The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, page 15
"Yes, it is sure to," cried Lucy, who saw an opportunity for escaping from the detested propriety topic. "To-day, for instance, with Mr. Oakley. He is middle-aged, by the bye, Gerty, and married, for I saw his wife."
They both laughed; they could, indeed, afford to laugh, for, regarded from a financial point of view, the morning had been an unusually satisfactory one.
Gertrude's prophetic vision of vistas of studio work proved, for the next few days at least, to have been no baseless fabric of the fancy. The two artists at York Place kept them so busy over models, sketches, and arrangements of drapery, that the girls' hands were full from morning till night. Of course this did not last, but Frank was so full of suggestions for them, so genuinely struck with the quality of their work, so anxious to recommend
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them to his comrades in art, that their spirits rose high, and hope, which for a time had almost failed them, arose, like a giant refreshed, in their breasts.
In all simplicity and respect, the young Cornishman took a deep and unconcealed interest in the photographic firm, and expected, on his part, a certain amount of interest to be taken in his own work.
Frank, as Conny had said, worked chiefly in black and white. He was engaged, at present, in illustrating a serial story for The Woodcut, but he had time on his hands for a great deal more work, time which he employed in painting pictures which the public refused to buy, although the committees were often willing to exhibit them.
"If they would only send me out to that wretched little war," 31 he said. "There is nothing like having been a special artist for getting a man on with the pictorial editors."
There is nothing like the salt of healthy objective interests for keeping the moral nature sound. Before the sense of mutual honesty, the little barriers of prudishness which both sides had thought fit in the first instance to raise, fell silently between the young people, never again to be lifted up.
For good or evil, these waifs on the great stream of London life had drifted together; how long the current should continue thus to bear them side by sidehow long, indeed, they should float on the surface of the stream at all, was a question with which, for the time being, they did not very much trouble themselves.
No one quite knew how it came about, but before a month had gone by, it became the most natural thing in the world for Frank to drop in upon them at unexpected hours, to share their simple meals, to ask and give advice about their respective work.
Fanny had accepted the situation with astonishing calmness. Prudish to the verge of insanity with regard to herself, she had grown to look upon her strong-minded sisters as creatures emancipated from the ordinary conventions of their sex, as far removed from the advantages and disadvantages of gallantry as the withered hag who swept the crossing near Baker Street Station.
Perhaps, too, she found life at this period a little dull, and welcomed, on her own account, a new and pleasant social element in the person of Frank
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Jermyn; however it may be, Fanny gave no trouble, and Gertrude's lurking scruples slept in peace.
One bright morning towards the end of January, Gertrude came careering up the street on the summit of a tall, green omnibus, her hair blowing gaily in the breeze, her ill-gloved hands clasped about a bulky note-book. Frank, passing by in painting-coat and sombrero, plucked the latter from his head and waved it in exaggerated salute, an action which evoked a responsive smile from the person for whom it was intended, but acted with quite a different effect on another person who chanced to witness it, and for whom it was certainly not intended. This was no other than Aunt Caroline Pratt, who, to Gertrude's dismay, came dashing past in an open carriage, a look of speechless horror on her handsome, horselike countenance.
Now it is impossible to be dignified on the top of an omnibus, and Gertrude received her aunt's frozen stare of non-recognition with a humiliating consciousness of the disadvantages of her own position.
With a sinking heart she crept down from her elevation, when the omnibus stopped at the corner, and walked in a crestfallen manner to Number 20B, before the door of which the carriage, emptied of its freight, was standing.
Aunt Caroline did not trouble them much in these days, and rather wondering what had brought her, Gertrude made her way to the sitting-room, where the visitor was already established.
"How do you do, Aunt Caroline?"
"How do you do, Gertrude? And where have you been this morning?"
"To the British Museum."
Gertrude felt all the old opposition rising within her, in the jarring presence; an opposition which she assured herself was unreasonable. What did it matter what Aunt Caroline said, at this time of day? It had been different when they had been little girls; different, too, in that first moment of sorrow and anxiety, when she had laid her coarse touch on their quivering sensibilities.
Yet, when all was said, Mrs. Pratt's was not a presence to be in any way passed over.
"It is half-past one," said Aunt Caroline, consulting her watch; "are you not going to have your luncheon?"
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"It is laid in the kitchen," explained Lucy; "but if you will stay we can have it in here."
