by Grant Allen
A minute later the First Murderer entered, conical hat in hand, much abashed and trembling. Big and burly as he was, he seemed afraid of the drawing-room, while as for me, I had entered it as though drawing-rooms ought always to have belonged to me.
I saw at once what had happened. They had sent out searchers and found the man while I was crying and eating my cake, and had asked him to come in and confront me.
“She says that she is not your daughter,” Mrs. Mallory began in Italian, which she spoke with fair fluency.
The First Murderer shrugged his shoulders and opened two demonstrative palms. “She is a bad girl, signora,” he answered in his slimy voice, glaring at me sidelong with a furtive glare. “She would say anything to get away from her father and mother.”
I recognised at once that I had the advantage of him in this discussion, because he could only speak Italian, which I understood, while I could speak English, which he did not follow. “It is not true,” I cried in English to Mrs. Mallory. “I am not his daughter. My father is Signor Antonio Lupari, of the Monti Berici, near Vicenza. If you do not believe me, you can write and ask him.”
My openness carried conviction. “Sounds straight,” Sir Hugh admitted. In a very few words, I told them the rest of my little story. Mrs. Mallory listened and clearly believed me. “But I suppose we must pay something to this ruffian,” she said at last to Sir Hugh, “just to make him relinquish his imaginary claim upon her.”
“Not one penny!” I cried firmly. “The man is a cheat. Don’t let him worm a single sou out of you.”
The First Murderer cringed and scraped. Though he did not understand their words, he could see that they were ready to pay, and that I opposed his interests; and he glanced at me as if he would choke me. His fingers fumbled nervously. “Microbe!” he muttered between his teeth. But I fought it out with him undaunted, in very voluble Italian. At last he threw up his hands in pantomimic despair. “Give me what I paid for her, then,” he exclaimed as the honest man wronged, flinging his lie to the winds. “I bought the little animal in Paris, and gave her last owner thirty francs for her.”
“It is not true,” I broke in, in English, to Mrs. Mallory. “He gave fourteen francs and a glass of absinthe.”
They laughed again at my vehemence, and at the nature of the bargain. But after some higgling, Mrs. Mallory yielded, and compromised the matter for twenty shillings down.
The First Murderer was to relinquish all claim to my guardianship. I was to have my few bits of clothing, my dolls, and my properties, and above all the book that the old gentleman gave me.
The money was paid in hand, and the First Murderer, clutching it, backed out by degrees, always slimy, and bowing many times, but casting a farewell scowl at me. As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Mallory turned to where I stood. “Now you are mine, my child,” she said, smiling. “I have bought you and paid for you.”
I jumped at her and kissed her hand. “No; not yours,” I answered, bending over it and letting a tear fall warm on it. “My own. You are a sweet, kind lady, and I should love to serve you. But I was not his to sell. I am my own — my own — a free Italian!”
Mrs. Mallory laughed, and turned to Sir Hugh. “A young individualist, you see,” she murmured softly.
Sir Hugh grunted a grumpy grunt “A young rebel, call it!” he answered. “People don’t know their proper places nowadays. Especially womenkind. She’s a saucy little baggage, and I wish you joy of her!”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked of my new friend confidingly; for I felt she had taken my future into her own hands, and when I looked at her face I was willing to let it rest there.
“Come to my house and see,” she answered, rising.
I looked about me, a little sorry. “Oh, then this is not your house,” I said, with a shade of disappointment.
“Oh no, not mine; this is Sir Hugh Tachbrook’s,” with a wave of the hand towards the fat old gentleman.
“I wish it was yours!” I cried, surveying it.
“Hear, hear!” Sir Hugh exclaimed with warmth. (He had been in Parliament, I learned later.) “That’s the most sensible thing the child has said yet, Mrs. Mallory. Go on like that, you young monkey, and I’ll begin to think better of you. It is no fault of mine that this is not her house — but she’s an obdurate creature.”
