The Triumph of Jill Part 7

I am as sorry as you can be that it happened."

He was not though, and he knew it. He considered her vexation altogether disproportionate, and absurd to a degree verging on affectation. Had the damage been irreparable he could have understood her loss of self-control; but it was only a plaster cast which she must a.s.suredly know that he would replace. Being a man he did not take sentiment into consideration at all, but merely thought her ill-tempered and ungovernable.

"How dare you equal your sorrow to mine?" Jill demanded fiercely. "You can't know how I feel. I don't believe you care."

Her lip trembled and she turned quickly away. Never had she looked so forlorn, so little, so shabby, he thought, as at that moment, and perhaps never in his life before had he felt so uncomfortable--such a brute. Vacating his position of safety he approached until he was close behind her where she stood with her back to the debris, and he saw that her hands were picking nervously at the paint-soiled ap.r.o.n.

"Don't," he said, and his voice sounded strangely unlike his usual tones. "You make me feel such a beast. You know that I care--you must know it. I would rather anything had happened than have vexed you like this."

"It doesn't matter," answered Jill a little unsteadily, and then one of the two big tears which had been welling slowly in her eyes fell with a splash upon the floor, and he started as though she had struck him a second time.

"Don't," he entreated again. And then without waiting for more he took his hat and slipped quietly out of the studio. Jill scarcely noticed his departure, did not even speculate as to his object in thus unceremoniously leaving, nor wonder whether he was likely to return or not. She was rather relieved at finding herself alone, and able to give vent to the emotion she could no longer repress. Sitting down at the table in the seat which St. John had so suddenly vacated she laid her head upon his drawing-board and wept all over the paper. The outburst, which was purely neurotic,--such outbursts usually are--had been gathering for days past, and had culminated with the fall of Clytie--the breaking of the bust which her father had so loved. Alas! for the sweet, sad, absurd a.s.sociations which cling about the things that the dead have touched.

St. John was not away very long; he had been to a shop that he knew of quite handy, and had driven there and back thanks to the stupid cabs that Miss Bolton found so inconvenient. He had bought another bust of Clytie, an altogether superior article in Parian marble which he carried back to the studio in triumph quite expecting to see Jill's grief vanish at sight of it, and tears give place to smiles. He found her still seated at the table; she was not crying any longer; but the traces of recent emotion were sufficiently apparent for him to detect at a glance.

The sight sobered him instantly, and he approached with less confidence in the efficiency of his purchase than had possessed him when out of her presence.

"It's all right," he exclaimed, speaking as cheerfully as he could, and placing the new Clytie on the table among the ruins of her predecessor, "I managed to get another. I hope you'll like it as well as the one I broke. It was confoundedly clumsy of me. But you aren't angry with me still?"

"No," answered Jill, raising her head to view the Clytie as he drew off the paper wrapping for her to see. "Oh!" she cried, "it is far too good; mine was only plaster."

"Was it?" he said slowly. "And yet, I fancy, you preferred it infinitely to this one."

Jill's lips quivered ominously again, and half unconsciously as it were she fingered one of the broken pieces in lingering regret.

"It had a.s.sociations," she said simply.

He stooped forward so that he could see her face, and his hand sought hers where it rested upon the table, and with a kindly pressure imprisoned it while he spoke.

"Can't you form a.s.sociations round this one too?" he asked.

For a moment there was silence. Then she looked back at him and smiled faintly.

"I have commenced doing so already," she answered, and, quietly withdrawing her hand, rose and stood back a little the better to admire his purchase.

"It was dreadfully extravagant of you to buy a thing like that just for an art school model," she exclaimed. "It ought to be in some drawing-room instead of here."

"It looks very well where it is," he answered coolly. "But I think I'll give over trying to draw it for a time; I can't catch that sadly contemplative, sweetly scornful expression at all; I make a sneer of it which is diabolical. Don't insist, please; because it makes me nervous just to look at her."

That was the beginning of things--at any rate the perceptible commencement; though it might have begun with the flowers as Isobel had insinuated. Never a word did St. John utter that Jill could possibly have turned or twisted into a betrayal of the growing regard which she felt in her heart he entertained for her, and never a sign did Jill make that she understood, or in any way reciprocated his unspoken liking.

She knew that he loved her by instinct, and the knowledge made her glad, so that her life was no longer lonely, nor the occasional privations, the incessant work, the petty, carking, almost daily worries so hard to bear. Life was one long pleasant day-dream; though sometimes Miss Bolton "biked" through the dreaming, and then it became a night-mare, and Jill was consumed with a fierce burning jealousy that lasted until a new-born, audacious, delicious conceit--her woman's intuition--a.s.sured her that poor and insignificant though she was St. John was far more fond of her than he would ever be of his pretty, elegant, and wealthy cousin.

