Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/97

 from? James was in an agony, and I was powerless to help him. If sorrow and pain could have bought these men their happiness they would have had it without much delay; but what could a weak and ignorant girl do for them? Absolutely nothing! I saw James look round the shabby room, and I saw where his eyes rested. By rare good fortune he had been commissioned to paint a portrait for one of those so-called patrons of art whose patronage consists in getting the best productions of clever young men, yet unknown, at merely nominal prices. It was for a rich City merchant to whom James had been introduced, and it was to be thirty pounds when done. Could he mortgage it? There was no use in asking Mr. Hawes to give him an advance. He thought he had done great things in giving the order at all; and there was every probability that if he paid him on delivery he would charge him a per-centage on the transaction, and make a profit out of his "cash down." No there was no use in going to him! He had lent my brother a magnificent silver-gilt hanaper which he wanted introduced into his picture. It had been a presentation-piece from some society or other, and the City merchant was very proud of his cup. It was a hideous thing, artistically speaking, but it was worth some hundreds of pounds.

My brother looked at this tankard. I do not know what made me do it, but I took it up quietly, and dusted it with my apron.

"I hope this has not got scratched or hurt in any way," I said; and it was rare that I spoke before Ashley. "You remember Mr. Hawes is coming for it to-morrow, Jamie?"

"What a shame that a fellow like that should have such a thing—and so vilely ugly too!" said Ashley. "It is worth only the weight of metal; but that is being worth something," he added, as if reflecting.

"Yes, it is hideously ugly—criminally ugly!" said James; "but it cost no end of money, I dare say. Old Hawes, I know, sets great store by it, the old rhinoceros! But as it is, it is too good for him. And to think that we should be at the orders of such a man!—that we should be obliged to put such a vile thing as that into our work!"

He spoke in the artist's injured tone. I have often noticed that artists are injured when they are employed by men who do not understand art—Philistines as they call them.

"Better send it to the smelting-pot!" laughed Ashley.

I say laughed, but it was a bitter sneer rather than a laugh.

James flushed, and I trembled. It never occurred to me as possible that my brother could do anything so dishonourable as deal with another man's property—my dear Jamie, the very soul of chivalrous feeling! and yet I somehow feared Ashley's suggestion. I knew how he loved that man, and I knew that he, quite as much as Ashley, wanted to see Cora and Mrs. Graham in London. But wishing and doing, envying and stealing, are two different things; and though I trembled I did not definitely distrust.

That night Ashley slept with us. I was going to say as usual; for, indeed, it was a very frequent thing now; and I passed the night sitting on a wooden chair before the empty kitchen hearth.

I had fallen into an uneasy doze just at the last hours, as the day began to break, when I was awakened by hearing a step on the stairs. The house was one of those creaking old places where a mouse could hardly stir without being heard; and there was something in the build of it that made my little kitchen like an echoing vault. The step came down the stairs and across the hall; I heard the door-chain rattle, and the bolt shoot back; and then the door opened and slammed to again; and a hurried footfall passed on the pavement. How like Ashley's step! An unaccountable terror came over me; what was he doing out so early?—but then I thought it might be Mr. Thomson, the lodger, who lived next door to me up-stairs, and who used sometimes to go out very early—before any one else was astir. He was a commission agent, as he called himself; an irreverent servant used to speak of him as "our commercial gent;" and, my brother, who had an artist's contempt for commerce in all its branches, always called him the bagman. He was a bold, coarse, good-looking man, with large roving eyes and long fingers; a man for whom I had an especial horror, partly because he would waylay me on the top landing when I went to bed, asking me all manner of things about my brother and his work, and who were his patrons, and what he got for such and such a picture, &c. He wished to pass himself off as knowing something about painting, and he knew as much of it as I did of algebra! Still, we had no right to dislike him as we did, and so I often said to James when we were alone.

Determined then that it should be Mr. Thomson who had gone out early, I tried to