After Innocence (12 page)

Sofie grimaced. Regardless of all else, Edward Delanza was the most splendid specimen of a man, and as a model, he would be glorious. Sofie put down her brush. How could she resist the temptation of painting him? How?

Especially when the very idea made Sofie breathless with anticipation, with excitement.

Sofie forced her attention back to her “genre” painting, which she was determined to complete before the end of the summer. It was a setting she had never done before and would most likely not do again for some time, at least, not until she reached twenty-one and was living on her own. Suzanne would never allow her to frequent this kind of neighborhood in order to paint real-life scenes of working-class people and immigrants; had she ever tried to gain permission for such an endeavor, she would be denied.
Sofie did not have permission now. She did feel guilty, but her art came first.

Sofie was doing the canvas on the sly. It was no coincidence that she had taken up this project in the summer while Suzanne was ensconced in Newport. With Suzanne away, the odds of getting caught were very low indeed.

Of course, she was supposed to be at class at the Academy. But it was a class that was of little interest to Sofie; she was not interested in engraving, and she had been cutting it for the past six weeks in order to do this oil.

The coachman stood some distance away. Sofie had convinced Billings that this was an assignment she must complete for one of her classes. She did not think he believed her, but he was so loyal that he had come, afraid she would go without him, afraid to let her out of his sight. The Ralston servants had known Sofie since she was nine years old, and everyone was well aware of Sofie’s passion for art.

That passion had been evident from the very first day that Sofie had arrived at the Ralston mansion to take up residence there as Benjamin’s stepdaughter. Benjamin was a collector of art. Like many of his peers, his interest was primarily in American art, but like some of the more discerning American collectors, he had attained a dozen works of the early nineteenth-century French Barbizon artists, including some rural and peasant landscapes by Millet and Rousseau, as well as the flashier, more erotic works of the Salon artists Couture and Cabanel. More important, Benjamin had been favorably impressed by the first full-scale exhibition in New York in 1886 of the French artists labeled
les impressionnistes
by the press and critics alike. Immediately afterwards, he had acquired both a Pissarro and a Degas, and in the fours years since, he had bought another Degas and a still life by Manet. Sofie had been dazzled when she discovered his gallery. She had spent hours and hours there every day.

Sofie had begun to dabble in art before coming to the Ralston mansion to live, as most young children do. At the Ralstons’, her education included art, and her first governess began to seriously encourage her sketches and water-colors. By the time Sofie was twelve, she had surpassed
her teacher, and realizing this, Miss Holden had brought the matter to Suzanne’s attention. Suzanne had not been interested in the fact that her daughter possessed an unnatural aptitude for an and had no intention of finding Sofie a genuine art instructor.

Sofie had begged, insisted, fought. She had been a quiet child ever since her father’s death, unassuming, uncomplaining, undemanding. But not now. In real annoyance, Suzanne had threatened to take away her paints and brushes, forbidding her to ever draw or paint again. Fortunately, due to the unusual uproar in his home, Benjamin Ralston was alerted to what was occurring, and he had intervened.

Because Benjamin rarely interfered in matters affecting his wife’s daughter—or his own daughter, for that matter—Suzanne could not defy him. She found Sofie an instructor. Paul Verault taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and also gave private lessons on the side if he deemed the student worthy enough.

And Verault instantly found Sofie worthy of his time and attention. Sofie began her studies with Verault at the age of thirteen and continued for three years. He was demanding and exacting, frequently given to criticism, all of it just, and very rarely given to praise. Verault insisted Sofie begin with the basics—with the study of linear shapes and form. That first year Sofie drew only with charcoal and she sketched some five hundred still lifes depicting almost every object imaginable, until a simple juxtaposition of fruit done in pencil had exploded with life.

A year later Verault pronounced her done with studies of shape and form; it was time to move on to color and light. Sofie was jubilant—for she loved color, she always had. And Verault no longer minded teaching privately at all. He was wide-eyed when he realized that his young student was far from ordinary, that her feeling for color bordered on brilliant. Sofie wanted to use color and shading boldly, in an unorthodox manner, but Verault would not allow it. “One day you may be original,
ma petite,
but only after you have mastered what I must teach you,” he told her, and it was a refrain he often repeated in the next few years when Sofie grumbled about copying one master after another at
the city’s different museums. Sofie wanted to create, but Verault demanded she re-create.

