Читать книгу A Likely Story - William De Morgan - Страница 3

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A good deal about a box of matches. Concerning a married couple, whom anyone would have thought quarrelsome, to listen to them. Of the difficulty with which the lady housekept, and how her husband was no help at all. But they went to the Old Water Colour. How Sairah only just wiped gently over a tacky picture, and Mr. Aiken said God and Devil. Of the plural number. Of a very pretty girl, but dressy, and her soldier lover, and how Mrs. Aiken was proper. Of her mystical utterance about the young lady. How Mr. Aiken sought for an explanation from Sairah, and created a situation. How his wife went to her Aunt Priscilla, at Athabasca Villa, and cried herself to sleep.

"You'll have to light the gas, Sairah!" said an Artist in a fog, one morning in Chelsea. For although summer was on the horizon, it was cold and damp; and, as we all know, till fires come to an end, London is not fogless—if, indeed, it ever is so. This was a very black fog, of the sort that is sure to go off presently, because it is only due to atmospheric conditions. Meanwhile, it was just as well to light the gas, and not go on pretending you could see and putting your eyes out.

This Artist, after putting his eyes out, called out, from a dark corner in his Studio, to something in a dark corner outside. And that something shuffled into the room and scratched something else several times at intervals on something gritty. It was Sairah, evidently, and Sairah appeared impatient.

"They're damp, Sairah," said the Artist feebly. "Why do you get that sort? Why can't you get Bryant and May?"

"These are Bryant and May, Mr. Aching. You can light 'em yourself if it sootes you better. I know my place. Only they're Safety, and fly in your eye. Puttin' of 'em down to dry improves. I'd screw up a spell, only there's no gettin' inside of the stove. Nor yet any fire, in the manner of speaking."

The scratching continued. So did Sairah's impatience. Then the supply of the something stopped, for Sairah said: "There ain't any more. That's the hend of the box. And exceptin' I go all the way to the King's Road there ain't another in the house—not Bryant and May."

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said the Artist, in the lowest spirits. But he brightened up. "Perhaps there's a Vesta," said he.

Sairah threw the thing nearest to her against the thing nearest to it to indicate her readiness to search.

"Look in the pocket of my plaid overcoat, Sairah," he continued. "It was a new box Tuesday."

Sairah shuffled into another room, and was heard to turn over garments. The Artist seemed to know which was which, by the sound. For he called out: "None of those! On the hook." Sairah appeared to turn up the soil in a new claim, and presently announced: "Nothing in neither pocket. Only coppers and a thrip'ny!"

"Oh dear—I'm certain there was! Are you sure you've looked? Just look again, Sairah." He seemed distressed that there should be no Vesta in his overcoat pocket.

"You can see for yourself—by lookin'," says Sairah. "And then there won't be any turnin' round and blamin' me!" Whereupon she appears, bearing a garment. The reason she shuffles is that she has to hold the heels of her shoes down on the floor with her feet.

The owner of the overcoat dived deep into the pockets, but found nothing. He appeared dumbfoundered. "Well, now!" he continued. "Whatever can have become of my Vestas?" And thereon, as one in panic on emergency, he put down the sponge and brush he was using and searched rapidly through all his other pockets. He slapped himself in such places as might still contain forgotten pockets; and then stood in thought, as one to whom a light of memory will come if he thinks hard enough, but with a certain glare and distortion of visage to say, in place of speech, how truly active is his effort of thought. And then of a sudden he is illuminated, and says of course!—he knows! But he doesn't know, for, after leaving the room to seek for his Vestas, and banging some doors, he comes back, saying he thought they were there and they aren't. Wherefore, Sairah must run out and get some more; and look sharp, because they must have the gas! But Sairah, who has not been exerting herself, awakes suddenly from something equivalent to sleep which she can indulge in upright, without support, and says, nodding towards a thing she speaks of, "Ain't that them on the stove?" And the Artist says, "No, it isn't; it's an empty box. Cut along and look sharp!" Sairah made no response; and time was lost in conversation, as follows:

"That ain't an empty box!"

"It is an empty box! Do cut along and look sharp!"

"It ain't my idear of an empty box. But, of course, it ain't for me to say nothin'!"

"I tell you I'm quite sure it's empty. Perfectly certain!"

"Well! It ain't for me to say anything. But if you had a asted me, I should have said there wouldn't any harm have come of looking inside of it, to see. Of course I can go, if you come to that! Only there's tandstickers in the kitchen, and for the matter of that, the fire ain't let out; nor likely when it's not the sweep till Wednesday."

"Get 'em out of the kitchen, then! Get the tandstickers or get anything. Anywhere; only look alive!" He seemed roused to impatience.

"Of course I can get them out of the kitchen. Or there's missus's bedroom candlestick stood on the landin', with one in, and guttered." Sairah enumerated two or three other resources unexhausted, and left the room.

When she had vanished, the Artist went and stood with his back to the stove, for it was too dark to work. Being there, he picked up the empty box and seemed to examine it. Having done so, he left the room, and called over the stair-rail, to a lower region.

"Sair-ah!"

"Did you call, Sir?"

"Yes—you needn't go! There's some here."

"'Arf a minute till I put these back."

