The Tiger Lily

Chapter Eleven.

Jaggs Makes a Discovery

“Their scent sickens me,” Dale cried passionately, as he committed them to the flames unread, for he frankly owned to himself that he dare not read one, lest he should falter in the resolution he had made.

For he had struggled hard to fight against his fate, and though tied and tangled by the threads which still clung to him, he had mockingly told himself that he was not mad enough to venture into the spider’s web again.

Then, twice over, he had hastily drawn a curtain in front of his great picture upon Keren-Happuch coming up to the studio to bring in a card – the Conte’s – and bit his lip with rage and mortification as that gentleman was shown up, in company with Lady Grayson.

The visit on the first occasion was to complain about Dale’s curt refusal to go on with the picture; while the young artist haltingly gave as his reason that it was impossible for him to complete Lady Dellatoria’s portrait on account of a large work that he was compelled to finish. And all the while Lady Grayson, with the reckless effrontery of her nature, looked at him mockingly, her eyes laughingly telling him that he was a poor weak coward, and that she could read him through and through.

Then came the second visit with the wretched Italian, blindly, or knowingly, to use him as a screen for his own amours, almost imploring him to come.

“Lady Dellatoria is so disappointed,” he said volubly. “She takes the matter quite to heart. No doubt, Mr Dale, there is a little vanity in the matter – the desire to be seen in the exhibition, painted by the famous young American artist.”

“There are plenty of men, sir, who would gladly undertake the commission,” said Dale angrily. “I beg that you will not ask me again.”

“Mr Dale, you are cruel,” cried Lady Grayson. “Our poor Contessa will be desolate. Let me plead for you to come and finish the work.”

“Aha! yes,” cried the Conte, wrinkling up his face, though it was full enough before of premature lines. “A lady pleads. You cannot refuse her.”

Dale gave the woman a look so full of contempt and disgust that she coloured and then turned away, shrugging her shoulders.

“He is immovable,” she said to the Conte.

“No, no! Body of Bacchus! I understand;” and he placed his finger to his lips, and half closing his eyes, signed to Dale to step aside with him. “Mr Dale,” he whispered, “Lady Dellatoria has set her mind upon this, and I see now: a much more highly paid commission that you wish to do for some one. That shall not stand in the way. Come, I double the amount for which we – what do you name it? Ah, yes – bargained.”

Dale turned upon him fiercely.

“No, sir!” he cried; “it is not a question of money. No sum would induce me to finish that portrait.”

“Ah, well: we shall see,” said the Conte. “Do not be angry, my young friend. Lady Dellatoria will be eaten by chagrin. But we will discuss the matter no more to-day. Good morning.”

He held out his hand to Lady Grayson, but she did not take it. She moved toward Dale, and held out her gloved fingers.

“Good morning, Mr Dale,” she said merrily. “You great men in oil are less approachable than a Prime Minister.” Then in a low tone: “It is not true, all this show of opposition. I am not blind.”

She turned and gave her hand to the Conte, and they left the studio, Armstrong making no effort to show them out, but standing motionless till he heard the door close, when, with a gesture of contempt and disgust, he threw open the windows and lit his pipe.

A minute later he had thrown the pipe aside and taken out Cornel’s letter to read; but the words swam before his eyes, and he could only see the face hidden behind that curtain.

“Poor little talisman!” he said, sadly apostrophising the letter, “you have lost your power. Evil is stronger than good, after all.”

“Good-bye, little one,” he continued, “for ever. You would forgive me if you knew all, for I am drifting – drifting, and my strength has gone.”

Two days passed – a week, and hour by hour he had waited, fully expecting that Valentina would come. He shrank from the meeting, but felt that it must be, for her influence seemed to be over him sleeping or waking, her eyes always gazing into his.

But she did not come. Only another note, and this he read in its brevity, for it contained but these words —

“You will drive me to my death.”

“Or me to mine,” he muttered, as he burned the letter; and then, in a raging desire to crush down the thoughts which troubled him, he turned to his work.

“Never!” he cried fiercely. “I will not go. If she comes here – well, if she does. That mockery of a man will track her some day, and then, in spite of English law, there will be a meeting, and he will kill me. I hope so. Then there would be rest.”

The picture which he had now stubbornly set himself to finish, as if he were urged by some unseen power, progressed but slowly. “The Emperor” came to sit, and tried to mould his features into the desired aspect with more or less success; but, in spite of inquiries, and interview after interview with different models recommended by brother artists as suitable to stand for the figure, Dale’s taste was too fastidious to be satisfied, and Juno’s face alone looked scornfully from the canvas.

Pacey had been again and again, but only in a friendly way, to chat as of old, sometimes bringing with him Leronde to gossip and fence with, at other times alone. No reference was made to the picture or the past.

