Chapter Seven.
The climax had come. It had rushed upon her with an unexpectedness that was overwhelming and had left her too stunned to even think connectedly. Only the night before she had been so full of glad expectation, and now everything seemed at an end and all the gladness vanished. She walked unsteadily back to her old seat by the window, and fingered absently the book St. John had sent. It was a new volume, and had been a gift; for he had written her name on the fly leaf. The fact had given her pleasure last night, now she wondered why he had done it, and laid the book down again wearily, all her former interest gone. There were other evidences of his gifts about the room in the shape of baskets once containing fruit and flowers. The fruit had been all eaten, and the flowers were dead; a bunch of them, fading fast, drooped in a vase upon the table; the rest, dried and discoloured, with all their beauty perished, were hidden away in Jill’s little bedroom where only she could see them, and recall the pleasure they had given; and from her exalted position on on the bracket which she occupied alone, Clytie looked down white, and pure, and pensive, seeming to understand. Oh! it was hard, and cruel, and bitter,—all the more bitter, that the mistake had been her own. She drew from the bosom of her frock St. John’s brief note, the note that had made her so happy, and read it again by the light of her new understanding, ‘Don’t worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday.’ Perhaps he had meant it literally and not, as she had imagined, penned the clause solely with a thoughtful desire to save her anxiety. How vain she had been!—how mad! ‘I have something to say to you which will not keep.’ So vague a sentence, and yet she had fancied that she had guessed his meaning rightly. He might have meant a hundred things, and what more probable than the announcement of his engagement?
Jill crouched by the window for the rest of the morning hugging this new trouble which had dwarfed all the others into insignificance. At first she was too dazed to feel anything much, then gradually the anguish of mind grew keener until it seemed unbearable, and finally exhausted itself by its own violence. After that came a lull, and then followed resentment, fierce, active, healthy resentment that left absolutely no room for any other emotion; resentment against her recent visitor, angry, contemptuous, indignant; resentment against Miss Bolton of the fiercely jealous order; but keenest of all resentment against St. John, the cold, inflexible, heartsore resentment of wounded love. He ought to have told her of his engagement; if not actually dishonourable it was mean of him to have suppressed the fact when he must have seen that he was becoming necessary to her, when he knew, too, that she was more than, under the circumstances, she should have been to him; for that he did care for her she did not doubt—infatuation his father had called it, and it might be that he was right. At any rate St. John should have left the Art School before it had grown too late. This feeling of anger acted as a tonic to Jill; it braced her nerves and put her on her mettle, so that she determined to face her trouble and conquer it, and if possible show St. John what a poor opinion she had of him. But then came the remembrance of her small debts and her poverty. It had been a bad thing for her this acquaintance with St. John; she had not relied sufficiently on herself. When he was gone the fee would cease, and she had not sold any work for weeks. The last canvas that she had been engaged upon before her illness, painting from a model St. John had employed, stood against the wall unfinished and there were others ready for sale but nowhere to dispose of them. In the afternoon she went out—there was no time for holidays now—in search of a market, and returned in the evening weary, footsore, miserable, having had no luck at all with her canvasses, but—oh! the degradation to Jill’s artist-soul—having been obliged to accept as the only thing going an order for half-a-dozen nightdress sachets—‘pyjama bags’ as the oily, leering, facetious individual who had given her the commission called them.
“There was a run on ’em,” he had added, “the swells like painted satin things to keep their night-gear in.”
Jill had agreed to do the work, but she looked far from happy over it, and very nearly cried as she turned to leave the shop. The facetious individual had chucked her under the chin, and told her to ‘buck up,’ and he would look round and see if there wasn’t something else he could find her to ‘daub.’ Then he winked at her, and Jill had broken away in haste fearing that these overtures would lead to an embrace. And so she reached home, and that night went early to bed, and Thursday ended unhappily even as it had begun.
The next morning when she rose, the feeling of anger was still paramount. She had suffered so keenly yesterday that she did not think it possible that she could feel any greater pain, and she found it difficult to realise yet all that this sudden breaking with St. John must mean. She steeled herself to meet her old pupil with composure though she had not yet determined upon what she should say or do. At first she had thought of writing and forbidding him ever to come to the Art School again, but had subsequently rejected this plan as impracticable; what reason had she to offer? She could not say on account of your engagement, such an excuse would have placed her in a false position, and given St. John a right to put what construction he chose upon her motive. The only thing that remained for her was to receive him, and by saying as little as possible convince him how indifferent she was, and how very determined at the same time. And at nine thirty sharp he arrived, clattering up the steep stairs like a noisy schoolboy and marching through the open door straight into the studio where Jill stood white and nervous, but outwardly calm, waiting to receive him. There was a pleased, eager, confident air about him in striking contrast to the chilling quiet of her manner, and he grasped her hand before she could prevent him with a very hearty grip of genuine sincerity.
“This is good to see you about again,” he began. Then he stopped short struck by something in her face, and exclaimed anxiously. “Nothing the matter I hope, Miss Erskine?”
