Looking at this woman brought his unsettled youth back to him in a rush. He did not know why he associated her face with that past life. Perhaps she reminded him of one of the artist models during his failed apprenticeship as a painter. Or perhaps her exotic beauty and her ethnicity suggested something forbidden, outside the realm of the familiar New England world in which he had settled. Or perhaps it was simply that her face, even at first glance, was so expressive that it seemed to have a capacity for the kind of deep and powerful feeling he associated with his younger self. Whatever it was, the face was arresting in its beauty and vibrant humanity in a way that drew him up short. Added to this was the disorienting impression that he had seen it before—an impossibility, surely, but an impression, nonetheless, of which he instantaneously felt certain.
As the woman approached, the contradictory feelings she aroused of both otherness and familiarity made him almost lose his balance, and he grabbed the back of the armchair close by.
“Are you well, Professor James?” she asked, raising a dark eyebrow as she registered his distress. “You seem agitated.” Her voice was low, and there was a touch of the melodious foreign lilt that William had noted in many Jews, even those native to a locale.
William assured her that he was fine. “Have we met?” he asked, trying not to stare but doing so all the same.
“We have not,” she replied. “But I was pleased to hear from Mr. Sargent that you wanted to meet us. I am familiar with your work and admire your attempt to connect philosophy, a science devoted to the general, with mental operation, a science concerned with the individual. It is something that Hebraic law—perhaps all religious law—attempts to do in its clumsy way. But you give it secular expression, which strikes me as useful. We may worship different gods, but we must all live on the same earth together, and it would be best, if we could, through the establishment of certain principles of behavior, transcend the sectarianism of any particular religious system of belief.”
William continued to stare at the speaker. It was rare for a woman to have an opinion on such matters, much less to speak about them with this sort of eloquence. His sister was possibly the only woman he knew capable of doing so. But here was a stranger who had performed the impressive feat of simplifying his philosophy in terms that were at once accurate and unique.
“And with whom do I have the honor of speaking, who knows my philosophical goals so well?” he asked, trying to keep his voice as detached and casual as he could.
“Ella Abrams,” said the young woman. “Or rather, Miss Ella Abrams. The English are very keen on letting a gentleman know one’s marital status at once.” She spoke jauntily, and William was not certain whether she was being dismissive of the practice or subtly flirtatious—possibly both.
“I assume you are here because you have an interest in something that my father has to sell,” she continued. “That’s generally why gentlemen come to dinner. We are not yet at the stage where our visits are purely social. Except for Mr. Sargent, and even he has an interest in us as exotic specimens, though of course we are also great friends.”
With the mention of Sargent, William suddenly realized where he had seen the girl before. It was at a gallery show in Boston the year before. It had been Sargent’s first American exhibition and had featured some two dozen paintings, mostly portraits of dowagers and society debutantes, but with a few Italianate scenes and one of a striking young woman in Persian costume, now identifiable as Ella Abrams. He recalled at the time staring raptly at that painting, until his Alice pulled him away, saying that she was growing jealous of the model. He had assured her that it was the brushwork that intrigued him—only John could do so much with the color black—and had even convinced himself that it was true. But now, looking at the woman in front of him, he realized it was the face that had mesmerized him on canvas as it now did in life.
She was wearing a dark blue velvet gown, very simple but well cut, with a sapphire necklace that matched the dress and accentuated the sweep of her long neck. She turned to take his arm and lead him into the dining room, and he was aware of the pressure of her fingers and the proximity of her body to his. Every fiber in him seemed alert to her presence and her touch. They walked through the drawing room, then through a long hall, lined, William vaguely noted, with a collection of the new impressionist painters—Asher Abrams’s taste was obviously for the new as well as the old—and into the dining room, where once again, he was dazzled by the spectacle that confronted him.
If he had been struck by Sargent’s painting of Ella Abrams at the Boston exhibition, he now saw the same effect multiplied. On the walls of the spacious room, in which a large table had been elaborately set for dinner, were five life-size portraits of the Abrams family, all unmistakably by the brush of John Singer Sargent.
“It is a bit extreme,” admitted Ella when she saw William’s expression as he gazed at the collection of paintings around them. “My father believes that without a dramatic showing, we are likely to be swept under the carpet. As it is, although we may be accused of questionable taste, we cannot be ignored.”
William felt the force of this statement. It was not just the number and size of the paintings that were arresting. It was also the unique appearance of the subjects and the unconventional way in which they had been painted. The Abramses had not held Sargent to the standard of propriety favored by most of his clients. Perhaps they did not understand that standard or did not like it. The figures represented in each of the paintings had vibrancy and color that seemed excessive. These were unruly, possibly indecorous people, though the paintings also made clear that they had a great deal of money and life.
The family members were all present in person as William entered the room, so that the relationship between the paintings and their subjects was immediately thrust upon him. Ada and Greta, the Abramses’ eight-year-old twins, who had been rendered by Sargent with their dog, as though they were three small animals playing together, were quarreling obstreperously under the table. Fiona, sixteen, was fidgeting near her seat, dressed in an extravagant evening gown of gold silk that accented her unaccountably blonde hair, the dress similar to one that her likeness was wearing on the opposite wall. Sargent had painted her in a double portrait with Ella. The two girls, their arms around each other’s waists, stared boldly at the observer, a study in dark and light. Alfred, the son and heir, who stood looking bored in the corner, had been portrayed holding a palette and brush (Sargent had mentioned that he was a painter, or at least an aspiring one). The red lips and supercilious expression on both portrait and man branded him the petulant aesthete. Esther Abrams, the matriarch, appeared in person precisely as she had been painted: a small, straight-backed woman in black with an expression of what could be described only as fierce timidity. She gave William a quick, frightened smile and turned to whisper something to her son.
In the midst of this tumultuous scene, in which life and art seemed to be vying for priority, stood the patriarch, Asher Abrams, directly below his own portrait. Sargent had painted him in the formal evening dress he was wearing now, but in the painting he held a ledger book as if to emphasize that, though a gentleman, he was never beyond the call of his business. The image, like the man, exuded power and cunning, a combination that William supposed was precisely the way Abrams wished to be portrayed. As Ella led William over to meet him, Abrams’s canny eyes surveyed his guest much as he might appraise a piece of good furniture or a fine picture.