Chapter XI: I Add the Last Touch to a Portrait

That same night, while undressing, with my room door open for the heat, I suddenly thought I distinguished an unwonted footstep on the landing below me, from which Patty’s little chamber led. I listened, quite still, for some moments; then, the stealthy sounds seeming to recede into the hall and thence die away, descended cat-footed to the landing, and, after hearkening an instant, opened her door swiftly and noiselessly upon my friend. Instantly I knew that the amazed suspicion which had sprung upon my heart was justified. The child stood before me, terror in her startled eyes, her dark hair falling upon her shoulders, a brush in one hand, a paper in the other.

“Diana!” she gasped, in a whisper. “What do you want?”

“Has he been with you?” I asked instantly, leaving her no time to prevaricate.

“_With_ me!” she exclaimed, so scandalised and incredulous that the worst of my qualm was laid on the spot.

Without another word I held out my hand. Without a word she put the paper into it. I took it, and read--

“Mignonette, Mignonette,
Of all flowers the pet,”--

(“O, shameful!” I whispered, and set my lips.)

“O, beautiful, beautiful, sweet Mignonette!
Dear, kind little blossom,
Soft, soft in the bosom,
Who gives to thee, takes from thee, sweet Mignonette?
Was it thou at her ear that shed sweets passing by me?
Is it thou in her shape, or herself that doth fly me?
Is it thou, is it she, Mignonette, Mignonette,
That I follow, must follow,
As the Summer the Spring,
Who hides warm in the wing
Of its darling the swallow?

As love chases the swallow
To the eaves and the leaves
High up under the roof,
Mignonette, so I follow.
Ah! to whose little chamber,
Sweetheart?
As I clamber,
I trow not, I know not
What dream flew before to the room high aloof.
But my heart pants delight
In the thought, half a fright,
Half delirious sweetness,
That the spirit of the flower,
That the spirit of the hour
Shall reveal love’s completeness.”

She was as pale as death and trembling all over as I looked up. For the moment my heart withered to her. The shock, the outrage was unendurable.

“Who wrote this?” I demanded, in a hoarse whisper.

She did not answer.

“Speak,” I said. “How did it come to you?”

“I heard it slipped under the door,” she muttered.

“By him? O, you little traitor and wanton!”

She fell on her knees, sobbing and clinging to me in a soft anguish of desperation.

“O, my dear, don’t look at me so! I’m not untrue to you. I never imagined it was me--no, not for one moment--till to-night.”

“And you are shocked, no doubt, to find your precious virtue at fault. O, you little serpent that I have trusted and warmed in my bosom!”

“Diana!” she wept, in a very frenzy of despair. “O, what can I say or do? I thought it was you. It shall be you, Diana!”

“Yes, it shall be me,” I answered, “but no thanks to you. Don’t think that this is anything but a passing mood of his, played upon you for my delectation because I have been cold to him of late.”

“I think it is, I know it is,” she said, brightening.

“And you hope it is, I daresay,” I said scornfully.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered. “There is no love in the world but yours that I care for, Diana!”

“Love!” I exclaimed. “Don’t flatter this poor half-breeched makeshift with the sentiment.”

But I looked down on her more kindly, with a vexed laugh. My good-humour was returning to me. It seemed too comical, the way we three pious spinsters were scrambling for the favour of a sheep’s-eyes. A pair of small-clothes flung into our nunnery had been worse than an apple of discord. Skirts were so _de rigueur_ with us, that I think even Gogo’s wooden legs seemed a little _outrés_.

“I do believe you were innocent, in everything but your cuddlesome looks,” I said, relenting.

“O yes, Diana!” she answered eagerly. “And I can’t help them.”

“Would you if you could?” I questioned doubtfully. “I don’t know. There is a good deal of method in artlessness. It can always plead itself in excuse for enjoying the pleasures which we sinners must take at the expense of our consciences.”

She knelt at my feet, silently fondling and kissing my hands.

“Are you sure you don’t regret giving him up?” I asked.

