Free The Crimson Bed by Loretta Proctor Page B

stood a tall young woman, well muffled in a cape and bonnet, though it was not a cold day. Two older ladies with very sour expressions stood behind her. Eleanor Farnham scarcely gave Fred a look but deposited her street garments upon him, as if assuming he was a servant, and made her way straight to the studio. The other ladies did the same and followed on behind her like the carriages of a train.
        He stared at the capes and bonnets heaped into his arms and then smiled and shrugged. Folding and draping them with his usual care and neatness, he put them all on a chair in the hallway and followed the ladies into the studio.
        Henry had rushed around trying to tidy up the chaos that always reigned in his studio. He managed to find seats beneath a pile of exotic clothes which he kept for his models to use, all flung to the floor now in a muddled heap of satins and velvets. He had also produced two straight-backed chairs and the older ladies sat primly upon them, their hands, in what looked like identical black cotton mittens, folded in their laps.
        Eleanor Farnham was seated on a sofa, Henry arranging her as he wanted her to look, turning her head sideways so that her neck was slightly elongated, resting her arm upon the back of the sofa and relaxing her hands in an artless, elegant pose. She wore a remarkable old-fashioned dress of ruby-red velvet tied under the bust with a girdle, which then fell in loose, soft folds about her figure. She looked exquisite in Fred's eyes; everything he had hoped and longed for her to be. She was straight from the pages of Le Morte D'Arthur , a vision of his inner dream world, yet also a real woman of flesh and blood who looked infinitely more desirable and lovely than the one on paper.
        'Where is that garnet necklace you had last time?' asked Henry in a stern voice.
        Ellie put her hand to her throat and exclaimed in annoyance, 'Oh, Mulhall, you forgot to remind me, silly thing!'
        The lady thus addressed looked flustered at this. 'I laid them out for you, Miss Ellie,' she said, 'laid them on the dressing table and told you so.'
        'I missed them then. I'm so sorry, Mr Winstone. Will it make much difference at this stage?'
        Henry shrugged his shoulders. 'Not for today, no. I'm concentrating on the face and hands today. Don't dare to forget next week, will you?' He smiled as he said this, his eyes looking deeply into her own, and Eleanor smiled back at him. Henry could never resist flirting with a young and pretty woman and Fred watched this by-play with some discomfort and jealousy.
        'This gentleman, by the way,' said Henry, now recovering his manners as Fred shifted impatiently behind him and coughed, 'is Mr. Frederic Ashton Thorpe. He is a very promising artist and a poet. A man of talent! Mr. Thorpe, Miss Eleanor Farnham.'
        Fred bowed in her direction.
        'I hope you have no objection, Miss Farnham,' the young man said, 'to my being here, I mean. I always learn so much from watching Mr Winstone at work. I consider myself an amateur in comparison.'
        'Balderdash!' snorted Henry. 'Don't be fooled by his false modesty, Miss Farnham. He's a perfectly good artist.'
        'You're the one who'll be an RA,' countered Fred.
        'Well, I hope so. If this portrait of Miss Farnham comes out as I'd like, maybe I'll enter it in the Summer Exhibition. What do you say, Miss Farnham?'
        'It would be rather special to have my portrait hang in the Royal Academy,' she replied. 'I wish you all success with it. If it pleases my father, who is most exacting, then I see no reason why it shouldn't please the old men at the Academy.'
        Henry looked gratified by this remark.
        'You think you will enter this summer?' asked Fred. 'You know their attitude to anything even faintly Pre-Raphaelite in execution? Remember the roasting poor Millais got for that picture of the Holy Family?'
        'I do remember.