And then from underground came the voice of the young woman saying something enigmatical about always wishing to give satisfaction, and there was never any knowing. But she remained below, because her master said: "You needn't come up again now. I'll light it myself." In an instant, however, he called out again that she must bring the matches, after all, because the Vestas were all stuck to, through being on the stove.

When she reappeared, after a good deal of shuffling about below, he asked her why on earth she couldn't come at once. She explained, with some indignation, that she had been doing a little dusting in the parlour; and, of course, the tandstickers, she put 'em back in the kitchen, not bein' wanted, as you might say. But all obstacles to lighting the gas were now removed.

Illumination presented itself first as an incombustible hiss; but shortly became a flame, and was bright enough to work by. The Artist did not seem very contented with it, and said that the pressure was weak, and it was off at the main, and there was water in the pipes, and the gas was bad and very dear. But he worked for half-an-hour or so, and then a young woman came in, of whom he took no notice; so she must have been his wife. Of whom anyone might have thought that she was stopping away from a funeral against her will, and resented the restraint. For she bit her lips and tapped with her feet as she sat in the arm-chair she dropped into when she entered the room. She made no remark, but maintained an aggressive silence. Presently the young man moaned.

"What is the rumpus?" said he plaintively. "What is the everlasting rumpus?"

"It's very easy for you. Men can! But if you were a woman, you would feel it like I do. Thank God, Reginald, you are not a woman!"

"Good job I ain't! We might quarrel, if I was. You've got something to be thankful for, you see, Mrs. Hay." This way of addressing her, as Mrs. Hay, was due to the substitution of the initial for the whole name, which was Aiken.

"Oh, you are unfeeling," said she reproachfully. "You know perfectly well what I meant!"

"Meant that you thanked God I wasn't a woman." But this made the lady evince despair. "Well!—what did you mean, then? Spit it out."

"You are tired of me, Reginald, and I shall go for my walk alone. Of course, what I meant was plain enough, to any but a downright fool. I meant you were to thank God, Reginald—on your knees!—that you were a man and not a woman. The idea of my saying anything so silly! Wait till you are a woman, and then see! But if you're not coming, I shall go. I don't know why you want the gas. It all mounts up in the bills. And then I shall be found fault with, I suppose."

"I want the gas because I can't see without it."

After a phase of despair, followed by resignation, the lady said, speaking in the effect of the latter: "I think, Reginald, if you had any regard for the bills, you would just look out of the window, once in an hour or so, and not consume all those cubic feet of gas at three-and-ninepence. The fog's gone! There's the sun. I knew it would be, and it was perfectly ridiculous to put off going to the Old Water Colour."

"Suppose we go, then? Hay, Mrs. Hay? Get your hat, and we'll go." He turned the gas out.

"Oh no! It's no use going now—it's too late. And it's all so depressing. And you know it is! And I shall have to get rid of this new girl, Sairah."

"I thought she looked honest." This was spoken feebly.

She answered irritably: "You always think they look honest when they're ugly. This one's no better than they all are. It's not the honesty, though. It's she won't do anything."

"Why didn't you have that rather pleasin'-looking gyairl with a bird's wing on her hat?"

"That conscious minx! I really do sometimes quite wonder at you, Reginald! Besides, she wanted a parlourmaid's place, and wouldn't go where there wasn't a manservant kept. You men are such fools! And you don't give any help."

Mr. Aiken, observing a disposition to weep in these last words, seemed embarrassed for a moment; but after reflection became conciliatory. "Sairah does seem lazy. But she says she's not been accustomed."

"And then you give way! You might put that magnifying-glass down just for one moment, and pay attention! Of course, she says she's not been accustomed to anything and everything. They all do! But what can one expect when their master blacks his own boots?"

"What can I do, when she says she hopes she knows her place, and she ain't a general, where a boy comes in to do the rough work?"

"What can you do? Why, of course not carry your dirty boots down into the kitchen and black them yourself, and have her say, when you ask for the blacking, do you know where it's kept? I've no patience! But some men will put up with anything, except their wives; and then one's head's snapped off! 'Do you know where it's kept!' The idea! … Well, are you coming, or are you not? Because, if you're coming, I must put on my grey tweed. If you're not coming, say so!"

But Mr. Aiken did not say so. So, after a good deal of time needlessly spent in preparation, the two asked each other several times if they were ready, shouting about the house to that effect. And then, when they reappeared in the Studio, having succeeded very indifferently in improving their appearance, the lady asked the gentleman more than once whether she looked right, and he said in a debilitated way, Yes!—he thought so. Whereon she took exception to his want of interest in her appearance, and he said she needn't catch him up so short. However, they did get away in the end, and Sairah came in to do a little tidin' up—not often getting the opportunity in the Studio—in pursuance of a programme arranged between herself and her mistress, in an aside out of hearing of her master, in order that the latter should not interpose, as he always did, and he knew it, to prevent anything the least like cleanness or order. How he could go on so was a wonder to his wife.

