“But it is the talk of London, my lad, and it means when it comes to Dellatoria’s ears—Bah! a miserable organ-grinder by rights—endless trouble. Perhaps a challenge. Brutes who have no right to name the word honour yell most about their own, as they call it.”
“It is not true—or—there, I tell you it is not true.”
“Not true?”
For answer Armstrong walked to the side of the studio, took a large canvas from where it stood face to the wall, and turned it to show the Contessa’s face half painted.
“Good,” said Pacey involuntarily, “but—”
“Don’t ask me any more, Joe,” said Dale. “Be satisfied that history is not going to repeat itself. I have declined to go on with the commission.”
“Armstrong, lad,” cried Pacey, springing from his seat, and clapping his hands on the young man’s shoulders to look him intently in the eyes. “Bah!” he literally roared, “and I spoiled my night’s rest, and—Here: got any whisky, old man? ’Bacco? Oh, here we are;” and he dragged a large black briar-root, well burned, from his breast and began to fill it. Then, taking a common box of matches from his pocket—a box he had bought an hour before from a beggar in the street, he threw himself back in the big chair, lifted one leg, and gave the match a sharp rub on his trousers, lit up, sending forth volumes of cloud, and in an entirely different tone of voice, said quite blusteringly—
“Now then, about that goddess canvas; let’s have a smell at it. Hah! yes, you want a Juno—a living, breathing divinity, all beauty, scorn, passion, hatred. No, my lad, there are plenty of flesh subjects who would do as well as one of Titian’s, and you could beat an Etty into fits; but there isn’t a model in London who could sit for the divine face you want. Your only chance is to evolve it from your mind as you paint another head.”
“Yes; perhaps you are right,” said Dale dreamily. “Sure I am. There, go in and win, my lad. You’ll do it.—Hah! that’s good whisky.—My dear old fellow, I might have known. I ought to have trusted you.”
“Don’t say any more about it.”