Chapter Seven.The climax had come. It had rushed upon her with an unexpectedness that was overwhelming and had left her too stunned to even think connectedly. Only the night before she had been so full of glad expectation, and now everything seemed at an end and all the gladness vanished. She walked unsteadily back to her old seat by the window, and fingered absently the book St. John had sent. It was a new volume, and had been a gift; for he had written her name on the fly leaf. The fact had given her pleasure last night, now she wondered why he had done it, and laid the book down again wearily, all her former interest gone. There were other evidences of his gifts about the room in the shape of baskets once containing fruit and flowers. The fruit had been all eaten, and the flowers were dead; a bunch of them, fading fast, drooped in a vase upon the table; the rest, dried and discoloured, with all their beauty perished, were hidden away in Jill’s little bedroom where only she could see them, and recall the pleasure they had given; and from her exalted position on on the bracket which she occupied alone, Clytie looked down white, and pure, and pensive, seeming to understand. Oh! it was hard, and cruel, and bitter,—all the more bitter, that the mistake had been her own. She drew from the bosom of her frock St. John’s brief note, the note that had made her so happy, and read it again by the light of her new understanding, ‘Don’t worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday.’ Perhaps he had meant it literally and not, as she had imagined, penned the clause solely with a thoughtful desire to save her anxiety. How vain she had been!—how mad! ‘I have something to say to you which will not keep.’ So vague a sentence, and yet she had fancied that she had guessed his meaning rightly. He might have meant a hundred things, and what more probable than the announcement of his engagement?Jill crouched by the window for the rest of the morning hugging this new trouble which had dwarfed all the others into insignificance. At first she was too dazed to feel anything much, then gradually the anguish of mind grew keener until it seemed unbearable, and finally exhausted itself by its own violence. After that came a lull, and then followed resentment, fierce, active, healthy resentment that left absolutely no room for any other emotion; resentment against her recent visitor, angry, contemptuous, indignant; resentment against Miss Bolton of the fiercely jealous order; but keenest of all resentment against St. John, the cold, inflexible, heartsore resentment of wounded love. He ought to have told her of his engagement; if not actually dishonourable it was mean of him to have suppressed the fact when he must have seen that he was becoming necessary to her, when he knew, too, that she was more than, under the circumstances, she should have been to him; for that he did care for her she did not doubt—infatuation his father had called it, and it might be that he was right. At any rate St. John should have left the Art School before it had grown too late. This feeling of anger acted as a tonic to Jill; it braced her nerves and put her on her mettle, so that she determined to face her trouble and conquer it, and if possible show St. John what a poor opinion she had of him. But then came the remembrance of her small debts and her poverty. It had been a bad thing for her this acquaintance with St. John; she had not relied sufficiently on herself. When he was gone the fee would cease, and she had not sold any work for weeks. The last canvas that she had been engaged upon before her illness, painting from a model St. John had employed, stood against the wall unfinished and there were others ready for sale but nowhere to dispose of them. In the afternoon she went out—there was no time for holidays now—in search of a market, and returned in the evening weary, footsore, miserable, having had no luck at all with her canvasses, but—oh! the degradation to Jill’s artist-soul—having been obliged to accept as the only thing going an order for half-a-dozen nightdress sachets—‘pyjama bags’ as the oily, leering, facetious individual who had given her the commission called them.“There was a run on ’em,” he had added, “the swells like painted satin things to keep their night-gear in.”Jill had agreed to do the work, but she looked far from happy over it, and very nearly cried as she turned to leave the shop. The facetious individual had chucked her under the chin, and told her to ‘buck up,’ and he would look round and see if there wasn’t something else he could find her to ‘daub.’ Then he winked at her, and Jill had broken away in haste fearing that these overtures would lead to an embrace. And so she reached home, and that night went early to bed, and Thursday ended unhappily even as it had begun.The next morning when she rose, the feeling of anger was still paramount. She had suffered so keenly yesterday that she did not think it possible that she could feel any greater pain, and she found it difficult to realise yet all that this sudden breaking with St. John must mean. She steeled herself to meet her old pupil with composure though she had not yet determined upon what she should say or do. At first she had thought of writing and forbidding him ever to come to the Art School again, but had subsequently rejected this plan as impracticable; what reason had she to offer? She could not say on account of your engagement, such an excuse would have placed her in a false position, and given St. John a right to put what construction he chose upon her motive. The only thing that remained for her was to receive him, and by saying as little as possible convince him how indifferent she was, and how very determined at the same time. And at nine thirty sharp he arrived, clattering up the steep stairs like a noisy schoolboy and marching through the open door straight into the studio where Jill stood white and nervous, but outwardly calm, waiting to receive him. There was a pleased, eager, confident air about him in striking contrast to the chilling quiet of her manner, and he grasped her hand before she could prevent him with a very hearty grip of genuine sincerity.“This is good to see you about again,” he began. Then he stopped short struck by something in her face, and exclaimed anxiously. “Nothing the matter I hope, Miss Erskine?”Jill was standing with her back to the light so that she had the advantage of him that way; but St. John’s sight was good and he detected at once the suppressed agitation of her manner; though she, herself, was unaware of it there was a whole life’s tragedy in the depths of her grey eyes.“No,” she answered; “nothing beyond a trifling annoyance that I have been subjected to lately, and which I have determined to put an end to for good and all. It is absurd of course and really not worth discussing, but these petty worries are even more trying than big ones.”“If it is not worth discussion,” he said, “we’ll let it slide for to-day at any rate. I have got so much to say that is worth discussing, that I want to say it at once. I give you fair warning that I haven’t come to work.”As a matter of fact there was no work put ready for him; but he had not time to notice that. He was so boyish and impulsive, so gay and self-complacent that her anger gathered strength from his sheer light-heartedness.“Come and sit beside me on the stool by the window, Jill,” he said, “and then we can talk at our ease.”It was the first time that he had addressed her by her Christian name, and he glanced at her half smiling, half diffident, to see how she would take it.“No,” she answered coldly, “what I have to say can very well be said where I am, and it will be as well to get through with it at once. You will think it rather sudden no doubt after my note of Wednesday, but, as I told you, I have been subjected to a great deal of annoyance lately and what I experienced yesterday has decided me to put an end to the existing state of affairs. I regret having to spring this upon you so abruptly, and in the middle of a quarter too, but I wish you to understand that I cannot teach you any longer, I wish you to leave this Art School.”St. John looked mystified and incredulous, he was astounded at her request, at the cold precision of her voice, and the apathy of her expression. He felt annoyed with her and not a little hurt.“May I enquire why you dismiss me thus suddenly?” he asked schooling himself to keep his vexation in check. “I should like to know what has induced you to act so precipitately.”“No, you may not,” Jill answered crossly; “I only took you on trial, remember.”“For a quarter yes, but then the probation was over, and it is hardly etiquette to dismiss a pupil in the middle of a term without vouchsafing any reason.”“I consider it quite sufficient that I do dismiss you,” Miss Erskine responded. “We will not discuss the matter further, if you please.”“Oh! yes, we will,” he answered, his temper like her own beginning to get the upper hand. “In fact I refuse to leave without an alleged complaint before my term is expired; you are bound to give a proper notice.”“Not if I expel you,” Jill retorted.“Expel me!” he scoffed. “What would you expel me for? You couldn’t do that without a reason.”“But I have a reason.”“A reason!” he repeated aghast, “a reason sufficient to expel me? What reason pray?”“Making love to me.”Silence followed—a depressing silence during which neither of them moved. She had spoken in the heat of the moment, the next she could have bitten out her tongue for her indiscretion. St. John stared at her fully a minute. Then he smiled rudely.“Making love to you!” he repeated. “Absurd! I have never spoken a word of love to you in my life.”It was true; he had not, and Jill’s cup of humiliation was full. What had induced her to make such an egregious error?“You’ll be running me in for breach of promise, I suppose?” he continued ruthlessly. “Don’t you think that you’re a little—a little—well, conceited to be so premature?”Jill turned upon him wrathfully.“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “It is only what people think. For myself it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had made love to me or not; I should soon have settled that.”He changed from angry crimson to dead white, and gazed at her in hurt displeasure.“You mean that?” he asked.“Certainly,” she answered with vindictive and unnecessary emphasis, “I am not in the habit of prevaricating.”“Very well,” he said in a tone of forced calm which contrasted ill with the pained expression of his face, “I believe you. And under the circumstances am quite of your opinion that further acquaintance had better cease. It was a mistake my coming at all both for you and for me. Good morning, Miss Erskine, and good-bye.”He paused, thinking that perhaps her mood had been prompted by caprice, and that she might relent yet and call him back; but she made no movement at all beyond a bend of the head, and her voice was no kinder when she wished him farewell. Then he went, striding down the stairs and out into the street, resentful, angry, heartsore, little guessing how very much greater was the unhappiness he had left behind him where Jill, alone now in every sense of the word, stood battling with her grief and her emotion, and trying to face the difficulties which seemed crowding upon her on every side. She got out her satin work when he had gone and started upon the sachets with eager haste, glad of the miserable order now; for it kept her employed, and diverted the train of her thoughts. And all that day she sat working, working feverishly, dining, when the light failed so that she could see to paint no longer, off a crust of bread, the best her larder had to offer—indeed the only thing.The next morning by the early post she received a letter from St. John. Her hand trembled so violently as she took it up that she could hardly unfasten the envelope, but, finally tearing it open she withdrew the contents, a sheet of notepaper with St. John’s compliments inscribed thereon, and enclosed within a cheque for the fee paid in full up to the end of the present quarter. The cheque fell to the ground unheeded but the sheet of paper Jill spread out on the table before her and then sat staring at it as though she could not take it in. It was the first brief missive of the sort that she had received; its very brevity chilled her. “With Mr St. John’s compliments.” So he had accepted his dismissal? It was better so, of course; but it was very hard to bear all the same.
The climax had come. It had rushed upon her with an unexpectedness that was overwhelming and had left her too stunned to even think connectedly. Only the night before she had been so full of glad expectation, and now everything seemed at an end and all the gladness vanished. She walked unsteadily back to her old seat by the window, and fingered absently the book St. John had sent. It was a new volume, and had been a gift; for he had written her name on the fly leaf. The fact had given her pleasure last night, now she wondered why he had done it, and laid the book down again wearily, all her former interest gone. There were other evidences of his gifts about the room in the shape of baskets once containing fruit and flowers. The fruit had been all eaten, and the flowers were dead; a bunch of them, fading fast, drooped in a vase upon the table; the rest, dried and discoloured, with all their beauty perished, were hidden away in Jill’s little bedroom where only she could see them, and recall the pleasure they had given; and from her exalted position on on the bracket which she occupied alone, Clytie looked down white, and pure, and pensive, seeming to understand. Oh! it was hard, and cruel, and bitter,—all the more bitter, that the mistake had been her own. She drew from the bosom of her frock St. John’s brief note, the note that had made her so happy, and read it again by the light of her new understanding, ‘Don’t worry about the lessons; I am enjoying the holiday.’ Perhaps he had meant it literally and not, as she had imagined, penned the clause solely with a thoughtful desire to save her anxiety. How vain she had been!—how mad! ‘I have something to say to you which will not keep.’ So vague a sentence, and yet she had fancied that she had guessed his meaning rightly. He might have meant a hundred things, and what more probable than the announcement of his engagement?