As for Sairah, the image of herself which she nourished in her own mind was apparently that of one determined to struggle single-handed to re-establish system in the midst of a world given over to Chaos. Whatever state the place would get into if it wasn't for her, she couldn't tell! The other inhabitants of the planet would never do a hand's turn; anyone could see that! In fact, the greater part of them devoted themselves to leavin' things about for her to clear up. The remainder, to gettin' in the way. When you were that werrited, you might very easy let something drop, and no great wonder! And things didn't show, not when riveted, if only done careful enough. Or a little diamond cement hotted up and the edges brought to. There was a man they knew his address at Pibses Dairy, over a hivory-turner's he lived, done their ornamential pail beautiful, and you never see a crack!

But Sairah's alacrity, when she found herself alone in the Studio, fell short of her implied forecast of it. Instead of taking opportunity by the forelock, and doing the little bit of tidying up that she stood pledged to, she gave herself up to the contemplation of the Fine Arts.

Now, there were two Fine Arts to which this master, Mr. Reginald Aiken, devoted himself. One, the production of original compositions; which did not pay, owing to their date. Some of these days they would be worth a pot of money—you see if they wouldn't! The other Fine Art was that of the picture-restorer, and did pay. At any rate, it paid enough to keep Mr. Aiken and his wife—and at this particular moment Sairah—in provisions cooked and quarrelled over at the street-door by the latter; leaving Mrs. Aiken's hundred a year, which her Aunt Priscilla allowed her, to pay the rent and so on, with a good margin for cabs and such-like. Anyhow, as the lady of the house helped with the house, the Aikens managed, somehow. Or perhaps it should be said that, somehow, the Aikens managed anyhow. Mrs. Verity, their landlady, had her opinions about this.

This, however, is by the way; but, arising as it does from this Artist's twofold mission in life, it connects itself with a regrettable occurrence which came about in consequence of Sairah's not confining herself to tidying up, and getting things a bit straight, but seizing the opportunity to do a little dusting also.

Those on whom the guardianship of a picture recently varnished has fallen know the assiduous devotion with which it must be watched to protect it from insect-life and flue. Even the larger lepidoptera may fail to detach themselves from a fat, slow-drying varnish, without assistance; and who does not know how terribly the delicate organization of beetles' legs may suffer if complicated with treacle or other glutinous material. But beetles' legs may be removed with care from varnish, and leave no trace of their presence, provided the varnish is not too dry. Flue, on the other hand, at any stage of desiccation, spells ruin, and is that nasty and messy there's no doing anything with it; and you may just worrit yourself mad, and sticky yourself all over, and only make matters worse than you began. So you may just as well let be, and not be took off your work no longer; nursing, however, an intention of saying well now!—you declare, who ever could have done that, and not a livin' soul come anigh the place, you having been close to the whole time, and never hardly took your eyes off?

That sketches the line of defence Sairah was constrained to adopt, after what certainly was at least a culpable error of judgment. She should not have wiped over any picture at all, not even with the cleanest of dusters. And though the one she used was the one she kep' for the Studio, nothing warranted its application to the Italian half-length that had been entrusted to Mr. Aiken by Sir Stopleigh Upwell, to clean and varnish carefully, and touch up the frame, without destroying the antique feeling of the latter.

Mr. Aiken was certainly to blame for not locking the door and taking away the key. So he had no excuse for using what is called strong language when he and his wife came back from the Old Water Colour. She had not been in ten minutes—a period she laid great stress on—when she heard him shouting inside the Studio. And then he came out in the passage and shouted down the stairs.

"Good God, Euphemia! where are you? Where the Devil are you? Do come up here! I'm ruined, I tell you! … that brute of a girl! … " And he went stamping about in his uncontrollable temper.

His wife was alarmed, but not to the extent of forgetting to enter her protest against the strong language. "Reginald!" she said with dignity, "have I not often told you that if you say God and Devil I shall go away and spend the rest of the day with my Aunt Priscilla, at Coombe? Before the girl and all!"

But her husband was seriously upset at something. "Don't go on talking like an idiot," he said irritably. Then his manner softened, as though he was himself a little penitent for the strong language, and he subsided into "Do come up and see what that confounded girl has done." Those conversant with the niceties of strong language will see there was concession in this.

Mrs. Aiken went upstairs, and saw what the confounded girl had done. But she did not seem impressed. "It wants a rub," she said. Then her husband said, "That's just like you, Euphemia. You're a fool." Whereupon the lady said in a dignified manner, "Perhaps if I am a fool, I'd better go." And was, as it were, under compulsion to do so, seeing that no objection was raised.

But she must have gone slowly, inasmuch as she presently called back from the landing, "What's that you said?" not without severity.

"I said 'Call the girl.'"

"You said nothing of the sort. What was it you said before that?"

Now, what her husband had said was, "The idea of a rub! Idiotic barbarian!" He was unable to qualify this speech effectually, and his wife went some more stairs up. Not to disappear finally; a compromise was possible.

"Did you say 'idiotic barbarian,' or 'idiotic barbarians'? Because it makes all the difference."

"Barbarians. Plural. Don't be a fool, and come down."

Thereupon the lady came back as far as the door, but seemed to waver in concession, for she made reservations.

"I am not coming down because of anything," she said, "but only to remind you that that Miss Upwell was to come some time to see the picture, and I think that's her."

"What's her? I don't hear anyone at the door."

"It's no use gaping out of the front-window. You know quite well what I mean. That's her in the carriage, gone to the Macnivensons' by mistake for us, as people always do and always will, Reginald, until Mrs. Verity gets the Borough Council to change the numbers. 'Thirty-seven A' is a mere mockery."

