Notwithstanding her former reluctance Jill eventually undertook the
commission for Mr Markham's portrait, though some time elapsed before
she started on the work, Markham, himself, being out of town staying as
a guest at a house where Evie Bolton was also visiting, a circumstance
that filled St. John with pleasurable anticipation, though Jill, less
sanguine as to the result, was more inclined to foresee troubles ahead,
and looked forward with no great joy to their friend's return. Yet his
manner, when he did put in an appearance, conveyed absolutely no
impression; as St. John afterwards informed his wife he believed that
Markham had funked it.
"When shall we have the first sitting, Mrs St. John?" he exclaimed
after the usual greetings were over. "I am quite anxious to begin."
"Why not fix Monday?" suggested St. John amicably.
"Monday!" cried Jill. "It's washing day. How can you be so
inconsiderate?"
"Oh, ah! washing day! I forgot. The atmosphere is composed of
soap-suds, and we have cold meat. Not Monday, my dear boy; it is the
most ungodly day of the week."
"Tuesday would do," said Jill, "if that suits, and I think three o'clock
would be the most convenient hour for me. The light, of course, is best
in the mornings, but I am always busy then."
"Any time will suit me," Markham answered promptly, "and any day."
"Ah," said Jill with a little smile, "Jack was like that once. Why
don't you get something to do?"
"Because it isn't necessary."
"But independence is such a grand thing," she persisted.
"Exactly. I inherited it, and I like it best that way."
Jill laughed.
"We can't all be workers, I suppose," she said, "yet I fancy if I had
been given my choice I should have chosen that kind of independence.
Work is necessary to me."
"From a selfish point of view I am glad that it is; otherwise you
wouldn't paint portraits."
"What makes you fancy that?" she asked.
"No one who paints as you do would undertake portraits if they could
avoid it. I know a man who has always one canvas at least in the
academy, but he can't afford to paint pictures now; they don't sell; so
he does portraits."
Jill sighed.
"I am sorry for that man," she said, "his life must be a disappointment.
The people who want to be painted are generally so impossible."
"My dear girl," remonstrated St. John, "considering the circumstances
that is one of the things better left unsaid."
"I am speaking from the artistic sense," she replied; "besides I said
`generally.'"
"I quite understand," interposed Markham laughing, "and entirely agree
with you. But that won't interfere with the sitting on Tuesday, eh?"
"I hope not," she answered gravely; "I should be doubly sorry now if you
didn't come."
"There is no fear of that," he said. "I enjoy seeing myself reproduced.
It is so often an improvement, you know, yet one invariably flatters
oneself that it is as one habitually looks."
"We haven't done much to foster your conceit so far," she observed.
"Oh! I don't know," he answered. "I really thought that that last
portrait was a bit like me. Somebody told me I did look like that
sometimes when I had a liver attack."
"Evie said it was a libel," St. John remarked tentatively.
"Ah! Well, I should be sorry to contradict her," he replied, and Jill
fancied, though she could not be quite sure, that he looked slightly
displeased at the mention of Miss Bolton's name. Why should a name that
had once been his sole subject of conversation excite his annoyance now?
It was not consistent. Had it been a case of unrequited affection she
could have understood his being hurt, but displeasure was something she
could not account for; it irritated her, why she could not have
explained. She was not accustomed to analyse her sensations even to
herself; it would have been wiser if she had; for her instinct was
wonderfully true, and her nature peculiarly observant.
"You put me on my mettle," she said, smiling. "It shan't be a libel
this time I promise you if infinite pains can prevent."
"I am not afraid to trust myself in your hands," he said.
Jill laughed.
"That's very fulsome flattery," she answered. "I was responsible for
the libel, remember. Mr Thompkins declares that I shall ruin the firm
yet. It is so humiliating because I was so positive at first that I was
going to become one of those celebrated lady photographers who have all
the best people sitting to them, and can charge any price they like."
"It's just as well as it is, perhaps," St. John rejoined with
conviction. "Success would make you a horrid little prig, Jill; very
few people can stand it."
"If Mr Markham were not here," Jill returned, "I would tell you what I
think of you."