Chapter Eleven.
Jaggs Makes a Discovery.
“Their scent sickens me,” Dale cried passionately, as he committed them to the flames unread, for he frankly owned to himself that he dare not read one, lest he should falter in the resolution he had made.
For he had struggled hard to fight against his fate, and though tied and tangled by the threads which still clung to him, he had mockingly told himself that he was not mad enough to venture into the spider’s web again.
Then, twice over, he had hastily drawn a curtain in front of his great picture upon Keren-Happuch coming up to the studio to bring in a card—the Conte’s—and bit his lip with rage and mortification as that gentleman was shown up, in company with Lady Grayson.
The visit on the first occasion was to complain about Dale’s curt refusal to go on with the picture; while the young artist haltingly gave as his reason that it was impossible for him to complete Lady Dellatoria’s portrait on account of a large work that he was compelled to finish. And all the while Lady Grayson, with the reckless effrontery of her nature, looked at him mockingly, her eyes laughingly telling him that he was a poor weak coward, and that she could read him through and through.
Then came the second visit with the wretched Italian, blindly, or knowingly, to use him as a screen for his own amours, almost imploring him to come.
“Lady Dellatoria is so disappointed,” he said volubly. “She takes the matter quite to heart. No doubt, Mr Dale, there is a little vanity in the matter—the desire to be seen in the exhibition, painted by the famous young American artist.”
“There are plenty of men, sir, who would gladly undertake the commission,” said Dale angrily. “I beg that you will not ask me again.”
“Mr Dale, you are cruel,” cried Lady Grayson. “Our poor Contessa will be desolate. Let me plead for you to come and finish the work.”
“Aha! yes,” cried the Conte, wrinkling up his face, though it was full enough before of premature lines. “A lady pleads. You cannot refuse her.”
Dale gave the woman a look so full of contempt and disgust that she coloured and then turned away, shrugging her shoulders.
“He is immovable,” she said to the Conte.
“No, no! Body of Bacchus! I understand;” and he placed his finger to his lips, and half closing his eyes, signed to Dale to step aside with him. “Mr Dale,” he whispered, “Lady Dellatoria has set her mind upon this, and I see now: a much more highly paid commission that you wish to do for some one. That shall not stand in the way. Come, I double the amount for which we—what do you name it? Ah, yes—bargained.”
Dale turned upon him fiercely.
“No, sir!” he cried; “it is not a question of money. No sum would induce me to finish that portrait.”
“Ah, well: we shall see,” said the Conte. “Do not be angry, my young friend. Lady Dellatoria will be eaten by chagrin. But we will discuss the matter no more to-day. Good morning.”
He held out his hand to Lady Grayson, but she did not take it. She moved toward Dale, and held out her gloved fingers.
“Good morning, Mr Dale,” she said merrily. “You great men in oil are less approachable than a Prime Minister.” Then in a low tone: “It is not true, all this show of opposition. I am not blind.”
She turned and gave her hand to the Conte, and they left the studio, Armstrong making no effort to show them out, but standing motionless till he heard the door close, when, with a gesture of contempt and disgust, he threw open the windows and lit his pipe.
A minute later he had thrown the pipe aside and taken out Cornel’s letter to read; but the words swam before his eyes, and he could only see the face hidden behind that curtain.
“Poor little talisman!” he said, sadly apostrophising the letter, “you have lost your power. Evil is stronger than good, after all.”
“Good-bye, little one,” he continued, “for ever. You would forgive me if you knew all, for I am drifting—drifting, and my strength has gone.”
Two days passed—a week, and hour by hour he had waited, fully expecting that Valentina would come. He shrank from the meeting, but felt that it must be, for her influence seemed to be over him sleeping or waking, her eyes always gazing into his.
But she did not come. Only another note, and this he read in its brevity, for it contained but these words—
“You will drive me to my death.”
“Or me to mine,” he muttered, as he burned the letter; and then, in a raging desire to crush down the thoughts which troubled him, he turned to his work.
“Never!” he cried fiercely. “I will not go. If she comes here—well, if she does. That mockery of a man will track her some day, and then, in spite of English law, there will be a meeting, and he will kill me. I hope so. Then there would be rest.”
The picture which he had now stubbornly set himself to finish, as if he were urged by some unseen power, progressed but slowly. “The Emperor” came to sit, and tried to mould his features into the desired aspect with more or less success; but, in spite of inquiries, and interview after interview with different models recommended by brother artists as suitable to stand for the figure, Dale’s taste was too fastidious to be satisfied, and Juno’s face alone looked scornfully from the canvas.
Pacey had been again and again, but only in a friendly way, to chat as of old, sometimes bringing with him Leronde to gossip and fence with, at other times alone. No reference was made to the picture or the past.
“I shall never finish it,” said Dale, as he sat alone one day gazing at his canvas. “What shall I do—go abroad? Joe would come with me, and all this horrible dream might slowly die away.”
“No,” he muttered, after a pause; “it would not die. Better seek the true forgetfulness. Do all men at some time in their lives suffer from such a madness as mine?”
His musings were interrupted by a step upon the stairs, and he hastily drew the curtain before hi? canvas.
A single rap, which sounded as if it had been given with the knob of a walking-stick, came upon the door panel, and directly afterwards, in answer to a loud “Come in,” Jaggs entered with the knocker in his hand, to wit, a silk umbrella—one of those ingenious affairs formed by sewing all the folds where they have been slit up by wear and tear, and declared by the kerb vendor as being better than new—a fact as regards the price.