Mr. Aiken came out of the Studio, and went up to the side-window on the landing, commanding a view of the street in which thirty-seven A stood, his own tenancy being in the upper half of a corner house. "That's her," said he. "And a young swell. Sweetheart, p'raps! Smart set, they look. But, I say, Mrs. Hay … "

"Do come away from the window. They'll see you, and it looks so bad. What do you say?"

"What the Devil am I to do? I can't let her see the picture in that state."

"Nonsense! Just wipe the mess off. You are such a fidget, Reginald."

But the Artist could not have his work treated thus lightly. The girl must say he had been called away on important business. It was absolutely impossible to let that picture be seen in its present state. And it would take over an hour to make it fit to be seen. … Well, of course, it was difficult, Mr. Aiken admitted, to think what to say, all in a hurry! He thought very hard, and twice said, "I've an idea. Look here!" And his wife said, "Well?" But nothing came of it. Then he said, "Anyhow, she mustn't come into the Studio. That's flat! … " But when, in answer to inquiry as to how the difficulty of the position should be met, he riposted brusquely, "Who's to see her? Why, you!"—Mrs. Aiken said, in the most uncompromising way, No—that she wouldn't; the idea! If there were to be any fibs told, her husband must tell them himself, and not put them off on her. It was unmanly cowardice. Let him tell his own fibs.

But the colloquy, which threatened to become heated, was interrupted by a knock at the door. Warmth of feeling had to give way before necessity for action. Broadly speaking, this took the form of affectation, on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Aiken, of a remoteness from the Studio not favoured by the resources of their premises, and, on the part of Sairah, of a dramatic effort to which she proved altogether unequal. She was instructed to say that she didn't know if her master was at home, but would see, if the lady and gentleman would walk into the Studio. She was then to convey an impression of passing through perspectives of corridors, and opening doors respectfully, and meeting with many failures, but succeeding in the end in running her quarry down in some boudoir or private chapel. She failed, and was audible to the visitors in the Studio, within a few feet of its door, which didn't 'asp, unless pulled to sharp. She had not pulled it to sharp. And her words were not well chosen:—"I said to 'em to set down till you come, and you wouldn't be a minute." No more they were; but there are more ways than one of not being a minute, and they chose the one most illustrative—to Mrs. Aiken's mind—of the frequency of unexpected visits from the élite. "Don't go rushing in, as if no one ever came!" said she to her husband.

The young lady and gentleman did not sit down, but walked about the room, the former examining its contents. The gentleman, who was palpably an officer in a cavalry regiment, neglected the Fine Arts, in favour of the lady, whom he may be said to have gloated over at a respectful distance. But he expressed himself to the effect that this was an awful lark, straining metaphor severely. The young lady, whose beauty had made Sairah's head reel, said, "Yes—it's fun," more temperately. But both looked blooming and optimistic, and ready to recognise awful larks and fun in almost any combination of circumstances.

The first instinct of visitors to a Studio is to find some way of avoiding looking at the pictures. A good method towards success in this object is to lean back and peep over all the canvases with their faces to the wall, and examine all the sketch-books, in search of what really interests you so much more than finished work; to wit, the first ideas of the Artist, fresh from his brain—incomplete, of course, but full of an indefinable something. They are himself, you see! But they spoil your new gloves, and perhaps you are going on to Hurlingham. These young people were; and that, no doubt, was why the young lady went no further in her researches than to discover the rich grimy quality of the dirt they compelled her to wallow in. It repulsed her, and she had to fall back on the easels and their burdens.

They glanced at "Diana and Actæon," unfinished, the Artist's capo d'opera at this date, and appeared embarrassed for a moment, but conscious that something is still due to High Art.

"Why don't you say the drawing's fine, or the tone, or something? You're not doing your duty, Jack." Thus spoke the young lady, who presently, to the relief of both, found an enthusiasm. "She's perfectly lovely! But is she Mr. Malkin's work? She isn't—she's our picture! She's Early Italian." She clapped her hands and laughed with delight. Oh dear!—how pretty she looked, transfixed, as it were, with her lips apart opposite to the picture Sairah had been attending to!

The young man took his eyes off her to glance at the picture, then put them back again. "I don't dislike 'em Early Italian," he said. But he wasn't paying proper attention; and, besides, Sairah's little essay towards picture-restoration had caught his passing glance. "What's all that woolly mess?" said he.

"Picture-cleaning, of course," said the lady. "Mr. Malthus knows what he's about—at least, I suppose so. … Oh, here he is!" Now, this young lady ought to have made herself mistress of the Artist's real name before visiting his Studio. Not having done so, his sudden appearance—he had taken the bit in his teeth and rushed in as though at most very few people ever came—was a little embarrassing to her, especially as he said correctively, "Aiken." Thereon the young lady said she meant Aiken, which may have been true, or not. However, she got the conversation on a sound footing by a little bit of truthfulness. "I was just saying to Captain Calverley that the 'woolly mess,' as he is pleased to call it, is what you are doing to the picture. Isn't it, now?"

Mr. Aiken satisfied his conscience cleverly. He smiled in a superior way—as a master smiles at one that is not of his school—and said merely, "Something of the kind."