Mrs. Mallory glanced at him pleadingly. “You promised me, Sir Hugh,” she said, in a very low voice. “How can I come here again if you continue to persecute me? I like you as a dear and valued old friend. But if you insist on trying to make me alter my resolve—”
Sir Hugh was all penitence. “My dear lady,” he murmured, stooping and kissing her hand submissively, “I forget — I forget. But it shall not occur again. If you shut up the gate you will drive me to distraction.”
For myself, I listened with the intensest interest. These people talked and thought like the people in my books. I felt I had escaped from the world that did not understand me to the society in which I had always mixed — in fancy.
It is beyond a doubt that each one of us lives a day-dream life as well as a practical one. My day-dream life seemed about to realise itself.
CHAPTER X
A NEW PROFESSION
SHE led me across the lawn and through a little copse of larches at the side to a gate in a hedge. I understood at once, being a girl and a southerner, that this was the gate of which Sir Hugh had just spoken; it joined their properties; and Mrs. Mallory must have threatened to close it if he repeated his attentions. On his side of the hedge, all was trim orderliness; on hers, all was rampant bowery luxuriance. We walked on through the answering but far more carelessly-ordered copse beyond the gate, and soon reached a cottage, ever so much smaller than Sir Hugh’s great house, but oh, so pretty and picturesque! It had a rustic porch covered with old climbing honeysuckle, as well as a verandah, up whose rough wooden posts red roses clambered to peep in with curious eyes at the first-floor windows.
The perfume of jasmine crept on the still air. ‘T was the sweetest little cottage I had ever be held; I felt instinctively that an artist inhabited it.
Mrs. Mallory took me at once through a dainty little rose-leaf-scented drawing-room into a large bare hall behind of a sort which I had never before seen, but which I recognised by intuition as a studio. Its furnishings were simple; its colours subdued. A great square of Saracenic tapestry blocked one wall. Pierced Moorish lamps hung from the ceiling. Pictures stood on easels about the centre of the room, finished or otherwise. One of them caught my eye. A tall and beautiful lady, undraped, save by her copious fair hair, patted a white horse, which she seemed just about to mount. Her face and form breathed exquisite purity. I stood and stared at it.
“You like it?” Mrs. Mallory said, watching me close.
I drew a deep breath. “It is lovely,” I answered. “Lovely!” My eyes hung on it This undisguised and unfeigned admiration seemed to please her not a little. I was such an unsophisticated natural critic. “It is Lady Godiva,” she explained, lingering on it with the loving eyes of a creator. “She is just going to ride through the streets of Coventry.”
“I don’t know that story,” I replied. “It’s not in Shakespeare.” I had heard of Coventry only in connection with Falstaff.
“No, but it’s in Tennyson.”
The name was still a name to me. I looked blank. Mrs. Mallory, observing my face, and intent, no doubt, on drawing me out, fetched a small green book, opened a page, and handed it to me. “Read aloud,” she said. I read aloud. The poem began—” I waited for the train at Coventry.” I read it dramatically, drinking it in as I went. The verse thrilled me through and through. I felt with that one reading that I had discovered a new poet — discovered him for myself, which is the great matter. Mrs. Mallory’s eyes were fixed upon me as I rolled out the liquid lines. “Why, my child,” she cried, “you are an actress! Some day I must see you do one of your little sketches.”
“Would you like to see me now?” I cried. And, no
thing loth, I dressed up Portia, Antonio, and Shylock, and gave my childish version of The Merchant of Venice.
Time after time, as I went on, she clapped her hands and cried, “Stop for a moment!” then she made a quick pencil-sketch of some attitude or gesture. I had never heard of professional models till then, but I understood at once what she wanted. As soon as I had finished, she laid down her note-book and said to me quietly, “Now, Rosalba, do you think you would like to live here and let me paint you?”
I cast up at her a quick glance. “No Lady Godivas!” I said with firmness.
She laughed. “I shall not want you for the nude,” she answered. “You know what that means?” I nodded. “But for the draped figure, yes. Do you think you would care about it?”
I reflected. “Yes, certainly,” I answered. “It is an art, like another. I should prefer my own art best — but I can find time for that; and yours” — I glanced at the canvas—” yours is beautiful!”
