The Fortunate Youth Part 9

"He was a nasty cad," said Jane promptly.

"Of course he was," said Paul. "But why did he say it? Do you think there's anything beastly in being a model?"

"Certainly not." She added in modification: "That is if you like it."

"Well, supposing I don't like it?"

She did not reply for a minute or two. Then: "If you really don't like it, I should be rather glad."

"Why?" asked Paul.

She raised a piteous face.

"Yes, tell me," he insisted. "Tell me why you agree with that cad Higgins?"

"I don't agree with him."

"You must."

They fenced for a while. At last he pinned her down.

"Well, if you want to know," she declared, with a flushed cheek, "I don't think it's a man's job."

He bit his lip. He had asked for the truth and he had got it. His own dark suspicions were confirmed. Jane glanced at him fearful of offence.

When they had walked some yards he spoke. "What would you call a man's job?"

Jane hesitated for an answer. Her life had been pa.s.sed in a sphere where men carpentered or drove horses or sold things in shops. Deeply impressed by the knowledge of Paul's romantic birth and high destiny she could not suggest any such lowly avocations, and she did not know what men's jobs were usually executed by scions of the n.o.bility. A clerk's work was certainly genteel; but even that would be lowering to the hero. She glanced at him again, swiftly. No, he was too beautiful to be penned up in an office from nine to six-thirty every day of his life. On the other hand her feminine intuition appreciated keenly the withering criticism of Higgins. Ever since Paul had first told her of his engagements at the Life Schools she had shrunk from the idea. It was all very well for the boy; but for the man--and being younger than he, she regarded him now as a man--there was something in it that offended her nice sense of human dignity.

"Well," he said. "Tell me, what do you call a man's job?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said in distress; "something you do with your hands or your brain."

"You think being a model is undignified."

"Yes."

"So do I," said Paul. "But I'm doing things with my brain, too, you know," he added quickly, anxious to be seen again on his pedestal. "I am getting on with my epic poem. I've done a lot since you last heard it. I'll read you the rest when we get home."

"That will be lovely," said Jane, to whom the faculty of rhyming was a never-ceasing wonder. She would sit bemused by the jingling lines and wrapt in awe at the minstrel.

They sat on a bench by the flower-beds, gay in their spring charm of belated crocus and hyacinth and daffodil, with here and there a precocious tulip. Paul, sensitive to beauty, discoursed on flowers. Max Field had a studio in St. John's Wood opening out into a garden, which last summer was a dream of delight. He described it. When he came into his kingdom he intended to have such a garden.

"You'll let me have a peep at it sometimes, won't you?" said Jane.

"Of course," said Paul.

The lack of enthusiasm in his tone chilled the girl's heart. But she did not protest. In these days, in spite of occasional outspokenness she was still a humble little girl wors.h.i.+pping her brilliant companion from afar.

"How often could I come?" she asked.

"That," said he, in his boyish pashadom, "would depend on how good you were."

Obedient to the thought processes of her s.e.x, she made a bee line to the particular.

"Oh, Paul, I hope you're not angry."

"At what?"

"At what I said about your being a model."

"Not a bit," said he. "If I hadn't wanted to know your opinion, I wouldn't have asked you."

She brightened. "You really wanted to know what I thought?"

"Naturally," said Paul. "You're the most commonsense girl I've ever met."

Paul walked soberly home. Jane accompanied him--on wings.

On Monday Paul went to the Life School and stripped with a heavy heart.

Jane was right. It was not a man's job. The fact, too, of his doing it lowered him in her esteem, and though he had no romantic thoughts whatever with regard to Jane, he enjoyed being Lord Paramount in her eyes. He went into the studio and took up his pose; and as he stood on the model throne, conspicuous, glaring, the one startling central object, Higgins's "How beastly!" came like a material echo and smote him in the face. He felt like Adam when he first proceeded to his primitive tailoring. A wave of shame ran through him. He looked around the great silent room, at the rows of students, each in front of an easel, using his naked body for their purposes. A phrase flashed across his mind--in three years his reading had brought vocabulary--they were using his physical body for their spiritual purposes. For the moment he hated them all fiercely. They were a band of vampires. Habit and discipline alone saved him from breaking his pose and fleeing headlong.

But there he was fixed, like marble, in an athlete's att.i.tude, showing rippling muscles of neck and chest and arms and thighs all developed by the gymnasium into the perfection of Greek beauty, and all useless, more useless even, as far as the world's work was concerned, than the muscles of a racehorse. There he was fixed, with outstretched limbs and strained loins, a human being far more alive than the peering, measuring throng, far more important, called by a destiny infinitely higher than theirs. And none of them suspected it. For the first time he saw himself as they saw him. They admired him as a thing, an animal trained especially for them, a prize bullock. As a human being they disregarded him. Nay, in the depth of their hearts they despised him.

Not one of them would have stood where he did. He would have considered it--rightly--as degrading to his manhood.

The head of the school snapped his fingers impatiently and fussed up to the model-stand. "What's the matter? Tired already? Take it easy for a minute, if you like."

"No," said Paul, instinctively stiffening himself. "I'm never tired."

It was his boast that he could stand longer in a given pose than any other model, and thereby he had earned reputation.

"Then don't go to pieces, my boy," said the head of the school, not unkindly. "You're supposed to be a Greek athlete and not Venus rising from the sea or a jelly at a children's party."

Paul flushed all over, and insane anger shook him. How dared the man speak to him like that? He kept the pose, thinking wild thoughts. Every moment the strain grew less bearable, the consciousness of his degradation more intense. He longed for something to happen, something dramatic, something that would show the vampires what manner of man he was. He was histrionic in his anguish.

A fly settled on his back--a damp, sluggish fly that had survived the winter--and it crawled horribly up his spine. He bore it for a few moments, and then his over-excited nerves gave way and he dashed his hand behind him. Somebody laughed. He raised his clenched fists and glared at the cla.s.s.

"Ay, yo' can laugh--you can laugh till yo' bust!" he cried, falling back into his Lancas.h.i.+re accent. "But yo'll never see me, here agen.

Never, never, never, so help me G.o.d!"

He rushed away. The head of the school followed him and, while he was dressing, reasoned with him.

"Nay," said Paul. "Never agen. Aw'm doan wi' th' whole business."

And as Paul walked home through the hurrying streets, he thought regretfully of twenty speeches which would have more adequately signified his indignant retirement from the profession.

CHAPTER VI

PAUL'S model-self being dead, he regarded it with complacency and set his foot on it, little doubting that it was another stepping-stone.