Jill crouched by the window for the rest of the morning hugging this new trouble which had dwarfed all the others into insignificance. At first she was too dazed to feel anything much, then gradually the anguish of mind grew keener until it seemed unbearable, and finally exhausted itself by its own violence. After that came a lull, and then followed resentment, fierce, active, healthy resentment that left absolutely no room for any other emotion; resentment against her recent visitor, angry, contemptuous, indignant; resentment against Miss Bolton of the fiercely jealous order; but keenest of all resentment against St. John, the cold, inflexible, heartsore resentment of wounded love. He ought to have told her of his engagement; if not actually dishonourable it was mean of him to have suppressed the fact when he must have seen that he was becoming necessary to her, when he knew, too, that she was more than, under the circumstances, she should have been to him; for that he did care for her she did not doubt—infatuation his father had called it, and it might be that he was right. At any rate St. John should have left the Art School before it had grown too late. This feeling of anger acted as a tonic to Jill; it braced her nerves and put her on her mettle, so that she determined to face her trouble and conquer it, and if possible show St. John what a poor opinion she had of him. But then came the remembrance of her small debts and her poverty. It had been a bad thing for her this acquaintance with St. John; she had not relied sufficiently on herself. When he was gone the fee would cease, and she had not sold any work for weeks. The last canvas that she had been engaged upon before her illness, painting from a model St. John had employed, stood against the wall unfinished and there were others ready for sale but nowhere to dispose of them. In the afternoon she went out—there was no time for holidays now—in search of a market, and returned in the evening weary, footsore, miserable, having had no luck at all with her canvasses, but—oh! the degradation to Jill’s artist-soul—having been obliged to accept as the only thing going an order for half-a-dozen nightdress sachets—‘pyjama bags’ as the oily, leering, facetious individual who had given her the commission called them.
“There was a run on ’em,” he had added, “the swells like painted satin things to keep their night-gear in.”
Jill had agreed to do the work, but she looked far from happy over it, and very nearly cried as she turned to leave the shop. The facetious individual had chucked her under the chin, and told her to ‘buck up,’ and he would look round and see if there wasn’t something else he could find her to ‘daub.’ Then he winked at her, and Jill had broken away in haste fearing that these overtures would lead to an embrace. And so she reached home, and that night went early to bed, and Thursday ended unhappily even as it had begun.
The next morning when she rose, the feeling of anger was still paramount. She had suffered so keenly yesterday that she did not think it possible that she could feel any greater pain, and she found it difficult to realise yet all that this sudden breaking with St. John must mean. She steeled herself to meet her old pupil with composure though she had not yet determined upon what she should say or do. At first she had thought of writing and forbidding him ever to come to the Art School again, but had subsequently rejected this plan as impracticable; what reason had she to offer? She could not say on account of your engagement, such an excuse would have placed her in a false position, and given St. John a right to put what construction he chose upon her motive. The only thing that remained for her was to receive him, and by saying as little as possible convince him how indifferent she was, and how very determined at the same time. And at nine thirty sharp he arrived, clattering up the steep stairs like a noisy schoolboy and marching through the open door straight into the studio where Jill stood white and nervous, but outwardly calm, waiting to receive him. There was a pleased, eager, confident air about him in striking contrast to the chilling quiet of her manner, and he grasped her hand before she could prevent him with a very hearty grip of genuine sincerity.
“This is good to see you about again,” he began. Then he stopped short struck by something in her face, and exclaimed anxiously. “Nothing the matter I hope, Miss Erskine?”
Jill was standing with her back to the light so that she had the advantage of him that way; but St. John’s sight was good and he detected at once the suppressed agitation of her manner; though she, herself, was unaware of it there was a whole life’s tragedy in the depths of her grey eyes.
“No,” she answered; “nothing beyond a trifling annoyance that I have been subjected to lately, and which I have determined to put an end to for good and all. It is absurd of course and really not worth discussing, but these petty worries are even more trying than big ones.”
“If it is not worth discussion,” he said, “we’ll let it slide for to-day at any rate. I have got so much to say that is worth discussing, that I want to say it at once. I give you fair warning that I haven’t come to work.”
As a matter of fact there was no work put ready for him; but he had not time to notice that. He was so boyish and impulsive, so gay and self-complacent that her anger gathered strength from his sheer light-heartedness.
“Come and sit beside me on the stool by the window, Jill,” he said, “and then we can talk at our ease.”
It was the first time that he had addressed her by her Christian name, and he glanced at her half smiling, half diffident, to see how she would take it.
“No,” she answered coldly, “what I have to say can very well be said where I am, and it will be as well to get through with it at once. You will think it rather sudden no doubt after my note of Wednesday, but, as I told you, I have been subjected to a great deal of annoyance lately and what I experienced yesterday has decided me to put an end to the existing state of affairs. I regret having to spring this upon you so abruptly, and in the middle of a quarter too, but I wish you to understand that I cannot teach you any longer, I wish you to leave this Art School.”
St. John looked mystified and incredulous, he was astounded at her request, at the cold precision of her voice, and the apathy of her expression. He felt annoyed with her and not a little hurt.
“May I enquire why you dismiss me thus suddenly?” he asked schooling himself to keep his vexation in check. “I should like to know what has induced you to act so precipitately.”
“No, you may not,” Jill answered crossly; “I only took you on trial, remember.”
“For a quarter yes, but then the probation was over, and it is hardly etiquette to dismiss a pupil in the middle of a term without vouchsafing any reason.”
“I consider it quite sufficient that I do dismiss you,” Miss Erskine responded. “We will not discuss the matter further, if you please.”
“Oh! yes, we will,” he answered, his temper like her own beginning to get the upper hand. “In fact I refuse to leave without an alleged complaint before my term is expired; you are bound to give a proper notice.”
“Not if I expel you,” Jill retorted.
“Expel me!” he scoffed. “What would you expel me for? You couldn’t do that without a reason.”
“But I have a reason.”
“A reason!” he repeated aghast, “a reason sufficient to expel me? What reason pray?”
“Making love to me.”
Silence followed—a depressing silence during which neither of them moved. She had spoken in the heat of the moment, the next she could have bitten out her tongue for her indiscretion. St. John stared at her fully a minute. Then he smiled rudely.
“Making love to you!” he repeated. “Absurd! I have never spoken a word of love to you in my life.”
It was true; he had not, and Jill’s cup of humiliation was full. What had induced her to make such an egregious error?
“You’ll be running me in for breach of promise, I suppose?” he continued ruthlessly. “Don’t you think that you’re a little—a little—well, conceited to be so premature?”
Jill turned upon him wrathfully.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” she cried. “It is only what people think. For myself it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had made love to me or not; I should soon have settled that.”
He changed from angry crimson to dead white, and gazed at her in hurt displeasure.
“You mean that?” he asked.
“Certainly,” she answered with vindictive and unnecessary emphasis, “I am not in the habit of prevaricating.”
“Very well,” he said in a tone of forced calm which contrasted ill with the pained expression of his face, “I believe you. And under the circumstances am quite of your opinion that further acquaintance had better cease. It was a mistake my coming at all both for you and for me. Good morning, Miss Erskine, and good-bye.”
He paused, thinking that perhaps her mood had been prompted by caprice, and that she might relent yet and call him back; but she made no movement at all beyond a bend of the head, and her voice was no kinder when she wished him farewell. Then he went, striding down the stairs and out into the street, resentful, angry, heartsore, little guessing how very much greater was the unhappiness he had left behind him where Jill, alone now in every sense of the word, stood battling with her grief and her emotion, and trying to face the difficulties which seemed crowding upon her on every side. She got out her satin work when he had gone and started upon the sachets with eager haste, glad of the miserable order now; for it kept her employed, and diverted the train of her thoughts. And all that day she sat working, working feverishly, dining, when the light failed so that she could see to paint no longer, off a crust of bread, the best her larder had to offer—indeed the only thing.
The next morning by the early post she received a letter from St. John. Her hand trembled so violently as she took it up that she could hardly unfasten the envelope, but, finally tearing it open she withdrew the contents, a sheet of notepaper with St. John’s compliments inscribed thereon, and enclosed within a cheque for the fee paid in full up to the end of the present quarter. The cheque fell to the ground unheeded but the sheet of paper Jill spread out on the table before her and then sat staring at it as though she could not take it in. It was the first brief missive of the sort that she had received; its very brevity chilled her. “With Mr St. John’s compliments.” So he had accepted his dismissal? It was better so, of course; but it was very hard to bear all the same.