This young lady, Madeline Upwell, had never been in a real picture-restorer's Studio before, and could not presume to be questioning anything, or taking exceptions. So she accepted Sairah's handiwork as technical skill of a high order. And Mr. Aiken, his conscience at ease at having avoided fibs, which so often lead to embarrassments, felt quite in high spirits, and could give himself airs about his knowledge of Early Italian Art.

"A fine picture!" said he. "But not a Bronzino."

Miss Upwell looked dejected, and said, "Oh dear!—isn't it? Ought it to be?" Captain Calverley said, "P'raps it's by somebody else." But he was evidently only making conversation. And Miss Upwell said to him, "Jack, you don't know anything about it. Be quiet!" Whereupon Captain Calverley was quiet. He was very good and docile, and no wonder; for the fact is, his inner soul purred like a cat whenever this young lady addressed him by name.

Mr. Aiken went on to declare his own belief about the authorship in question. His opinion was of less than no value, but he gave it for what it was worth. The picture was palpably the work of Mozzo Vecchio, or his son Cippo—probably the latter, who was really the finer artist of the two, in spite of Jupp. As to the identity of the portrait, he did not agree with any of the theories about it. He then, receiving well-bred encouragement to proceed from his hearers, threw himself into a complete exposition of his views—although he frequently dwelt upon their insignificance and his own—with such enthusiasm that it was with a wrench to his treatment of the subject that he became aware that his wife had come into the room and was expecting to be taken notice of, venomously. At the same time it dawned on him that his visitors had assumed the appearance of awaiting formal introduction. The method of indicating this is not exactly like endeavouring to detect a smell of gas, nor giving up a conundrum and waiting for the answer, nor standing quite still to try on, nor any particular passage in fielding at cricket; but there may be a little of each in it. Only, you mustn't speak on any account—mind that! You may say "er"—if that indicates the smallest speakable section of a syllable—as a friendly lead to the introducer. And it is well to indicate, if you can, how sweet your disposition will be towards the other party when the introducer has taken action, like the Treasury. But the magic words must be spoken.

Miss Upwell was beginning to feel a spirit of Chauvinism rising in her heart, that might in time have become "Is this Mrs. Aiken?" with a certain gush of provisional joy, when the gentleman perceived his neglect, and said, "Ah—oh!—my wife, of course! Beg pardon!" On which Mrs. Aiken said, "You must forgive my husband," with an air of spacious condescension, and the incident ended curiously by a kind of alliance between the two ladies against the social blunders of male mankind.

But the Artist's wife declined to fall in with current opinion about the picture. "I suppose it's very beautiful, and all that," said she. "Only don't ask me to admire it! I never have liked that sort of thing, and I never shall like it." She went on to say the same thing more frequently than public interest in her decisions appeared to warrant.

The young lady said, in a rather plaintive, disappointed tone, "But is it that sort of thing?" She had evidently fallen in love with the picture, and while not prepared to deny that sorts of things existed which half-length portraits oughtn't to be, was very reluctant to have a new-found idol pitchforked into their category.

The Artist said, "What the dooce you mean, Euphemia, I'm blest if I know!" He looked like an Artist who wished his wife hadn't come into his room when visitors were there.

The Captain said, "What sort of thing? I don't see that she's any sort at all. Thundering pretty sort, anyhow!"

Thereupon the Artist's wife said, "I suppose I'm not to speak," and showed symptoms of a dangerous and threatening self-subordination. The lady visitor, perceiving danger ahead, with great tact exclaimed: "Oh, but I do know so exactly what Mrs. Aiken means." She didn't know, the least in the world. But what did that matter? She went on to dwell on the beauty of the portrait, saying that she should persuade Pupsey to have it over the library chimneypiece and take away that dreary old Kneller woman. It was the best light in the whole place.

But her sweetly meant effort to soothe away the paroxysm of propriety which seemed to have seized upon the lady of the house was destined to fail, for the husband of the latter must needs put his word in, saying, "I don't see any ground for it. Never shall." This occasioned an intensification of his wife's attitude, shown by a particular form of silence, and an underspeech to Miss Upwell, as to one who would understand, "No ground?—with those arms and shoulders! And look at her open throat—oh, the whole thing!" which elicited a sympathetic sound, meant to mean anything. But the young lady was only being civil. Because she had really no sympathy whatever with this Mrs. What's-her-name, and spoke with severity of her afterwards, under that designation. At the moment, however, she made no protest beyond an expression of rapturous admiration for the portrait, saying it was the most fascinating head she had ever seen in a picture. And as for the arms and open throat, they were simply ducky. The Artist's wife could find nothing to contradict flatly in this, and had to content herself with, "Oh yes, the beauty's undeniable. But that was how they did it."

The young officer appeared to want to say something, but to be diffident. A nod of encouragement from Miss Upwell produced, "Why, I was going to say—wasn't it awfully jolly of 'em to do it that way?" The speaker coloured slightly, but when the young lady said, "Bravo, Jack! I'm on your side," he looked happy and reinstated.

