Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction (2 page)

Chapter 2

R
EBECCA, IN A NEW WHITE DRESS,
sat for Sanborn the following morning. He had prepared his canvas and carefully arranged his smudgepan, pencils, and maulstick. On his palette were vermilion, burnt ocher, Indian red, pink, umber, black, and, finally, a stiff lake and, closest to his thumb, white.

He tried to make pleasing conversation with her. The painting went very well, he thought, during the first hour or so. Despite his lack of sufficient sleep, he found he had energy and attention. They began to relax in one another's company. Still, somewhere during the second hour the constraints of posture and labor began to wear on them and his mind turned to what he suspected were her betrayals. In the third hour both of them were feeling impatient. He decided to give up for the day.

She looked at the painting, as they had agreed she might. She said, “Oh, yes. Now I see,” but made no other comment upon her face and form as it more clearly emerged from the canvas.

“By next sitting this should be quite recognizable,” he said. “I've little more than dead colored the face.”

“Oh, yes,” she repeated. But she kept her promise to make no comment or judgment. She seemed to wait for him to speak.

“May I see more of yours?” he said as he cleaned up.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” she said. “I have sundry responsibilities this afternoon.”

He found her way of speaking odd, too—not like a child's speech, even a well-bred child. Maybe it was all that reading she spoke of. What he really wished to see was how she painted, or, more accurately, whether she herself actually painted such things. He would devise some ploy.

T
HE NEXT DAY,
he finally finished the portrait. Perhaps it was not his very best portrait to date, but certainly respectable and rather accomplished. Even his own mentors—Highmore, Hudson, Kent, and other masters of the Academy of St. Martin's Lane—might have to agree. The Brownes would not be disappointed, surely. He might well garner other commissions hereabouts. He no longer felt tired or anxious.

“What do you think, Rebecca?” He had to ask, finally.

“What do I think, sir?”

“Yes, how does it seem to you, now it's finished?”

“I promised not to comment, Mr. Sanborn.”

He laughed. “That's all right. I've completed my work, so it will not matter, to this painting, if you express your response to it.”

“If it won't matter, I should remain silent in any case.”

“I don't mean it that way. I mean it won't distract me from the work. Not now.” He gave her his best avuncular smile. “Well?”

She turned her full attention to the painting. “I think that it is quite good, Mr. Sanborn. I especially like the dress. The folds and color—your drapery is accomplished.” She seemed satisfied with that pronouncement.

“And? What of yourself then?”

“The face, you mean?”

“And the form.”

“Well, sir, the face is a good likeness, but I appear a little dull, unfeeling, perhaps a little drowned in cloth. I suppose it is the tedium of my sitting.” She looked at him, smiled, and then turned back to the picture. “And the hands, were they a little stiff, rather like a doll's?” She held up her hands and inspected them. “Now I see that even my pose, precisely as I sat, is rather . . .”—she searched a moment for the best word—“derived.”

He was taken aback. “I'm not sure what you mean, Rebecca. I paint according to the best principles, and within the tradition of my masters, and theirs before them.”

“Oh yes, I see that.” She smiled pleasantly. “And I know that people of fashion wouldn't hear of anything else. That they by nature chiefly consider the drapery of others, so that it is a necessary imitation of the best models.”

“It is rather a kind of
quotation
,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “Each artist brings himself to the task, but mindful of his masters and the great tradition of his predecessors.” He looked to see if she attended to his words. “Correctness and order must take precedence over a sitter's personal characteristics. Or eccentricities.” Perhaps he was being a little stern, he thought, or foolishly impatient with a child.

“Of course,” she said, looking at the painting. “The hands are beautifully colored, that tone of the flesh, I mean. And I'm thankful you allowed my own costume. I think it is very good, sir, and that mother will be pleased.”

“Thank you,” he said. Was that final compliment enough? Or had the child pointed out precisely his weakness: He had never quite learned to bring hands and faces to life. Mr. Highmore had said as much. But few patrons had expected him to vivify faces and hands individually. Some modest degree of characterization, particularly among the male sitters, was sufficient.

“You paint well yourself,” he said, “for someone of your age and without training, who has not closely studied preceding artists.” He was cleaning up and being as matter-of-fact as he knew how to be. “I'm curious as to how you learned to do it. Perhaps you could show me?”