Chapter Eight.It was the Tuesday following that miserable and never to be forgotten Friday. Jill had been out in the morning to take back two of the sachets which she had finished, but had brought them back to make some alterations that the oily individual had pointed out to her in a playfully amorous fashion; a circumstance that had put her into as bad a temper as her grief stricken soul would allow. She sat on the red stool before her easel working, not at the sachets—she was too disgusted to touch them—but at her last canvas, with a lay figure posed in lieu of the model she could no longer employ. When the sound of someone mounting the stairs caused her heart to quicken its beating, and the tell-tale colour to come and go in her cheeks. It was St. John, she knew at once; very few men ascended those stairs, and only one with that quick decision born of familiarity. He knocked before entering, a ceremony that he had dispensed with altogether on class days when he had been a student; he did not, however, wait for permission to enter, but opened the door for himself. Jill’s mouth hardened obstinately as she glanced casually over her shoulder, and then, feigning not to see the bunch of flowers that he brought and laid humbly on the table as a peace-offering, went unmoved on with her work. She did not rise, did not even offer a word of greeting. St. John spoke first, awkwardly, deprecatingly, uncertain, what to make of her mood.“Good morning,” he said hesitatingly, “I—I was passing and thought I would call.”“Passing here?” interposed Jill incredulously, “what a circuitous route you must have taken to accomplish that.”“Not at all,” he answered, “you aren’t so very out of the way. Besides I wanted to come.”“So I supposed,” she retorted disagreeably. “But you might have saved yourself the trouble; you were quite safe paying by cheque, you know.”“What do you mean?” he asked.“Mean! Why haven’t you called for your receipt? I own to having been remiss in not sending it, but I had my reasons; and after all it was only three days since, and a cheque is always pretty safe.”“You know that I haven’t called for that,” he said angrily. “If I thought you really believed me capable of such an act I would—”“Well, what?” she asked derisively.“I don’t know,” he answered lamely, “clear perhaps. I had forgotten even that a receipt was customary, and certainly never looked for one from you.”“Nothing so business like, I suppose?” snapped Jill. “I should have sent one though if I had not intended returning the cheque instead. I have no right to that money; I turned you away at a moment’s notice, you did not leave of your own accord.”“That’s true enough,” he ruefully agreed. “Nevertheless the money is due to you; I received the tuition.”“It is not due,” replied Jill firmly. “You are making me a present of it, Mr St. John, and I will not accept such a gift. There is your cheque, take it back if you please.”He took it from her, tore it savagely into pieces, and threw them on the floor.“So be it,” he answered wrathfully. “You must indeed be succeeding as you deserve, to reject what you have lawfully earned.”Jill went white as she generally did when in a rage, and favoured him with a glance that he was not likely to forget in a hurry.“I have not earned it,” she responded, “neither am I succeeding; two facts which you are thoroughly well acquainted with. Doesthatlook like success?” And she drew from the cardboard box the sachets she had brought home again from the shop that morning, and threw them on the table in front of him. “That’s the kind of work that I have come to do, and I daresay I shall sink lower yet;—Xmas cards no doubt. Oh! yes, I have sunk pretty low. The man who gave me that order superintends the work, and corrects errors of detail. He does not like female figures in atmospheric drapery like those. He said the public wouldn’t buy them that way; a nude figure on a nightdress bag—he didn’t use the word nude, by the way, but plain vulgar English—was too suggestive, and requested me to take them home and paint in a garment—‘Just a small one’—as though he were alluding to a vest. Ugh! it makes me sick—it makes meblush. He wears his hair oiled, too,” she continued retrospectively, forgetting for the minute her resentment against St. John in disgust at her latest patron, “and—further degradation—makes love to me which for the sake of the miserable commission I dare not resent.”What followed was unpardonable on St. John’s part but for the life of him he could not resist retaliating for the thrusts that she had given him.“Perhaps the last is a hallucination,” he suggested ungenerously; “You have a tendency to imagine that sort of thing you know.”She eyed him for a moment in stony displeasure, then pointed imperiously to the door.“You may consider that remark worthy of a gentleman, Mr St. John,” she said, “I don’t. You will oblige me by leaving the studio at once; I—I shall be rude to you if you don’t.”Her voice broke, and she turned to her work again abruptly, painting with feverish haste as thought she had not a moment to lose. In two strides St. John was behind her, and stooping he put his arms about her with a swift movement for which she was entirely unprepared, and which imprisoned her so firmly that she could not escape.“Rude to me if you like,” he cried; “but not unkind, Jill—never any more.”Jill had dropped her utensils, and the palette lay paint side downwards on the floor. She put her small hands on St. John’s wrists and tried to free herself from his embrace, but the attempt was ineffectual, his arms Only tightened round her, and his face bent lower until it was on a level with her own. She looked into his eyes and read in them a laughing mastery that defied her efforts to escape, and, even while it angered her, set her pulses leaping in a wild excitement that was half fear, half gladness. She breathed quickly, and pulled at his wrists again.“Let me go,” she whispered. “How dare you touch me?”But he only laughed in answer and held her closer to him, and for the first time Jill felt his warm kisses on her lips.“It’s not a bit of good,” he said; “you can’t get away. I feel as though I could hold you to my heart for ever. You expelled me for a fault that I was not guilty of; I am now going to justify your accusation. Jill, Jill, you foolish child, what are you thinking? Don’t shrink away like that, dear. I love you, my darling, my little independent, high-spirited girl. I love every tone of your voice, every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time. Jill will you marry me?”“No,” Jill answered with curt abruptness. He shook his head at her reprovingly, but looked not the least whit disconcerted.“Oh! yes, you will,” he returned with confidence; “you must if I have to carry you all the way to the Church in my arms like this. I can’t let you go again; these last four days have been unbearable. Answer me truly, haven’t you found them so too, dear?—just a little sad and lonely, eh Jill?”“Stand back,” she cried still struggling futilely to shake him off. “You are mad to talk to me the way you are doing, and I should be worse than mad to listen.”“Oh! no, you wouldn’t,” he replied with gay audacity. “You can’t help listening, sweetheart, any more than you can prevent my kissing you. Come, Jill, end this farce and be candid. Is it pique, dear, or what? Why won’t you own that you care for me? I know you do.”“Yes. Oh, my God, yes!” she answered, and she broke into violent sobs. “I wish from my heart that I could answer truthfully that I do not.”He was startled at her outburst, and drew back in consternation letting his hands fall to his sides. She was free enough now, but she hardly seemed to realise the fact and made no attempt to rise.“Jill,” he exclaimed, “what is it? What has happened, dear? Won’t you tell me?”But Jill only buried her face in her hands and sobbed on. She would have given anything to have preserved her composure throughout this interview; but once having broken down there was no stemming the torrent; the flood must have its way, and a regular deluge it proved. St. John watched her uneasily for a while, then unable to stand it longer he went up to her again, and putting his arm around her neck, tried to draw her hands away. In a moment she was on her feet facing him, grief changed to indignation, scorn and anger in her eyes, while the tear drops glistened still upon her flushed cheeks, and trembled wet and sparkling on her lashes.“Don’t come near me,” she panted; “your touch is hateful to me—keep away, do you hear?”“Don’t worry yourself, my dear girl,” he retorted a trifle impatiently it must be confessed. “I have no wish to approach any nearer; indeed I’d rather remain where I am. If you would only tell me what it is all about, instead of flying off at a tangent we might arrive at a better understanding. Have I done anything to forfeit your regard?”“Yes,” she answered petulantly, “you know you have.”“Should I ask for information which I had already?” he questioned coolly. “Information moreover which is presumably hardly creditable to myself. What is the something, please?”Jill looked at him coldly, but he bore her scrutiny well. He was grave, but he certainly did not appear apprehensive, nor was he in the least embarrassed or perturbed.“What is the something?” he repeated. “I think I have a right to know.”But Jill seemed to find a difficulty in answering, or a disinclination to do so; for she drew herself up and remained silent, an angry spot of colour in either cheek. St. John tapped the floor impatiently with his boot.“Come, come,” he cried, “this is childish to accuse a fellow of some possibly imaginary wrong, and not give him the chance of refuting it. What heinous offence do you fancy me guilty of? Robbing a bank? I haven’t I assure you.”He was turning her doubts of him to ridicule which only angered her the more. There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes and his moustache twitched ever so slightly.“What! sceptical of that even?” he continued ironically. “So it’s my honesty that’s called into question, eh?”“Yes,” Jill flashed back with a fierceness born of wounded pride, “your honesty, Mr St. John. Is it honest of you to come and make love to me? No, you know it is not, it is dishonourable, despicable—”“Stop a bit,” he interrupted with a quietness and control which surprised himself; “don’t let us lose ourselves in a labyrinth of adjectives, and so get away from the main subject altogether. Why is it dishonourable for me to make love to you? For, though you will insist to the contrary, I am absolutely ignorant of any prohibitive reason.”“That is impossible,” Jill replied, and he flushed at her want of faith in his veracity. “But as you are determined to keep your counsel until you discover how much I know I had better speak out I suppose. You are not free to propose matrimony to me.”St. John’s eyebrows went up with a jerk.“Indeed!” he said. “Your statement is news to me, so also is the very low idea you have formed of my character. In what way am I not free? Do you mean that there is someone else?”Jill nodded; she could find no words.“And the lady’s name?” he questioned in peremptory tones.“Miss Bolton,” she answered with a visible effort. “I have recently learnt from unquestionable authority that you have been engaged to your cousin for some months.”St. John started, pulled thoughtfully at his moustache for a moment, and then looking up sharply,—“The name of your informant?” he asked.“Never mind that,” Jill answered, “my informant was in a position to know. I have tried to but cannot doubt the assertion.”“And yet you seem to find it easy enough to doubt mine,” he said.She made no reply; and striding up to her he caught her by the shoulders and transfixed her with a gaze at once stern and reproachful.“Speak,” he exclaimed. “I will know who is the lying, interfering mischief-maker who has spread such abominable reports about me.”Jill swayed slightly in his grip, and her glance met his in wide-eyed questioning as though she would read his very soul.“Ah!” she cried, “if it were false! if it were only false!”“The name?” he repeated impatiently, and almost shook her in his excitement. She hesitated still for a minute, then the answer came unwillingly, more as though his glance compelled the truth than that she gave it voluntarily.“It was your father,” she half-whispered, and her eyes sought the floor and stayed there as though she dreaded reading what she might see in his face.He stared at her for a moment, then he pushed her from him with a laugh.“Unquestionable authority certainly,” he said moodily, and laughed again. Jill remained motionless watching him, uncertain whether he intended denying the allegation or not, and he stood opposite in a towering rage glowering back at her with his brows drawn together in the old bad-tempered scowl.“I suppose,” he went on after a pause, “that he communicated this intelligence to you between the time of your writing to me and my first appearance at the art school after your illness?”“Yes,” she replied, “on the Thursday.”“That accounts for your inexplicable bad temper that Friday,” he resumed unpleasantly.“Information from such a source must certainly have been convincing, far more convincing than my contradiction. But did it not strike you to doubt the authenticity of the signature?”“It was a word of mouth communication,” Jill answered coldly, “Mr St. John honoured me with a visit.”“He came here?” repeated her hearer aghast. “My father? Impossible!”“It does sound rather improbable I admit,” agreed Jill. “It was going to a great deal of trouble over a small matter, wasn’t it?—when a penny postage stamp would have done as well. But he seemed more concerned about it than either you or I. Was it likely, do you think, that I should question his statement? Had there been no truth in it why should he have bothered?”“The only reason I can think of,” answered St. John, “was that he merely anticipated his desire. But for you I can find no excuse, not even one so flimsy as that. Why should you place perfect reliance on the word of a man you did not know, and, putting the worse possible construction on my actions, refuse to give me even the chance of justifying myself?”“I don’t know,” retorted Jill ungraciously. “Looked at from your point of view I suppose it appears monstrous, but from my point it seems natural enough. I had no reason to doubt your father’s word, and, as you, yourself, informed me that morning you had never spoken a word of love to me in your life. There was no necessity for you to mention your engagement; men not infrequently prefer to conceal the fact from girls of inferior social standing—”“Stop,” he cried, angrily. “This is too much. I could have forgiven the rest, but you go too far.”“I didn’t know that I had entreated your forgiveness,” she said with a smile which mocked his indignation. “‘I love every tone of your voice,’” she mimicked, “‘every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time.’ You have a strange way of showing your affection, Mr Saint John, an admirable way of disguising it, I should say.”St. John looked furious, and his tormentor continued relentlessly.“Or is it that now it is wounding and vexing you? To-morrow, I suppose, you will be enamoured of all that I have said and done to-day?”Then, her mood changing abruptly as the love in her heart reproached her for doubting and vexing him as she had, she went up to the table and buried her face shyly in the flowers he had brought.“Go away now, my dear Saint,” she whispered, “and come to-morrow instead; for I like you enamoured best.”But St. John was angry still, and not so ready to be propitiated. His hat lay on the table where he had placed it near the flowers, and Jill’s hand rested beside it—her fingers touching the brim, it may have been by accident though it looked more like design.“I think Ihadbetter go,” he agreed, reaching out for it; “your opinion of me is not easy to forget, and—”He had taken hold of his hat; but Jill’s small fingers had closed upon the brim on the other side, and kept their hold determinedly.St. John desisted at once; it was incompatible with his dignity to struggle over his headgear.“At your pleasure, Miss Erskine,” he said.“It’s very strange,” mused Jill in a tone of innocent speculation; “do you know that until to-day I had always considered you handsome? What a difference it makes to a face whether it is smiling or glum.”“One can’t keep up a perpetual grin,” he retorted, but his countenance relaxed a little despite his effort to appear unmoved, and seeing her advantage she followed it up, turning a scene which had been growing painfully strained into a comedy by her deft handling of the situation.“No; not unless it is natural to one, which is even a greater affliction. I once heard of a man who had his nose broken for laughing at a quarrelsome individual in the street. As a matter of fact he wasn’t laughing; it was only that Nature had endowed him with a perpetual and unavoidable grin. But you are not at all likely to get your nose broken from a similar cause.”“I should hope not,” he returned with disagreeable emphasis.“Is mine on my face still?” enquired Jill putting up her hand to feel. “Why! it actually is. Funny, but I thought you had snapped it off. It is there, isn’t it?”She went quite close to him and held up her face for inspection with a look in her eyes that St. John would have been more than human, or at any rate not genuinely in love, had he resisted. He made no attempt to; he just took the small face between his two hands and kissed it. And then they sat down together on the twill covered box to spoon a little, and afterwards talk matters over from a practical, common sense view, as Jill declared; though it would have been more sensible had they left the spooning and talked matters over first.