“I shall never finish it,” said Dale, as he sat alone one day gazing at his canvas. “What shall I do – go abroad? Joe would come with me, and all this horrible dream might slowly die away.”

“No,” he muttered, after a pause; “it would not die. Better seek the true forgetfulness. Do all men at some time in their lives suffer from such a madness as mine?”

His musings were interrupted by a step upon the stairs, and he hastily drew the curtain before hi? canvas.

A single rap, which sounded as if it had been given with the knob of a walking-stick, came upon the door panel, and directly afterwards, in answer to a loud “Come in,” Jaggs entered with the knocker in his hand, to wit, a silk umbrella – one of those ingenious affairs formed by sewing all the folds where they have been slit up by wear and tear, and declared by the kerb vendor as being better than new – a fact as regards the price.

“Ah, Jaggs, good morning,” said Dale. “But I don’t want you. I shall let your face go as it is.”

“Quite right, sir,” said the man, glancing at the curtain. “Couldn’t be better; but I didn’t come about that.”

“Oh, I see,” said Dale sarcastically. “Your banker gone on the Continent?”

“The Emperor” drew himself up, and looked majestic in the face and pose of the head, shambling as to his legs, and extremely deferential in the curve of his body and the position of his hands and arms.

“Mr Dale,” he said, “I don’t deny, sir, as there ’ave been times when a half-crown has been a little heaven, and a double florin a delight, but I was not agoing to ask assistance now, though I am still a strugglin’ man, and been accustomed to better things. It was not to ask help, sir, as I’d come, but to bestow it, if so be as you’d condescend to accept it of your humble servant, as always feels a pride in your success, not to hide the fack that it does me good, sir, to be seen upon the line.”

“Well, what do you mean?” said Dale gruffly.

“I want to see that picture done, sir. It’ll make our fortune, sir. I’m sure on it, and I say it with pride, there isn’t anything as’ll touch it for a mile round.”

“Thank you, Jaggs; you are very complimentary,” said Dale ironically, but the tone was not observed.

“It’s on’y justice, sir, and I ain’t set going on for twenty years for artists without knowing a good picture when I see one. But that ain’t business, sir. You want a model, sir, and that Miss Montesquieu, as she calls herself, won’t be here for a month or two, and you needn’t expect her. Did you try her as Mr Pacey calls the Honourable Miss Brill?”

“Pish! I don’t want to paint a fishwife, man.”

“No, sir, you don’t; and of course Miss Varsey Vavasour wouldn’t do?”

“No, no, no! there is not one of them I’d care to have, Jaggs. If I go on with the figure, I shall work from some cast at first, and finish afterward from a model.”

“No, sir, don’t, pr’y don’t,” cried Jaggs. “You’ll only myke it stiff and hard. It wouldn’t be worthy on you, Mr Dale, sir; and besides, there ain’t no need. You’re a lion, sir, a reg’lar lion ’mong artisses, sir, and you was caught in a net, sir, and couldn’t get free, and all the time, sir, there was a little mouse a nibblin’ and a nibblin’ to get you out, sir, though you didn’t know it, sir, and that mouse’s nyme was Jaggs.”

“What! You don’t mean to say you know of a suitable model?”

“But I just do, sir. That’s what I do say, sir.”

“No, no,” cried Armstrong peevishly. “I don’t want to be worried into seeing one of your friends, Jaggs. Your taste and mine are too different for a lady of your choice to suit my work.”

“Don’t s’y that, sir,” cried Jaggs, in an aggrieved tone of voice. “I’m on’y a common sort o’ man, I own, sir, but I do know a good model when I see one – I mean one as shows breed. I don’t mean one o’ your pretty East End girls, with the bad stock showing through, but one as has got good furren breed in her.”

“Is this a foreign woman, then?”

“That’s it, sir. Comes from that place last where they ketch the little fishes as they sends over here for breakfast – not bloaters, sir, them furren ones.”

“Anchovies?”

“No, sir, t’other ones in tins.”

“Sardines?”

“That’s it, sir: comes from Sardineyer last, but her father was a Human. Sort o’ patriot kind o’ chap as got into trouble for trying to free his country. Them furren chaps is always up to their games, sir, like that theer Mr Lerondy, and then their country’s so grateful that they has to come over here to save themselves from being shot.”

“But the woman?”

“Oh, she come along with her father, sir, and he’s been trying to give Hightalian lessons, and don’t get on ’cause they say he don’t talk pure, and he’s too proud to go out as a waiter and earn a honest living, so the gal’s begun going out to sit. But she don’t get on nayther, ’cause her figure’s too high.”

“What! a great giraffe of a woman?”