CHAPTER SIX.

St. John had attended Miss Erskine's studio for two quarters, and was now into the third. He was still her sole pupil; though she had had another student, a long-legged girl of fifteen who had attended for three weeks and then been taken away in a hurry because her mother had discovered that Miss Erskine was very young, and had, besides her daughter, only one other pupil--_a man_--and no chaperone. She wrote Miss Erskine very plainly on the subject of the impropriety of her conduct, and gave her a good deal of advice, but omitted to enclose the fee. Jill showed the letter to St. John as the best way of explaining his fellow-student's absence, and St. John laughed over it immoderately; he was so glad that the long-legged girl was gone.

"It's rather rough on you though," he remarked as he returned the missive which Jill put into her pocket to keep for a curiosity. "If you get another pupil of that description you'll have to get rid of me, that's certain. Poor little snub-nosed Flossie! I hope we didn't demoralise her altogether. How I do detest the respectable British matron, don't you?"

"No," answered Jill. "I detest the vulgar, narrow-minded order though, like the writer of this letter. That poor child! I used to think her a giggling little idiot. She did giggle, and she wasn't very wise; but she is greatly to be commiserated all the same."

Jill had no fresh pupils after that, only St. John trudged manfully up the steep, narrow stairs with unfailing regularity, and once, when she was ill and obliged to stay in bed with a bad cold on her chest, he sent her fruit and flowers, but carefully refrained from going near the studio himself until he received a little note from her thanking him and saying that she was well enough to resume work.

Independent of the fee he paid for tuition, and the pleasure she derived from his society Jill enjoyed many advantages through his being at the studio which she could not herself have afforded. For one thing when he started painting he insisted upon employing a model; he wanted to paint from life; and Jill had to pose the model and paint from him or her--as the case might be--at the same time. She made good use of her opportunities, and many of the canva.s.ses sold, but she had to dispose of them far below their market value at a merely nominal profit which just paid her and that was all. St. John offered her a hundred and fifty pounds for one picture--a female figure against a background of sea and sky, the whole veiled in a kind of white mist--a vapoury shroud which softened yet did not conceal. Jill had christened this picture "The Pride of the Morning," and for some reason, perhaps because St. John so greatly admired it, she felt loth to let it go for the ridiculous price which she had accepted for the other canva.s.ses; yet when St. John wished to purchase it she refused. She would not sell it to him though she offered it as a gift, but he would not take it, and so "The Pride of the Morning" was stood in a corner of the studio facing the wall just as though it was in disgrace.

Just about this time Jill had a regular run of ill luck. In the first instance the man who always bought her canva.s.ses became bankrupt and was sold up, and Jill, who didn't know anything about sending in claims, and had no one to advise her; for she never consulted St. John on purely personal matters for fear of his finding out how very poor she really was, lost the price of three canva.s.ses which he had taken of her and never paid for, besides having nowhere now to dispose of her work. He had paid her poorly but it had been a certain market, and although she tramped London over, as it seemed to her weary feet, she could find no one to give her an order, or even a promise of work in the future; she had plenty of time for dreaming now. Besides this, the rent of her rooms was due again, and it was absolutely expedient that she should have new boots. And then came the climax--at least it seemed the climax to Jill's overwrought and tired brain, but it was not so; as a matter of fact that fell later when she had not conceived it possible that greater trouble could fall to human lot. She became ill again--off her head, as Isobel informed St. John when she received him one Tuesday with the intimation that he could not go up as usual. The heat of summer, together with the continual atmosphere of white lead and turpentine had been too much for Jill, and she had collapsed, and, becoming rambling and incoherent in her talk the landlady had taken things into her own hands and sent for the doctor, when it was only rest and a little nursing and relief from mental worry that the invalid stood in need of, and not physic, a doctor's bill, and impossible advice. The doctor came. She was thoroughly run down, he said; and he ordered her things that she could not buy, and change of air which she could not afford either, though she told him that she would see about it for fear he should think that she was hoping he would not charge her for attendance, which was very foolish and proud, just as foolish as her refusal to sell St. John the picture.

When she was well enough to get out again she took a holiday and spent it at Hampden Court, going by steam-boat and returning in the evening by train after a long, solitary, but on the whole fairly enjoyable day.

That was all the change of air she took, and greatly it benefitted her, far more than anyone would imagine so short a time could do. On her way home when she was crossing the road where Bedford Square merges into Gower Street a private hansom pa.s.sed her with St. John and his cousin in it both in evening dress. Jill had fancied that Miss Bolton was out of town, and the sight of her quite upset all the pleasure she had derived from her jaunt.