She smiled at me strangely. Then she took my hand again. “You are a queer little thing,” she said. “A sort of native Eve — an untaught Beatrice. Where did you learn it all?”
“I was born so, I suppose. I have always read books and loved what I found in them.”
“But how did you know people painted from models, and especially from the nude?”
I paused to think. It had all come to me so naturally. “Well, one sees artists painting hills and trees from nature,” I said, after a short mental search; “and hills and trees must surely be easier to paint from imagination than people. And one sees artists painting groups in the street, all clothed and moving; but it must surely be easier to paint people clothed, as you see them every day and know them familiarly, than to paint them in their own bodies and limbs as you see them so few and so seldom. Still, one finds pictures painted like your Lady Godiva; and since they are so true to life, I suppose artists must have somebody as a model to paint them from.”
She perused me with some surprise. “That is so,” she said slowly. “But — I wonder you thought of it.”
“We learn to think of many things on the road,” I answered. “It is a great university. You see, our livelihood depends upon observation. We would soon starve if we couldn’t put two and two together.”
“And you object to starving?”
“Well, I may be narrow-minded, but — I have a prejudice against it.”
Mrs. Mallory paused. Then she unfolded her plan to me. “I want you for a model,” she said. “I will paint you first in Italian costume — possibly afterwards in others. — But not except in costume. And I shall want you to live with me. My gardener’s wife might take you in, perhaps, and give you bed and breakfast Your other meals you could have here with the servants.”
I demurred. “I would rather have them with the gardener’s wife, if I might,” I answered, flushing.
“Why?” She scanned me hard.
I hesitated. “Well, I hardly know why. You think it odd of me, after the company I have kept But somehow — the One-eyed Calender and the First Murderer were not servants. They were gentlemen of the road, but independent gentlemen.”
She pressed my hand again. “You quaint little witch!” she exclaimed. “I wonder how you discovered all these things! But you are right, quite right. There is nothing menial in gipsydom. You shall not mix with the servants. I recognise your claim to brevet-gentility.”
“Thank you!” I answered. “I am not proud — beggars cannot be choosers — but I am the daughter of one of the men who fought to save Italy.” I was growing older now, and by this time, I think, it had begun to dawn upon me that my father did not expel the Austrians quite single-handed.
“You will obey me in everything reasonable?” she asked, half doubtful.
“Everything reasonable!” I cried. “Everything unreasonable if it is your wish, dear lady.”
So all was shortly arranged. I was installed in comfortable quarters in the gardener’s cottage; I had a bed to sleep on, and the gardener’s wife — a raw-boned lady with a broad Scotch accent — was told off to look after me. I took my meals at the cottage, and went up to the studio every morning to be painted. In point of fact, I had arrived at the psychological moment for Mrs. Mallory. As the butler at Sir Hugh’s phrased it, I had “copped her on the hop.” She was at work on a picture in which an Italian girl was a necessary element; and I came in the nick of time to fill the gap.
But I had piloted my ship at last into a delicious haven. I enjoyed being a model. Mrs. Mallory, with her tender smile and her sympathetic manner, became a real friend to me. There was something so reposeful about her face and figure. She moved with slow grace. Coffee-coloured laces belonged to her, of congruity. Her house was like herself — soft colours, velvety carpets, sheets that smelt of fresh lavender. It was a leisurely home, and she was a leisurely person. I understood her, and she understood me. After a few days’ painting she said to me spontaneously, “I see more and more that you were quite right about not having your meals with the servants, Rosalba. I ought never to have suggested it Your place is here. You were born a lady.”
“So I think,” I answered, with my simple Italian matter-of-factness. “I have always thought that; because, when I read about ladies in Shakespeare and Scott, Rosalind and Lady Ashton seemed to me to think and feel exactly as I did.”
“You have read so much!” she put in.
“Well, it was easy for me,” I answered. “You see, I hold the keys of three great literatures.”
She only stared at me; but her stare said many things.
