He paused dramatically.
“And then?” asked Quixtus amused.
“We went out to lunch in a restaurant and she gave me all the material necessary for my article. A most charming woman, who I think will do you justice, Quixtus.”
When his friends had gone, each, by the way, diving furtive and searching hands into their great-coat pockets, as soon as they had been helped into these garments by the butler—and here, by the way also, be it stated that, no matter how sultry the breath of summer or how frigid that of fortune, they never failed to bring overcoats to hang, for all the world like children’s stockings for Santa Claus, on the familiar pegs—when his friends were gone, Quixtus, who had an elementary sense of humour, failed entirely to see an expansive and notoriety-seeking Clementina lunching tête-à-tête at the Carlton or the Savoy with Theodore Vandermeer. In point of fact, he fell asleep smiling at the picture.
The next day, while he was at breakfast—he breakfasted rather late—Tommy Burgrave was announced. Tommy, who had already eaten with the appetite of youth, immediately after his cold bath, declined to join his uncle in a meal, but for the sake of sociability trifled with porridge, kidneys, cold ham, hot rolls and marmalade, while Quixtus feasted on a soft-boiled egg and a piece of dry toast. When his barmecide meal was over, Tommy came to the business of the day. For some inexplicable, unconjecturable reason his monthly allowance had gone, disappeared, vanished into the Ewigkeit. What in the world was he to do?
Now it must be explained that Tommy Burgrave was an orphan, the son of Ephraim Quixtus’s only sister, and his whole personal estate a sum of money invested in a mortgage which brought him in fifty pounds a year. On fifty pounds a year a young man cannot lead the plenteous life as far as food and raiment are concerned, rent a studio (even though it be a converted first-floor back, as Tommy’s was) and a bedroom in Romney Place, travel (even on a bicycle, as Tommy did) about England, and entertain ladies to dinner at restaurants—even though the ladies may be only models, and the restaurants in Soho. He must have other financial support. This other financial support came to him in the guise of a generous allowance from his uncle. But as the generosity of his instincts—and who in the world would be a cynic, animated blight, curmudgeon enough to check the generous instincts of youth?—as, I say, the generosity of his instincts outran the generosity of his allowance, towards the end of every month Tommy found himself in a most naturally inexplicable position. At the end of the month, therefore, Tommy came to Russell Square and trifled with porridge, kidneys, cold ham, hot rolls and marmalade, while his uncle feasted on a soft-boiled egg and a piece of dried toast, and, at the end of his barmecide feast, came to business.
On the satisfactory conclusion thereof (and it had never been known to be otherwise) Tommy lit a cigar—he liked his uncle’s cigars.
“Well,” said he, “what do you think of Clementina?”
“I think,” said Quixtus, with a faint luminosity lighting his china-blue eyes, “I think that Clementina, being an artist, is a problem. But if she weren’t an artist and in a different class of life, she would be a model old family servant in a great house in which the family, by no chance whatever, resided.”
Tommy laughed. “It seemed tremendously funny to bring you two together.”
Quixtus smiled indulgently. “So it was a practical joke on your part?”
“Oh no!” cried Tommy, flaring up. “You mustn’t think that. There’s only one painter living who has, her power—and I’m one of the people who know it—and I wanted her to paint you. Besides, she is a thorough good sort—through and through.”
“My dear boy, I was only jesting,” said Quixtus, touched by his earnestness. “I know that not only are you a devotee—and very rightly so—of Clementina—but that she is a very great painter.”
“All the same,” said Tommy, with a twinkle in his eyes, “I’m afraid that you’re in for an awful time.”
“I’m afraid so, too,” said Quixtus, whimsically, “but I’ll get through it somehow.”
He did get through it; but it was only “somehow.” This quiet, courtly, dreamy gentleman irritated Clementina as he had irritated her years ago. He was a learned man; that went without saying; but he was a fool all the same, and Clementina had not trained herself to suffer fools gladly. The portrait became her despair. The man had no character. There was nothing beneath the surface of those china-blue eyes. She was afraid, she said, of getting on the canvas the portrait of a congenital idiot. His attitude towards life—the dilettante attitude which she as a worker despised—made her impatient. By profession he was a solicitor, head of the old-fashioned firm of Quixtus and Son; but, on his open avowal, he neglected the business, leaving it all in the hands of his partner.
“He’ll do you, sure as a gun,” said Clementina.
Quixtus smiled. “My father trusted him implicitly, and so do I.”
“A man or a woman’s a fool to trust anybody,” said Clementina.
“I’ve trusted everybody around me all my life, and no one has done me any harm, and therefore I’m a happy man.”
“Rubbish,” said Clementina. “Any fraud gets the better of you. What about your German friend Tommy was telling me of?”
This was a sore point. A most innocent, spectacled, bearded, but obviously poverty-stricken German had called on him a few weeks before with a collection of flint instruments for sale, which he alleged to have come from the valley of the Weser, near Hameln. They were of shapes and peculiarities which he had not met with before, and, after a cursory and admiring examination, he had given the starving Teuton twice as much as he had asked for the collection, and sent him on his way rejoicing. With a brother palæontologist summoned in haste he had proceeded to a minute scrutiny of his treasures. They were impudent forgeries.
“I told Tommy in confidence. He ought not to have repeated the story,” he said, with dignity.
“Which shows,” said Clementina, pausing so as to make her point and an important brush-stroke—“which shows that you can’t even trust Tommy.”
On another occasion he referred to Vandermeer’s famous interview.
“You know a friend of mine, Vandermeer,” said he.
Clementina shook her head.
“Never heard the name.”
He explained. Vandermeer was a journalist. He had interviewed her and lunched with her at a restaurant.
Clementina could not remember. At last her knitted brow cleared.
“Good lord, do you mean a half-starved, foxy-faced man with his toes through his boots?”
“The portrait is unflattering,” said he, “but I’m afraid there’s a kind of resemblance.”
“He looked so hungry and was so hungry—he told me—that I took him to the ham-and-beef shop round the corner and stuffed his head with copy while he stuffed himself with ham and beef. To say that he lunched with me at a restaurant is infernal impudence.”
“Poor fellow,” said Quixtus. “He has to live rather fatly in imagination so as to make up for the meagreness of his living in reality. It’s only human nature.”
“Bah,” said Clementina, “I believe you’d find human nature in the devil.”
Quixtus smiled one of his sweet smiles.
“I find it in you, Clementina,” he said.
Thus it may be perceived that the sittings were not marked by the usual amenities of the studio. The natures of the two were antagonistic. He shrank from her downrightness;