第19章

I didn't owe my friends money, but I did see them again.They reappeared together three days later, and, given all the other facts, there was something tragic in that one.It was a clear proof they could find nothing else in life to do.They had threshed the matter out in a dismal conference--they had digested the bad news that they were not in for the series.If they weren't useful to me even for the Cheapside their function seemed difficult to determine, and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly, decorously, to take a last leave.This made me rejoice in secret that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I hoped to derive glory.It had been suggested by the passage in -which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisia's piano-stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers out a difficult piece of music.I had done Miss Churm at the piano before--it was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an absolutely poetic grace.I wished the two figures to "compose" together with intensity, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into my conception.The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been pulled out; it was a charming show of blended youth and murmured love, which I had only to catch and keep.My visitors stood and looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.

They made no response, but I was used to silent company and went on with my work, only a little disconcerted--even though exhilarated by the sense that this was at least the ideal thing--at not having got rid of them after all.Presently I heard Mrs.Monarch's sweet voice beside or rather above me: "I wish her hair were a little better done." I looked up and she was staring with a strange fixedness at Miss Churm, whose back was turned to her."Do you mind my just touching it?" she went on--a question which made me spring up for an instant as with the instinctive fear that she might do the young lady a harm.But she quieted me with a glance Ishall never forget--I confess I should like to have been able to paint that--and went for a moment to my model.She spoke to her softly, laying a hand on her shoulder and bending over her; and as the girl, understanding, gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few quick passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churm's head twice as charming.It was one of the most heroic personal services I've ever seen rendered.Then Mrs.Monarch turned away with a low sigh and, looking about her as if for something to do, stooped to the floor with a noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my paint-box.

The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do, and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast-things neglected, unremoved."I say, can't I be useful HERE?" he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver.Iassented with a laugh that I fear was awkward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass.Mrs.Monarch assisted her husband--they washed up my crockery, they put it away.They wandered off into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface.When it came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess that my drawing was blurred for a moment--the picture swam.They had accepted their failure, but they couldn't accept their fate.They had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal; but they didn't want to starve.If my servants were my models, then my models might be my servants.They would reverse the parts--the others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen and THEY would do the work.They would still be in the studio--it was an intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out."Take us on," they wanted to say--"we'll do ANYTHING."My pencil dropped from my hand; my sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters, who were also evidently rather mystified and awestruck.Then, alone with the Major and his wife I had a most uncomfortable moment.He put their prayer into a single sentence:

"I say, you know--just let US do for you, can't you?" I couldn't--it was dreadful to see them emptying my slops; but I pretended Icould, to oblige them, for about a week.Then I gave them a sum of money to go away, and I never saw them again.I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley repeats that Major and Mrs.

Monarch did me a permanent harm, got me into false ways.If it be true I'm content to have paid the price--for the memory.