her father's garden at
Clovelly, and during the modelling of the central figure the studio was
no place for a modest young man. He had one glimpse through the
half-open door of a girl with very red hair and very white skin, and he
turned and beat a decided retreat, blushing furiously. He did not repeat
his visit to her studio until Barbara assured him that the nymph had put
on her clothes and gone away. Then, much to his disgust, he found
there a young fellow named Scupper, who smoked a vile pipe and had
dirty finger-nails and was allowed to make himself at home because he
had recently exhibited a portrait bust that everybody was praising (even
Wilmot) and because he had volunteered during a delightful
contemplation of Barbara's face to do her portrait and tell her all that he
had learned from his great master, Rodin.
The little beast had the assurance of the devil. He praised, blamed,
patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with superiority on topics which
are best left alone, until Wilmot wanted to kick him downstairs.
Scupper, aware of Wilmot's dislike for him, and thoroughly cognizant
of its causes, did his best to goad the "young prude" (as he chose to
consider him) into open hostility. He strutted, boasted, puffed, and
talked loosely without avail. Wilmot maintained a beautiful calm, and
the more he raged internally the more Chesterfieldian and gorgeously at
ease his manners became. Barbara enjoyed the contest between the
terrier and the Newfoundland hugely. Personally she disliked Scupper
almost as much as she liked Wilmot, but artistically she admired him
tremendously and felt that his judgments and criticisms were the most
valuable things to be had in the whole city.
Wilmot not only kept his temper, but outstayed his antagonist. The
latter gone, he turned upon Barbara, and she in mock terror held up her
hands for mercy; but Wilmot was not in a merciful mood.
"When you imagine that you are uplifting the cause of art, Barbs, are
you sure that you aren't debasing it? You won't marry a man who has
always loved you. _Art._ You put marble and bronze higher than little

children. _Art._ You allow disreputable, unwashed men to talk in your
presence as that man talked. _Art._ You hire people of bad character to
sit for you, and people of no character. All art. You treat them in a
spirit of friendliness and camaraderie. You affect to place art above all
considerations; above character, above morals; worse, you place it
above cleanliness.
"A man--yes, take him for all and all, a man--eats out his heart for you;
desires only to live for you, only to die for you, only to lie at your feet
afterward--that is nothing to you. You do not even care to listen. You
would rather hear through a braggart, indecent mouth that ought to be
sewed up what Rodin said about Phidias. It seems finer to you to be an
artist than a woman, and you so beautiful and so dear!"
Barbara made no answer. She looked a little hurt, possibly a little sullen.
She had a way of looking a little sullen (it did not happen often) when
she could not hit upon just