Spring Days Part 40

"I suppose I am; I have begun a portrait of her."

"What, another! You never finish anything. I shan't have that when I come and sit for you. I shall make you finish my portrait."

"Ah, yes; when you come and sit. But, joking apart, when will you come? I should so like to show you my studio. It really looks very nice now. When will you come?"

"I have no time."

"Why not come next Sunday; it is your Sunday off."

"What would Maggie say if she found me there? She'd have my eyes out."

"If she did find it out she'd know you came to sit; but as a matter of fact she'd know nothing about it. You come and lunch with me about twelve--they're all in church about that time."

"And you never go to church, you wicked boy. I don't know that I dare trust myself with you."

A scruple jarred the even strain of his desire to paint Lizzie's portrait, but his scruple vanished in one of her sweet sunny smiles, and he gave her all information about the train she would have to take to reach Southwick by twelve o'clock.

He ordered some delicacies in the way of potted meats, and there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice when she arrived.

"Do you keep your champagne in ice? We never do in the bar. When the gentlemen want it they have a piece to put in their wine."

"I wish you'd try to forget your gentlemen when you come here."

Lizzie began to cry, and it was hard to console her; she said that Frank had spoilt her lunch for her.

"It is because you are so much superior to the men I see you speaking to. How can I help feeling annoyed that you should be serving drinks?"

"But I've got to get my living. You don't suppose I serve in a bar because I like it?"

"No, of course not; but don't let us talk any more about it. You're going to sit to me, and I want to do as pretty a portrait of you as I can. All that beautiful brown hair, and that hat! Let me take it from your head!" Frank had bought this hat for her and had handed it to her over the counter, thereby bringing censure upon her from the manager.

"Let's forget what I said. The hat suits you. There, now against the light, just a three-quarter face."

At the end of half an hour he said she was a very good sitter and this pleased her, and she tried to keep the pose till the clock struck, but at the end of fifty minutes she said: "I must get up," and she came round to see what he was doing.

"Now you mustn't criticise it," he said. "It's only a beginning.

You've forgiven me my remarks about the bar?"

"Don't remind me of it again."

But he could not get it out of his head that he had annoyed her, and was unable to apply himself to his painting; perhaps for this reason his drawing went wrong, and his colour became muddy, and the thought struck him that if Maggie were to find this portrait about the studio she would certainly ask him whose portrait it was,

"I can't paint to-day," he said, getting up from his easel.

"And why can't you paint?" The question seemed to him at first a stupid one, and then she showed a perception that surprised him. "Are you afraid the young lady you're engaged to might come and catch me sitting to you?"

The fear that this might happen had been floating in the back of his mind for the last half hour; he had kept Lizzie too long in the studio, and it was not improbable that the girls might knock at his door at any moment, and if they did it would be impossible for him not to answer. Triss would bark.

"Well," she said, "I won't keep you any longer."

"No, I a.s.sure you," he said aloud, and within himself, "I'd give a sovereign if I could get her to the station without being seen."

And he thought he had done so as he returned half an hour afterwards across the green. Maggie was waiting for him. "Come to ask me to dine at the Manor House," he thought; but she told him that she knew all about his visitor, and, despite all Frank's efforts to pacify her she grew more violent, more excited until at last she told him she didn't want to see him any more, that he was to go away, that she gave him his liberty.

"What an excitable girl she is! I'll go there this evening and try to coax her out of her anger. I must try to explain to her that a painter must have models. If we were married we shouldn't have more than a thousand a year to live on at the outside--that is to say, if Mount Rorke and Brookes come to terms, which is not very likely, they might make up a thousand a year between them, that would not be enough for two, and I should have to work; and I couldn't work without a model.

The thing is absurd! She'll have to learn that a model is absolutely necessary; we were bound to have a row over that model question, so it might as well come off now as later on, and we shall understand each other better when this has blown over. There is nothing, and never has been anything, between me and Lizzie--my conscience is clear on that score. How pretty she looked to-day--that pale brown hair, so soft and so full of colour. To-day was an unlucky day; I began by being unfortunate with my painting; I never made a worse drawing in my life, and the worst of it was that I did not see that my drawing was wrong until I had begun to paint."

A remembrance of Maggie's gracefulness came dazzling and straining his imagination, and in sharp revulsion of desire he a.s.sailed Lizzie with angry and contemptuous memory. She was always in low company--was never happy out of it; it was part of her. How this man liked six dashes of bitters in his sherry, and the other would not drink whisky except in a thin gla.s.s.

