Revenge!, Robert Barr [ebook offline reader .txt] 📗

as pretty as ever, perhaps a little prettier, with her long white pinafore and her pretty fingers discoloured by the crayons she was using. She was trying to sketch upon the canvas before her the figure of a man, striking out from the shoulder, and she did not seem to have much success with her drawing, perhaps because she had no model, and perhaps because her mind was pre- occupied. She would sit for a long time staring at the canvas, then jump up and put in lines which did not appear to bring the rough sketch any nearer perfection.

The room was large, with a good north window, and scattered about were the numberless objects that go to the confusing make-up of an artist's workshop. At last Miss Linderham threw down her crayon, went to the end of the room where a telephone hung, and rang the bell.

"Give me," she said, "100,803."

After a few moments of waiting, a voice came.

"Is that Spink and Company?" she asked.

"Yes, madam," was the reply.

"You have in your employ Lord Stansford, I think?"

"Yes, madam."

"Is he engaged for this afternoon?"

"No, madam."

"Well, send him to Miss Linderham, No. 2,044, Cromwell Road, South Kensington."

The man at the other end wrote the address, and then asked--

"At what hour, madam?"

"I want him from four till six o'clock."

"Very well, madam, we shall send him."

"Now," said Miss Linderham, with a sigh of relief, "I can have a model who will strike the right attitude. It is so difficult to draw from memory."

The reason why so many women fail as artists, as well as in many other professions, may be because they pay so much attention to their own dress. It is an astonishing fact to record that Miss Linderham sent out for a French hairdresser, who was a most expensive man, and whom she generally called in only when some very important function was about to take place.

"I want you," she said, "to dress my hair in an artistic way, and yet in a manner that it will seem as if no particular trouble had been taken. Do you understand me?"

"Ah, perfectly, mademoiselle," said the polite Frenchman. "You shall be so fascinating, mademoiselle, that----"

"Yes," said Miss Linderham, "that is what I want."

At three o'clock she had on a dainty gown. The sleeves were turned up, as if she were ready for the most serious work. The spotless pinafore which covered this dress had the most fetching little frill around it; all in all, it was doubtful if any studio in London, even one belonging to the most celebrated painter, had in it as pretty a picture as Miss Maggie Linderham was that afternoon. At three o'clock there came a ring at the telephone, and when Miss Linderham answered the call, the voice which she had heard before said--

"I am very sorry to disappoint you, madam, but Lord Stansford resigned this afternoon. We could send you another man if you liked to have him."

"No, no!" cried Miss Linderham; and the man at the other end of the telephone actually thought she was weeping.

"No, I don't want any one else. It doesn't really matter."

"The other man," replied the voice, "would be only two guineas, and it was five for Lord Stansford. We could send you a man for a guinea, although we don't recommend him."

"No," said Miss Linderham, "I don't want anybody. I am glad Lord Stansford is not coming, as the little party I proposed to give, has been postponed."

"Ah, then, when it does come off, madam, I hope----"

But Miss Linderham hung up the receiver, and did not listen to the recommendations the man was sending over the wire about his hired guests. The chances are that Maggie Linderham would have cried had it not been that her hair was so nicely, yet carelessly, done; but before she had time to make up her mind what to do, the trim little maid came along the gallery and down the steps into the studio, with a silver salver in her hand, and on it a card, which she handed to Miss Linderham, who picked up the card and read, "Richard Stansford."

"Oh," she cried joyfully, "ask him to come here."

"Won't you see him in the drawing-room, miss?"

"No, no; tell him I am very busy, and bring him to the studio."

The maid went up the stair again. Miss Linderham, taking one long, careful glance at herself, looking over her shoulder in the tall mirror, and not caring to touch her wealth of hair, picked up her crayon and began making the sketch of the striking man even worse than it was before. She did not look round until she heard Lord Stansford's step on the stair, then she gave an exclamation of surprise on seeing him. The young man was dressed in a wide-awake hat, and the costume which we see in the illustrated papers as picturing our friends in South Africa. All he needed was a belt of cartridges and a rifle to make the picture complete.

"This is hardly the dress a man is supposed to wear in London when he makes an afternoon call on a lady, Miss Linderham," said the young man, with a laugh, "but I had either to come this way or not at all, for my time is very limited. I thought it was too bad to leave the country without giving you an opportunity to apologise for your conduct last night, and for the additional insult of hiring me for two hours this afternoon. And so, you see, I came."