“Ah, Jaggs, good morning,” said Dale. “But I don’t want you. I shall let your face go as it is.”
“Quite right, sir,” said the man, glancing at the curtain. “Couldn’t be better; but I didn’t come about that.”
“Oh, I see,” said Dale sarcastically. “Your banker gone on the Continent?”
“The Emperor” drew himself up, and looked majestic in the face and pose of the head, shambling as to his legs, and extremely deferential in the curve of his body and the position of his hands and arms.
“Mr Dale,” he said, “I don’t deny, sir, as there ’ave been times when a half-crown has been a little heaven, and a double florin a delight, but I was not agoing to ask assistance now, though I am still a strugglin’ man, and been accustomed to better things. It was not to ask help, sir, as I’d come, but to bestow it, if so be as you’d condescend to accept it of your humble servant, as always feels a pride in your success, not to hide the fack that it does me good, sir, to be seen upon the line.”
“Well, what do you mean?” said Dale gruffly.
“I want to see that picture done, sir. It’ll make our fortune, sir. I’m sure on it, and I say it with pride, there isn’t anything as’ll touch it for a mile round.”
“Thank you, Jaggs; you are very complimentary,” said Dale ironically, but the tone was not observed.
“It’s on’y justice, sir, and I ain’t set going on for twenty years for artists without knowing a good picture when I see one. But that ain’t business, sir. You want a model, sir, and that Miss Montesquieu, as she calls herself, won’t be here for a month or two, and you needn’t expect her. Did you try her as Mr Pacey calls the Honourable Miss Brill?”
“Pish! I don’t want to paint a fishwife, man.”
“No, sir, you don’t; and of course Miss Varsey Vavasour wouldn’t do?”
“No, no, no! there is not one of them I’d care to have, Jaggs. If I go on with the figure, I shall work from some cast at first, and finish afterward from a model.”
“No, sir, don’t, pr’y don’t,” cried Jaggs. “You’ll only myke it stiff and hard. It wouldn’t be worthy on you, Mr Dale, sir; and besides, there ain’t no need. You’re a lion, sir, a reg’lar lion ’mong artisses, sir, and you was caught in a net, sir, and couldn’t get free, and all the time, sir, there was a little mouse a nibblin’ and a nibblin’ to get you out, sir, though you didn’t know it, sir, and that mouse’s nyme was Jaggs.”
“What! You don’t mean to say you know of a suitable model?”
“But I just do, sir. That’s what I do say, sir.”
“No, no,” cried Armstrong peevishly. “I don’t want to be worried into seeing one of your friends, Jaggs. Your taste and mine are too different for a lady of your choice to suit my work.”
“Don’t s’y that, sir,” cried Jaggs, in an aggrieved tone of voice. “I’m on’y a common sort o’ man, I own, sir, but I do know a good model when I see one—I mean one as shows breed. I don’t mean one o’ your pretty East End girls, with the bad stock showing through, but one as has got good furren breed in her.”
“Is this a foreign woman, then?”
“That’s it, sir. Comes from that place last where they ketch the little fishes as they sends over here for breakfast—not bloaters, sir, them furren ones.”
“Anchovies?”
“No, sir, t’other ones in tins.”
“Sardines?”
“That’s it, sir: comes from Sardineyer last, but her father was a Human. Sort o’ patriot kind o’ chap as got into trouble for trying to free his country. Them furren chaps is always up to their games, sir, like that theer Mr Lerondy, and then their country’s so grateful that they has to come over here to save themselves from being shot.”
“But the woman?”
“Oh, she come along with her father, sir, and he’s been trying to give Hightalian lessons, and don’t get on ’cause they say he don’t talk pure, and he’s too proud to go out as a waiter and earn a honest living, so the gal’s begun going out to sit. But she don’t get on nayther, ’cause her figure’s too high.”
“What! a great giraffe of a woman?”
“Lor’ bless you, no, sir! ’bout five feet two half. I should say. I meant charges stiff; won’t go out for less nor arf crown a hour, and them as tried her don’t like her ’cause she’s so stuck-up.”
“Look here, Jaggs; is she a finely formed, handsome woman?”
“Well, Mr Dale, sir, I won’t deceive you, for from what I hear her face ain’t up to much; but she don’t make a pynte o’ faces, and I’m told as she’s real good for anything, from a Greek statoo to a hangel.”
“Well, I’ll see her. Where does she live?”
“Leather Lane way, sir.”
“Address?”
“Ah, that I don’t know, sir. I b’leeve it’s her father as does the business and takes the money.”
“He is her father?”
“Oh yes, sir, it’s all square. I’m told they’re very ’spectable people. Old man’s quite the seedy furren gent, and the gal orful stand-offish.”
“Tell him to come and bring his daughter. If I don’t like her, I’ll pay for one sitting and she can go—”
“Eight, sir; and speaking ’onest, sir, I do hope as she will turn out all right.”
“Thank you. There’s a crown for your trouble.”
“Raly, sir, that ain’t nessary,” said “The Emperor,” holding out his hand.—“Oh, well, sir, if you will be so gen’rous, why, ’tain’t for me to stop you.—Good mornin’, sir, good mornin’.”