THE look of illness that Morland had noticed upon Jimmie's face was due
to the fact that he had been ill. Italian townlets nestling on hillsides
are picturesque, but they are not always healthy. A touch of fever had
laid him on his back for a week, and caused the local doctor to order
him to England. He had arrived in a limp condition, much to the anxiety
of Aline, who had expected to see the roses return to his cheek as soon
as their slender baggage had passed the custom-house. He was shabbily
dressed because he had fallen on evil times, and had no money to waste
on personal vanities. The four guineas which Aline had put aside out of
their limited resources to buy him a new suit he had meanly abstracted
from the housekeeping drawer, and had devoted, with the surreptitious
help of the servant, to purchasing necessary articles of attire for
Aline. He was looking worried because he had forgotten in which of the
cheap Oxford Street restaurants he had promised to meet that young lady.
When he remembered, the cloud passed from his face and he darted across
the road behind Morland's brougham. He found Aline seated primly at
a little marble table on which were a glass of milk and a lump of
amorphous pastry for herself, and a plate of cold beef and a small
bottle of Bass for Jimmie. It was too early for the regular crowd of
lunchers--only half-past twelve--and the slim, erect little figure
looked oddly alone in the almost empty restaurant.
Jimmie nodded in a general, kindly way at the idle waitresses about the
buffet, and marched down the room with a quick step, his eyes beaming.
He sat down with some clatter opposite Aline, and took two cheques, a
bank-note and a handful of gold and silver from his pocket, and dumped
them noisily on the table.
“There, my child. Seven pounds ten. Twenty-five guineas. Five pounds.
And eight pounds three-and-six-pence. Exit wolf at the door, howling,
with his tail between his legs.”
Aline looked at the wealth with knitted brow.
“Can I take this?” she asked, lifting up the five-pound note.
Jimmie pushed the pile towards her. “Take it all, my dear. What on earth
should I do with it? Besides, it's all your doing.”
“Because I made you go and dun those horrid dealers? And even now Hyam
has only given you half. It was fifty guineas--Oh, Jimmie! Do you mean
to say you forgot? Now, what did you tell him? Did you produce the
agreement?”
Jimmie looked at her ruefully.
“I'm afraid I forgot the wretched agreement. I went in and twirled my
moustache fiercely, and said 'Mr. Hyam, I want my money.'”
Aline laughed. “And you took him by the throat. I know. Oh, you foolish
person!”
“Well, he asked me if twenty-five would be enough--and it's a lot of
money, you know, dear--and I thought if I did n't say 'yes,' he would
n't give me anything. In business affairs one has to be diplomatic.”
“I'll have to take Hyam in hand myself,” said Aline, decisively. “Well,
he'll have to pay up some day. Then there's Blathwayt & Co.,--and
Tilney--that's quite right--but where did you get all that gold from,
Jimmie?”
“Oh, that was somebody else,” he said vaguely. Then turning to the
waitress, who had sauntered up to open the bottle of Bass, he pointed at
Aline's lunch.
“Do you mind taking away that eccentric pie-thing and bringing the most
nutritious dish you have in the establishment?”
“But, Jimmie, this is a Bath bun. It's delicious,” protested Aline.
“My dear child, growing girls cannot be fed like bears on buns. Ah,
here,” he said to the waitress who showed him the little wooden-handled
frame containing the tariff, “bring this young lady some galantine of
chicken.”
Aline, who in her secret heart loved the “eccentric pie-thing” beyond
all other dainties, and trembled at the stupendous charge, possibly
ninepence or a shilling, that would be made for the galantine, yielded,
after the manner of women, because she knew it would please Jimmie. But
accustomed to his diplomatic methods, she felt that a red herring--or a
galantine--had been drawn across the track.
“Who was the somebody else?” she asked.
He nodded and drank a draught of beer and wiped the froth from his
moustache. Something unusual in his personal appearance suddenly caught
her attention. His watch-chain was dangling loose from the buttonhole of
his waistcoat.
“Your watch!” she gasped.
Dissimulation being vain, Jimmie confessed.
“You told me this morning, my dear, that if we didn't get fifty pounds
to-day we were ruined. You spoke alarmingly of the workhouse. My debt
collecting amounted to thirty-eight pounds fifteen. I tried hard to work
the obdurate bosom up to eleven pounds five, but he would only give me
eight.”
“You don't mean to say you have sold your beautiful gold watch for eight
pounds?” cried the girl, turning as pale as the milk in front of her.
It had been a present from a wealthy stockbroker who had been delighted
with his portrait painted by Jimmie a couple of years ago, and it was
thick and heavy and the pride of Aline's existence. It invested Jimmie
with an air of solidity, worldly substantiality; and it was the only
timekeeper they had ever had in the house which properly executed its
functions. Now he had sold it! Was there ever so exasperating a man?
He was worse than Moses with his green spectacles. But Jimmie reassured
her. He had only pawned the watch at Attenborough's over the way.
“Then give me the ticket, do, or you'll lose it, Jimmie.”
