The Triumph of Jill Part 2

"There!" he exclaimed, as he threw on fresh coals, and, going down on his knees, raked out the dead ashes from the lower bars, "it will soon burn up now. Had the cold upset Isobel's equilibrium too?"

It was an unlucky slip, but fortunately for his own peace of mind, Mr St. John did not notice the offensive and unnecessary little word at the end of his query, nor, having his back towards her, could he see Jill's quick flush of annoyance.

"I don't understand you," she answered curtly.

"I beg your pardon," he remarked, nettled by her tone. "I hope you don't think me impertinent; but I thought there had been a little difficulty about bringing in the coals."

"So there was," she replied, and smiled involuntarily at the recollection. Then she glanced at her art student as he knelt upon the hearth, and from him to the models showing up white and still against the dingy curtain which formed their background; Mars Borghese, the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, and a smaller figure of the Venus de Milo; a good collection, a collection which both she and her father had loved and been proud of, and which had taken many years to gather together.

"You were the cause," she continued, bringing her gaze back again to the kneeling figure in front of the grate; "Isobel's modesty would not permit her to enter the studio with a strange man present; ignorance is always self-conscious, you know."

He gave her a quick look.

"I am sorry," he said, "to have been the innocent cause of so much perturbation. Hadn't you better arrange with the Abigail to bring the coals a little earlier?"

Jill shook her head, but she was still smiling.

"You forget," she said, "that I'm only the attics; it is a favour that I get them brought at all. I fear it will end in your always having to carry them in if you won't let me; that and the stairs will soon put to flight your desire for studying art."

He got up, and bending, began to dust the ash off his clothes with angry vehemence. Did she wish to annoy him, or was it merely that she was cursed with a particularly disagreeable manner? Jill feigned not to note his displeasure, but, returning to the table, resumed her seat and went on with the lesson as though there had been no interruption, explaining and ill.u.s.trating her remarks with the care and precision that she remembered her father to have used when first instructing her. Mr St. John listened with grave attention; he was at any rate unaffectedly interested in the matter in hand, and had, if not the talent, an unmistakable love for art. When she relinquished the seat he took it and made a second, and this time less futile attempt. It is true that his drawing bore so little resemblance to the copy that it could not possibly be taken for the same head, nevertheless it was a wonderful creation in the artist's eyes, and possessed a power and boldness of conception which the original lacked, he considered. He put his idea into words, and again Miss Erskine marvelled at his audacity.

"Not bad, is it?" he queried in a tone the self-complacency of which he did not even attempt to disguise. "I strengthened it a bit--thought it would be an improvement, don't you know."

"Yes," agreed Jill, regarding his work with dubious appreciation, "character in a face is greatly to be desired."

He nodded approvingly.

"I'm glad you think that," he remarked with increasing satisfaction; "but of course you would."

"Of course. And, after all, a few inches on to one's nose hardly signifies, does it? not to mention a jaw that no woman ever possessed outside a show. Your drawing puts me in mind of somebody or other's criticism on Pope's translation of Homer--'a very pretty story, Mr Pope, but it is not Homer.' Yours is a very wonderful creation, Mr St.

John, but it in no wise resembles the copy."

St. John glared.

"I thought you said you admired character?" he exclaimed.

"So I do; and there is a great deal of character in the original, I consider; but if you wish for a candid opinion, I think your head is simply a masculine monstrosity. But, come, you need not look so angry; we do not win our spurs at the first charge, you know. Must I praise your failures as well as your successes, eh?"

"You don't think me quite such a conceited fool, I hope," he said somewhat deprecatingly, though he still looked a little dissatisfied and aggrieved. "I only meant that it wasn't altogether bad for a first attempt."

But it was not Jill's intention to flatter.

"It isn't altogether _good_ for a first attempt," she said.

"You are not very encouraging," he remarked a trifle reproachfully.

"Had you been my pupil and I had said so much--"

"I should have thought you very disagreeable," she interrupted, laughing.

