The Empty Sack Part 11

At this minute, too, in the studio, Hubert Wray was leaning over Jennie Follett's shoulder and placing before her a rough pencil sketch.

"Take it away!" Jennie cried, tearfully. "I don't want to look at it."

"But, Jennie, I only wish you to see how little it involves."

It was a drawing of a nude woman, her hair coiled on the top of her head, sitting very upright in a marble Byzantine chair, her knees pressed together in the manner of the Egyptian cat-G.o.ddess. On a level with her face and poised on the tips of her fingers, she held a human skull which she inspected with slanting, mysterious eyes.

Wray continued to keep the sketch before Jennie, hanging over her shoulder. He was so close that she felt his breath on her neck. He could easily have pressed his lips against her amber-colored hair, and Jennie wished he would. But having long ago made up his mind that she could best be won by a system of starving out, he refrained from doing it. As, however, she persisted in brus.h.i.+ng the sketch aside, he straightened himself up.

"Then, Jennie, I'm afraid I can't use you any more-that is, for the present. Since you won't do it, I must get some one who will."

"You could paint another kind of picture," she argued indignantly, "with me with clothes on."

"You don't understand. I'm an artist. An artist doesn't paint the picture he chooses, but the one that's given him to paint."

"No one gave you this to paint. It isn't a commission. It's just your own bad mind."

"I'm not ready to explain what it is. You wouldn't understand. Something comes to you. You've got to obey it. This is the picture I've seen and which I'm obliged to do next. And, besides, it isn't a bad mind, Jennie.

The human form is the most-"

"Oh, you don't have to hand me out any hok.u.m about the human form. It's all very well in its place. But you fellows are crazy-the way you stick it up where it doesn't belong. Look at that picture of Sims's you were all so wild about-three women walking in a field, and not a st.i.tch between them. Who'd go out like that? There's no sense in it-"

"It isn't a question of sense, Jennie; it's one of business. If you want to be a model, you must _be_ a model and meet the demands of the market."

She wore the cheap linen suit that had been her best last summer, and the corresponding hat; but her beauty being of the type which subordinates externals to itself, she was more than adorable; she was elegant. With tears still rolling down her cheeks, she pointed at the sketch Wray held in his hand as he stood before her at a distance.

"Do you know what my father would do if he thought I was going to be painted like that? He'd turn me out of doors."

Wray tossed the sketch on the table.

"Then, Jennie, there's no use talking of it any more. You're not that kind of a model, and it's that kind of a model I'm looking for."

"I'm the kind of model you were looking for when you put that advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper nearly a year ago. I answered it because you said a pretty girl, not a professional-"

"Yes; that was a year ago. That's what I wanted then. But now it's something else. It doesn't follow that because you're satisfied with an egg for breakfast, that an egg will be enough for every meal all the rest of your life."

She looked up reproachfully.

"Yes; all the rest of your life! That's the way you talk. Nothing will ever be enough for you all the rest of your life."

"No, Jennie; nothing-not as far as I see now."

"And yet you expect me to stake everything-"

"You must choose your words there, Jennie. I don't _expect_ you to do anything. There may have been a time when I hoped-but that's all over.

We won't talk of it. You've made up your mind; I must make up mine.

There's nothing between us now but a question of business. I'm looking for a model who does this kind of thing, and it doesn't suit you to serve my turn. Well, that settles it, doesn't it? Our little account is paid up to date, and so-"

She stumbled to her feet. The only form her resentment took was a trembling of the lip and the streaming of more tears.

"But what can I _do_?"

"Do you mean for a living?"

As she nodded speechlessly, he smiled, with a faint shrug of the shoulders.

"That's not for me to decide, is it, Jennie? Once you've left me-"

"I'm not leaving you. You're driving me away."

"Suppose we said that life was separating us? Wouldn't that express it better? We've-we've liked each other. I've never made any secret of it on my side-have I, Jennie?-though you're so terribly discreet on yours.

And yet life-"

"I've only been discreet about one thing."

"But that one thing is the whole business."

"And I wouldn't be discreet about that if there was any other way."

"There's the way I've told you about."

"Yes; and be left high and dry after two or three years, neither one thing nor the other."

"Isn't that looking pretty far ahead?"

"It's not looking farther ahead than a girl has to. It's easy enough to talk. There _you'd_ be, able to walk off without a sign on you; whereas I'd have to lie down and die or-or find some one else."

"Well, there'd be that possibility, wouldn't there? They're not so difficult for a pretty girl to find when-"

She stamped her foot.

"I hate you!"

"Oh no, you don't, Jennie. You love me-only, you won't let yourself-"

"And I never will-never-never-never! Not if I was starving in the streets-so help me G.o.d!"

She was running toward the model's exit when he called after her.

"Then you leave me to work with another woman, Jennie-another woman sitting in your place-another woman-" When she threw him a despairing glance he s.n.a.t.c.hed the sketch from the table and held it up to her.

"Another woman-dressed like that!"

But out on the stairs she paused. Anger was giving place to fear. It was, first of all, a fear of the other woman _dressed like that_, and then it was a fear not less agonizing of the loss of her six a week.

Her six a week was all that stood between Jennie and the not very carefully veiled contempt of the family. In the testing to which the past half year had subjected them all, Jennie had not made very good.

Six a week had been her measure. For obscure reasons which none of them could fathom, she had proved incapable of really lucrative work. She had tried to get employment with other artists who would leave her free for her hours with Wray, but she had failed. She had failed, too, in stores, factories, offices, and dressmaking establishments. Perhaps they saw she was only half hearted in her attempts; perhaps her air of helplessness told against her. "She was too much like a lady," had been one employer's verdict, and possibly that was true. Whatever the reason, she seemed a creature not primarily meant to work, but to be utilized in some other way. The question was as to that way. "You're splendid to love," little Gladys had whispered one day, when Jennie was crying to herself, and much in her recent experience confirmed this opinion. In her applications for something to do, it had more than once been made plain to her that money could be made by other means than by punching a time clock at seven.