Angelica and I are planning what to wear. Come join us."
"I can't," Sarah said. "Not this minute."
"Oh bother, picture-copying. I want you to help me decide what to wear."
"Rosa," Sarah scolded. "I'll come in half an hour." She continued with her work, but after a few minutes was impatient to finish. Rosa waited, looking over Sarah's shoulder, chattering about the ball, about her own drawing which she said she found exhausting.
"It's different for me, Rosa. I must assist Papa. His eyes are failing, and my work must measure up."
"But isn't it awfully tiring?"
"Not for me," Sarah said. "I'm strong and used to working."
Rosa shook her head. "Has Father shown you how to draw the little snake curls? I call them Byron curls."
Sarah nodded. She didn't think the people who came to her Father's painting room would care for the style. It was a European mannerism. But she had practiced it.
"I do hair well—and profiles," Rosa said, "but eyes are difficult for me." She sighed. "I work on my music more now—it's not as tiring."
Sarah knew what Rosa was really saying. Marriage was coming, and a home and children, and what did drawing have to do with that? Rosa was pretty, and maybe she was right—for her.
The evening of the ball arrived and Rosa, Angelica, and Sarah each wore their finest gowns. Sarah crinkled and shushed in Margaretta's blue taffeta. Rosa gushed about the desirable men Sarah would meet. She hoped she would meet someone like Ben Blakely.
Charlotte Robinson arrived with a large party after the ballroom was filled. Sarah saw her immediately and noticed she looked pale and nervous. Rosa, who had been dancing, broke away and greeted her cousin at once. Rosa's eyes shone with pleasure. Her face was pink with excitement as she brought Charlotte to Sarah for a few words. They were soon joined by some of Charlotte's party. They chatted and danced and sipped punch. Sarah danced with Thomas, one of the men who came with Charlotte. He was a tobacco planter who danced with energy, dashing about the floor like a fox in the woods. Sarah teased him until she saw Charlotte's eyes following them.
Rosa led the conversation at intermission over cakes and punch. "My cousin Sally has the Peale talent for portrait painting."
"Is it easy to capture a likeness?" someone asked Sarah.
"No, it's never easy."
"Then why would you spend so much time doing it?" Charlotte asked. "There are so many men devoting their lives to it."
"Why?" Sarah looked wonderingly into Charlotte's eyes. She glanced at the faces of the others who politely waited for her reply. "I do it because I want to excel." Her answer was instinctive, but it brought smiles and giggles. Charlotte's eyes showed sympathy mingled with amusement. Hurt, Sarah was speechless, but the moment passed. The conversation moved on. To these people her struggle could not possibly succeed or make any difference anyway. They believed she was wasting her time. She longed to explain, to tell them they were wrong. It was possible to do what she wanted to do. She would excel.
The music began again, and Thomas asked Charlotte to dance. Sarah watched them, seeing the scene as a painting: light touched their foreheads, shadows revealed bone structure under the surface of their skin. She saw proportion, composition. Though she participated, she also observed, very carefully.
Perhaps Ben would understand. Or did he think she was wasting her time just as the others did? Her head whirled with images of the smiling faces around her, then of Ben.
She was glad to leave when the evening ended, but when she reached her room she was not ready to sleep. Ben had written her a letter she hadn't answered. Even before she took off her party dress she picked up her pen and poured out her thoughts to him:
Your letter came several days ago and since you did write, I must assume you have given some thought to me at least. You are an honest hard-working person and not of our family; therefore, I am writing to ask you a vital question. You have been to medical school, which I have heard is very demanding, so you understand sacrifice and working hard for "what you want. But if I am not mistaken about you, Ben, you are also practical and a man of sensibilities.
As you must know, I take my painting seriously. My father expects me to help in his painting room. When people come to my father for their portraits, they expect a painting that will give them pleasure for the rest of their lives and remain as a testament after their deaths. To prepare myself for this work, I am studying very hard to become an excellent artist, not simply a painter of drapery and ruffles. I want to become an artist as competent as my father. Yet some people think it is a waste for me to spend so much time learning to paint when s many men are devoting their lives to it. My burning question is this, Ben. Do you understand why I want to devote myself to it? Does it seem reasonable that I should give up the little pleasures in a young woman's life to exhaust myself thus?
Respectfully yours,
Sarah
The next morning in the studio, Rembrandt paced and lectured about ways of constructing a face to make the painting worthy to live on through time. As he described paintings he had seen in London and Paris, Sarah saw that Rembrandt's purpose in painting was not to provide a likeness or to earn a living or even to describe an event in history. His art was grandly conceived and executed so people born centuries in the future would admire it.
She began to understand Rembrandt's Napoleon. The horse was magnificent, the rider a worthy-looking hero. She doubted if she would ever paint such pictures. She thought of the patrons that came to her father's shop. There would be no Napoleons there.
At the end of the lecture, Rembrandt asked if she had any questions. Sarah smiled. "Do you think Raphaelle does still-life that could last through the ages?"
Rembrandt looked startled, but clenched his jaw and gazed over the top of her head. "Raphaelle should be doing more with his talent." "He does a few miniatures when he is well enough."
Rembrandt waved the miniatures out of consideration. "He has no conception of pleasing a sitter. It's as though he wishes to insult them. I don't understand him. Why does he turn his talent and wit against himself? Is it because he resents the fact that his work isn't recognized? If so, why does he pretend it doesn't matter? His advertisements are degrading to everyone. 'No likeness, no pay. It's not hard to imagine what inspired that. Worse still, one advertisement read, 'Still Life, including both fruit pieces and portraits of the deceased!'"Why should he hang up a sign like that?"
"To be noticed," Sarah suggested.
"Yes. And such cheap prices! Why must he drag his humiliation out for all to see?" Rembrandt shook his head and lowered his voice. "He's too tender a soul to survive. His sense of his own frustrations won't give him any peace."
Rembrandt's words left Sarah with a cold prickling sensation. "I've known Raphaelle was unhappy and that was why he wasn't successful. But I still don't understand how it happens."
"None of us understands Raphaelle, not even Raphaelle."
Sarah thought about that. Her father might be the one person who understood him. "When I see his still-life paintings," Sarah said, "I can believe everything in his life is in perfect order."
"When he is painting for himself, it is." Rembrandt strode across the room. "There is nothing we can do for him." He lowered his head and looked at the floor.
In the days that followed, Sarah redoubled her efforts to make the best of her opportunity in Baltimore, but even as she worked intensely, her thoughts were often with Anna. She asked Anna to write her everything that was happening. One evening she was rewarded with a fat envelope addressed to her in Anna's handwriting. She carelessly threw her cape down on the sofa beside her in her haste to read Anna's letter.
Dear Sarah, I am glad to hear you are working diligently. If you ever come to Washington City to paint, you will wish you had worked even harder. You asked too many questions in your letter, but I will try to tell you everything. The city itself was a great disappointment.