As he was leaving the studio he received a letter from Maggie, and when he thought of the circ.u.mstances in which it was written, he grew genuinely alarmed, for there was no forgetting the seriousness of the letter, and she stated her reasons for the step she was taking without undue emphasis. In its severity and quiet determination the letter did not seem like her, and he suspected forgery, sisterly advice, paternal influence--a family conspiracy. There was but one thing to do. He looked through the various furniture for his hat; and with his head full of citations from the lives of artists ill.u.s.trative of their conduct, he went to her. But Maggie would not see him.

"Miss Brookes," the servant said, "is in her room and cannot see you, sir."

"She will never be mine, she will never be mine," he muttered as he pa.s.sed into the town. "But why do I think she'll never be mine?" And looking at the grey sea with only a trace of the sunset left in the grey sky he asked himself if the thought that had crossed his mind were a conviction, a fore-telling or merely a pa.s.sing fancy created by the difficulty of the moment. He asked himself if he had heard himself saying, "She'll never be mine" and mistaken his own voice for the voice of Fate. Over the s.h.i.+ngle bank the sea faded, a thin illusion, dim and promiseful of peace, and as the darkness and the sea filled Frank's soul he, the lightest and most life-loving of men, was filled for once with a sense of failure of life, and as his sorrowing thoughts drifted on he remembered that he had stood with her in hearing of the rising tide, and all his pleading and pa.s.sion came back to him.

"What are you doing here?"

It was w.i.l.l.y.

"I don't know. Maggie has broken off her engagement; she will never speak to me again, she hopes we may never meet."

"I don't understand. When did she break off her engagement?"

Frank told his story, and they walked across the green towards the studio.

"Oh, you don't care. I don't believe you are listening to me."

"I am listening. You never think any one understands what is said to them if they do not instantly jump and call the stars to witness."

"I suppose I am like that--excitable--the difference between the Celt and the Saxon; and yet I don't know, your sisters are quite as excitable as I am."

"They take after their mother; I am more like my father."

"It wouldn't be a bad character for a play--a man who never would believe what you said, unless you threw up your arms and called on the stars."

"He can't be very bad if he can think about plays," thought w.i.l.l.y.

"Tell me, w.i.l.l.y, you won't offend me; tell me exactly what you think, did I do anything wrong? I swear to you there is nothing between me and Lizzie--I believe she is over head and ears in love with some fellow who has treated her very badly. She never would tell me who he was. In fact, she told me she had left London so that she might get over it. There would be no use my humbugging you, and I swear there is not, and never was, anything between me and Lizzie Baker. I never expected to see her again. It is very strange how people meet. I have told you all about it. When I go to Brighton I must go somewhere to get a drink, and I really don't see there is any harm in going to the 'Tivoli'; it didn't occur to me to think I should avoid the place merely because she was serving there. I have often been there, I don't deny it. Do you see there is any harm in my going there?"

"I don't like giving an opinion unless I am fully acquainted with the facts; but it seems to me that you might have gone to the 'Tivoli' to have a drink without asking her to your studio."

"Stay a bit, we'll speak of that presently. I am now telling you how I see Lizzie when I go to Brighton. I often go to Brighton by the four o'clock train, I often go to the 'Tivoli,' and when she is not talking to some one else I talk to her about things in general; but I swear I have never been out with her, that I never saw her except in the bar, and yet Maggie accuses me of keeping a woman in Brighton, and won't hear what I have to say in my defence. This is what she says: 'I have it on unquestionable authority that you have been keeping this woman since you returned from Ireland, perhaps before, and that you go in by the four o'clock train almost daily to see her.' Now I ask you if it is fair to make such accusations--such utterly false and baseless accusations--and then to refuse to hear what a fellow has to say in his defence? By Jove! if I caught the fellow who has been telling lies about me, I'd let him have it. Some of those Southdown Road people have been writing to her, that's about the long and short of it.

"As for having asked her to come to the studio, I a.s.sure you my intentions were quite innocent. Perhaps you won't understand what I mean; you don't care for painting, but very often an artist has a longing to paint a certain face, and the desire completely masters him. Well, I had a longing of this kind to paint Lizzie; hers is just the kind of head that suits me--she offered to give me a sitting, Idid not see much harm in accepting, and as I could not paint her in the bar-room, I asked her to the studio. But as for making out there was anything wrong--I a.s.sure you she is not that sort of girl. If we were married (I mean Maggie and I) I would have to have models; we'll have to come to an understanding on that point. Now what I want you to do is to explain to Maggie that there is nothing wrong between me and Lizzie, you can tell her there is nothing--I swear there is nothing; and then you had better explain that an artist must have models to work from."

"Don't ask me. I wish you wouldn't ask me. I make a rule never to interfere in my sisters' affairs. I did once, you remember, and I thought I should never hear the end of it."

"I think you might do this for me."

"Don't ask me. I wish you wouldn't, my dear fellow. I am an exceedingly nervous chap, and I have had nothing but bad luck all my life."