第15章

One day when my young lady happened to be present with my other sitters--she even dropped in, when it was convenient, for a chat--Iasked her to be so good as to lend a hand in getting tea, a service with which she was familiar and which was one of a class that, living as I did in a small way, with slender domestic resources, Ioften appealed to my models to render.They liked to lay hands on my property, to break the sitting, and sometimes the china--it made them feel Bohemian.The next time I saw Miss Churm after this incident she surprised me greatly by making a scene about it--she accused me of having wished to humiliate her.She hadn't resented the outrage at the time, but had seemed obliging and amused, enjoying the comedy of asking Mrs.Monarch, who sat vague and silent, whether she would have cream and sugar, and putting an exaggerated simper into the question.She had tried intonations--as if she too wished to pass for the real thing--till I was afraid my other visitors would take offence.

Oh they were determined not to do this, and their touching patience was the measure of their great need.They would sit by the hour, uncomplaining, till I was ready to use them; they would come back on the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if it failed.I used to go to the door with them to see in what magnificent order they retreated.I tried to find other employment for them--I introduced them to several artists.But they didn't "take," for reasons I could appreciate, and I became rather anxiously aware that after such disappointments they fell back upon me with a heavier weight.They did me the honour to think me most their form.They weren't romantic enough for the painters, and in those days there were few serious workers in black-and-white.

Besides, they had an eye to the great job I had mentioned to them--they had secretly set their hearts on supplying the right essence for my pictorial vindication of our fine novelist.They knew that for this undertaking I should want no costume--effects, none of the frippery of past ages--that it was a case in which everything would be contemporary and satirical and presumably genteel.If I could work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour would of course be long and the occupation steady.

One day Mrs.Monarch came without her husband--she explained his absence by his having had to go to the City.While she sat there in her usual relaxed majesty there came at the door a knock which Iimmediately recognised as the subdued appeal of a model out of work.It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I at once saw to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian acquainted with no English word but my name, which he uttered in a way that made it seem to include all others.I hadn't then visited his country, nor was I proficient in his tongue; but as he was not so meanly constituted--what Italian is?--as to depend only on that member for expression he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the employment in which the lady before me was engaged.I was not struck with him at first, and while I continued to draw I dropped few signs of interest or encouragement.He stood his ground however--not importunately, but with a dumb dog-like fidelity in his eyes that amounted to innocent impudence, the manner of a devoted servant--he might have been in the house for years--unjustly suspected.

Suddenly it struck me that this very attitude and expression made a picture; whereupon I told him to sit down and wait till I should be free.There was another picture in the way he obeyed me, and Iobserved as I worked that there were others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with his head thrown back, about the high studio.He might have been crossing himself in Saint Peter's.

Before I finished I said to myself "The fellow's a bankrupt orange-monger, but a treasure."

When Mrs.Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to open the door for her, standing there with the rapt pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice.As I never insisted, in such situations, on the blankness of the British domestic, I reflected that he had the making of a servant--and Ineeded one, but couldn't pay him to be only that--as well as of a model; in short I resolved to adopt my bright adventurer if he would agree to officiate in the double capacity.He jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashness--for I had really known nothing about him--wasn't brought home to me.He proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose.It was uncultivated, instinctive, a part of the happy instinct that had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it.He had had no other introduction to me than a guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist.He had wandered to England in search of fortune, like other itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small green hand-cart, on the sale of penny ices.

The ices had melted away and the partner had dissolved in their train.My young man wore tight yellow trousers with reddish stripes and his name was Oronte.He was sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old clothes of my own he looked like an Englishman.He was as good as Miss Churm, who could look, when requested, like an Italian.