“I taught myself, and Miss Norris, my tutor, has given me diverse instruction manuals. And I do observe, when opportunity arises, the work of others. But ever since I could walk, Mother tells me, I was known for standing before papers and boards applying crayon and paint. It has always been the most interesting thing for me to do, for some reason.”

“May I see then?”

“I had better consult with Miss Norris,” she said and left the room.

She returned in a few minutes and directed him toward an odd little chamber on the first floor behind the kitchen where she and her tutor had rigged a classroom-studio for her lessons. As they passed through the kitchen, they offered their good-days to the cook and her assistant, and Rebecca introduced him to the governess, one Miss Norris, a small but not unappealing woman, who sat at a long table meditatively sipping her tea. Clearly, Rebecca had already explained their mission. She left the door wide, so that the tutor could look in on them from her seat. In the instruction room there were a number of paintings and drawings about, on walls, on tables and desks, on the floor. He hardly noticed them, however, in his desire to see her perform. Again, he asked her to show him how she painted. She went to a trunk and took out some of her implements and colors. She set a board on an easel, prepared herself and her colors, and then looked up at Sanborn.

“Well, Mr. Sanborn,” she said. “What shall it be, then?”

“Oh, whatever you like, surely.”

“You're not particular?”

“Not at all, Rebecca. Please, suit yourself.”

She began immediately with paint, not sketching anything out or experimenting in any way. She worked from the right side of the board toward the left, finishing as she went. It was very odd to watch. Another dog was taking shape, sitting in a garden surrounded by blossoms. Right to left, almost as if someone were slowly unveiling a completed painting. Almost as if she had seen it whole before her brush touched board.

“What would happen if you had started from the left, and moved to the right?” he found himself asking before he had even thought to speak.

“Happen, sir?” she asked, looking directly at him now.

“Could you have done it that way, I mean?”

“Oh.” She continued to paint now. “Well, yes, of course.”

She put down the more than half completed board and picked up another.

“Like this you mean?” She was painting from the left side now; a still life was being uncovered left to right. Brilliant oranges and deep yellow pears. Other fruit, grapes, beginning to appear. He couldn't speak, even though Miss Norris walked in just then to observe Rebecca's demonstration. He and the governess merely exchanged glances.

It was the same untutored style, full of force—a dog, quick with canine life; fruit, full of succulence. Almost like unearthly objects, yet at the same time utterly recognizable for what they were. He could not imagine how she managed it. For all his living among painters and academies in England, no, he had never seen anything like this, in method or result. He found it a little frightening, but also wonderfully curious. It was as if between Rebecca and whatever she wanted to paint there were no difficult barriers of execution to be scaled. The heavy gates of perspicacity and technique had been thrown wide for her. It was as if she had penetrated the weight of the mundane world and a strange unnatural intensity were pouring onto her painted boards.

He could not speak to her about it. What, after all, could he possibly say? She continued her still life while he stood there incapacitated. When she put down her brush and palette, he still could not speak.

“Shall I finish the dog, sir?”

“No,” he managed to say. “No. We're both tired. Thank you. I'll say good-bye to you tomorrow, after I present the portrait to your mother and father.” He gave a little bow toward Miss Norris and started to leave. Then he remembered himself. “Rebecca.”

“Yes, Mr. Sanborn?”

“Those are quite remarkable.” He gestured toward the paintings, one little better than half completed.

“They are indeed,” Miss Norris said.

“Thank you, sir. I'm honored by compliments from so accomplished a painter.”

He turned again and walked out of the instruction room, offering a brisk good-day to the governess.

Chapter 3

R
EBECCA, WEARING A FRESH WHITE GOWN,
came into the parlor the following morning before her parents arrived. Sanborn was delicately testing the slow progress of the drying oils with his brush on the completed portrait. Her father and mother had not seen it yet, but Sanborn was confident they would be pleased.

She looked at the portrait and answered his query about her parents—yes, indeed, Mr. Sanborn, they were sure to approve the portrait.

“Do you suppose they might like one of themselves, or of one another as well?” he asked.

“It's quite possible, I think. They perhaps first use my portrait to discover the suitability of your brush, Mr. Sanborn. Portsmouth has never had adequate limners.”

He paused to consider her audacity. “I would be delighted to do them, but Madam Browne spoke only of yours.”

“I suppose that may be because I'm going away soon, and it's possible they want one to remember me by while I'm away.”

“Away,” he said. It was a flat statement, almost as if he had not understood that she had spoken first.

