第18章

The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that at first I was shy of letting it break upon them that my artful little servant had begun to sit to me for "Rutland Ramsay." They knew Ihad been odd enough--they were prepared by this time to allow oddity to artists--to pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets when I might have had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments.They found him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ-grinder.There were several things they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the menial.I kept putting this off, I didn't like to ask him to don the livery--besides the difficulty of finding a livery to fit him.At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at work on the despised Oronte, who caught one's idea on the wing, and was in the glow of feeling myself go very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about nothing (there was less and less to laugh at); came in like country-callers--they always reminded me of that--who have walked across the park after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon.Luncheon was over, but they could stay to tea--I knew they wanted it.The fit was on me, however, and I couldn't let my ardour cool and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it.So Iasked Mrs.Monarch if she would mind laying it out--a request which for an instant brought all the blood to her face.Her eyes were on her husband's for a second, and some mute telegraphy passed between them.Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful shrewdness put an end to it.So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as Icould.They bustled about together and got out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil.I know they felt as if they were waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said:

"He'll have a cup, please--he's tired." Mrs.Monarch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a party squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.

Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for me--made it with a kind of nobleness--and that I owed her a compensation.

Each time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be.I couldn't go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them.

Oh it WAS the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they sat--Hawley was not the only person to say it now.I sent in a large number of the drawings I had made for "Rutland Ramsay," and Ireceived a warning that was more to the point than Hawley's.The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opinion that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for.Most of these illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured.Without going into the question of what HADbeen looked for, I had to face the fact that at this rate Ishouldn't get the other books to do.I hurled myself in despair on Miss Churm--I put her through all her paces.I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major looked in to see if I didn't require him to finish a Cheapside figure for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him I had changed my mind--I'd do the drawing from my man.At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me."Is HE your idea of an English gentleman?" he asked.

I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work;so.I replied with irritation: "Oh my dear Major--I can't be ruined for YOU!"It was a horrid speech, but he stood another moment--after which, without a word, he quitted the studio.I drew a long breath, for Isaid to myself that I shouldn't see him again.I hadn't told--him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but Iwas vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that in the deceptive atmosphere of art even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.