Jill was standing with her back to the light so that she had the advantage of him that way; but St. John’s sight was good and he detected at once the suppressed agitation of her manner; though she, herself, was unaware of it there was a whole life’s tragedy in the depths of her grey eyes.
“No,” she answered; “nothing beyond a trifling annoyance that I have been subjected to lately, and which I have determined to put an end to for good and all. It is absurd of course and really not worth discussing, but these petty worries are even more trying than big ones.”
“If it is not worth discussion,” he said, “we’ll let it slide for to-day at any rate. I have got so much to say that is worth discussing, that I want to say it at once. I give you fair warning that I haven’t come to work.”
As a matter of fact there was no work put ready for him; but he had not time to notice that. He was so boyish and impulsive, so gay and self-complacent that her anger gathered strength from his sheer light-heartedness.
“Come and sit beside me on the stool by the window, Jill,” he said, “and then we can talk at our ease.”
It was the first time that he had addressed her by her Christian name, and he glanced at her half smiling, half diffident, to see how she would take it.
“No,” she answered coldly, “what I have to say can very well be said where I am, and it will be as well to get through with it at once. You will think it rather sudden no doubt after my note of Wednesday, but, as I told you, I have been subjected to a great deal of annoyance lately and what I experienced yesterday has decided me to put an end to the existing state of affairs. I regret having to spring this upon you so abruptly, and in the middle of a quarter too, but I wish you to understand that I cannot teach you any longer, I wish you to leave this Art School.”
St. John looked mystified and incredulous, he was astounded at her request, at the cold precision of her voice, and the apathy of her expression. He felt annoyed with her and not a little hurt.
“May I enquire why you dismiss me thus suddenly?” he asked schooling himself to keep his vexation in check. “I should like to know what has induced you to act so precipitately.”
“No, you may not,” Jill answered crossly; “I only took you on trial, remember.”
“For a quarter yes, but then the probation was over, and it is hardly etiquette to dismiss a pupil in the middle of a term without vouchsafing any reason.”
“I consider it quite sufficient that I do dismiss you,” Miss Erskine responded. “We will not discuss the matter further, if you please.”
“Oh! yes, we will,” he answered, his temper like her own beginning to get the upper hand. “In fact I refuse to leave without an alleged complaint before my term is expired; you are bound to give a proper notice.”
“Not if I expel you,” Jill retorted.
“Expel me!” he scoffed. “What would you expel me for? You couldn’t do that without a reason.”
“But I have a reason.”
“A reason!” he repeated aghast, “a reason sufficient to expel me? What reason pray?”
“Making love to me.”
Silence followed—a depressing silence during which neither of them moved. She had spoken in the heat of the moment, the next she could have bitten out her tongue for her indiscretion. St. John stared at her fully a minute. Then he smiled rudely.
“Making love to you!” he repeated. “Absurd! I have never spoken a word of love to you in my life.”
It was true; he had not, and Jill’s cup of humiliation was full. What had induced her to make such an egregious error?
“You’ll be running me in for breach of promise, I suppose?” he continued ruthlessly. “Don’t you think that you’re a little—a little—well, conceited to be so premature?”
Jill turned upon him wrathfully.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “It is only what people think. For myself it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had made love to me or not; I should soon have settled that.”
He changed from angry crimson to dead white, and gazed at her in hurt displeasure.
“You mean that?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she answered with vindictive and unnecessary emphasis, “I am not in the habit of prevaricating.”
“Very well,” he said in a tone of forced calm which contrasted ill with the pained expression of his face, “I believe you. And under the circumstances am quite of your opinion that further acquaintance had better cease. It was a mistake my coming at all both for you and for me. Good morning, Miss Erskine, and good-bye.”
He paused, thinking that perhaps her mood had been prompted by caprice, and that she might relent yet and call him back; but she made no movement at all beyond a bend of the head, and her voice was no kinder when she wished him farewell. Then he went, striding down the stairs and out into the street, resentful, angry, heartsore, little guessing how very much greater was the unhappiness he had left behind him where Jill, alone now in every sense of the word, stood battling with her grief and her emotion, and trying to face the difficulties which seemed crowding upon her on every side. She got out her satin work when he had gone and started upon the sachets with eager haste, glad of the miserable order now; for it kept her employed, and diverted the train of her thoughts. And all that day she sat working, working feverishly, dining, when the light failed so that she could see to paint no longer, off a crust of bread, the best her larder had to offer—indeed the only thing.
The next morning by the early post she received a letter from St. John. Her hand trembled so violently as she took it up that she could hardly unfasten the envelope, but, finally tearing it open she withdrew the contents, a sheet of notepaper with St. John’s compliments inscribed thereon, and enclosed within a cheque for the fee paid in full up to the end of the present quarter. The cheque fell to the ground unheeded but the sheet of paper Jill spread out on the table before her and then sat staring at it as though she could not take it in. It was the first brief missive of the sort that she had received; its very brevity chilled her. “With Mr St. John’s compliments.” So he had accepted his dismissal? It was better so, of course; but it was very hard to bear all the same.