Finally Sofie turned sixteen. She had already applied to and been accepted at the Academy, where she would soon continue to study with Verault as well as with many other teachers. But one day he came to her with tears glinting in his dark eyes. “I am going home,
ma petite,
” he said.

Sofie was stunned. “Home? To France?”

“
Oui.
To Paris. My family is there, and my wife is not well.”

Sofie wrung her hands, trying not to cry. She had not even known that this moody, untalkative man had a family anywhere, much less in Paris. How she would miss her teacher, her mentor, her friend. “You must go, of course,” she whispered. “I pray that Madame Verault will regain her health.”

“Do not look so crestfallen, little one.” Verault took her hand. “You have learned all that you can from me,
ma chère”
he said, kissing her hand. “Indeed, in my last letter home to my old friend André Vollard, I said as much.”

Vollard was an art dealer in Paris whom Verault had mentioned to Sofie from time to time. “Now you must learn from the other fine teachers at the Academy,” Verault continued, “and from those around you, and then from yourself—and from life.” He finally smiled. “But have patience,
ma petite.
Have patience. One day you will be free to use those oils as you long to do. You are young, there is time. Study hard with your new teachers. And when you are in Paris, come visit me.”

After he had left, Sofie wept, feeling as if she had lost her dearest friend—her only real friend. For several days she had been unable to paint or even think of it, missing Verault terribly. He was the only one who had ever truly understood her in the years since her father’s death.

When she returned to her studio, she disobeyed his last directive. She had been working on a pastoral scene, the canvas simply titled
Central Park.
Model boats sailed on a small lake, the little boys in knickers and the grown men in their shirtsleeves watching their toys, excited and laughing, cheering. She stared at the oil, angry her teacher was gone,
feeling young, wild, and rebellious. In another week she would begin her first classes at the Academy. To Sofie, it felt as if time was
not
on her side—it felt as if it were now or never.

Her heart began to pump more vigorously as she picked up a medium-sized brush, suddenly afraid. Then she dabbed it feverishly in bright yellow. Soon the placid water had become more blue and green than brown, flecked with yellow, and the once white sails billowed multihued. The pretty lake scene exploded with hot color and vibrant movement. Sofie had been thinking of Monet as she worked, whose works she often saw in the exclusive Gallery Durand-Ruel downtown.

She had been so proud of her first foray into the modern, proud but doubtful and desperately needing encouragement and reassurance. Had she been crude and obvious where Monet was subtle and extraordinary? Shyly she told Lisa what she had done, daring to reveal her hopes that her art had taken a new direction and that she had discovered her true style. Lisa had been thrilled for her and had told Suzanne, who insisted upon seeing her work. Sofie had invited her mother and sister into her studio to view her art, trying to ignore her fear and anxiety. Sofie’s art had shocked them.

“You’re crazy!” Suzanne had cried. “And everyone will say you’re crazy! They’ll say you’re a crazy cripple! You are not allowed to paint in such a manner, Sofie. I forbid it. Do you hear me? What’s happened to your fine portraits and sweet landscapes? Why don’t you do a new portrait of Lisa?”

Sofie could not hide her anguish. She had wondered if they were right, if her attempt to emulate the great Monet was so monstrous, if it was so shocking, if it was as ugly as they said. She had thrown the painting away, but Lisa had rescued it and put it in the attic. And Sofie had gone to the Academy and continued to study the traditional use of line and form, shading and color, spending three or four hours every day after class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art copying one renowned artist after another.

But she was no longer so alone. Midway into her first semester, Sofie made two friends for the first time in her life. Jane Chandler and Eliza Reed-Wharing were both young society women like herself, and they were both as fervently devoted to art as Sofie. Together the trio haunted museums and art galleries when they were not at class or at work. They took all the same classes, sitting together whenever they could, studying together for examinations. The next few years were the happiest and most exciting of Sofie’s life.