“Lor’ bless you, no, sir! ’bout five feet two half. I should say. I meant charges stiff; won’t go out for less nor arf crown a hour, and them as tried her don’t like her ’cause she’s so stuck-up.”

“Look here, Jaggs; is she a finely formed, handsome woman?”

“Well, Mr Dale, sir, I won’t deceive you, for from what I hear her face ain’t up to much; but she don’t make a pynte o’ faces, and I’m told as she’s real good for anything, from a Greek statoo to a hangel.”

“Well, I’ll see her. Where does she live?”

“Leather Lane way, sir.”

“Address?”

“Ah, that I don’t know, sir. I b’leeve it’s her father as does the business and takes the money.”

“He is her father?”

“Oh yes, sir, it’s all square. I’m told they’re very ’spectable people. Old man’s quite the seedy furren gent, and the gal orful stand-offish.”

“Tell him to come and bring his daughter. If I don’t like her, I’ll pay for one sitting and she can go – ”

“Eight, sir; and speaking ’onest, sir, I do hope as she will turn out all right.”

“Thank you. There’s a crown for your trouble.”

“Raly, sir, that ain’t nessary,” said “The Emperor,” holding out his hand. – “Oh, well, sir, if you will be so gen’rous, why, ’tain’t for me to stop you. – Good mornin’, sir, good mornin’.”

Chapter Twelve.

The New Model

Two days passed, and Dale was standing, brush in hand, before his canvas, thinking. He had made up his mind to trust to his imagination to a great extent for the finishing of Juno’s figure: this, with the many classic sketches he had made in Greece and Rome, would, he believed, enable him to be pretty well independent. He was in better spirits, for he had heard nothing from Portland Place, and flattered himself that the impression which had troubled him was growing fainter.

“Come in,” he cried, as there was a tap at the door, and Keren-Happuch appeared, evidently fresh from a study in black-lead, and holding a card between a finger and thumb, guarded by her apron.

“Here’s a model, sir, and she give me this.”

Dale took a very dirty card, which looked as if it had been for some time in an old waistcoat pocket. Printed thereon were the words – “D. Jaggs. Head and face. Roman fathers, etc,” and written on the back in pencil, in Jaggs’ cramped hand —

“Signora Azatchy Figgers.”

“Where is she, Miranda?”

“On the front door mat, sir. And please, Mr Dale, sir, mayn’t I bring you some beef-tea?”

“No, thank you, Miranda. Bring up the visitor instead.”

“Oh, dear! he do worry me,” muttered Keren-Happuch. “I do hope he ain’t going into a decline.”

Dale smiled at the dirty card, and waited for the entrance of the new model, who was shown in directly by the grimy maid, and immediately, in a quick, jerky, excited way, looked sharply round the room before turning her face to the artist as the girl closed the door.

On his side he gazed with cold indifference at his visitor, who, after taking a couple of steps forward, stopped short, and he saw that she was rather tall, wore a closely fitting bonnet, over which a thick dark Shetland wool veil was drawn, and was draped from head to foot in a long black cloak, which had evidently seen a good deal of service.

“Signora Azacci?” said Dale, glancing at the card again, and making a good shot at her name.

It was evidently correct, for the woman said, in a husky voice, as if suffering from intense nervousness —

“Si, si.”

“You are willing to stand for me – for this picture?” said Dale, scanning her closely, but learning nothing respecting her figure on account of the cloak; and he spoke very coldly, for the woman’s actions on entering struck him as being angular and awkward; now they were jerky, as she raised her hands to her temples.

“No Inglese, signore,” she said then, excitedly; and again, after an embarrassed pause, “Parlate Italiano? – No?”

“No,” said Dale, shaking his head.

Her hands again came from beneath her cloak in a despairing gesture. Then, placing one to her forehead, she looked round at the lumber of paintings and properties, as if seeking for a way to express herself, till her eyes lit upon the great uncovered canvas. Bending forward in a quick, alert way, she uttered a low, peculiar cry, and almost ran to it, leaned forward again, as if examining, and then, with extreme rapidity, pointed to the blank place in the picture where Lady Dellatoria’s face stood out weirdly. She then took a few quick steps aside from where Dale stood, frowning and annoyed at what seemed to be a hopeless waste of time. Then, with a rapid movement, she unclasped the cloak, swept it from her shoulders, and holding it only with her left hand, let it fall in many folds to the floor, while as she stood before him now in a plainly made, tightly fitting black cloth princess dress, she instinctively fell into almost the very attitude Dale had in his mind’s eye, and he saw at once that her figure must be all that he wished.

“Bravo!” he cried involuntarily, and with an artist’s pleasure in an intelligence that grasps his ideas.

At the word “Bravo!” the woman turned her head quickly.

