Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

The man was so delightfully innocent in the ways and workings of criminals. He showed the simple faith of a child when listening with avidity to Mr. Sedgewick's views, and allowed himself to be browbeaten by the coachman. He would turn the drift of the talk aside at a most interesting point to relate his early aspirations as a student, and his dismal failure as an artist, and how he had been driven from the painting of colossal historical pictures to the humbler art of the varnisher and restorer, working for a daily wage. He would tell stories of his early struggles that evolved laughter and good-natured scorn.

He had a room allotted to him for his work, one of those rooms opening out of the long passage that led to Mr. Provana's private door, that door by which he and his murderer must have entered the house on the fatal night. Mr. Johnson had examined the door with studious attention, confessing to a morbid interest in the details of crime, co-existent with a curious ignorance of the law of the land. The nature and methods of a coroner's court had to be explained to him, condescendingly, by Mr. Sedgewick, when the Provana murder was under discussion.

He had his room for his artistic work, where he installed himself with three of the largest pictures from the dining-room, his bottles of oil and varnish, and his stock of brushes, and where he insisted upon being undisturbed. He was of a nervous temperament, and could not bear to have his work looked at. He talked of his progress from day to day, expatiating upon the dangers of blue mould, the horrors of asphaltum and other pernicious mediums, and the superiority of the old painters, who ground their own colours; but no one, not even Mr. Sedgewick, was allowed to see him at work.

He was altogether a superior person, yet it was something of a surprise to the household that he should be admitted every evening to an interview with Mrs. Provana, who received him in the great, lonely drawing-room, where he remained with her for about a quarter of an hour, giving an account of his day's work.

This privilege was explained by Mr. Johnson as a natural result of the lady's interest in art, and the value she set upon pictures which it appeared were especial favourites with her husband.

"At the rate he goes at it, I don't fancy he can have much progress to report," remarked Mr. Sedgewick, "for I don't believe he works a solid hour a day at those pictures. He takes things a bit too easily, to my mind. He knows he's got a soft job, and he means to make it last as long as the missus will let him. He's got his head pretty well screwed on, has our friend Johnson; and he knows when he's in for a good thing. And he's got a tongue that would talk over a special commissioner of income tax; so no doubt he makes Mrs. Provana believe that he works heavens hard at fetching up the colour in the Frau Angelicas."

"I shall think something of his work if he can do anything to brighten up those Salvini Roses, which are about the dismallest pictures I ever saw in a gentleman's dining-room," the housekeeper remarked with conviction.

Mr. Johnson was a desultory worker. He told his friends in the household that he worked like a tiger while he was at it, but your real artist was ever fitful in his toil. It was in the artistic temperament to be desultory. He would emerge from his den after an hour or so, in a canvas apron so stained with oil, and so sticky with varnish, that none could doubt his industry. He was eminently sociable. He couldn't get on without company and conversation. The four young footmen afforded him inexhaustible amusement.

"The oldest of 'em ain't over twenty-five," he said, "but every one of 'em is a character in his way. Now I love studying character. There's no book, no, nor no illustrated magazine, you can give me that I enjoy as I do human nature. Give me the human document, and leave your mouldy old books for mouldy old scholars. Every one of those four lads is a romance, if you know how to read him."

This taste, which Mr. Sedgewick and Mrs. Manby thought low, led Mr. Johnson to consort in the friendliest way with the four youths in question. He had not been in the house a fortnight before he knew all about them; their sweethearts; their ambitions; their tastes for pleasure, and their craving for gain. Even the odd man, a creature whom the élite of the household esteemed as hardly human—a savage without a livery, by whom it was a hardship to be waited on at one's meals—was not without interest for Johnson. While he delighted in Mr. Sedgewick's company, and was proud to spend an evening with him at his club, he shocked everybody by taking the old man to a music hall, and giving him supper after the entertainment.