"I am very glad you did," replied Miss Linderham. "I was much disappointed when they telephoned me this afternoon that you had resigned. I must say that you look exceedingly well in that outfit, Lord Stansford."

"Yes," said the young man, casting a glance over himself; "I am compelled to admit that it is rather becoming. I have had the pleasure of attracting a good deal of attention as I came along the street."

"They took you for a cowboy, I suppose?"

"Well, something of that sort. The small boy, I regret to say, was so unfeeling as to sing 'He's got 'em on,' and other ribald ditties of that kind, which they seemed to think suited the occasion. But others looked at me with great respect, which compensated for the disadvantages. Will you pardon the rudeness of a pioneer, Miss Linderham, when I say that you look even more charming in the studio dress than you did in ball costume, and I never thought that could be possible?"

"Oh," cried the girl, flushing, perhaps, because the crimson paint on the palette she had picked up reflected on her cheek. "You must excuse this working garb, as I did not expect visitors. You see, they telephoned me that you were not coming."

The deluded young man actually thought this statement was correct, which in part it was, and he believed also that the luxuriant hair tossed up here and there with seeming carelessness was not the result of an art far superior to any the girl herself had ever put upon canvas.

"So you are off to South Africa?" she said.

"Yes, the Cape."

"Oh, is the Cape in South Africa?"

"Well, I think so," replied the young man, somewhat dubiously, "but I wouldn't be certain about it, though the steamship company guarantee to land me at the Cape, wherever it is."

The girl laughed.

"You must have given it a great deal of thought," she said, "when you don't really know where you are going."

"Oh, I have a better idea of direction than you give me credit for. I am not such a fool as I looked last night, you know; then I belonged to Spink and Company, and was sublet by them to old Heckle; now I belong to myself and South Africa. That makes a world of difference, you know."

"I see it does," replied Miss Linderham. "Won't you sit down?"

The girl herself sank into an armchair, while Stansford sat on a low table, swinging one foot to and fro, his wide-brimmed hat thrown back, and gazed at the girl until she reddened more than ever. Neither spoke for some moments.

"Do you know," said Stansford at last, "that when I look at you South Africa seems a long distance away!"

"I thought it was a long distance away," said the girl, without looking up.

"Yes; but it's longer and more lonely when one looks at you. By Jove, if I thought I couldn't do better, I would be tempted to take that two thousand a year offer of yours and----"

"It wasn't an offer of mine," cried the girl hastily. "Perhaps the lady I was thinking of wouldn't have agreed to it, even if I had spoken to her about it."

"That is quite true; still, I think if she had seen me in this outfit she would have thought me worth the money."

"You think you can make more than two thousand a year out in South Africa? You have become very hopeful all in a moment. It seems to me that a man who thinks he can make two thousand a year is very foolish to let himself out at two guineas an evening."

"Do you know, Miss Linderham, that was just what I thought myself, and I told the respectable Spink so, too. I told him I had had an offer of two thousand a year in his own line of business. He said that no firm in London could afford the money. 'Why,' he cried, waxing angry, 'I could get a Duke for that.'"

"'Well,' I replied, 'it is purely a matter of business with me. I was offered two thousand pounds a year as ornamental man by a most charming young lady, who has a studio in South Kensington, and who is herself, when dressed up as an artist, prettier than any picture that ever entered the Royal Academy'; that's what I told Spink."

The girl looked up at him, first with indignation in her eyes, and then with a smile hovering about her pretty lips.

"You said nothing of the sort," she answered, "for you knew nothing about this studio at that time, so you see I am not going to emulate your dishonesty by pretending not to know you are referring to me."

"My dishonesty!" exclaimed the young man, with protest in his voice. "I am the most honest, straightforward person alive, and I believe I would take your two thousand a year offer if I didn't think I could do better."

"Where, in South Africa?"

"No, in South Kensington. I think that when the lady learns how useful I could be around a studio--oh, I could learn to wash brushes, sweep out the room, prepare canvases, light the fire; and how nicely I could hand around cups of tea when she had her 'At Homes,' and exhibited her pictures! When she realises this, and sees what a bargain she is getting, I feel almost certain she will not make any terms at all."

The young man sprang from the table, and the girl rose from her chair, a look almost of alarm in her face. He caught her by the arms.

"What do you think, Miss Linderham? You know the lady. Don't you think she would refuse to have anything to do with a cad like Billy Heckle, rich as he