“To England. Or such is their misguided plan for me.”

“Oh? For how long?”

“I don't know, sir. But for a proper schooling, it is. I think they are a little exasperated with me.” She giggled quietly.

“Exasperated? Even your tutor?” She nodded. “How can you be exasperating to them?”

“I don't know. But from what they say, I believe that is the reason. A proper training is in order, however, all the same.” Her voice had changed as if she were, but just barely, imitating her mother.

“Goodness,” he said. “I can't think why. I can't imagine such a thing, having met you and spoken to you myself.”

“Still,” she said and smiled. “There it is.”

He ran out of words again, but soon Madam Browne and her husband, William, walked in. Just behind them came the governess.

Sanborn put down his brush immediately and made a bow. “Sir,” he said, “Madam.” He invited them by gesture to look at the portrait. Squire William, a man of sixty, made an imposing figure. Much older than his second wife, he was tall and without the portliness of age. Sanborn had heard that he had once been a hero in certain campaigns against “the heathen and their Jesuitical brethren,” and as a result of his exploits he held the title of colonel. He was a man of grave dignity and rectitude.

The mother and father were pleased. They had wanted a conventional portrait and he had given them a fine one. He had learned that he always gave satisfaction, after the proper English manner, here in New England. This was something he could do. Something he relished doing. Although he had enjoyed meeting Robert Feke, through Smibert in Boston, for his useful information and anecdotes of New England, he had judged him a self-taught dauber with none of the requisite polish of London society and academy. Now he happily assured himself that Mr. Feke would hardly have pleased a man of Colonel Browne's urbanity and address. It suddenly occurred to him for the first time, however, that these people might have found Rebecca's paintings troubling in some way.

After light conversation expressing his approval, Colonel Browne paid Sanborn the remainder of the agreed-upon sum. They went so far as to suggest there would be others in the port who might require his services. Sanborn beamed. He forgot about Rebecca and her paintings. He imagined himself growing intimate with captains and owners, with weighty bewigged merchants and assemblymen. He would be toasted. He would accrue wealth and respect over the years. He would settle here after all. Why not? The Brownes would provide him entrée.

Of course, he said nothing of all this. He prepared to leave. He went to his room to gather his things after giving the Brownes his card. He said that he would alert them to his new address as soon as he was in lodgings, in the event they should require his services in any way or have any further requests or queries regarding his portrait of Rebecca. He thanked them profusely for the commission, for their faith in him, and promised to return later next week to apply a coat of varnish.

As he was preparing his gear and clothing to leave, there was knock on his door. Rebecca came in at the sound of his voice.

“Sir,” she said, “I have another effort of my own that you may be interested to see. And I'd like your opinion of it.”

“Certainly, Rebecca.” He turned enthusiastically toward her. She unveiled yet another painting, a portrait.

It was a portrait of herself, painted in a pose similar to his own portrait. But the face occupied much more of the canvas, as if to reverse the English tradition displaying chiefly garment or drapery and setting. The portrait showed none of that common ambition to look, in pose and the latest emblems of gentility, like one's aristocratic betters. Nor had the girl produced a literal transposition of herself, or of his painting of her; nor was there any familiar formality—the etiquette and posture of polite society—about the demeanor. The portrait, the face in particular, was alive with the energy he had come to expect, as if her very soul suffused the girlish figure on the canvas. It was so superior to his own (yet so much more strange) that he had to check his rage. His perfect day was to be ruined. His success was to be undercut.

Not that he believed the Brownes would prefer her painting to his. No, but she had affronted his painterly vanity. She had captured an antic vivacity. She had evoked . . . he could think of no other word in the heat of the moment . . . an “otherworldliness.”

“Why have you done this?” he said. His voice sounded desperate even to himself.

“Sir?” she said, looking wounded. “I thought you would approve. I thought you found me, my paintings . . . remarkable.”

He didn't speak. Was she mocking him? He suppressed a sudden urge to strike her. The Brownes were sending her away. Perhaps there was reason. But he would do nothing to put the family off him.

“Sir?” she finally repeated.

“I must leave,” he said, trying to contain himself. “Immediately. I have rooms to get, and my dinner. I have other work to do.” This latter was of course a lie; he had no other commissions in Portsmouth. He picked up his bags and walked past her. “Good day, Miss Browne.”

When he glanced back, she was standing in the doorway to his room with an utterly confused look on her face, and more than a trace of sorrow.