It was the Tuesday following that miserable and never to be forgotten Friday. Jill had been out in the morning to take back two of the sachets which she had finished, but had brought them back to make some alterations that the oily individual had pointed out to her in a playfully amorous fashion; a circumstance that had put her into as bad a temper as her grief stricken soul would allow. She sat on the red stool before her easel working, not at the sachets—she was too disgusted to touch them—but at her last canvas, with a lay figure posed in lieu of the model she could no longer employ. When the sound of someone mounting the stairs caused her heart to quicken its beating, and the tell-tale colour to come and go in her cheeks. It was St. John, she knew at once; very few men ascended those stairs, and only one with that quick decision born of familiarity. He knocked before entering, a ceremony that he had dispensed with altogether on class days when he had been a student; he did not, however, wait for permission to enter, but opened the door for himself. Jill’s mouth hardened obstinately as she glanced casually over her shoulder, and then, feigning not to see the bunch of flowers that he brought and laid humbly on the table as a peace-offering, went unmoved on with her work. She did not rise, did not even offer a word of greeting. St. John spoke first, awkwardly, deprecatingly, uncertain, what to make of her mood.
“Good morning,” he said hesitatingly, “I—I was passing and thought I would call.”
“Passing here?” interposed Jill incredulously, “what a circuitous route you must have taken to accomplish that.”
“Not at all,” he answered, “you aren’t so very out of the way. Besides I wanted to come.”
“So I supposed,” she retorted disagreeably. “But you might have saved yourself the trouble; you were quite safe paying by cheque, you know.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Mean! Why haven’t you called for your receipt? I own to having been remiss in not sending it, but I had my reasons; and after all it was only three days since, and a cheque is always pretty safe.”
“You know that I haven’t called for that,” he said angrily. “If I thought you really believed me capable of such an act I would—”
“Well, what?” she asked derisively.
“I don’t know,” he answered lamely, “clear perhaps. I had forgotten even that a receipt was customary, and certainly never looked for one from you.”
“Nothing so business like, I suppose?” snapped Jill. “I should have sent one though if I had not intended returning the cheque instead. I have no right to that money; I turned you away at a moment’s notice, you did not leave of your own accord.”
“That’s true enough,” he ruefully agreed. “Nevertheless the money is due to you; I received the tuition.”
“It is not due,” replied Jill firmly. “You are making me a present of it, Mr St. John, and I will not accept such a gift. There is your cheque, take it back if you please.”
He took it from her, tore it savagely into pieces, and threw them on the floor.
“So be it,” he answered wrathfully. “You must indeed be succeeding as you deserve, to reject what you have lawfully earned.”
Jill went white as she generally did when in a rage, and favoured him with a glance that he was not likely to forget in a hurry.
“I have not earned it,” she responded, “neither am I succeeding; two facts which you are thoroughly well acquainted with. Doesthatlook like success?” And she drew from the cardboard box the sachets she had brought home again from the shop that morning, and threw them on the table in front of him. “That’s the kind of work that I have come to do, and I daresay I shall sink lower yet;—Xmas cards no doubt. Oh! yes, I have sunk pretty low. The man who gave me that order superintends the work, and corrects errors of detail. He does not like female figures in atmospheric drapery like those. He said the public wouldn’t buy them that way; a nude figure on a nightdress bag—he didn’t use the word nude, by the way, but plain vulgar English—was too suggestive, and requested me to take them home and paint in a garment—‘Just a small one’—as though he were alluding to a vest. Ugh! it makes me sick—it makes meblush. He wears his hair oiled, too,” she continued retrospectively, forgetting for the minute her resentment against St. John in disgust at her latest patron, “and—further degradation—makes love to me which for the sake of the miserable commission I dare not resent.”
What followed was unpardonable on St. John’s part but for the life of him he could not resist retaliating for the thrusts that she had given him.
“Perhaps the last is a hallucination,” he suggested ungenerously; “You have a tendency to imagine that sort of thing you know.”
She eyed him for a moment in stony displeasure, then pointed imperiously to the door.
“You may consider that remark worthy of a gentleman, Mr St. John,” she said, “I don’t. You will oblige me by leaving the studio at once; I—I shall be rude to you if you don’t.”
Her voice broke, and she turned to her work again abruptly, painting with feverish haste as thought she had not a moment to lose. In two strides St. John was behind her, and stooping he put his arms about her with a swift movement for which she was entirely unprepared, and which imprisoned her so firmly that she could not escape.
“Rude to me if you like,” he cried; “but not unkind, Jill—never any more.”
Jill had dropped her utensils, and the palette lay paint side downwards on the floor. She put her small hands on St. John’s wrists and tried to free herself from his embrace, but the attempt was ineffectual, his arms Only tightened round her, and his face bent lower until it was on a level with her own. She looked into his eyes and read in them a laughing mastery that defied her efforts to escape, and, even while it angered her, set her pulses leaping in a wild excitement that was half fear, half gladness. She breathed quickly, and pulled at his wrists again.
“Let me go,” she whispered. “How dare you touch me?”
But he only laughed in answer and held her closer to him, and for the first time Jill felt his warm kisses on her lips.
“It’s not a bit of good,” he said; “you can’t get away. I feel as though I could hold you to my heart for ever. You expelled me for a fault that I was not guilty of; I am now going to justify your accusation. Jill, Jill, you foolish child, what are you thinking? Don’t shrink away like that, dear. I love you, my darling, my little independent, high-spirited girl. I love every tone of your voice, every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time. Jill will you marry me?”
“No,” Jill answered with curt abruptness. He shook his head at her reprovingly, but looked not the least whit disconcerted.
“Oh! yes, you will,” he returned with confidence; “you must if I have to carry you all the way to the Church in my arms like this. I can’t let you go again; these last four days have been unbearable. Answer me truly, haven’t you found them so too, dear?—just a little sad and lonely, eh Jill?”
“Stand back,” she cried still struggling futilely to shake him off. “You are mad to talk to me the way you are doing, and I should be worse than mad to listen.”
“Oh! no, you wouldn’t,” he replied with gay audacity. “You can’t help listening, sweetheart, any more than you can prevent my kissing you. Come, Jill, end this farce and be candid. Is it pique, dear, or what? Why won’t you own that you care for me? I know you do.”
“Yes. Oh, my God, yes!” she answered, and she broke into violent sobs. “I wish from my heart that I could answer truthfully that I do not.”
He was startled at her outburst, and drew back in consternation letting his hands fall to his sides. She was free enough now, but she hardly seemed to realise the fact and made no attempt to rise.
“Jill,” he exclaimed, “what is it? What has happened, dear? Won’t you tell me?”
But Jill only buried her face in her hands and sobbed on. She would have given anything to have preserved her composure throughout this interview; but once having broken down there was no stemming the torrent; the flood must have its way, and a regular deluge it proved. St. John watched her uneasily for a while, then unable to stand it longer he went up to her again, and putting his arm around her neck, tried to draw her hands away. In a moment she was on her feet facing him, grief changed to indignation, scorn and anger in her eyes, while the tear drops glistened still upon her flushed cheeks, and trembled wet and sparkling on her lashes.
“Don’t come near me,” she panted; “your touch is hateful to me—keep away, do you hear?”
“Don’t worry yourself, my dear girl,” he retorted a trifle impatiently it must be confessed. “I have no wish to approach any nearer; indeed I’d rather remain where I am. If you would only tell me what it is all about, instead of flying off at a tangent we might arrive at a better understanding. Have I done anything to forfeit your regard?”
“Yes,” she answered petulantly, “you know you have.”
“Should I ask for information which I had already?” he questioned coolly. “Information moreover which is presumably hardly creditable to myself. What is the something, please?”
Jill looked at him coldly, but he bore her scrutiny well. He was grave, but he certainly did not appear apprehensive, nor was he in the least embarrassed or perturbed.
“What is the something?” he repeated. “I think I have a right to know.”
But Jill seemed to find a difficulty in answering, or a disinclination to do so; for she drew herself up and remained silent, an angry spot of colour in either cheek. St. John tapped the floor impatiently with his boot.
“Come, come,” he cried, “this is childish to accuse a fellow of some possibly imaginary wrong, and not give him the chance of refuting it. What heinous offence do you fancy me guilty of? Robbing a bank? I haven’t I assure you.”
He was turning her doubts of him to ridicule which only angered her the more. There was a gleam of amusement in his eyes and his moustache twitched ever so slightly.
“What! sceptical of that even?” he continued ironically. “So it’s my honesty that’s called into question, eh?”
“Yes,” Jill flashed back with a fierceness born of wounded pride, “your honesty, Mr St. John. Is it honest of you to come and make love to me? No, you know it is not, it is dishonourable, despicable—”
“Stop a bit,” he interrupted with a quietness and control which surprised himself; “don’t let us lose ourselves in a labyrinth of adjectives, and so get away from the main subject altogether. Why is it dishonourable for me to make love to you? For, though you will insist to the contrary, I am absolutely ignorant of any prohibitive reason.”
“That is impossible,” Jill replied, and he flushed at her want of faith in his veracity. “But as you are determined to keep your counsel until you discover how much I know I had better speak out I suppose. You are not free to propose matrimony to me.”
St. John’s eyebrows went up with a jerk.
“Indeed!” he said. “Your statement is news to me, so also is the very low idea you have formed of my character. In what way am I not free? Do you mean that there is someone else?”
Jill nodded; she could find no words.
“And the lady’s name?” he questioned in peremptory tones.
“Miss Bolton,” she answered with a visible effort. “I have recently learnt from unquestionable authority that you have been engaged to your cousin for some months.”
St. John started, pulled thoughtfully at his moustache for a moment, and then looking up sharply,—
“The name of your informant?” he asked.
“Never mind that,” Jill answered, “my informant was in a position to know. I have tried to but cannot doubt the assertion.”
“And yet you seem to find it easy enough to doubt mine,” he said.
She made no reply; and striding up to her he caught her by the shoulders and transfixed her with a gaze at once stern and reproachful.
“Speak,” he exclaimed. “I will know who is the lying, interfering mischief-maker who has spread such abominable reports about me.”
Jill swayed slightly in his grip, and her glance met his in wide-eyed questioning as though she would read his very soul.
“Ah!” she cried, “if it were false! if it were only false!”
“The name?” he repeated impatiently, and almost shook her in his excitement. She hesitated still for a minute, then the answer came unwillingly, more as though his glance compelled the truth than that she gave it voluntarily.
“It was your father,” she half-whispered, and her eyes sought the floor and stayed there as though she dreaded reading what she might see in his face.