They did not see her, for it was dark in the road, but a street lamp shining full in their faces as they drove past revealed them plainly to her, and she noticed that St. John was looking both bored and worried, a fact which compensated somewhat for the shock of disappointment she had experienced on seeing the heiress.

When she reached home there was a package of books addressed to her on the hall table, and a note in the bold, familiar handwriting she had learnt to know so well. She carried them up to her room and sat on the edge of her bed while she read the latter without waiting to take off her hat, or put in water the knot of wild flowers, faded now, which she had gathered and thrust into her belt.

"Dear Miss Erskine," it ran,--

"I am sending you some literature on the chance of your being well enough now to do a little reading, and time, I know, hangs heavy when one is convalescent. Don't worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday; but when may I be allowed to call and see you? I have something to say to you which will not keep.

"Yours very truly, J. St. John."

Jill's heart gave a little jump as her eye took in the last sentence, and she made a shy guess at what the 'something' might be, a guess which sent the blood to her face in a warm rich glow, and set her pulses tingling in ecstatic enjoyment. She was curious to hear that something, so curious that she could hardly wait, and yet she was determined not to let St. John suspect how curious she really was. Going into the studio she sat down at the table and wrote her reply, a carefully worded little note thanking him for the books, and appointing Friday morning at the usual hour for him to visit her; stating that she was quite well and anxious to begin work. It was Wednesday so that there would be the whole of Thursday to get through, but Jill felt that she could manage that now that the letter was written, and tired though she was she went out again and posted it.

The next morning by the same post that St. John got his letter, Jill received her doctor's account which was considerably heavier than she had expected. It is an expensive luxury being ill. She sighed as she looked at the bill, and wondered where the money was coming from. She had not got it just then that was certain; the settlement must be deferred for a while. How hard it was to want to pay and not be able to do so! Later in the morning as she sat huddled up near the window poring over one of the books St. John had sent--for she could not work with the thought of the morrow before her; her sense of the fitness of things had bidden her take a last holiday and give herself up thoroughly to the enjoyment of the present--her attention was diverted from the novel by the sound of a footstep on the stairs, a heavy, uncertain, unmistakably masculine step which reminded her with a strange thrill of St. John's first visit when he had stumbled up those stairs in the darkness eight months ago. She waited where she was until the visitor knocked, a loud, imperative, double knock on the door with his stick, then she rose, laid aside her book, and slowly crossed the room.

Outside on the narrow landing stood an elderly man, tall and gaunt, with shoulders slightly bent, and iron grey hair and beard. He eyed Jill uncertainly, very much as St. John had done, and, also like St. John, concluded that she must be a pupil; she looked so very childish, much more like a child, indeed, than had the lanky, short-frocked, girl-student who had studied there so brief a time.

"I wish to speak with Miss Erskine," he said. And Jill, in vague foreboding, and with a dull repet.i.tion of her information on that former occasion, answered quietly,--

"I am Miss Erskine."

"Good G.o.d!" exclaimed her visitor, and without waiting for an invitation he strode past her into the studio. Jill followed him wondering, and standing opposite to him, watched him closely, waiting for more.

"My name is St. John," he said--the bomb had fallen. "My son--h'm!-- studies art here."

He looked round superciliously as though he wondered how anyone could study anything in so mean a place; no doubt he considered that his son's explanation had been merely a plausible excuse.

"Yes," Jill answered, and that was all.

He felt irritated with her that she was so quiet, so reserved, and so thoroughly self-possessed. He had expected something different; his ward had spoken of her as a horrid, designing, low-minded creature, his son had told him plainly only the night before that she was the one woman he loved, or ever could love; he had put the two descriptions together, and had pictured something handsome and sophisticated, bold perhaps, and necessarily charming, but nothing like what he found; not an ill-dressed, white-faced, ordinary-looking child-woman, whose great grey eyes watched him with such wistful, apprehensive, piteous anxiety that he turned away from their scrutiny with ill-concealed vexation.

"I have come on an unpleasant errand," he went on, "and naturally feel rather upset. But these unpleasant things must happen so long as men are imprudent and women over anxious. Have you no one belonging to you?--no one to advise you?"

"Thank you," Jill answered drawing herself up proudly, "I do not want advice."

"So most young people think," he said irascibly; "but they do well to accept it all the same. My son has been studying under you for some time, I believe?"

"Yes," replied Jill, "since last January."

"And have you any more pupils?"

"Not now; I had one other for a short time. But the locality is against my forming an extensive connection."