The Triumph of Jill

by F. E. Mills Young

Chapter Six.

St. John had attended Miss Erskine’s studio for two quarters, and was now into the third. He was still her sole pupil; though she had had another student, a long-legged girl of fifteen who had attended for three weeks and then been taken away in a hurry because her mother had discovered that Miss Erskine was very young, and had, besides her daughter, only one other pupil—a man—and no chaperone. She wrote Miss Erskine very plainly on the subject of the impropriety of her conduct, and gave her a good deal of advice, but omitted to enclose the fee. Jill showed the letter to St. John as the best way of explaining his fellow-student’s absence, and St. John laughed over it immoderately; he was so glad that the long-legged girl was gone.

“It’s rather rough on you though,” he remarked as he returned the missive which Jill put into her pocket to keep for a curiosity. “If you get another pupil of that description you’ll have to get rid of me, that’s certain. Poor little snub-nosed Flossie! I hope we didn’t demoralise her altogether. How I do detest the respectable British matron, don’t you?”

“No,” answered Jill. “I detest the vulgar, narrow-minded order though, like the writer of this letter. That poor child! I used to think her a giggling little idiot. She did giggle, and she wasn’t very wise; but she is greatly to be commiserated all the same.”

Jill had no fresh pupils after that, only St. John trudged manfully up the steep, narrow stairs with unfailing regularity, and once, when she was ill and obliged to stay in bed with a bad cold on her chest, he sent her fruit and flowers, but carefully refrained from going near the studio himself until he received a little note from her thanking him and saying that she was well enough to resume work.

Independent of the fee he paid for tuition, and the pleasure she derived from his society Jill enjoyed many advantages through his being at the studio which she could not herself have afforded. For one thing when he started painting he insisted upon employing a model; he wanted to paint from life; and Jill had to pose the model and paint from him or her—as the case might be—at the same time. She made good use of her opportunities, and many of the canvasses sold, but she had to dispose of them far below their market value at a merely nominal profit which just paid her and that was all. St. John offered her a hundred and fifty pounds for one picture—a female figure against a background of sea and sky, the whole veiled in a kind of white mist—a vapoury shroud which softened yet did not conceal. Jill had christened this picture “The Pride of the Morning,” and for some reason, perhaps because St. John so greatly admired it, she felt loth to let it go for the ridiculous price which she had accepted for the other canvasses; yet when St. John wished to purchase it she refused. She would not sell it to him though she offered it as a gift, but he would not take it, and so “The Pride of the Morning” was stood in a corner of the studio facing the wall just as though it was in disgrace.

Just about this time Jill had a regular run of ill luck. In the first instance the man who always bought her canvasses became bankrupt and was sold up, and Jill, who didn’t know anything about sending in claims, and had no one to advise her; for she never consulted St. John on purely personal matters for fear of his finding out how very poor she really was, lost the price of three canvasses which he had taken of her and never paid for, besides having nowhere now to dispose of her work. He had paid her poorly but it had been a certain market, and although she tramped London over, as it seemed to her weary feet, she could find no one to give her an order, or even a promise of work in the future; she had plenty of time for dreaming now. Besides this, the rent of her rooms was due again, and it was absolutely expedient that she should have new boots. And then came the climax—at least it seemed the climax to Jill’s overwrought and tired brain, but it was not so; as a matter of fact that fell later when she had not conceived it possible that greater trouble could fall to human lot. She became ill again—off her head, as Isobel informed St. John when she received him one Tuesday with the intimation that he could not go up as usual. The heat of summer, together with the continual atmosphere of white lead and turpentine had been too much for Jill, and she had collapsed, and, becoming rambling and incoherent in her talk the landlady had taken things into her own hands and sent for the doctor, when it was only rest and a little nursing and relief from mental worry that the invalid stood in need of, and not physic, a doctor’s bill, and impossible advice. The doctor came. She was thoroughly run down, he said; and he ordered her things that she could not buy, and change of air which she could not afford either, though she told him that she would see about it for fear he should think that she was hoping he would not charge her for attendance, which was very foolish and proud, just as foolish as her refusal to sell St. John the picture.

When she was well enough to get out again she took a holiday and spent it at Hampden Court, going by steam-boat and returning in the evening by train after a long, solitary, but on the whole fairly enjoyable day. That was all the change of air she took, and greatly it benefitted her, far more than anyone would imagine so short a time could do. On her way home when she was crossing the road where Bedford Square merges into Gower Street a private hansom passed her with St. John and his cousin in it both in evening dress. Jill had fancied that Miss Bolton was out of town, and the sight of her quite upset all the pleasure she had derived from her jaunt.

They did not see her, for it was dark in the road, but a street lamp shining full in their faces as they drove past revealed them plainly to her, and she noticed that St. John was looking both bored and worried, a fact which compensated somewhat for the shock of disappointment she had experienced on seeing the heiress.