But eventually she began to feel as if she had had enough. She was tired of copying the old masters. She had mastered female anatomy. The study of male anatomy was not allowed. Drypoint and etching did not really interest her. Sofie wanted to try her hand at something new and different. She wanted to explore color and light.

It had begun as a dare. Sofie had voiced aloud her yearnings to her friends. But Jane was happy with the curriculum, for she planned to work for her father, an engraver, and so was Eliza, who intended to become a portrait artist; both girls attended all their classes dutifully without complaint. Indeed, they both planned to marry and have families as well. Recently both girls had become engaged to fine young men from socially prominent families. They never said anything, but Sofie knew they wondered why she did not become engaged, as well. Sadly Sofie realized that they did not really understand her after all.

“If you want to do your own work so much, Sofie,” Eliza had said, “just do it. Or are you afraid?”

Sofie was afraid; how could she not be? But she was burning with need, too. Her search for a suitable subject had finally led her to Third Avenue in lieu of her third-period class.

So she had decided to do a genre work, but not as Millet might, nor as Rousseau or Diaz, but as she, Sofie O’Neil, preferred.

“Miss Sofie, ma’am,” the coachman said gruffly, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s half past three.”

Sofie sighed. “Thank you, Billings. I’ll pack up.” It was time to go and greet the crusty Miss Ames.

*    *    *

Sofie froze on the threshold of her mother’s salon.

Edward Delanza stood on the other side of the room. His smile was warm.

Eyes wide, Sofie could not look away. Finally she realized that Miss Ames was also in the room, seated on the sofa by the marble-manteled hearth. The old spinster was greedily observing both Sofie and Edward with her darting black gaze.

Sofie felt a momentary panic.
What was he doing here
?

Edward strolled towards her, his gaze taking in every inch of her appearance with unnerving intensity. “Good afternoon. Miss O’Neil. I happened to be driving by, and I thought to leave my card. When I realized you were due home at any moment—” he grinned, his blue eyes holding hers “—I knew I had to wait.”

Sofie had yet to move. When his glance slipped over her clothing, she realized just what she must look like. Sofie was horrified. How different she must seem now than she had that night on the veranda, when she was carefully coiffed and clad in an evening gown. Far more eccentric than he had ever dreamed, and far more eccentric than she had ever wished to appear.

For she was a mess. Her hair was escaping its thick, loose braid, a braid that was no longer coiled around her head. She could feel the heavy mass on her neck, and knew she was within a moment of having the plait burst free, allowing the unwieldy tresses to cascade down her back. Worse, her blouse and skirt were covered with paint, and she knew she smelled of turpentine. She had been more careless than usual with her appearance because she knew Suzanne was in Newport and that the house was empty—she had not been expecting a caller other than Miss Ames.

A caller? Was Edward Delanza calling on her?

“Cat got your tongue, gel?” Miss Ames stood. “Don’t you care to say good day to the handsome gentleman?”

Sofie went red. “Mr. Delanza,” she croaked. It was dawning on her that he had come to call on her. Then Suzanne’s words suddenly echoed in her mind:
His kindness is a disguise for one thing, his intention to seduce and ruin you.

“Where’s my painting?” Miss Ames approached, her cane thumping.

Sofie was jerked to the present, paler now, her heart pounding. “Miss Ames,” she managed, acutely aware of Edward. “How do you do?”

“My painting, gel!”

Sofie took a calming breath. She did not dare look at Edward, who was smiling at her.
He was toying with you, dear.
“It’s here, Miss Ames. Jenson, do bring it in, please.”

The butler entered, lugging the large canvas with him. He set it down facing the trio, huffing. And suddenly Sofie was anxious. Not because of Miss Ames, who would undoubtedly like it, but because of Edward Delanza.

It was competent, but it was hardly exciting. It was run-of-the-mill. She had forced herself to do it. She found herself looking at Edward, not Miss Ames, awaiting
his
reaction. That was ridiculous, because she should not care what he thought of her work. Then she wondered what he would think of her genre painting of the two immigrant women.