He meekly obeyed. Aline began her galantine with a sigh of relief, and
condescended to laugh at Jimmie's account of his exploits. But when the
meal was ended, she insisted on redeeming the precious watch, and much
happier in knowing it safe in his pocket, she carried him off to a
ready-made tailor's, where she ordered him a beautiful thin overcoat for
thirty shillings, a neat blue serge suit for three pounds ten, handing
over in payment the five-pound note she had abstracted from his
gleanings, and a new hat, for which she paid from a mysterious
private store of her own. These matters having been arranged to her
satisfaction, she made up for her hectoring ways by nestling against him
on top of the homeward-bound omnibus and telling him what a delightful,
lovely morning they had spent.
Thus it will be seen that Jimmie, aided by Aline's stout little heart,
was battling more than usual against adversity. Aline had many schemes.
Why should she not obtain some lucrative employment? Jimmie made a wry
face at the phrase and protested vehemently against the suggestion.
A hulking varlet like him to let her wear her fingers to the bone by
addressing envelopes at twopence a million? He would sooner return to
the five-shillings-a-dozen oil paintings; he would go round the streets
at dawn and play “ghost” to pavement artists; he would take in washing!
The idea of the street-pictures caught his fancy. He expatiated upon its
advantages. Five pitches, say at two shillings a pitch, that would be
ten shillings a day--three pounds a week. A most business-like plan, to
say nothing of the education in art it would be to the public! He had
his own fantastical way of dealing with the petty cares of life. As for
Aline working, he would not hear of it. Though they lived now from hand
to mouth, they were always fed. He had faith in the ravens.
But all the fantasy and the faith could not subdue Aline's passionate
rebellion against Jimmie's ostracism. She was very young, very feminine;
she had not his wide outlook, his generous sympathies, his disdain of
trivial, ignoble things, his independence of soul. The world was arrayed
against Jimmie. Society was persecuting him with monstrous injustice.
She hated his oppressors, longed fiercely for an opportunity of
vindicating his honour. It was sometimes more than she could bear--to
think of his straitened means, the absence of sitters, the lowered
prices he obtained, the hours of unremitting toil he spent at his easel
and drawing-table. During their travels she had not realised what the
scandal would mean to him professionally. Now her heart rose in hot
revolt and thirsted for battle in Jimmie's cause.
Her heart had never been hotter than one morning when, the gem of his
finished Italian studies having been rejected by the committee of
a minor exhibition, she went down to the studio to give vent to her
indignation. At breakfast Jimmie had laughed and kissed her and told
her not to drop tears into his coffee. He would send the picture to
the Academy, where it would be hung on the line and make him famous.
He refused to be downhearted and talked buoyantly of other things.
But Aline felt that it was only for her sake that he hid his bitter
disappointment, and an hour later she could bear the strain of silence
no longer.
The door of the studio was open. The girl's footstep was soft, and, not
hearing it, he did not turn as she entered. For a few seconds she stood
watching him; feeling shy, embarrassed, an intruder upon unexpected
sacred things. Jimmie's mind was far away from minor exhibitions. He was
sitting on his painting-stool, chin in hand, looking at a picture on
the easel. On his face was unutterable pain, in his eyes an agony of
longing. Aline caught her breath, frightened at the revelation. The eyes
of the painted Norma smiled steadfastly into his. The horrible irony
of it smote the girl. Another catch at the breath became a choking sob.
Jimmie started, and as if a magic hand had passed across his features,
the pain vanished, and Aline saw the homely face again with its look
of wistful kindness. Overwrought, she broke into a passion of weeping.
Jimmie put his arms about her and soothed her. What did the rejection of
a picture matter? It was part of the game of painting. She must be his
own brave little girl and smile at the rubs of fortune. But Aline
shook the head buried on his shoulder, and stretched out a hand blindly
towards the portrait. “It's that. I can't bear it.”
An impossible thought shot through him. He drew away from her and caught
her wrists somewhat roughly, and tried to look at her; but she bowed her
head.
“What do you mean, my child?” he asked curtly, with bent brows.
Women are lightning-witted in their interpretation of such questions.
The blood flooded her face, and her tears dried suddenly and she met
his glance straight.
“Do you think I'm jealous? Do you suppose I have n't known? I can't bear
you to suffer. I can't bear her not to believe in you. I can't bear her
not to love you.”
Jimmie let go her wrists and stood before her full of grateful
tenderness, quite at a loss for words. He looked whimsically at the
flushed, defiant little face; he shook her by the shoulder and turned
away.
“My valiant tin soldier,” he said.
It was an old name for her, dating from nursery days, when they thought
and talked according to the gospel of Hans Christian Andersen.