But when could the picture be finished and be sent to Surley Stakes? The young lady would never be happy till it was safe there, now she had seen it. Would Mr. Aiken get it done in a week? … No?—then in a fortnight? The Artist smiled in a superior way, from within the panoply of his mystery, and intimated that at least a month would be required; and, indeed, to do justice to so important a job, he would much rather have said six weeks. He hoped, however, that Miss Upwell would be content with his assurance that he would do his best.

Miss Upwell would not be at all content. Still, she would accept the inevitable. How could she do otherwise, with Captain Calverley's sisters waiting for them at Hurlingham?

"Quite up to date!" was the verdict of the Artist's wife, as soon as her guest was out of hearing.

"Who?" said the Artist. Then, as one who steps down from conversation to communication, he added in business tones: "I say, Euphemia, I shall have to run this all down with turps before the copal hardens, and I really must give my mind to it. You had better hook it."

"I'm going directly. But it's easy to say 'who?'"

"Oh, I say, do hook it! I can't attend to you and this at the same time."

"I'm going. But it is easy to say 'who?' And you know it's easy."

The Artist, who was coquetting with one of those nice little corkscrews that bloom on Artists' bottles, became impatient. "Wha-a-awt is it you're going on about?" he exclaimed, exasperated. "Can't you leave the girl alone, and hook it?"

"I can leave the room," said his wife temperately, "and am doing so. But you see you knew perfectly well who, all along!" Even so the Japanese wrestler, who has got a certainty, is temperance itself towards his victim, who writhes in vain.

Why on earth could not the gentleman leave the lady to go her own way, and attend to his work? He couldn't; and must needs fan the fires of an incipient wrangle that would have burned down, left to itself. "Don't be a fool, Euphemia," said he. "Can't you answer my question? What do you mean by 'quite up to date'?"

Now, Mrs. Aiken had a much better memory than her husband. "Because," she replied, dexterously seizing on his weak point, "you never asked any such question, Reginald. If you had asked me to tell you what I meant by 'quite up to date,' I should have told you what I meant by 'quite up to date.' But I shall not tell you now, Reginald, because it is worse than ridiculous for you to pretend you do not know the meaning of 'quite up to date,' when it is not only transparently on the surface, but obvious. Ask anyone. Ask my Aunt Priscilla. Ask Mrs. Verity." The lady had much better have stopped here. But she wished to class her landlady amongst the lower intelligences, so she must needs add, somewhat in the rear of her enumeration, in a quick sotto voce, "Ask the girl Sairah, for that matter!"

"What's that?" said her husband curtly.

"You heard what I said."

"Oh yes, I heard what you said. Well—suppose I ask the girl Sairah!"

"Reginald! If you are determined to make yourself and your wife ridiculous, I shall go. I do think that, even if you have no common sense, you might have a little good-feeling. The girl Sairah! The idea!" She collected herself a little more—some wandering scraps were out of bounds—and went almost away, just listening back on the staircase landing.

Now, although an impish intention may have flickered in the mind of Mr. Reginald Aiken, he certainty had no definite idea of catechising the girl Sairah about the phrase under discussion when he rang the bell for her and summoned her to the Studio. But his wife having taken him au serieux instead of laughing at his absurdity, the impish intention flared up, and had not time to die down before Sairah answered the bell. Would it have done so if he had not been conscious that his wife was still standing at pause on the staircase to keep an eye on the outcome?

So, when Sairah lurched into his sanctum, asking whether he rang—not without suggestion that offence would be given by an affirmative answer—his real intention in summoning the damsel wavered at the instigation of the spirit of mischief that had momentary possession of him; and instead of blowing her up roundly for damaging his picture, he actually must needs ask her the very question his wife had said "The idea!" about. He spoke loud, that his speech should reach that lady's listening ears.

"Yes Sairah: I rang for you. What is the meaning of … ?" He paused a moment, to overhear, if possible, some result of his words in the passage.

"It's nothin' along o' me. I ain't done nothin'." A brief sketch of a blameless life, implied in these words, seemed to Sairah the safest policy. She thought she was going to be indicted for the ruin of the picture.

"Shut up, Sairah!" said the Artist, and listened. Of course, he was doing this, you see, to plague his wife. But he heard nothing, being nevertheless mysteriously aware that Mrs. Aiken was still on the landing above, taking mental notes of what she overheard. So he pursued his inquiry, regarding Sairah as a mere lay-figure of use in practical joking. "I expect you know the meaning of 'up to date,' Sairah," said he, and listened. But no sign came from without. If the ears this pleasantry was intended to reach were still there, their owner was storing up retribution for its author in silence.

It was but natural that this young woman Sairah, having no information on any topic whatever—for this condition soon asserts itself in young women of her class after their Board-School erudition has had time to die a natural death—should be apt to ascribe sinister meanings to things she did not understand. And in this case none the less for the air and aspect of the speaker, which, while it really was open to the misinterpretation that it was intended to convey insinuating waggery to the person addressed, had only reference to the enjoyment Mr. Aiken had, or was proposing to himself, from a mild joke perpetrated at his wife's expense. However, the young woman was not going to fly out—an action akin to the showing of a proper spirit—without an absolute certainty of the point to be flown out about. Therefore Sairah said briefly, "Ask your parding!" Briefly, but with a slight asperity.