He stared at her for a moment, then he pushed her from him with a laugh.
“Unquestionable authority certainly,” he said moodily, and laughed again. Jill remained motionless watching him, uncertain whether he intended denying the allegation or not, and he stood opposite in a towering rage glowering back at her with his brows drawn together in the old bad-tempered scowl.
“I suppose,” he went on after a pause, “that he communicated this intelligence to you between the time of your writing to me and my first appearance at the art school after your illness?”
“Yes,” she replied, “on the Thursday.”
“That accounts for your inexplicable bad temper that Friday,” he resumed unpleasantly.
“Information from such a source must certainly have been convincing, far more convincing than my contradiction. But did it not strike you to doubt the authenticity of the signature?”
“It was a word of mouth communication,” Jill answered coldly, “Mr St. John honoured me with a visit.”
“He came here?” repeated her hearer aghast. “My father? Impossible!”
“It does sound rather improbable I admit,” agreed Jill. “It was going to a great deal of trouble over a small matter, wasn’t it?—when a penny postage stamp would have done as well. But he seemed more concerned about it than either you or I. Was it likely, do you think, that I should question his statement? Had there been no truth in it why should he have bothered?”
“The only reason I can think of,” answered St. John, “was that he merely anticipated his desire. But for you I can find no excuse, not even one so flimsy as that. Why should you place perfect reliance on the word of a man you did not know, and, putting the worse possible construction on my actions, refuse to give me even the chance of justifying myself?”
“I don’t know,” retorted Jill ungraciously. “Looked at from your point of view I suppose it appears monstrous, but from my point it seems natural enough. I had no reason to doubt your father’s word, and, as you, yourself, informed me that morning you had never spoken a word of love to me in your life. There was no necessity for you to mention your engagement; men not infrequently prefer to conceal the fact from girls of inferior social standing—”
“Stop,” he cried, angrily. “This is too much. I could have forgiven the rest, but you go too far.”
“I didn’t know that I had entreated your forgiveness,” she said with a smile which mocked his indignation. “‘I love every tone of your voice,’” she mimicked, “‘every fresh mood, wound and vex me though they may at the time.’ You have a strange way of showing your affection, Mr Saint John, an admirable way of disguising it, I should say.”
St. John looked furious, and his tormentor continued relentlessly.
“Or is it that now it is wounding and vexing you? To-morrow, I suppose, you will be enamoured of all that I have said and done to-day?”
Then, her mood changing abruptly as the love in her heart reproached her for doubting and vexing him as she had, she went up to the table and buried her face shyly in the flowers he had brought.
“Go away now, my dear Saint,” she whispered, “and come to-morrow instead; for I like you enamoured best.”
But St. John was angry still, and not so ready to be propitiated. His hat lay on the table where he had placed it near the flowers, and Jill’s hand rested beside it—her fingers touching the brim, it may have been by accident though it looked more like design.
“I think Ihadbetter go,” he agreed, reaching out for it; “your opinion of me is not easy to forget, and—”
He had taken hold of his hat; but Jill’s small fingers had closed upon the brim on the other side, and kept their hold determinedly.
St. John desisted at once; it was incompatible with his dignity to struggle over his headgear.
“At your pleasure, Miss Erskine,” he said.
“It’s very strange,” mused Jill in a tone of innocent speculation; “do you know that until to-day I had always considered you handsome? What a difference it makes to a face whether it is smiling or glum.”
“One can’t keep up a perpetual grin,” he retorted, but his countenance relaxed a little despite his effort to appear unmoved, and seeing her advantage she followed it up, turning a scene which had been growing painfully strained into a comedy by her deft handling of the situation.
“No; not unless it is natural to one, which is even a greater affliction. I once heard of a man who had his nose broken for laughing at a quarrelsome individual in the street. As a matter of fact he wasn’t laughing; it was only that Nature had endowed him with a perpetual and unavoidable grin. But you are not at all likely to get your nose broken from a similar cause.”
“I should hope not,” he returned with disagreeable emphasis.
“Is mine on my face still?” enquired Jill putting up her hand to feel. “Why! it actually is. Funny, but I thought you had snapped it off. It is there, isn’t it?”
She went quite close to him and held up her face for inspection with a look in her eyes that St. John would have been more than human, or at any rate not genuinely in love, had he resisted. He made no attempt to; he just took the small face between his two hands and kissed it. And then they sat down together on the twill covered box to spoon a little, and afterwards talk matters over from a practical, common sense view, as Jill declared; though it would have been more sensible had they left the spooning and talked matters over first.
Chapter Nine.“I wonder,” mused St. John, stroking Jill’s tumbled hair with his right hand, and holding both hers in his left, “why the governor should have come here and told you what he did? It was putting us all in such a false position, and—well, I should have considered it an act altogether beneath him.”Jill sighed and nestled unconsciously a little closer to him.“Can’t we forget all that for to-day,” she asked, “and just think only of our two selves? I quite believe you when you say that you are not engaged to your cousin. I think I believed it all along only I was so horribly jealous. I’m jealous still, jealous that she can see you when I can’t, and that she has a right to call you Jack—”“But you have got that right too,” he interrupted, “a better right than she has. You will call me Jack, won’t you? I call you Jill.”She laughed.“Doesn’t it put you in mind of the nursery rhyme?” she said. “I never thought of it before.”“Yes; let’s see, how does it go? We must alter it a little to fit the case, ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to—’ we can’t say ‘fetch a pail of water.’”“In search of fame together,” put in Jill.“Ah, yes! Jack and Jill went up the hill In search of fame together, Jack fell down and broke his crown, And—”“No,” interrupted Jill, “I won’t come tumbling after. You can say that I went on alone.”“But that’s so unkind,” he objected; “besides it doesn’t rhyme.”“Oh! well,” she answered after a pause devoted to thinking out a finish to the verse, “put, ‘But Jill goes climbing ever.’ That rhymes, and it’s true; I’m not going to stop in the valley trying to haul you up.”“You’re a disagreeable little prig,” he exclaimed. “I should as likely as not be obliged to haul you.”“And I daresay you could manage that,” she answered rubbing her cheek against his coat sleeve; “you’re big enough goodness knows. I should like to be hauled up and have no more climbing to do, Jack; it would be such a change. But that’s too good to come true I’m afraid, it will always be more kicks than coppers it seems to me.”“What do you mean?” asked St. John in astonishment. “There will be no more kicks, Jill, when you are once married to me; I shall take all those.”Jill went on caressing his coat sleeve vigorously, and her hand pressed his with tender warmth.“We shall never marry, Jack,” she said; “we can’t.”“Why?” he asked amazed.“Because we can’t live on love, dear; I never did like sweet things much, and you don’t like bread and cheese, and stout. I don’t much either; but I have to go in for it; it’s cheap. Only now I do without the stout—and the cheese also the last day or two.”“But, darling,” he exclaimed, not quite certain whether she was joking or not, “you are making troubles where they don’t exist. There will be no need to live on bread and cheese and affection—though I should be equal to that even if necessary—I have five hundred a year from my father, and he has promised to increase it when I marry.”“Providing you marry your cousin,” Jill interposed. “He would certainly decrease it if you married me. Oh! I know quite well all about it. You forget that he called upon me; he told me so then. And though you love me and I love you we shouldn’t be such fools, Jack, as to marry on nothing.”St. John looked glum. He entertained no doubt that his father had resolved upon this plan of deterring him from marrying the girl he wished to, and he determined to thwart him if possible.“We could get married, and I could come and live here,” he suggested brilliantly, “and we could work together; that would be jolly.”Jill smiled at this proposal but shook her head decisively.“It’s no good; it wouldn’t answer,” she said. “We should fight dreadfully in a month, and then the models would get smashed. And you’d never earn anything at painting, you know; your pictures always require explaining, and your figures are atrocious. I can’t think why you will persist in going in for the human form divine; it’s most difficult; for any fool can see when a figure’s out of drawing except the one who draws it, and you never will learn that green isn’t a becoming tint for flesh even in the deep shadows.”St. John heaved a sigh which seemed to proceed from the bottom of his boots. He was too genuinely despondent to resent her slighting criticism of his abilities, or too well aware of its truth perhaps. He rose impatiently, and walked restlessly up and down trying to think. Jill watched him, her own brows knit in a hopeless attempt to solve the difficulty.“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he exclaimed swinging round so suddenly that he nearly upset the model. “I’m hanged if I see what we are to do.”“My dear boy,” remonstrated Jill in tones of apprehension, “do mind the lay figure. I am trying to finish this canvas with its sole aid,” pointing to the work that she had been engaged upon at his entry—a female figure recumbent on a night rainbow. “I can’t possibly employ a model, unless perhaps for a final sitting when I know that I shall see so many mistakes it will be a case of repainting it.”Then St. John had a happy inspiration.“Wouldn’t I do?” he asked in all good faith. “I’m bigger, of course; but I’d be better than a lay figure, and I don’t mind posing for you a bit.”Jill broke into a laugh, the first laugh of thorough enjoyment that she had had for days.“Ye gods!” she cried, “what next I wonder?” Then she got up and put her two arms about his neck.“Dear old boy,” she said gratefully, “I believe you’d stand on your head if I wanted you to. But no, dear, I won’t pose you as ‘The Shepherd’s Delight,’ I’m sore afraid you wouldn’t do at all.”Well the end of it all was that Jill absolutely refused to marry St. John on the understanding that they should pick up a precarious livelihood by their combined artistic efforts, though she was quite willing that he should speak to his father again on the subject if he deemed it of any use. She also thought that Miss Bolton should be apprised of what had taken place, and for the rest things would go on just as usual, only he would attend the Art School again, and, as he himself stipulated, pop in as often as he chose. Then Jill went and put her hat on at his request, and they strolled out to lunch somewhere, and afterwards spent the rest of the day as they liked, which wasn’t among pictures as one would have imagined from two such lovers of art. In the first place St. John drove to a jewellers and placed a handsome solitaire ring on the third finger of Jill’s left hand, then they attended a matinée at one of the theatres, and in the evening he took her to Frascatti’s to dinner. There were several men there whom he knew and saluted in passing. They bowed back and stared hard at the dowdy little girl he escorted, wondering where he had unearthed her, and why? That night Jill tasted champagne for the first time, and its effect upon her spirits was decidedly exhilarating. She liked champagne, she said, and St. John laughed at the naïveté of both manner and remark. When he asked her where she would like to finish up the evening she suggested a Music Hall; for there one could talk while the performance was going on. So they drove to Shaftsbury Avenue, and St. John got one of the comfortable little curtained boxes at the Palace where one can enjoy the stage if one wishes to, or sit back and not pay any attention to it at all. Jill liked the Living Pictures best. She almost forgot in the delight of watching that they were actually animate and not marvellously painted canvasses by some master hand. But St. John rather spoiled the effect by remarking that they were ‘leggy,’ whereat she told him that he was horrid; nevertheless she noticed how very quietly the house received these artistic representations; but it was the quietness of appreciation had she known it—the appreciation which enjoys, yet with a very common mock modesty fears to be detected enjoying. Jill glanced at her lover as he sat back watching her instead of the stage with a smile of quiet amusement on his face.“They are lovely, Jack,” she said. “I should like to carry them all home in reality as I shall in my mind’s eye. But this is the wrong audience to exhibit such things to.”And St. John agreed with her, though he was by no means certain as to the soundness of her logic, but he would have agreed to anything just then; he was in the idiotic, inconsequent stage of love sickness, and had got it fairly badly.When the Music Hall was over he suggested a late supper somewhere, but Jill was firm in her refusal; so they drove straight to her lodgings where St. John alighted and opened the door for her, and embraced her several times in the dirty passage before he finally allowed her to shut him out and go on up to her room. And that night she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the diamond ring, and a smile of perfect happiness parting her lips.The next morning Jill went to work on the sachets again, though it was with the utmost difficulty that she managed to concentrate her thoughts upon anything at all save Jack and the new ring. As it was, her ideas kept wandering, and she caught herself every now and again breaking off into song—snatches of Music Hall choruses that she had heard the night before. And then in the midst of it in walked St. John, and seeing what she was doing he took the satin away from her in his masterful fashion, and crumpled it up in his hands before her horrified gaze.“You said that the smirking idiot who gave you these to do made love to you,” he said. “I won’t brook any oily rivals of that description.”Jill laughed. She rather enjoyed the idea of his being jealous.“I thought you said that that was a hallucination,” she retorted. “I was almost prepared to believe you and to think that the next time he chucked me under the chin, or put his arm round my waist that it was only my vivid imagination.”“He did that?” cried St. John fiercely.“Oh, dear! yes; several times.”“Give me his address,” commanded her lover. “I’ll stop his love-making propensities. Where does this greasy Lothario hang out?”But Jill was too discreet to say.“I forget,” she answered lamely; “I never was good at locality. Don’t look so savage, Jack; he only chucked me under the chin once, and I washed my face well directly I got back, indeed I did; I scrubbed so hard that I rubbed the skin off, I remember, and it was sore for two days.”“You ought to have returned the work at once,” grumbled St. John. “I am surprised at your taking it after that.”“Surprised!” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have been so astonished had you lived for a few days on a stale crust, and expected to dine the next off the crumbs if by good luck there happened to be any crumbs left.”“Oh! Jill,” he exclaimed, “I’m a brute dear. Has it ever been as bad as that, my poor little girl?”Jill nodded affirmatively, and then let her head recline contentedly against his shoulder, glad to nestle within the comforting security of his strong arms, and feel that there she could find both shelter and defence.“Have you told your father yet?” she asked a little nervously.“No, dear,” he answered. Then added quickly, “I will some time to-day, though.”“Yes,” she said, “don’t put it off any longer; I think that he ought to know; and yet I feel somehow that his knowing will put an end to all this pleasant fooling. Oh! Jack, I’m such a horrid little coward, I know I am.”She lifted her face, and he saw that she was laughing even though the tears stood in her eyes.“If you feel like that,” he said tenderly, kissing the upturned face, “why not get married first and tell him afterwards?”“Oh! Jack, fie,” she cried; “you are turning coward too.”“Not I,” he contradicted stoutly, then added with a smile, “I think I am though; I’m so terribly afraid of your slipping through my fingers, you eel.”“Oh, you dear!” whispered Jill softly. “Itisnice to have someone wanting you so badly as all that. I won’t slip through though; I am far too comfortable where I am.”