No more passed between them. But thenceforward Jimmie put the finishing
touches to the portrait openly, Instead of painting at it when he knew
he should be undisturbed. The wedding was drawing near. The date had
been announced in the papers, and Jimmie had put a cross against it in
his diary. If only Norma would accept the portrait as a wedding-present,
he would feel happier. But how to approach her he did not know. In her
pure eyes, he was well aware, he must appear the basest of men, and
things proceeding from him would bear a taint of the unspeakable. Yet he
hungered for her acceptance. It was the most perfect picture he had
painted or could ever paint. The divinest part of him had gone to the
making of it. It held in its passionate simplicity the man's soul, as
the Monna Lisa in its mysterious complexity holds Leonardo's. Of
material symbols of things spiritual he could not give her more. But how
to give?
Connie Deering settled the question by coming to the studio one morning,
a bewildering vision of millinery and smiles and kindness.
“You have persistently refused, you wicked bear, to come and see me
since my return to London, so I have no choice but to walk into your
den. If it had n't been for Aline, beyond an occasional 'Dear Connie, I
am very well. The weather is unusually warm for the time of year. Yours
sincerely, J. P.', I should n't know whether you were alive or dead. I
hope you're ashamed of yourself.”
This was the little lady's exordium, to which she tactfully gave Jimmie
no time to reply. She stayed for an hour. The disastrous topic was
avoided. But Jimmie felt that she forbore to judge him for his supposed
offence, and learned to his great happiness that Norma had asked after
his welfare, and would without doubt deign in her divine graciousness
to accept the portrait. She looked thoughtfully at the picture for some
time, and then laid a light touch on his arm.
“How you must love her, Jimmie!” she said in a low voice. “I have n't
forgotten.”
“I wish you would,” he answered gravely. “I oughtn't to have said what
I did. I don't remember what I did say. I lost my head and raved.
Every man has his hour of madness, and that was mine--all through your
witchery. And yet somehow it seemed as if I were pouring it all out to
her.”
Connie Deering perceptibly winced. Plucking up courage, she began:
“I wish a man would--”
“My dear Connie,” Jimmie interrupted kindly, “there are hundreds of men
in London who are sighing themselves hoarse for you. But you are such a
hard-hearted butterfly.”
Her lips twitched. “Not so hard-hearted as you think, my good Jimmie,”
she retorted.
A moment later she was all inconsequence and jest. On parting he took
both her white-gloved little hands.
“You can't realise the joy it has been to me to see you, Connie,” he
said. “It has been like a ray of sunlight through prison bars.”
After a private talk with Aline she drove straight to Devonshire Place,
and on the way dabbed her eyes with the inconsiderable bit of chiffon
called a handkerchief which she carried in her gold chain purse. She saw
Norma alone for a moment before lunch, and told her of her visit.
“I don't care what he has done,” she declared desperately. “I am
not going to let it make a difference any longer. He's the same dear
creature I have known all my life, and I don't believe he has done
anything at all. If there's a sinner in that horrible business, it is
n't Jimmie!”
Norma looked out of the window at the bleak March day.
“That is what Theodore Weever said,” she answered tonelessly.
“Then why don't you give Jimmie the benefit of the doubt?”
“It is better that I should n't.”
“Why, dear?”
“You are a sweet little soul, Connie,” said Norma, her eyes still fixed
on the grey sky. “But you may do more harm than good. I am better as I
am. I have benumbed myself into a decent state of insensibility and I
don't want to feel anything ever again as long as I live.”
The door opened, and Mrs. Hardacre appeared on the threshold. Connie
bent forward and whispered quickly into Norma's ear:
“One would think you were afraid to believe in Jimmie.”
She swung round, flushed, femininely excited at having seized the unfair
moment for dealing a stab.
“I hope I _have_ made her feel,” she thought, as she fluttered forward
to greet Mrs. Hardacre.
She succeeded perhaps beyond her hope. A sharp glance showed her Norma
still staring out of window, but staring now with an odd look of fear
and pain. Her kind heart repented.
“Forgive me if I hurt you,” she said on their way downstairs to lunch.
“What does it matter?” Norma answered by way of pardon.
But the shrewd thrust mattered exceedingly. After Connie had gone, the
wound ached, and Norma found that her boast of having benumbed herself
was a vain word. In the night she lay awake, frightened at the reaction
that was taking place. Theodore Weever had shaken her more than she had
realised. Connie Deering proclaimed the same faith. She felt that she
too would have to accept it--against argument, against reason, against
fact. She would have to accept it wholly, implicitly; and she dreaded
the act of faith. Her marriage with Morland was fixed for that day week,
and she was agonisingly aware that she loved another man with all her
heart.
The next day she received a hurried note from Connie Deering:
_“Do come in for half an hour for tea on Sunday. I have a beautiful
wedding-present to show you which I hope you'll like, as great pains
have been spent over it. And I want to have a last little chat with
you.”_
She promised unreflectingly, seeing no snare. But as she walked
to Bryanston Square on Sunday afternoon, more of a presentiment, a
foreboding of evil, than a suspicion fixed itself upon her mind, and she
wished she had not agreed to come. She was shown into the drawing-room,
and there, beside a gilt-framed picture over which a cloth was thrown,
with her great brown eyes meeting her defiantly, stood Aline.