Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham.mobi [97]
She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop where he could get a portfolio, drawing-paper, and charcoal.
“I shall be going to Amitrano’s about nine tomorrow, and if you’ll be there then I’ll see that you get a good place and all that sort of thing.”
She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that he should not let her see how vague he was about the whole matter.
“Well, first I want to learn to draw,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear you say that. People always want to do things in such a hurry. I never touched oils till I’d been here for two years, and look at the result.”
She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece of painting that hung over the piano.
“And if I were you, I would be very careful about the people you get to know. I wouldn’t mix myself up with any foreigners. I’m very careful myself.”
Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him odd. He did not know that he particularly wanted to be careful.
“We live just as we would if we were in England,” said Mrs. Otter’s mother, who till then had spoken little. “When we came here we brought all our own furniture over.”
Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive suite, and at the window were the same sort of white lace curtains which Aunt Louisa put up at the vicarage in summer. The piano was draped in Liberty silk and so was the chimney-piece. Mrs. Otter followed his wandering eye.
“In the evening when we close the shutters one might really feel one was in England.”
“And we have our meals just as if we were at home,” added her mother. “A meat breakfast in the morning and dinner in the middle of the day.”
When he left Mrs. Otter Philip went to buy drawing materials; and next morning at the stroke of nine, trying to seem self-assured, he presented himself at the school. Mrs. Otter was already there, and she came forward with a friendly smile. He had been anxious about the reception he would have as a nouveau, for he had read a good deal of the rough joking to which a newcomer was exposed at some of the studios; but Mrs. Otter had reassured him.
“Oh, there’s nothing like that here,” she said. “You see, about half our students are ladies, and they set a tone to the place.”
The studio was large and bare, with gray walls, on which were pinned the studies that had received prizes. A model was sitting in a chair with a loose wrap thrown over her, and about a dozen men and women were standing about, some talking and others still working on their sketch. It was the first rest of the model.
“You’d better not try anything too difficult at first,” said Mrs. Otter. “Put your easel here. You’ll find that’s the easiest pose.”
Philip placed an ease! where she indicated, and Mrs. Otter introduced him to a young woman who sat next to him.
“Mr. Carey—Miss Price. Mr. Carey’s never studied before, you won’t mind helping him a little just at first, will you?” Then she turned to the model. “La Pose. ”
The model threw aside the paper she had been reading, La Petite République, and sulkily throwing off her gown, got on to the stand. She stood, squarely on both feet, with her hands clasped behind her head.
“It’s a stupid pose,” said Miss Price. “I can’t imagine why they chose it.”
When Philip entered, the people in the studio looked at him curiously, and the model gave him an indifferent glance, but now they ceased to pay any attention to him. Philip, with his beautiful sheet of paper in front of him, stared awkwardly at the model. He did not know how to begin. He had never seen a naked woman before. She was not young and her breasts were shrivelled. She had colorless, fair hair that fell over her forehead untidily, and her face was covered with large freckles. He glanced at Miss Price’s work. She had only been working on it two days, and it looked as though she had had trouble; her paper was in a mess from constant rubbing out, and to Philip’s eyes the figure looked strangely distorted.
“I should have thought I could do as well as that,” he said to himself.
He began on the head, thinking that he would work slowly downward, but, he could not understand why, he found it infinitely more difficult to draw a head from the model than to draw one from his imagination. He got into difficulties. He glanced at Miss Price. She was working with vehement gravity. Her brow was wrinkled with eagerness, and there was an anxious look in her eyes. It was hot in the studio, and drops of sweat stood on her forehead. She was a girl of twenty-six, with a great deal of dull gold hair; it was handsome hair, but it was carelessly done, dragged back from her forehead and tied in a hurried knot. She had a large face, with broad, flat features and small eyes; her skin was pasty, with a singular unhealthiness of tone, and there was no color in the cheeks. She had an unwashed tone, and you could not help wondering if she slept in her clothes. She was serious and silent. When the next pause came, she stepped back to look at her work.