"In the kitchen! Is it necessary to give up the habits of ladies because you are poor?"
"A kitchen without a cook," put in Phyllis, "is the most ladylike place in the world."
Mrs. Pratt vouchsafed no answer to this exclamation, but turned to Lucy.
"No luncheon, thank you. I may as well say at once that I have come here with a purpose; solely, in fact, from motives of duty. Gertrude, perhaps your conscience can tell you what brings me."
"Indeed, Aunt Caroline, I am at a loss"
"I have come," continued Mrs. Pratt, "prepared to put up with anything you may say. Gertrude, it is to you I address myself, although, from Fanny's age, she is the one to have prevented this scandal."
"I do not in the least understand you," said Gertrude, with self-restraint.
Mrs. Pratt elevated her gloved forefinger, with the air of a well-seasoned counsel.
"Is it, or is it not true, that you have scraped acquaintance with a young man who lodges opposite you; that he is in and out of your rooms at all hours; that you follow him about to his studio?"
"Yes," said Gertrude, slowly, flushing deeply, "if you choose to put it that way; it is true."
"That you go about to public places with him," continued Aunt Caroline; "that you have been seen, two of you and this person, in the upper boxes of a theatre?"
"Yes, it is true," answered Gertrude; and Lucy, mindful of a coming storm, would have taken up the word, but Gertrude interrupted her.
"Let me speak, Lucy; perhaps, after all, we do owe Aunt Caroline some explanation. Aunt, how shall I say it for you to understand? We have taken life up from a different standpoint, begun it on different bases. We are poor people, and we are learning to find out the pleasures of the poor, to approach happiness from another side. We have none of the conventional social opportunities for instance, but are we therefore to sacrifice all social enjoyment? You say we 'follow Mr. Jermyn to his studio'; we have our living to earn, no less than our lives to live, and in neither case can we afford to be the slaves of custom. Our friends must trust us or leave us;
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must rely on our self-respect and our judgment. Convention apart, are not judgment and self-respect what we most of us do rely on in our relations with people, under any circumstances whatever?"
It was only the fact that Aunt Caroline was speechless with rage that prevented her from breaking in at an earlier stage on poor Gertrude's heroics; but at this point she found her voice. Sitting very still, and looking hard at her niece with a remarkably unpleasant expression in her cold eye, she said in tones of concentrated fury:
"Fanny is a fool, and the others are children; but don't you, Gertrude, know what is meant by a lost reputation?"
This was too much for Gertrude; she sprang to her feet.
"Aunt Caroline," she cried, "you are right; Lucy and Phyllis are very young. It is not fit that they should hear such conversation. If you wish to continue it, I will ask them to go away."
A pause; the two combatants standing pale and breathless, facing one another. Then Lucy went over to her sister and took her hand; Fanny sobbed; Phyllis glanced from one to the other with her bright eyes.
Now, Gertrude's conduct had been distinctly injudicious; open defiance, no less than servile acquiescence, was understood and appreciated by Mrs. Pratt; but Gertrude, as Lucy, who secretly admired her sister's eloquence, at once perceived, had spoken a tongue not understanded of Aunt Caroline.
As soon, in these non-miraculous days, strike the rock for water, as appeal to Aunt Caroline's finer feelings or imaginative perceptions.
"If you will not listen to me," she said, suddenly assuming an air of weariness and physical delicacy, "it must be seen whether your uncle can influence you. I am not equal to prolonging the discussion."
Pointedly ignoring Gertrude, she shook hands with the other girls; angry as she was, their shabby clothes and shabby furniture smote her for the moment with compassion. Poverty seemed to her the greatest of human calamities; she pitied even more than she despised it.
To Lucy, indeed, who escorted her downstairs, she assumed quite a gay and benevolent manner; only pausing to ask on the threshold, with a good deal of fine, healthy curiosity underlying the elaborate archness of her tones:
"Now, how much money have you naughty girls been making lately?"
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Lucy stoutly and laughingly evaded the question, and Aunt Caroline drove off smiling, refusing, like the stalwart warrior that she was, to acknowledge herself defeated. But it was many a long day before she attempted again to interfere in the affairs of the Lorimers.
Perhaps she would have been more ready to renew the attack, had she known how really distressed and disturbed Gertrude had been by her words.
Chapter 8. A Distinguished Person
I can give no reason, nor I will not;
More than have a lodged hate and a certain loathing
I bear Antonio.
