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