The Artist, though he was in some doubt whether his jest was worth proceeding with, was too far committed to retreat. With his wife listening on the stairs, was he not bound to pursue his inquiry? Obviously he must do so, or run the risk of being twitted with his indecision by that lady later on. So he said, with effrontery, "Your mistress says you can tell me the meaning of the expression 'up to date,' Sairah."

Sairah turned purple. "Well, I never!" said she. "Mrs. Aching to say that of a respectable girl!"

Mr. Aiken became uncomfortable, as Sairah turned purple. He began to perceive that his jest was a very stupid one. As Sairah turned purpler, he became more uncomfortable still. A panic-stricken review of possible ways out of the difficulty started in his mind, but soon stopped for want of materials. Explanation—cajolery—severe transition to another topic—he thought of all three. The first was simply impossible to reasoning faculties like Sairah's. The second was out of Mr. Aiken's line. If the girl had been a model now! … And who can say that then it might not have been ticklish work—yes!—even with the strong personal vanity of that inscrutable class to appeal to? There was nothing for it but the third, and Mr. Aiken's confidence in it was very weak. Something had to be done, though, with Sairah's colour crescendo, and probably Mrs. Hay outside the door; that was the image his mind supplied. He felt like an ill-furnished storming-party, a forlorn hope in want of a ladder, as he said, "There—never mind that now! You've been meddling with this picture. You know you have. Look here!" Had he been a good tactician, he would have affected sudden detection of the injury to the picture. But he lost the opportunity.

Sairah held the strong position of an Injured Woman. If she was to have the sack, she much preferred to have it "on her own"—to wrest it, as it were, from a grasp unwilling to surrender it—rather than to have it forced upon her unwilling acceptance, with a month's notice and a character for Vandalism. So she repeated, as one still rigid with amazement, "Mrs. Aching to say that of a respectable girl!" and remained paralysed, in dumb show.

Mr. Aiken perceived with chagrin that he might have saved the situation by, "What's this horrible mess on the picture? You've been touching this!" and a drowning storm of indignation to follow. It was too late now. He had to accept his task as Destiny set it, and he cut a very poor figure over it—was quite outclassed by Sairah. He could actually manage nothing better than, "Do let that alone, girl! I tell you it was foolery. … I tell you it was a joke. Look here at this picture—the mischief you've done it. You know you did it!"

To which Sairah thus:—"Ho, it's easy gettin' out of it that way, Mr. Aching. Not but what I have always known you for the gentleman—I will say that. But such a thing to say! If I'd a been Missis, I should have shrank!"

The Artist felt that there was nothing for it but to grapple with the situation. He shouted at the indignant young woman, "Don't be such a confounded idiot, girl! I mean, don't be such an insufferable goose. I tell you, you're under a complete misconception. Nobody's ever said anything against you. Nobody's said a word against your confounded character, and be hanged to it! Do have a little common sense! A young woman of your age ought to be ashamed to be such a fool."

But Sairah's entrenchments were strengthened, if anything. "It's easy calling fool," said she. "And as for saying against, who's using expressions, and passing off remarks now?" Controversial opponents incapable of understanding anything whatever are harder to refute than the shrewdest intellects. Mr. Aiken felt that Sairah was oak and triple brass against logical conviction. Explanation only made matters worse.

A vague desperate idea of summoning his wife and accusing Sairah of intoxication, as a sort of universal solvent, crossed his mind; and he actually went so far as to look out into the passage for her, but only to find that she had vanished for the moment. Coning back, he assumed a sudden decisive tone, saying, "There—that'll do, Sairah! Now go." But Sairah wasn't going to give in, evidently, and he added, "I mean, that's enough!"

Whether it was or wasn't, Sairah showed no signs of concession. She was going, no fear! She was going—ho yes!—she was going. She said she was going so often that Mr. Aiken said at last, "Well, go!" But when the young woman began to go—vengefully, as it were, even as a quadruped suddenly stung by an ill-deserved whip—he inconsequently exclaimed, "Stop!" For a fell purpose had been visible in her manner. What, he asked, was she going to do?

What was she going to do? Oh yes!—it was easy asking questions. But the answer would reach Mr. Aiken in due course. Nevertheless, if he wanted to know, she would be generous, and tell him. She wasn't an underhand girl, like the majority of her sex at her age. Mean concealments were foreign to her nature. She was going straight to Mrs. Aching to give a month's warning, and you might summing in the police to search her box. All should be aboveboard, as had been the case in her family for generations past, and she never had experienced such treatment all the places she'd been in, nor yet expected to it.

It was then that this Artist made a serious error of judgment. He would have done much more wisely to allow this stupid maid-of-all-work to go away and attend to some of it in the kitchen, while he looked after his own. Instead of doing so, he, being seriously alarmed at the possible domestic consequences of his very imperfectly thought out joke—for he knew his wife accounted the finding of a new handmaid life's greatest calamity—must needs make an ill-advised attempt to calm the troubled waters on the same line that he would have adopted, at any rate in his Bohemian days, with Miss de Lancey or Miss Montmorency—these names are chosen at random—whose professional beauty as models did not prevent their suffering, now and again, from tantrums. And cajolery, of the class otherwise known as blarney, might have smoothed over the incident, and the whole thing have been forgotten, if bad luck had not, just at this moment, brought back to the Studio the mistress of the house, who had only been attracted by a noise in the street to look out at a front-window. She, coming unheard within hearing, not only was aware of interchanges of unusual amiability between Reginald and that horrible girl Sairah, but was just in time to hear the latter say, "You keep your 'ands off of me now, Mr. Aching!" without any apparent intention of being taken at her word. And, further, that the odious minx brazened it out, leaving the room as if nothing had happened, before the gentleman's offended wife could find words to express her indignation. At least, so this lady told her Aunt Priscilla that evening, in an interview from which we have just borrowed some telling phrases.