Those weeks at Mrs. Mallory’s, too, were a social education to me. Hitherto I had learnt from books only, or from contact with the sterner realities of life; now I began to learn how cultivated men and women talk, and to know something at first hand of the mode of thought and feeling of English gentlefolk. That is a profound study which I have not yet lived long enough in England thoroughly to master — if anybody ever masters its endless intricacies — from squire to rural dean, from knighted soap-boiler to grammar-school master; but my life at Mrs. Mallory’s sufficed to impress upon me some smattering of its meaning. I spent most of my days in the studio, and as Sir Hugh and others were constant visitors there, I heard much and learned much. Being by nature and disposition an actress and a mimic, this glimpse of a new world produced a great effect upon me. In a very few weeks I could imitate Sir Hugh on the scandalous fashion in which the labouring classes were getting things all their own way—” machinations of levellers, setting class against class” — and could discourse like Mrs, Mallory with rapt attention about textures and draperies, values and composition.
My new employer talked much to me while I sat to her, and we grew to be great friends. Indeed the word sat gives a false idea of my usual attitude, for my sitting was of a disjointed and episodic character. I ran about, chattered, struck attitudes, and gave Shakespearian representations at frequent intervals; and Mrs. Mallory took what she thought most important. She wanted me for hints, she said, not for regular sittings. My small audacities delighted her.
I spent the summer at Patchingham. The great tranquillity, the green stillness, calmed me. In the early autumn Mrs. Mallory went up to London to give a private exhibition of her work in Bond Street.
“Would you like to come too, Rosalba?” she asked me.
Would I like to come too! I could not bear to be away from her. Affection for Mrs. Mallory was a plant of quick growth. She was more of a mother to me than anyone else had ever been, and I told her so frankly, with southern impulsiveness. I think she was flattered, for she was really fond of me, and she never tired of asking me to give my little entertainments before visitors; but like a true Englishwoman, kind as she was, a certain barrier of birth prevented her from saying so. She had recognised that I was a lady — but only one of nature’s ladies; while she herself was one of society’s. That makes a difference still. And so, though she would hold my hand and make much of me, she never once kissed me — at this sta
ge, I mean; for later on she learned to take a more natural view of me. That is the way with Englishwomen. Distinctions of blood count for more with them, and similarities of taste and nature for less, than with the proudest aristocracy of continental Europe.
However, she took my hand now and answered warmly, “Very well, then, dear; you shall come and wait about in the room. I shall want somebody with me. And I had rather it should be you, Rosalba, than anybody.”
Tears rose in my eyes. I brushed them away. Mrs. Mallory noticed them. “Why do you cry, dear?” she asked me.
I gulped down a rising throat, and answered mendaciously, “I was born in London, and now I am going back there.” I did not realise at the time that it is clean ridiculous for anyone even to simulate a sentimental attachment towards London.
I am an infrequent kisser, but I longed for her to kiss me.
CHAPTER XI
VISTAS
MRS. MALLORY had a flat off Victoria Street, redolent of spikenard, cedar chests, and sandalwood. There we put up. It being necessary still to preserve the barrier, I took my meals downstairs with the housekeeper — an aggrieved-looking widow — and the hall porter, a contrast in jollity.
On the third day after our arrival in town, when we had almost finished hanging the pictures in the room in Bond Street, Mrs. Mallory gave a little inaugural luncheon-party to some special artistic friends and critics. It marked an epoch.
I had helped her not a little in dressing the rooms; suggesting here a bit of Oriental drapery and there a decorative plate, with that half-unconscious touch of the aesthetic spirit which comes natural to the Italian peasant.
(Yes, dear Mr. Critic, I mean “comes natural,” not “comes naturally.” Think it over for yourself, and you will see that I am right, and that your superfine objection is positively wrong, not merely hypercritical.) But on the morning of the lunch, I was chiefly employed in looking after the dining-room and arranging flowers, for which I had always a native talent. My harmony in chrysanthemums was a subtle success. Mrs. Mallory was charmed with the simplicity of my decoration. “It is Japanesque, child,” she said; and though my ideas of the Japanesque were then somewhat hazy, I knew from her tone that she meant it to be taken as the highest commendation, and I flushed with pleasure.