“I wonder,” mused St. John, stroking Jill’s tumbled hair with his right hand, and holding both hers in his left, “why the governor should have come here and told you what he did? It was putting us all in such a false position, and—well, I should have considered it an act altogether beneath him.”
Jill sighed and nestled unconsciously a little closer to him.
“Can’t we forget all that for to-day,” she asked, “and just think only of our two selves? I quite believe you when you say that you are not engaged to your cousin. I think I believed it all along only I was so horribly jealous. I’m jealous still, jealous that she can see you when I can’t, and that she has a right to call you Jack—”
“But you have got that right too,” he interrupted, “a better right than she has. You will call me Jack, won’t you? I call you Jill.”
She laughed.
“Doesn’t it put you in mind of the nursery rhyme?” she said. “I never thought of it before.”
“Yes; let’s see, how does it go? We must alter it a little to fit the case, ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to—’ we can’t say ‘fetch a pail of water.’”
“In search of fame together,” put in Jill.
“Ah, yes! Jack and Jill went up the hill In search of fame together, Jack fell down and broke his crown, And—”
“No,” interrupted Jill, “I won’t come tumbling after. You can say that I went on alone.”
“But that’s so unkind,” he objected; “besides it doesn’t rhyme.”
“Oh! well,” she answered after a pause devoted to thinking out a finish to the verse, “put, ‘But Jill goes climbing ever.’ That rhymes, and it’s true; I’m not going to stop in the valley trying to haul you up.”
“You’re a disagreeable little prig,” he exclaimed. “I should as likely as not be obliged to haul you.”
“And I daresay you could manage that,” she answered rubbing her cheek against his coat sleeve; “you’re big enough goodness knows. I should like to be hauled up and have no more climbing to do, Jack; it would be such a change. But that’s too good to come true I’m afraid, it will always be more kicks than coppers it seems to me.”
“What do you mean?” asked St. John in astonishment. “There will be no more kicks, Jill, when you are once married to me; I shall take all those.”
Jill went on caressing his coat sleeve vigorously, and her hand pressed his with tender warmth.
“We shall never marry, Jack,” she said; “we can’t.”
“Why?” he asked amazed.
“Because we can’t live on love, dear; I never did like sweet things much, and you don’t like bread and cheese, and stout. I don’t much either; but I have to go in for it; it’s cheap. Only now I do without the stout—and the cheese also the last day or two.”
“But, darling,” he exclaimed, not quite certain whether she was joking or not, “you are making troubles where they don’t exist. There will be no need to live on bread and cheese and affection—though I should be equal to that even if necessary—I have five hundred a year from my father, and he has promised to increase it when I marry.”
“Providing you marry your cousin,” Jill interposed. “He would certainly decrease it if you married me. Oh! I know quite well all about it. You forget that he called upon me; he told me so then. And though you love me and I love you we shouldn’t be such fools, Jack, as to marry on nothing.”
St. John looked glum. He entertained no doubt that his father had resolved upon this plan of deterring him from marrying the girl he wished to, and he determined to thwart him if possible.
“We could get married, and I could come and live here,” he suggested brilliantly, “and we could work together; that would be jolly.”
Jill smiled at this proposal but shook her head decisively.
“It’s no good; it wouldn’t answer,” she said. “We should fight dreadfully in a month, and then the models would get smashed. And you’d never earn anything at painting, you know; your pictures always require explaining, and your figures are atrocious. I can’t think why you will persist in going in for the human form divine; it’s most difficult; for any fool can see when a figure’s out of drawing except the one who draws it, and you never will learn that green isn’t a becoming tint for flesh even in the deep shadows.”
St. John heaved a sigh which seemed to proceed from the bottom of his boots. He was too genuinely despondent to resent her slighting criticism of his abilities, or too well aware of its truth perhaps. He rose impatiently, and walked restlessly up and down trying to think. Jill watched him, her own brows knit in a hopeless attempt to solve the difficulty.
“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he exclaimed swinging round so suddenly that he nearly upset the model. “I’m hanged if I see what we are to do.”
“My dear boy,” remonstrated Jill in tones of apprehension, “do mind the lay figure. I am trying to finish this canvas with its sole aid,” pointing to the work that she had been engaged upon at his entry—a female figure recumbent on a night rainbow. “I can’t possibly employ a model, unless perhaps for a final sitting when I know that I shall see so many mistakes it will be a case of repainting it.”
Then St. John had a happy inspiration.
“Wouldn’t I do?” he asked in all good faith. “I’m bigger, of course; but I’d be better than a lay figure, and I don’t mind posing for you a bit.”
Jill broke into a laugh, the first laugh of thorough enjoyment that she had had for days.
“Ye gods!” she cried, “what next I wonder?” Then she got up and put her two arms about his neck.
“Dear old boy,” she said gratefully, “I believe you’d stand on your head if I wanted you to. But no, dear, I won’t pose you as ‘The Shepherd’s Delight,’ I’m sore afraid you wouldn’t do at all.”
Well the end of it all was that Jill absolutely refused to marry St. John on the understanding that they should pick up a precarious livelihood by their combined artistic efforts, though she was quite willing that he should speak to his father again on the subject if he deemed it of any use. She also thought that Miss Bolton should be apprised of what had taken place, and for the rest things would go on just as usual, only he would attend the Art School again, and, as he himself stipulated, pop in as often as he chose. Then Jill went and put her hat on at his request, and they strolled out to lunch somewhere, and afterwards spent the rest of the day as they liked, which wasn’t among pictures as one would have imagined from two such lovers of art. In the first place St. John drove to a jewellers and placed a handsome solitaire ring on the third finger of Jill’s left hand, then they attended a matinée at one of the theatres, and in the evening he took her to Frascatti’s to dinner. There were several men there whom he knew and saluted in passing. They bowed back and stared hard at the dowdy little girl he escorted, wondering where he had unearthed her, and why? That night Jill tasted champagne for the first time, and its effect upon her spirits was decidedly exhilarating. She liked champagne, she said, and St. John laughed at the naïveté of both manner and remark. When he asked her where she would like to finish up the evening she suggested a Music Hall; for there one could talk while the performance was going on. So they drove to Shaftsbury Avenue, and St. John got one of the comfortable little curtained boxes at the Palace where one can enjoy the stage if one wishes to, or sit back and not pay any attention to it at all. Jill liked the Living Pictures best. She almost forgot in the delight of watching that they were actually animate and not marvellously painted canvasses by some master hand. But St. John rather spoiled the effect by remarking that they were ‘leggy,’ whereat she told him that he was horrid; nevertheless she noticed how very quietly the house received these artistic representations; but it was the quietness of appreciation had she known it—the appreciation which enjoys, yet with a very common mock modesty fears to be detected enjoying. Jill glanced at her lover as he sat back watching her instead of the stage with a smile of quiet amusement on his face.
“They are lovely, Jack,” she said. “I should like to carry them all home in reality as I shall in my mind’s eye. But this is the wrong audience to exhibit such things to.”
And St. John agreed with her, though he was by no means certain as to the soundness of her logic, but he would have agreed to anything just then; he was in the idiotic, inconsequent stage of love sickness, and had got it fairly badly.
When the Music Hall was over he suggested a late supper somewhere, but Jill was firm in her refusal; so they drove straight to her lodgings where St. John alighted and opened the door for her, and embraced her several times in the dirty passage before he finally allowed her to shut him out and go on up to her room. And that night she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the diamond ring, and a smile of perfect happiness parting her lips.
The next morning Jill went to work on the sachets again, though it was with the utmost difficulty that she managed to concentrate her thoughts upon anything at all save Jack and the new ring. As it was, her ideas kept wandering, and she caught herself every now and again breaking off into song—snatches of Music Hall choruses that she had heard the night before. And then in the midst of it in walked St. John, and seeing what she was doing he took the satin away from her in his masterful fashion, and crumpled it up in his hands before her horrified gaze.
“You said that the smirking idiot who gave you these to do made love to you,” he said. “I won’t brook any oily rivals of that description.”
Jill laughed. She rather enjoyed the idea of his being jealous.
“I thought you said that that was a hallucination,” she retorted. “I was almost prepared to believe you and to think that the next time he chucked me under the chin, or put his arm round my waist that it was only my vivid imagination.”