“Excellent,” he continued; “that promises well.”

Her face was hidden, but as she shrugged up her shoulders nearly to her ears, and raised her hands with the fingers contracted and toward him, he felt that she must be wrinkling up her forehead and making a grimace expressive of her vexation.

“Yes, it is tiresome,” he said; “but we don’t want to talk. I dare say I can make you understand. But I’ve forgotten every word I picked up in Rome.”

“Ah!” cried the woman, with quick pantomimic action, as she changed her attitude again, and leant toward him – “Roma – Roma?”

“Si, si.”

“My lord has been in Rome?” she cried in Italian.

“I think I understand that,” muttered Dale, “and if your form proves to be equal to your quick intelligence, my picture will be painted. Now then, signora, this is a language I dare say you can understand. Here are two half-crowns. For two hours – ‘due ore.’”

“Si, si,” she cried eagerly, and she almost snatched the coins and held them to her veiled lips.

“Silver keys to your understanding, madam,” he muttered, taking a mahlstick from where it stood against a chair. “Humph! I begin to be hopeful. Yes, more than hopeful,” he continued, as the model was rapidly drawing off her shabby, carefully mended gloves, before taking a little common portemonnaie from her pocket and dropping the coins in one by one. Then aloud, as he pointed with the mahlstick, “La bella mano.”

“Aha!” she cried quickly. But she gave her shoulders another shrug, and shook the purse, saying sadly – “Pel povero padre.”

”‘Padre.’ For her father,” muttered Dale. “Not so sordid as I thought, poor thing. Will you remove your veil?”

She leaned toward him.

“I said, Will you remove your veil? – Hang it, what is veil in Italian? ‘Velum’ in Latin.”

She was evidently trying hard to grasp his meaning, and at the Latin “velum” she clapped her beautifully formed hands to her veil.

“No, no!” she cried haughtily; and then volubly, in Italian – “I am compelled to do this for bread. I do not know you, neither need you know me. My face is not beautiful, and we are strangers. You wish to paint my figure. I will retain my veil.”

“I do not understand you, signora, and yet I have a glimmering of what you wish to express,” said Dale, as gravely as if his visitor could grasp every word. “There, you seem to be a lady, and – hang it all, this is very absurd, my preaching to you, and you to me. I wish Pacey were here. He speaks Italian like a native. No, poor lass, I suppose they must be starving nearly, or she would not stoop to this. I don’t wish Joe Pacey were here.”

Then quietly bowing as if acceding to her wishes, he made a sign to his visitor to take her attention, and as she watched him from behind her thick veil, he walked to the entrance and turned the key.

Crossing the studio to the farther door, he threw it open, and then drew forward from the end of the great room a large folding-screen, which he placed at the back of the dais and opened wide.

“There, signora,” he said, “I am at your service;” and he pointed to the inner room, turned from her, and walked to the canvas.

The model stood motionless for a moment or two, and then caught up the great cloak from where it lay upon the floor.

“Grazie, Signore,” she said then, with quiet dignity, and she was hurrying across to the inner room, but he arrested her.

“One moment,” he said, with grave respect, and the chivalrous manner of a true gentleman toward one whose tones seemed to suggest that she trusted him. “Let us arrange the pose first. Look at the picture: study it well. You see the subject.”

Dale continued speaking, but kept on pointing to the scene he had depicted, and, to his intense gratification, she threw the cloak across a chair back, gazed intently at the picture for a few moments, letting her eyes rest longest upon the beautiful, scornful face, and then went quickly to the dais, stepped up, turned, and with rare intelligence fell once more into the very position he desired, bettering in fact that which she had sketched at first.

“Eccellentissimo!” he cried; and then she stepped down quickly, and glided into the inner room, while Dale gazed at his painting with a feeling of triumph sweeping away the morbid thoughts which had troubled him so long.

“Art is my mistress after all,” he said to himself, as he glanced upward to see that the skylight was properly blinded, and then, going to a box, rapidly prepared his palette, armed himself with a sheaf of brushes, and altered the position of his easel a little.

He was hardly ready when he heard the slight rattle of the handle, a faint rustling sound, and the swinging of the door again.

But he did not turn as a light step passed behind him, and a faint creaking sound announced that the model had mounted upon the dais.

He raised his eyes, and she was standing there apparently as he had seen her first, closely veiled, and still draped in the long, heavy, black cloak.

Then, with a quick movement, the long garment was thrown aside, and the model stood before him in the very attitude, and the perfection of her womanly beauty – a beauty made hideous in the ghastly effect produced by the black face and head swathed in the thick veil.

But this passed unnoticed by the artist, who, with a triumphant ejaculation, began to sketch rapidly, as he muttered to himself without vanity —