As for her profligate husband, it came out in the same interview that he looked "sheepish to a degree, and well he might." He had tried to cook up a sort of explanation—"oh yes! a sort,"—which was no doubt an attempt on the misguided man's part to tell the truth. But we have seen that he was the last person to succeed in such an enterprise; and, indeed, self-exculpation is tough work, even for the guiltless. Fancy the fingers of reproachful virtue directed at you from all points of the compass. And suppose, to make matters worse, you had committed something—not a crime, you would never do that; but something or other of a committable nature—what on earth could you do but look sheepish to some degree or other? Unless, indeed, you were a minx, and could brazen it out, like that gurl.

Such a ridiculous and vulgar incident would not be worth so much description, but that, like other things of the same sort, it led to serious consequences. A storm occurred in what had hitherto been a haven of domestic peace, and the Artist's wife carried out her threat, this time, of a visit to her Aunt Priscilla. That good lady, being a spinster of very limited experience, but anxious to make it seem a wide one, dwelt upon her knowledge of mankind and its evil ways, and the hopelessness of undivided possession thereof by womankind. She had told her niece "what it was going to be," when she first learned that Mr. Aiken was an Artist. She repeated what she had said before, that Artists' wives had no idea what was going on under their eyes. If they had, Artists would very soon be unprovided with the raw material of proper infidelity. They would have no wives, and would go on like in Paris. This tale is absolutely irresponsible for Miss Priscilla's informants; it only reports her words.

Now, Mrs. Euphemia Aiken, in spite of a severe ruction with her husband, had really not consciously imputed to him any transgression of a serious nature when—as that gentleman worded it—she "flounced away" to her Aunt Priscilla with an angry report of how Reginald had insulted her. She had much too high an opinion of him to form, on her own account, a mental version of his conduct, such as the one her excellent Aunt jumped at, in pursuance of the establishment of a vile moral character for Artists and nephews-in-law generally, with a concrete foundation in the case of an Artist-nephew—a Centaur-like combination with a doubt which half was which. But nothing is easier than to convince any human creature that any other is twice, thrice, four times as human as itself, in respect of what is graceless or disgraceful—spot-stroke barred, of course; meaning felony. So that after a long interview with Aunt Priscilla, this foolish woman cried herself to sleep, having accepted the good lady's offered hospitality, and was next morning so vigorously urged to do scriptural things in the way of forgiveness and submission to her husband—so Miltonic, in fact, did the prevailing atmosphere become—that she naturally sat down and wrote a healthily furious letter to him. The tale may surmise that she offered him Sairah as a consolation for what it knows she proposed—her own withdrawal to a voluntary grass-widowhood. For she flatly refused to return to her deserted hearth. And, indeed, the poor lady may have felt that her home had been soiled and desecrated. But it was not only her Aunt's impudent claim to superior knowledge—she was still Miss Priscilla Bax, and of irreproachable character—that had influenced her, but the recollection of Sairah. It would not have been half as bad if it had been a distinguished young lady with a swoop, like in a shiny journal she subscribed for quarterly. But Sairah! That gurl! Visions of Sairah's coiffure; of the way Sairah appeared to be coming through, locally, owing to previousness on the part of hooks which would not wait for their own affinities, but annexed the very first eye that appealed to them; of intolerable stockings she overlooked large holes in, however careful she see to 'em when they come from the Wash; of her chronic pocket-handkerchief—all these kept floating before her eyes and exasperating her sense of insult and degradation past endurance. Perhaps the worst and most irritating thought was the extent to which she had stooped to supplement this maid's all-work by efforts of her own, without which their small household could scarcely have lived within its limited means. No!—let Reginald grill his own chops now, or find another Sairah!

It was illustrative of the unreality of this ruction that the lady took it as a matter of course that Sairah would accept the sack in the spirit in which it was given; for official banishment of the culprit was her last act on leaving the house. No idea entered her head that her husband had the slightest personal wish to retain Sairah.

As for him, he judged it best to pay the girl her month's wages and send her packing. He removed her deposit of flue from the picture-varnish, and in due time completed the job and sent it off to its destination. He fell back provisionally on his old bachelor ways, making his own bed and slipping slowly down into Chaos at home, but getting well fed either by his friends or at an Italian restaurant near by—others being beyond his means or fraught with garbage—and writing frequent appeals to his wife not to be an Ass, but to come back and be jolly. She opened his letters and read them, and more than once all but started to return to him—would have done so, in fact, if her excellent Aunt had not pointed out, each time, that it was the Woman's duty to forgive. Which she might have gone the length of accepting, but for its exasperating sequel, "and submit herself to her husband."

But neither he nor either of the other actors in this drama had the slightest idea that it had been witnessed by any eyes but their own.