II
It was the next morning that an eccentric old lady in dowdy black, accompanied by a child and nurse, left the Hotel des Palmes and wandered idly and unconcernedly about the streets of Palermo.
For a time this erratic trio followed a tinkling herd of milk-goats leisurely out towards the suburbs. Then, apparently tiring of this, they made a purchase from a native pedlar of sponges. A keen observer might have noticed that notwithstanding the silver-mounted ear-trumpet, several quietly spoken words passed between the sponge-seller and the old lady in black.
Taking up their course again, the idle-minded trio stopped before a house of the pink-stucco villa type. There they peered through the glass front of a cabinet filled with miniatures, showed open admiration for the work which they were inspecting, and after some debate entered the house itself.
There they encountered a quiet-mannered and violet-eyed young woman who announced herself as "Miss Keating," the owner of the studio. It was to this young lady, whose knowledge of German was manifestly limited, that the nurse politely and patiently explained that the old lady in black—who, she confessed, was erratic but wealthy—had decided to have a painting on ivory of her grandchild.
Miss Keating, who showed small delight at the prospect of a sitter, explained that the cost of a miniature would be forty pounds.
The uniformed nurse made it as clear as she could that the old lady was quite deaf, that she was whimsical, but that she was too wealthy to quibble over a matter of price. And Miss Keating, having lifted the child's face and gazed into its shy and innocent eyes, admitted that a portrait might be attempted and that it might be completed in a couple of sittings. After some hesitation, she even acknowledged that the first sitting might take place that morning.
Thereupon, this being vociferously explained to the old lady, through the ear-trumpet, that worthy calmly settled herself in an arm-chair at the far end of the big room with its all but bare walls and its moderated north light.
There, with the self-immuring tendency of the deaf, she promptly fell asleep. She dozed, huddled up in her chair, apparently oblivious of the further arrangements for the sitting, such as the placing of the subject in the most favourable light, the addition of a touch of colour in the form of a hair-ribbon, the wheeling about of a bevel-topped drawing-desk, and the arraying of the needed pigments. The nurse, seating herself by one of the windows, produced a paper-covered edition of a Sudermann novel and promptly lost herself in its pages.
The old lady in the shadows at the far end of the room apparently continued to doze behind her amber-coloured glasses. But in a light less accommodating it might have been observed that nothing which took place in the room escaped the somnolent eye behind the amber-tinted lens.
These eyes made note of the fact that the wires of telephone, so recently installed in the apartment, ran from the table-edge to the floor, close beside the light-wires. They made note of these incongruous innovations in a villa so antiquated, and they also made note of the doors, and the modern manner of lock with which they were now protected. They appraised the furniture and the work-table on which the telephone stood.
But most of all they quietly studied the face of the young woman on the far side of the drawing-desk. This face revealed itself as being thinner and paler than when last seen by those same studious eyes. It showed a deepened sense of trouble about the clouded white brow, a more wistful line of revolt about the full lines of the red lips that parted in a curve that was almost child-like. But the dull chestnut of the heavily massed hair was the same, and the same, too, was the light in the violet-blue eyes with their adumbrating fringe of lashes. The delicate oval of the face carried the same incongruous suggestion of fragility, of unblunted sensibilities. The tilt of the chin as the head was thrown back to observe through drooping lids the effect of the first hurrying brush-strokes seemed as unstudied and adorable as before.
Yet the watcher did not fail to observe the facile and quick-fingered hand as it worked, and the thought that this hand belonged to the most skilful forger in all Europe suddenly robbed the face of its inherent loveliness. The mere memory of it sent a twitch of revolt through the dowdy old lady in black. It seemed incredible. A look of shadowy bewilderment troubled the eyes behind the amber lenses. But the painting went on in silence.
This silence was shatterd by the sudden shrill of a call-bell. At that sound, however, the old lady in the arm-chair neither stirred nor blinked.
It was the younger woman at the drawing-desk who started, looked apprehensively about, paused a moment, and then quickly crossed to the table where the telephone stood. There, placing the receiver at her ear, she listened intently, speaking back an occasional guarded monosyllable or two, in Italian. It was plain that she was receiving and not delivering a message. When she returned to her work she did so with somewhat heightened colour and with a more energetic movement of the fingers as she bent over the little oval of ivory.
A second interruption to this work came in the form of a peremptory knock on the entrance-door. Again the woman who called herself Miss Keating stopped in her labours, looked from the novel-reading nurse to the slumberous figure in black, and then promptly answered the knock.
It turned out to be nothing more than a street pedlar, selling sponges. So eager was he to make a sale, so eloquent was he in his talk, that the preoccupied woman apparently purchased a sponge as the most expeditious way of ending his importunities.
That young woman, however, had scarcely reached her chair before the knock was repeated, more peremptorily than ever.
This time she was greeted by the Sicilian seller with fire in his eye and indignation in his voice. He loudly proclaimed that the silver coin she had given him was spurious. This, once she had comprehended his dialect, she firmly but gently denied, only to be met with a louder storm of abusive anger. So persistent were his outcries that first the child and then the uniformed nurse followed the miniature-painter into the hallway, where, apparently by accident, the door closed behind them.
Yet in the few moments during which that altercation took place the dowdy old lady in black was the most active figure in Palermo. She had fitted key-blanks covered with coloured wax to each of the doors leading from that room. She had experimentally lifted the telephone receiver and heard a voice answer from the other end of the wire. She had examined the desk drawers, and had traced out the wire-circuits, and had even made careful note of what lay immediately beyond the north-fronting windows.
When the miniature-painter and her youthful sitter re-entered the room they saw this same old lady dozing heavily in her arm-chair. The child resumed her pose in the mellow side-light from the north window. The nurse went back to her Sudermann. The painter once more took up her brush. But those repeated interruptions seemed to have taken the zest from her touch.
She bent over her work for several minutes. Then she suddenly pushed back her chair, stood up, and announced that the sitting would have to end. There could be another appointment, if necessary. But she could not go on with the picture that day.
The old lady in black, pulling herself together after being shaken out of her sleep, fumbled with scratch-pad and ear-trumpet and finally came to an understanding of the situation.
She was by no means willing to be put off. The miniature was begun, and there was no reason why it should not be finished, and finished before they started North.
"Then it will have to be in the evening," announced the owner of the studio, "for my days for the rest of the week will be quite taken up."
To this the old lady in black eventually agreed, provided the work could be properly done by electric-light. On being reassured of this the group moved brokenly towards the door.
But for one brief moment the eyes behind the amber-coloured lenses searched the face of the woman so inhospitably ushering them out. Still again about that self-contained and ascetic face the searching eyes seemed able to discern some vague sense of the pathos of isolation, as though a once ardent and buoyant spirit had been driven under protest into a shadowy underworld of solitude.
"To-morrow evening at eight," the young woman with the voice as clear and reedy as a clarionet was quietly repeating, as she held the door for her oddly-sorted visitors.
The child smiled shyly back at her. The German nurse nodded pleasantly. But the figure in black with the silver-mounted old ear-trumpet neither ventured a word of farewell nor essayed a backward glance. She merely trudged stolidly out behind the others.
At the entrance door her cane slipped from her rheumatic fingers and she stooped to pick it up. This was not easy to do. She had to steady herself, as she stooped, with one hand clinging to the door beside her.
Yet in that brief space of time a skeleton-blank had been thrust into the key-hole, a quick turn made, and an exact imprint of the wards of the lock left on the wax-coated metal of the key-flange.
Waving her cane in a splutter of anger, she hobbled on after the others, without so much as a glance back over her shoulder as she went.