Chapter Fifteen.
Notwithstanding her former reluctance Jill eventually undertook the commission for Mr Markham’s portrait, though some time elapsed before she started on the work, Markham, himself, being out of town staying as a guest at a house where Evie Bolton was also visiting, a circumstance that filled St. John with pleasurable anticipation, though Jill, less sanguine as to the result, was more inclined to foresee troubles ahead, and looked forward with no great joy to their friend’s return. Yet his manner, when he did put in an appearance, conveyed absolutely no impression; as St. John afterwards informed his wife he believed that Markham had funked it.
“When shall we have the first sitting, Mrs St. John?” he exclaimed after the usual greetings were over. “I am quite anxious to begin.”
“Why not fix Monday?” suggested St. John amicably.
“Monday!” cried Jill. “It’s washing day. How can you be so inconsiderate?”
“Oh, ah! washing day! I forgot. The atmosphere is composed of soap-suds, and we have cold meat. Not Monday, my dear boy; it is the most ungodly day of the week.”
“Tuesday would do,” said Jill, “if that suits, and I think three o’clock would be the most convenient hour for me. The light, of course, is best in the mornings, but I am always busy then.”
“Any time will suit me,” Markham answered promptly, “and any day.”
“Ah,” said Jill with a little smile, “Jack was like that once. Why don’t you get something to do?”
“Because it isn’t necessary.”
“But independence is such a grand thing,” she persisted.
“Exactly. I inherited it, and I like it best that way.”
Jill laughed.
“We can’t all be workers, I suppose,” she said, “yet I fancy if I had been given my choice I should have chosen that kind of independence. Work is necessary to me.”
“From a selfish point of view I am glad that it is; otherwise you wouldn’t paint portraits.”
“What makes you fancy that?” she asked.
“No one who paints as you do would undertake portraits if they could avoid it. I know a man who has always one canvas at least in the academy, but he can’t afford to paint pictures now; they don’t sell; so he does portraits.”
Jill sighed.
“I am sorry for that man,” she said, “his life must be a disappointment. The people who want to be painted are generally so impossible.”
“My dear girl,” remonstrated St. John, “considering the circumstances that is one of the things better left unsaid.”
“I am speaking from the artistic sense,” she replied; “besides I said ‘generally.’”
“I quite understand,” interposed Markham laughing, “and entirely agree with you. But that won’t interfere with the sitting on Tuesday, eh?”
“I hope not,” she answered gravely; “I should be doubly sorry now if you didn’t come.”
“There is no fear of that,” he said. “I enjoy seeing myself reproduced. It is so often an improvement, you know, yet one invariably flatters oneself that it is as one habitually looks.”
“We haven’t done much to foster your conceit so far,” she observed.
“Oh! I don’t know,” he answered. “I really thought that that last portrait was a bit like me. Somebody told me I did look like that sometimes when I had a liver attack.”
“Evie said it was a libel,” St. John remarked tentatively.
“Ah! Well, I should be sorry to contradict her,” he replied, and Jill fancied, though she could not be quite sure, that he looked slightly displeased at the mention of Miss Bolton’s name. Why should a name that had once been his sole subject of conversation excite his annoyance now? It was not consistent. Had it been a case of unrequited affection she could have understood his being hurt, but displeasure was something she could not account for; it irritated her, why she could not have explained. She was not accustomed to analyse her sensations even to herself; it would have been wiser if she had; for her instinct was wonderfully true, and her nature peculiarly observant.
“You put me on my mettle,” she said, smiling. “It shan’t be a libel this time I promise you if infinite pains can prevent.”
“I am not afraid to trust myself in your hands,” he said.
Jill laughed.
“That’s very fulsome flattery,” she answered. “I was responsible for the libel, remember. Mr Thompkins declares that I shall ruin the firm yet. It is so humiliating because I was so positive at first that I was going to become one of those celebrated lady photographers who have all the best people sitting to them, and can charge any price they like.”
“It’s just as well as it is, perhaps,” St. John rejoined with conviction. “Success would make you a horrid little prig, Jill; very few people can stand it.”
“If Mr Markham were not here,” Jill returned, “I would tell you what I think of you.”