Merchant of Venice 32
One morning, towards the middle of March, the sisters were much excited at receiving a letter containing an order to photograph a picture in a studio at St. John's Wood.
It was written in a small legible hand-writing, was dated from The Sycamores, and signed, Sidney Darrell.
"I wonder how he came to hear of us?" said Lucy, who cherished a particular admiration for the works of this artist.
"Perhaps Mr. Jermyn knows him," answered Gertrude.
"He would probably have spoken of him to us, if he did."
"Here," said Gertrude, "is Mr. Jermyn to answer for himself."
Frank, who had been admitted by Matilda, came into the waiting-room, where the sisters stood, a look as of the dawning spring-time in his vivid face and shining eyes.
"I have brought the proofs from The Woodcut," he said, drawing a damp bundle from his painting-coat. The Lorimers always read the slips of the story he was illustrating, and then a general council was held to decide on the best incident for illustration.
Lucy took the bundle and handed him the letter.
"Aren't you tremendously pleased?" he said.
"Do you know anything about this?" asked Lucy.
"How?"
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''I mean, did you recommend us to him?"
"Not I. This letter is simply the reward of well-earned fame."
"Thank you, Mr. Jermyn; I really think you must be right. Do you know Sidney Darrell?"
"I have met him. But he is a great swell, you know, Miss Lucy, and he is almost always abroad."
"Yes," put in Gertrude; "his exquisite Venetian pictures!"
"Oh, Darrell is a clever fellow. Too fond of the French school, perhaps, for my taste. And the curious thing is, that, though his work is every bit as solid as it is brilliant, there is something rather sensational about his reputation."
"All this," cried Gertrude, "sounds exciting."
"I think that must be owing to the man himself," went on Frank. "Oakley knows him fairly well; says you may meet him one night at dinner, and he will ask you up to his studio. The first thing next morning you get a note putting you off; he is very sorry, but he is starting that day for India."
"Does he paint Indian pictures?"
"No, but is bitten at times with the 'big game' craze; shoots tigers and sticks pigs, and so on. I believe his studio is quite a museum of trophies of the chase."
"By the by, Lucy, which of us is to go to The Sycamores to-morrow morning?"
"You must go, Gerty; I can't trust any one else to finish off those prints of little Jack Oakley, and they have been promised so long."
Gertrude consulted the letter.
"I shall have to take the big camera, which involves a cab."
"I wish I could have walked up with you," said Frank; "but, strange to say, I am very busy this week."
"I wish we were busy," answered Gertrude; "things are a little better, but it is slow work."
"I consider this letter of Darrell's a distinct move forward," cried hopeful Frank; "he will be able to recommend you to artists who are not a lot of out-at-elbow fellows," he added, holding out his hand in farewell, with a bright smile that belied the rueful words. "Now, please don't forget you are all coming to tea with Oakley and me on Sunday afternoon. And Miss Devonshireyou gave her my invitation?"
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"Yes," said Lucy, promptly; then added after a pause: "May her brother come too; he says he would like to?"
Frank scanned her quickly with his bright eyes.
"Certainly, if you like; he is not a bad sort of cub."
And then he departed abruptly.
"That was quite rude, for Mr. Jermyn," said Gertrude.
Lucy turned away with a slight flush on her fair face.
"It would be quite rude for anybody," she said, and went over to the studio.
Phyllis was spending the day at the Devonshires, but came back for the evening meal, by which time her sisters' excitement on the subject of Darrell's letter had subsided; and no mention was made of it while they were at table.
After the meal, Phyllis went over to the window, drew up the blind, and amused herself, as was her frequent custom, by looking into the street.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," said Lucy; "any one can see right into the room."
"Why do you waste your breath, Lucy? You know it is never any good telling me not to do things, when I want to."
Gertrude, who had herself a secret, childish love for the gas-lit street, for the sight of the hurrying people, the lamps, the hansom cabs, flickering in and out the yellow haze, like so many fire-flies, took no part in the dispute, but set to work at repairing an old skirt of Phyllis's, which was sadly torn.
Meanwhile the spoilt child at the window continued her observations, which seemed to afford her considerable amusement.
"There is a light in Frank Jermyn's windowthe top one," she cried; "I suppose he is dressing. He told me he had an early dance in Harley Street. I wish I were going to a dance."