He laughed also; for despite her contrariety her mirth was most infectious, and put him more at ease with her. It was the first glimpse of her natural self that she had vouchsafed him, and he liked it infinitely better than the half-aggressive dignity she a.s.sumed in her capacity of teacher.

"Do you think," he ventured again after a pause, and with a decided increase of diffidence, "that I am likely to be any good at it?"

Jill took up a pencil and penknife with the intent to sharpen the former but laid them down again suddenly and looked him squarely in the face.

"If you mean have you any talent for art?" she said coolly, "I am afraid I cannot give you much encouragement. You have a liking for it, and, I should say, possess a certain amount of perseverance; therefore in time you ought to turn out some fairly decent work, but you have not talent."

He looked displeased, and fell to contemplating his work anew from the distinctly irritating standpoint of its not being quite such a success as he had deemed it.

"You are very candid," he remarked, not altogether gratefully; "I suppose I should feel obliged to you. But, to be frank in my turn, you would do well not to be quite so candid with your pupils; you will never get on if you are."

She laughed, and shrugged her shoulders with a careless, half-bitter gesture.

"Your advice is rather superfluous," she answered; "I am not likely to get any pupils."

"Why not?" he queried. "You have one."

"Very true," she replied, "I had not forgotten that; it is too gigantic a fact to be overlooked. Nevertheless, as I believe I remarked before, the coals and the stairs are likely to prove too great odds; facts--even gigantic ones--have a way of vanis.h.i.+ng before great personal discomfort."

He reached down his overcoat and thrust his arms into the sleeves without pa.s.sing any comment on her last remark; there was such an extreme possibility, not in the stairs, or the coals, but in herself proving too much for him that he refrained from contradicting her. Jill watched him busily without appearing to do so until he was ready to go, and stood, hat in hand, apparently undecided whether to shake hands or no.

"Good morning," she said, and bowed in so distant a manner, that, regretting his former indecision, he bowed back, and turning round went out with an equally brief salutation.

When he had gone Jill sat down in his seat and fell to studying his work.

"'Shall I be any good at it?'" she mimicked, and then she laughed aloud.

"'Do you think that I am likely to be any good at it?' No, I do not, Mr St. John, I don't indeed."

CHAPTER THREE.

When St. John left the studio it was with so sore a feeling of resentment against Miss Erskine that it seemed to him most unlikely that he would ever re-enter it. It was not that he disliked her; he did not, but he had an uncomfortable conviction that she disliked him, and felt aggrieved at his presence even while she suffered it on account of the fee. He remembered with some vexation that he had almost forced her into accepting him as a pupil, for poor as she undoubtedly was she had plainly evinced that she had no desire to instruct him. Never mind, he would atone for his persistence by sending her his cheque and troubling the studio no more; that at any rate would show her that he had no wish to intrude. This decision being final he dismissed the matter from his mind, and, as a proof of the consistency of human nature, on Friday morning at the specified hour he stood on the dirty steps outside Miss Erskine's lodgings knocking with his walking-stick on the knockerless door. The modest Isobel opened it after a wait of some five minutes-- minutes in which he had time to recall his past determination and to wonder at himself for having so speedily altered his mind--and having opened it startled him considerably by firing at him without giving him time for speech the vague yet all comprehensive information.

"She's hout."

"Miss Erskine?" he queried in very natural astonishment.

"Yus; been gone over 'arf a nour."

"But," remonstrated St. John, "the Art School opens at half past nine, it is after that now."

"Carnt 'elp it, she's hout."

"It is a very strange procedure," he exclaimed in visible annoyance. "I come to the Art School at the hour it should open and Miss Erskine is out."

"Well!" snapped the damsel waxing impatient in her turn, "wot of that?

The Art School aint hout, is it? You can go up if yer want to."

The permission was not very gracious but St. John accepted it nevertheless, and striding past her into the narrow pa.s.sage began the ascent. He had not mounted two stairs however, before the slipshod Isobel called him back, and he noticed with surprise that her manner was altogether different, her tone softer, and in the obscurity of the dingy pa.s.sage she looked less dirty and untidy.