your master is in affluent circumstances.”
She shook her head emphatically, and said something that I failed to catch.
“You wish to indicate,” I hazarded, “that he married a fortune.”
This time I caught the words. They were “Tinned meats,” and having uttered them she lapsed into gloomy silence.
“Nevertheless,” I said, “this room must have cost a pretty penny.”
“She done it all herself,” replied my new friend, with concentrated scorn.
“But this green floor, so beautifully stained—”
“Boiling oil,” said she, with a flush of honest shame, “and a shillingsworth o' paint.”
“Those rugs—”
“Remnants,” she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had been pieced together.
“The curtains—”
“Remnants.”
“At all events the sofa—”
She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built of packing cases.
“The desk—”
I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not see the drawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf for books, the pigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?
“She made it out of three orange boxes,” said the lady, at last a little awed herself.
I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on the holland covering. “There is a fine chandelier in that holland bag,” I said coaxingly.
She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her. “Forbear, ma'am,” I cried with authority, “I prefer to believe in that bag. How much to be pitied, ma'am, are those who have lost faith in everything.” I think all the pretty things that the little nursery governess had made out of nothing squeezed my hand for letting the chandelier off.
“But, good God, ma'am,” said I to madam, “what an exposure.”
She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.
“So there is a stair,” said I, and then, suspiciously, “did she make it?”
No, but how she had altered it.
The stair led to Mary's bedroom, and I said I would not look at that, nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.
“Did she build the studio with her own hands?”
No, but how she had altered it.
“How she alters everything,” I said. “Do you think you are safe, ma'am?”
She thawed a little under my obvious sympathy and honoured me with some of her views and confidences. The rental paid by Mary and her husband was not, it appeared, one on which any self-respecting domestic could reflect with pride. They got the house very cheap on the understanding that they were to vacate it promptly if anyone bought it for building purposes, and because they paid so little they had to submit to the indignity of the notice-board. Mary A—— detested the words “This space to be sold,” and had been known to shake her fist at them. She was as elated about her house as if it were a real house, and always trembled when any possible purchaser of spaces called.
As I have told you my own aphorism I feel I ought in fairness to record that of this aggrieved servant. It was on the subject of art. “The difficulty,” she said, “is not to paint pictures, but to get frames for them.” A home thrust this.
She could not honestly say that she thought much of her master's work. Nor, apparently, did any other person. Result, tinned meats.
Yes, one person thought a deal of it, or pretended to do so; was constantly flinging up her hands in delight over it; had even been caught whispering fiercely to a friend, “Praise it, praise it, praise it!” This was when the painter was sunk in gloom. Never, as I could well believe, was such a one as Mary for luring a man back to cheerfulness.
“A dangerous woman,” I said, with a shudder, and fell to examining a painting over the mantel-shelf. It was a portrait of a man, and had impressed me favourably because it was framed.
“A friend of hers,” my guide informed me, “but I never seed him.”
I would have turned away from it, had not an inscription on the picture drawn me nearer. It was in a lady's handwriting, and these were the words: “Fancy portrait of our dear unknown.” Could it be meant for me? I cannot tell you how interested I suddenly became.
It represented a very fine looking fellow, indeed, and not a day more than thirty.
“A friend of hers, ma'am, did you say?” I asked quite shakily. “How do you know that, if you have never seen him?”
“When master was painting of it,” she said, “in the studio, he used to come running in here to say to her such like as, 'What colour would you make his eyes?'”
“And her reply, ma'am?” I asked eagerly.
“She said, 'Beautiful blue eyes.' And he said, 'You wouldn't make it a handsome face, would you?' and she says, 'A very handsome face.' And says he, 'Middle-aged?' and says she, 'Twenty-nine.' And I mind him saying, 'A little bald on the top?' and she says, says she, 'Not at all.'”
The dear, grateful girl, not to make me bald on the top.
“I have seed her kiss her hand to that picture,” said the maid.
Fancy Mary kissing her hand to me! Oh, the pretty love!
Pooh!
I was staring at the picture, cogitating what insulting message I could write on it, when I heard the woman's voice again. “I think she has known him since she were a babby,” she was saying, “for this here was a present he give her.”
She was on her knees drawing the doll's house from beneath the sofa, where it had been hidden away; and immediately I thought, “I shall slip the insulting message into this.” But I did not, and I shall tell you why. It was because the engaging toy had been redecorated by loving hands; there were fresh gowns for all the inhabitants, and the paint on the furniture was scarcely dry. The little doll's house was almost ready for further use.
I looked at the maid, but her face was expressionless. “Put it back,” I said, ashamed to have surprised Mary's pretty secret, and I left the house dejectedly, with a profound conviction that the little nursery governess had hooked on to me again.
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