THE ladies persisted, though the artist was obdurate. He stood in their path directly before the covered picture on the foreign easel. His eyes wandered gravely over the various faces of his fair besiegers.
Said the Duchess Aoi, with her small chin raised and her long eyes at disdainful level:—
“Sir Artist, you invest a picture with the attributes of the original. Yet even the princess’s most celestial person is not so sacred to our insignificant eyes. Why, then, her august picture?”
Junzo bowed only slightly to his interlocutor, and replied briefly:—
“The portrait is unfinished, Duchess Aoi.”
“Unfinished! Well, and did we not gaze upon the statue of his Imperial Highness while yet it was unfinished?”
The artist did not move from his position.
“Ah, it is the honorable whim of the artist, ladies,” said the little Countess Matsuka.
“Sir Artist, you are most cruel to the kind,” chided a roguish young lady, who leaned against the Duchess Aoi.
“Yes, indeed,” added another, “to permit a whim—an artist’s foolish whim—to prevent our enjoyment of her Highness’s picture.”
“Confess,” said Lady Fuji-no, who hitherto had remained quietly in the background, “that this is not the whim of an artist, but of—”
“The portrait is unfinished,” repeated the artist, raising his voice.
“Shaka! You have been most painstaking, Sir Artist. The statue of the Prince Komatzu was completed in just half the space of time.” It was the Duchess Aoi who spoke. To her the artist turned.
“Lady, bid me not again repeat, the portrait is unfinished,” he said with a low, graceful bow.
Lady Fuji burst into merry laughter.
“Artist,” she said, “the foreigners whom we emulate in some things declare that all women, royal or otherwise, have the prerogative to command, to insist.”
Junzo’s brows were slightly drawn together. He bowed without answering the smiling Fuji.
“And so,” she continued, taking a step nearer to him, “I am going to look upon the picture, since you will not heed command, and even though—”
Her hand was upon the silken covering, which she had partly lifted. Junzo’s hand fell upon hers like a vice. She did not, however, release the covering, but clutched at it beneath his fingers, her half-defiant, half-smiling eyes upon his face.
“Lady Fuji-no!” he cried, breathing heavily, “I must command—”
“Command!” she repeated haughtily; “and when, Sir Artist, did you acquire authority at court? By what right do you, a hired artist, dare to command a lady of the household of her Imperial Highness?”
She wrenched at the covering, and it began to slip from the top of the picture.
“In the name of Princess Sado-ko!” he cried.
The covering had slipped to the floor, and even the most impassive of the ladies had started back with little gasps of consternation. The canvas that faced them now was blank.
There was complete silence in the salon of the visiting artist. Then almost simultaneously all eyes were turned from that blank canvas to the face of the artist-man.
He stood there like one overtaken by a sudden tragedy. His face was white and drawn, his eyes, always large and dark, were widened now. His nostrils quivered, and his lips were dry. The very sight of his despair had a moving effect upon all, save the Lady Fuji-no, who began to laugh very softly. Thus she broke the silence. Her words were slow and cruel:—
“Of a truth, Sir Artist, the picture of her Imperial Highness is unfinished.”
He did not speak. The lady leaned toward him, thrusting her face within the range of his vision.
“Is this the honorable portrait of our Princess Sado-ko, which she will make as exchange gift to her affianced, Prince Komatzu?” she asked.
The artist turned his face painfully aside. Then the Duchess Aoi spoke:—
“Artist,” she said, “we most humble and insignificant ones copy the august fashions from her Highness. Pray you, paint my picture in just so fine a style.”
There were hysterical tears in the voice of the little Countess Matsuka. She sought in vain to divert her more heartless companions.
“I,” she said, “would desire to be painted in a most gorgeous foreign gown.”
“With the body showing?” inquired Madame Bara.
“Yes, the neck and the long arms. Why not?”
“Oh, ah, it is indecent!”
The artist stooped to the covering on the floor. He stood holding it in his hand, as though he knew not what to do.
“Oh, pray do not cover up the august likeness, artist,” pleaded the Lady Fuji-no, with affected solicitude.
The Countess Matsuka raised her voice almost shrilly:—
“Ladies, do let us take a vote as to the decency of the barbarian gown.”
But her suggestion was drowned in the hub-bub of gossip. The countess was met only with this reply:—
“Countess, upon what work was this artist-man engaged when he was closeted with Princess Sado-ko?”
The group about the picture grew closer still together. The question grew in size, and found a hundred answers.
“It is one that only the artist himself can solve,” said Aoi, looking toward him obliquely.
“Oh, oh, was only the artist present?” protested Lady Fuji.
“And her Highness,” said the Duchess Aoi, and bowed in mocking reverence at the name. “Do you not recall she said she would not have her ladies present at the sittings? When we dared to protest, in most humble wise, she frowned and commanded us to go, which we were forced to do.”
The artist suddenly took a step forward and faced the ladies fairly. The color had returned to his face, and his eyes sparkled in defiant scorn at his small tormentors. His voice was raised to a clear pitch:—
“You make mistake, most noble ladies. You do injustice to the humble artist, to his work, and to her most exalted Highness.” Here he bowed deeply and with reverence. “It is very true you do not now behold on this blank canvas the work of the many days of the artist. Yet that is not an unsolvable mystery. Shall the humble but honorable artist allow his work upon the portrait of her Serene Highness, the daughter of the sun-god, to remain in his most public salon for the chance and vulgar observation of the spiteful curious? Permit me to observe with proper respect and humility that no explanation of the substitution of the blank canvas is due. Further, ladies, you make a treasonable mistake when you declare the august sittings were unattended. Her Highness, upon all occasions when she deigned to permit me to paint her august picture, was both chaperoned and attended by the honorable maid, Onatsu-no.”
A sudden little shriek broke from one of the ladies, at which all turned toward her and then followed the direction of her startled eyes. The next instant all this company of clattering-tongued ladies, whether in European dress or kimono, had fallen to their knees, and were touching the mats with their heads.
The Princess Sado-ko, attended by her maiden, Natsu-no, stepped slowly down from the slight eminence of the adjoining room, the shojis of which the pages drew behind her. There was no expression in the face of Sado-ko as she crossed the room, bowing her head with grace in response to the servile courtesies of her maids of honor. She made a slight motion with her hands, and there was a quick movement and rustling of the obedient ladies, moving toward the shoji that led without. One of them, more daring than the others, the Lady Fuji-no, paused by the veranda doors, and spoke with affected timidity:—
“May it please your Highness that we be permitted to remain to-day for this sitting?”
Sado-ko’s eyes were above the head of her father’s new favorite and her own maid of honor.
“Lady Fuji-no,” she said, “I have spoken.”
Fuji bowed herself down to the mats, then quietly joined those without.