“He did that?” cried St. John fiercely.
“Oh, dear! yes; several times.”
“Give me his address,” commanded her lover. “I’ll stop his love-making propensities. Where does this greasy Lothario hang out?”
But Jill was too discreet to say.
“I forget,” she answered lamely; “I never was good at locality. Don’t look so savage, Jack; he only chucked me under the chin once, and I washed my face well directly I got back, indeed I did; I scrubbed so hard that I rubbed the skin off, I remember, and it was sore for two days.”
“You ought to have returned the work at once,” grumbled St. John. “I am surprised at your taking it after that.”
“Surprised!” she repeated. “You wouldn’t have been so astonished had you lived for a few days on a stale crust, and expected to dine the next off the crumbs if by good luck there happened to be any crumbs left.”
“Oh! Jill,” he exclaimed, “I’m a brute dear. Has it ever been as bad as that, my poor little girl?”
Jill nodded affirmatively, and then let her head recline contentedly against his shoulder, glad to nestle within the comforting security of his strong arms, and feel that there she could find both shelter and defence.
“Have you told your father yet?” she asked a little nervously.
“No, dear,” he answered. Then added quickly, “I will some time to-day, though.”
“Yes,” she said, “don’t put it off any longer; I think that he ought to know; and yet I feel somehow that his knowing will put an end to all this pleasant fooling. Oh! Jack, I’m such a horrid little coward, I know I am.”
She lifted her face, and he saw that she was laughing even though the tears stood in her eyes.
“If you feel like that,” he said tenderly, kissing the upturned face, “why not get married first and tell him afterwards?”
“Oh! Jack, fie,” she cried; “you are turning coward too.”
“Not I,” he contradicted stoutly, then added with a smile, “I think I am though; I’m so terribly afraid of your slipping through my fingers, you eel.”
“Oh, you dear!” whispered Jill softly. “Itisnice to have someone wanting you so badly as all that. I won’t slip through though; I am far too comfortable where I am.”
Chapter Ten.The following day, St. John entered the studio with a face the gravity of which boded no good for their plans, Jill feared. She knew at once that his father had refused to countenance the match, and although she had not dared to hope for his sanction, the knowledge that he had positively denied it came upon her with a sense of shock. Not for one moment did she think of resenting his objection, nor of questioning his right to forbid the marriage, she just crept within the shelter of St. John’s arms and stayed there, her face, with its flush of mortification, hidden against his breast.“The governor’s a silly old fool,” St. John exclaimed savagely, thinking less, perhaps, of the girl’s discomfort than his own personal grievances. “He’s cut me off with nothing—at least five hundred pounds; he gave me a cheque for that amount before giving me the kick out.”“We won’t take it,” Jill cried wrathfully with the improvident contempt of the penniless, “We won’t touch a farthing of it, will we?”“Oh; yes, we will,” he answered. “We’ll get married on it in the first place, and then live on the rest for so long as it will last.”“I wouldn’t get married on that five hundred pounds for anything,” Jill said firmly.“Well, I’m going to,” he replied, “I’m going to see about it now. We’ll go before a Registrar—much nicer than Church, you know, doesn’t take so long. And then I’m going to invest the rest with a little capital that I have by me in a snug little business—haberdashery, or something of the kind; I’m not quite sure what, though I thought about nothing else all last night.”Jill gave a quiet laugh.“My dear old boy,” she said, “you must allow me a say in that matter if you please. I wouldn’t let you have a haberdashery; I’d sooner that you were a pork butcher at once.”“No good,” he answered. “I’ve thought of that too; but I couldn’t kill a pig for love or money. I could measure out a yard or two of ribbon though, and sell worsted stockings to old women. I say, Jill, what do you think of a photographic studio?—That’s the next best thing to art.”Jill had a fine contempt for photography, and said so, but St. John was rather taken with the new idea, and as he pointed out while he did the mechanical work she could paint portraits and enlargements, and have a kind of Art Gallery as well. He spoke with a cheery confidence that showed that he fully expected her to fall in with his plan immediately and be struck as he was with the brilliance of the idea. But for once Jill’s spirit seemed to have deserted her, and she turned away with a catch in her voice, and quite a forlorn expression in the grey eyes which a moment ago had been smiling into his.“Oh, Jack, don’t!” she cried. “I can’t bear to listen to you. My poor old saint, I wish that you had never met me.”“Stop that,” commanded St. John sharply. “You make me feel such a beastly cad—the son of a beastlier cad—”She turned and laid her hand upon his lips, shaking her head at him reprovingly.“Your language isn’t fit for a stable,” she said in her elder sister, teacher-to-pupil tone. “I can’t have you calling people names here. Besides what I said need not have excited your risability like that. I meant it in all sincerity; it is a pity as things have turned out; I was quite happy here working by myself, and got along fairly comfortably, and I think now that we have had our pleasant fooling and the crisis is reached I should like to offer you your freedom.”“Thank you,” he answered grimly, and he stood looking down from his six feet of brawny manhood upon the small determined figure in front of him busily engaged in withdrawing the ring—her sole article of jewellery—from the third finger of her left hand. She held the shining circlet, emblem of their mutual love, towards him with a smile upon her lips, but he made no attempt to take it though he understood the significance of her action well enough.“Wouldn’t you like to keep it to wear on the other hand?” he enquired sarcastically. “It isn’t etiquette, I know; but ladies do it sometimes, I believe.”“But your freedom?” Jill persisted, still holding the ring before his eyes. “Won’t you take that?”“Oh, certainly,” he replied disagreeably, “butthatdoesn’t constitute my freedom, does it?” with a contemptuous glance at the small golden hoop in her hand.“No, I suppose not,” the girl answered in a voice of such blank disappointment that St. John grinned despite his ill-humour; her lugubrious expression aroused his mirth. Jill saw nothing to laugh at. The situation had assumed for her quite a tragic aspect, and her eyes blazed with a very wrathful light as she gazed witheringly up into his broadly smiling face.“I don’t see,” she observed icily, “that my remark called for any violent ebullition of mirth. I wasn’t aware that I had said anything funny. Is there insanity in your family?”“Not that I know of,” he replied, taking possession of both ring and hand as he spoke, and keeping his hold despite her angry attempt to free herself. “’Pon my word, Jill, you’re enough to try a fellow’s patience. You deserved to be taken at your word just now, and didn’t expect to be, that’s the joke. And now I’ve got to put this ring back in its place, I suppose. The next time that you take it off for the childish satisfaction of dangling it an inch from my nose I shall keep it and give it to some other girl.”“Miss Bolton perhaps?” remarked Jill in her nastiest tone.“Don’t you think it would be better,” he suggested without looking at her, “to leave Evie’s name out of our disputes?”“I don’t know whether you consider it gentlemanly,” Jill cried fiercely, “to try and make me feel mean?”“I’m glad if I have succeeded in making you feel it,” he answered imperturbably, patting the ring in place, and slowly releasing her hand, “for you certainly are mean. Your meanness is, in fact, only to be equalled by your bad temper and that exceeds it. I am not blind to your faults you may observe; they are as plentiful as flies in summer, and equally irritating.”“And to think,” exclaimed Jill in exasperation, “that I was going to give you up just for your personal benefit! I won’t now; if you try to back out of it I’ll have you up for breach of promise.”“You will, will you? Jove! I almost believe you would. And you’d win your case too, for if you looked as belligerent as you do at present the jury would be afraid to give it against you. It isn’t a bit of use, Jill, getting nasty; I’m in such an angelic frame of mind myself that not even you could put me out. Get your hat on, old girl, and let’s go and look for our shop together. We are going to become public benefactors, and hand down to posterity the idealised representatives of the present generation.”Jill smiled scornfully.“I am sorry for the idealisation if you are going to operate; they’ll be more like caricatures I’m thinking. What do you know about photography?”“Know about it!” echoed St. John indignantly. “Why I’ve got a camera of my own; Evie and I used to dabble a good deal in photography at one time.”“It strikes me that youdabbledin a great many things,” retorted Jill. “Perhaps that accounts for the very indifferent manner in which you do everything. If you are counting on your amateur efforts solely, I fear we shall end in the bankruptcy court.”“Jill,” he said very gravely, and in such an altered tone that Jill looked up in surprise, “are you afraid to throw in your lot with mine now that my circumstances are almost as destitute and uncertain as your own?”Jill gave a gasp. For a moment she looked as if about to offer an indignant protest, the next she dissolved into tears. St. John’s half-formed suspicions faded immediately. His father had planted them in his mind the night before. He had said “tell her that you are penniless and see how sincere her love will prove.” The girl’s uncertain mood had recalled the words to his memory but he knew as soon as he had spoken by the look in her eyes that he had entirely misjudged her.“How can you say such unkind things?” she cried. “I believe you are trying to make me hate you.”“Darling,” he said contritely, slipping his arm about her, and holding her closely to him, “forgive me; I didn’t mean it, indeed I didn’t.”“You did,” sobbed Jill. “You thought that I had been running after you as a good speculation—”“Don’t, dear,” he entreated, “you make me feel so ashamed of myself.”“And so you ought to,” she answered, drying her eyes on the corner of her painting apron, and looking up at him with a very woebegone face. “I shall never forget that, I’m afraid; I have a horrid memory for cruel things, and I have loved you so truly all the time. I would go through a dozen bankruptcy courts with you, and—and—and end up in the work-house even sooner than lose you now.”She dropped her head again with a fresh burst of tears, and St. John felt as intensely miserable as it is possible for a man to feel, intensely ashamed of himself also for giving voice to such an unjust suspicion. He racked his brains in search of something soothing, but the only thing he could find to say was,—“Don’t keep hitting a fellow when he’s down, Jill.”It wasn’t a very brilliant, nor a very original remark, but it was the very luckiest thing he could have hit upon. Its effect on Jill was marvellous; she recollected what she might have remembered sooner, that he had been passing through very stormy times lately, and all on her account. A man does not generally relish breaking with his family and throwing up a luxurious home for the doubtful prospect of earning his own living when he has not been brought up to any profession, and hasn’t a superabundance of capital to launch him into a going concern. St. John had certainly not relished it, but he had made no complaint and had met his ill fortune with a cheerfulness and pluck which did him infinite credit. Jill mopped her eyes again vigorously and put both arms around his neck.“I have been horrid,” she said; “I have done nothing but worried you ever since you came, and you were worried enough before. Jack dear, I’m afraid we shall quarrel dreadfully after we are married. I really am bad-tempered, and you are not—not altogether amiable, are you?”St. John laughed.“I don’t care,” he said, “so long as we make it up again. Rows are like hills in cycling, beastly at first, but when you’re used to ’em a flat road seems dreadfully monotonous.”Jill saw very little of her fiancé during the next week. He was busy looking for something to do! for she had declared that until he found permanent occupation their marriage must be postponed; she was not going to take such a serious plunge on the strength of the five hundred pounds. St. John acknowledged the wisdom of her decision but chafed at the delay. Having been ejected from the paternal roof he was anxious to have a home of his own, and more than anxious to see Jill at the head of his frugal board. He was not quite sure how Jill existed; it worried him rather to think of her poverty; but she would take no assistance from him. Once he deprecatingly offered her a ten pound note which she however firmly refused. She would not allow him to support her until he had the right to do so.“Don’t you think that that’s rather straining at a gnat?” he said.“Perhaps,” she answered smiling. “But you would not like to think that your coming had lessened my pride and independence, and made me lazy and unselfreliant, would you? If I actually need assistance I will come to you, dear old boy.”And so he had gone forth in search of a livelihood more than ever anxious for the ceremony to come off, and not a little eager to commence the new life of independence and hard work. St. John had a friend who knew everything. There is a difference between a man who knows everything and the man who thinks he does; St. John’s friend was the right sort, and he put him in the way of the very thing he was looking for. A photographer of the firm of Thompkins and Co, having recently dissolved partnership through the Co, setting up for himself was advertising through the regular channels for a new partner. St. John’s friend having some slight acquaintance with Thompkins introduced the two, and eventually St. John invested his capital and returned to the studio in triumph to inform Jill with much pride and satisfaction that he represented the Co in “Thompkins and Co.—photographers.”
The following day, St. John entered the studio with a face the gravity of which boded no good for their plans, Jill feared. She knew at once that his father had refused to countenance the match, and although she had not dared to hope for his sanction, the knowledge that he had positively denied it came upon her with a sense of shock. Not for one moment did she think of resenting his objection, nor of questioning his right to forbid the marriage, she just crept within the shelter of St. John’s arms and stayed there, her face, with its flush of mortification, hidden against his breast.
“The governor’s a silly old fool,” St. John exclaimed savagely, thinking less, perhaps, of the girl’s discomfort than his own personal grievances. “He’s cut me off with nothing—at least five hundred pounds; he gave me a cheque for that amount before giving me the kick out.”
“We won’t take it,” Jill cried wrathfully with the improvident contempt of the penniless, “We won’t touch a farthing of it, will we?”
“Oh; yes, we will,” he answered. “We’ll get married on it in the first place, and then live on the rest for so long as it will last.”
“I wouldn’t get married on that five hundred pounds for anything,” Jill said firmly.
“Well, I’m going to,” he replied, “I’m going to see about it now. We’ll go before a Registrar—much nicer than Church, you know, doesn’t take so long. And then I’m going to invest the rest with a little capital that I have by me in a snug little business—haberdashery, or something of the kind; I’m not quite sure what, though I thought about nothing else all last night.”
Jill gave a quiet laugh.
“My dear old boy,” she said, “you must allow me a say in that matter if you please. I wouldn’t let you have a haberdashery; I’d sooner that you were a pork butcher at once.”
“No good,” he answered. “I’ve thought of that too; but I couldn’t kill a pig for love or money. I could measure out a yard or two of ribbon though, and sell worsted stockings to old women. I say, Jill, what do you think of a photographic studio?—That’s the next best thing to art.”
Jill had a fine contempt for photography, and said so, but St. John was rather taken with the new idea, and as he pointed out while he did the mechanical work she could paint portraits and enlargements, and have a kind of Art Gallery as well. He spoke with a cheery confidence that showed that he fully expected her to fall in with his plan immediately and be struck as he was with the brilliance of the idea. But for once Jill’s spirit seemed to have deserted her, and she turned away with a catch in her voice, and quite a forlorn expression in the grey eyes which a moment ago had been smiling into his.
“Oh, Jack, don’t!” she cried. “I can’t bear to listen to you. My poor old saint, I wish that you had never met me.”
“Stop that,” commanded St. John sharply. “You make me feel such a beastly cad—the son of a beastlier cad—”
She turned and laid her hand upon his lips, shaking her head at him reprovingly.
“Your language isn’t fit for a stable,” she said in her elder sister, teacher-to-pupil tone. “I can’t have you calling people names here. Besides what I said need not have excited your risability like that. I meant it in all sincerity; it is a pity as things have turned out; I was quite happy here working by myself, and got along fairly comfortably, and I think now that we have had our pleasant fooling and the crisis is reached I should like to offer you your freedom.”
“Thank you,” he answered grimly, and he stood looking down from his six feet of brawny manhood upon the small determined figure in front of him busily engaged in withdrawing the ring—her sole article of jewellery—from the third finger of her left hand. She held the shining circlet, emblem of their mutual love, towards him with a smile upon her lips, but he made no attempt to take it though he understood the significance of her action well enough.
“Wouldn’t you like to keep it to wear on the other hand?” he enquired sarcastically. “It isn’t etiquette, I know; but ladies do it sometimes, I believe.”
“But your freedom?” Jill persisted, still holding the ring before his eyes. “Won’t you take that?”
“Oh, certainly,” he replied disagreeably, “butthatdoesn’t constitute my freedom, does it?” with a contemptuous glance at the small golden hoop in her hand.
“No, I suppose not,” the girl answered in a voice of such blank disappointment that St. John grinned despite his ill-humour; her lugubrious expression aroused his mirth. Jill saw nothing to laugh at. The situation had assumed for her quite a tragic aspect, and her eyes blazed with a very wrathful light as she gazed witheringly up into his broadly smiling face.
“I don’t see,” she observed icily, “that my remark called for any violent ebullition of mirth. I wasn’t aware that I had said anything funny. Is there insanity in your family?”
“Not that I know of,” he replied, taking possession of both ring and hand as he spoke, and keeping his hold despite her angry attempt to free herself. “’Pon my word, Jill, you’re enough to try a fellow’s patience. You deserved to be taken at your word just now, and didn’t expect to be, that’s the joke. And now I’ve got to put this ring back in its place, I suppose. The next time that you take it off for the childish satisfaction of dangling it an inch from my nose I shall keep it and give it to some other girl.”
“Miss Bolton perhaps?” remarked Jill in her nastiest tone.
“Don’t you think it would be better,” he suggested without looking at her, “to leave Evie’s name out of our disputes?”
“I don’t know whether you consider it gentlemanly,” Jill cried fiercely, “to try and make me feel mean?”
“I’m glad if I have succeeded in making you feel it,” he answered imperturbably, patting the ring in place, and slowly releasing her hand, “for you certainly are mean. Your meanness is, in fact, only to be equalled by your bad temper and that exceeds it. I am not blind to your faults you may observe; they are as plentiful as flies in summer, and equally irritating.”
“And to think,” exclaimed Jill in exasperation, “that I was going to give you up just for your personal benefit! I won’t now; if you try to back out of it I’ll have you up for breach of promise.”
“You will, will you? Jove! I almost believe you would. And you’d win your case too, for if you looked as belligerent as you do at present the jury would be afraid to give it against you. It isn’t a bit of use, Jill, getting nasty; I’m in such an angelic frame of mind myself that not even you could put me out. Get your hat on, old girl, and let’s go and look for our shop together. We are going to become public benefactors, and hand down to posterity the idealised representatives of the present generation.”
Jill smiled scornfully.
“I am sorry for the idealisation if you are going to operate; they’ll be more like caricatures I’m thinking. What do you know about photography?”
“Know about it!” echoed St. John indignantly. “Why I’ve got a camera of my own; Evie and I used to dabble a good deal in photography at one time.”
“It strikes me that youdabbledin a great many things,” retorted Jill. “Perhaps that accounts for the very indifferent manner in which you do everything. If you are counting on your amateur efforts solely, I fear we shall end in the bankruptcy court.”
“Jill,” he said very gravely, and in such an altered tone that Jill looked up in surprise, “are you afraid to throw in your lot with mine now that my circumstances are almost as destitute and uncertain as your own?”
Jill gave a gasp. For a moment she looked as if about to offer an indignant protest, the next she dissolved into tears. St. John’s half-formed suspicions faded immediately. His father had planted them in his mind the night before. He had said “tell her that you are penniless and see how sincere her love will prove.” The girl’s uncertain mood had recalled the words to his memory but he knew as soon as he had spoken by the look in her eyes that he had entirely misjudged her.
“How can you say such unkind things?” she cried. “I believe you are trying to make me hate you.”
“Darling,” he said contritely, slipping his arm about her, and holding her closely to him, “forgive me; I didn’t mean it, indeed I didn’t.”
“You did,” sobbed Jill. “You thought that I had been running after you as a good speculation—”
“Don’t, dear,” he entreated, “you make me feel so ashamed of myself.”
“And so you ought to,” she answered, drying her eyes on the corner of her painting apron, and looking up at him with a very woebegone face. “I shall never forget that, I’m afraid; I have a horrid memory for cruel things, and I have loved you so truly all the time. I would go through a dozen bankruptcy courts with you, and—and—and end up in the work-house even sooner than lose you now.”
She dropped her head again with a fresh burst of tears, and St. John felt as intensely miserable as it is possible for a man to feel, intensely ashamed of himself also for giving voice to such an unjust suspicion. He racked his brains in search of something soothing, but the only thing he could find to say was,—
“Don’t keep hitting a fellow when he’s down, Jill.”
It wasn’t a very brilliant, nor a very original remark, but it was the very luckiest thing he could have hit upon. Its effect on Jill was marvellous; she recollected what she might have remembered sooner, that he had been passing through very stormy times lately, and all on her account. A man does not generally relish breaking with his family and throwing up a luxurious home for the doubtful prospect of earning his own living when he has not been brought up to any profession, and hasn’t a superabundance of capital to launch him into a going concern. St. John had certainly not relished it, but he had made no complaint and had met his ill fortune with a cheerfulness and pluck which did him infinite credit. Jill mopped her eyes again vigorously and put both arms around his neck.
“I have been horrid,” she said; “I have done nothing but worried you ever since you came, and you were worried enough before. Jack dear, I’m afraid we shall quarrel dreadfully after we are married. I really am bad-tempered, and you are not—not altogether amiable, are you?”
St. John laughed.
“I don’t care,” he said, “so long as we make it up again. Rows are like hills in cycling, beastly at first, but when you’re used to ’em a flat road seems dreadfully monotonous.”
Jill saw very little of her fiancé during the next week. He was busy looking for something to do! for she had declared that until he found permanent occupation their marriage must be postponed; she was not going to take such a serious plunge on the strength of the five hundred pounds. St. John acknowledged the wisdom of her decision but chafed at the delay. Having been ejected from the paternal roof he was anxious to have a home of his own, and more than anxious to see Jill at the head of his frugal board. He was not quite sure how Jill existed; it worried him rather to think of her poverty; but she would take no assistance from him. Once he deprecatingly offered her a ten pound note which she however firmly refused. She would not allow him to support her until he had the right to do so.
“Don’t you think that that’s rather straining at a gnat?” he said.
“Perhaps,” she answered smiling. “But you would not like to think that your coming had lessened my pride and independence, and made me lazy and unselfreliant, would you? If I actually need assistance I will come to you, dear old boy.”
And so he had gone forth in search of a livelihood more than ever anxious for the ceremony to come off, and not a little eager to commence the new life of independence and hard work. St. John had a friend who knew everything. There is a difference between a man who knows everything and the man who thinks he does; St. John’s friend was the right sort, and he put him in the way of the very thing he was looking for. A photographer of the firm of Thompkins and Co, having recently dissolved partnership through the Co, setting up for himself was advertising through the regular channels for a new partner. St. John’s friend having some slight acquaintance with Thompkins introduced the two, and eventually St. John invested his capital and returned to the studio in triumph to inform Jill with much pride and satisfaction that he represented the Co in “Thompkins and Co.—photographers.”