“Quite--sure,” she answered, so faintly as to set me off laughing.

“There, Patty _mia_,” I said; “you are not to be sacrificed to a self-indulgent vapours. You will see some day how kind I am being to you; and you shall have a large family yet.” And with that I kissed and left her, taking the paper with me.

I will admit that the shock to my vanity was for the moment acute, until reflection came to convince me that this rickety light-o’-love, wearying of his one day’s abstinence, and finding me inaccessible, had only palmed off on my friend the reversion of sentiments inspired by me. On further reflection, too, I was not the more angry upon realising that I had acquired a useful weapon for goading him to a definite decision upon an action long deferred--our flight together, that is to say, and, when once emancipated from the stunting influences of Wellcot, the union which, it was understood, was to be conditional on his satisfying me that his ambitions and mine were mutually accommodating partners. But now, if for no other reason, I felt that I owed it to my affection for my poor little friend to precipitate this step, lest she should be led, through her natural incapacity for denying anyone, to making herself miserable for life; and so, armed with my _pièce de conviction_, I ended by sleeping very soundly and comfortably.

I did not even hesitate the next morning, but, about noon, singing very cheerfully to myself, descended to Mr. de Crespigny’s studio. The door was locked. “Open, please,” I said.

“Go away,” he answered crossly. “I’m at work on the portrait.”

“Yes?” I said; “but I want to come in.”

Perhaps there was something in my tone. Anyhow, after a short interval, during which I heard him wheeling his easel about, he unlocked the door himself. I marched straight in, and, quite radiant, nodded to Gogo, who, busy in a corner, gazed at me with a sort of gloomy alarm.

“Mayn’t I look?” I said, smiling.

“No!” said de Crespigny sharply.

I went and held the paper under his nose.

“Didn’t you slip this under the wrong door last night?” I asked calmly.

“There!” growled Gogo, and throwing down his tools faced about furiously.

De Crespigny’s face went mottled, and he began to shake all over. Then suddenly he rallied, and flamed on me, stuttering.

“Wha-what right have you to ask? I may address whom I like, without requesting your leave. My-my lady shall be informed what spies she’s got in her house.”

“You ass!” roared Gogo.

“From me--yes,” I said. “I’m going straight to tell her.”

Gogo stumped fiercely, and put himself between me and the door. His master collapsed like a pricked bladder.

“You’ll ruin yourself,” he gasped, between tears and bullying. “If you ruin me, you come down too--don’t forget that.”

“O, in a noble cause!” I said mockingly: “to open the eyes of my mistress and my friend.”

He stamped about in a little impotent frenzy, then came and almost prostrated himself before me.

“I--I thought you’d forsaken me,” he cried; “I swear I did, Di; and--and I was as miserable as a dog, and wanted sympathy, I did, in this cursed strait-laced nunnery. Don’t tell on me--don’t; and I’ll go on with your picture here and now.”

In a fever of trepidation, he hurried from me, calling on me not to go, and fetched the canvas from the press and brought it to me.

“See,” he said, “you little injured innocent--yes, you was quite right to be hurt; but--but it’s you I love, Di--it really is--and”--

The canvas fell from his hand. He stood, gaping, as if in the first shock of a stroke. And I turned; and there was madam standing in our midst, every atom of colour gone from her face.

There are some situations, my Alcide, that can only be ended brutally. I don’t know what deadly instinct drove me to the portrait; but to it I ran, and turned it with the easel about. Then, I declare, I felt as if I had committed murder. The wretch, with what fatal purpose I could not tell, had done nothing less than mutilate his own inspiration. In place of the lovely roses of yesterday was the worn, haggard woman of to-day, and the harp in her lap was a tangle of broken strings.

I felt for her. Looking in her face, I almost repented my part. There was a dreadful smile on it, as she went very quiet and breathless, and lifted the “Una” from the ground.

“It is very pretty,” she said, “but hardly proper to a child of the Good Shepherd.”

Then I hated her as I had never done before, and rejoiced in her downfall.

“I was looking for you, Diana,” she said, in her straitened tones, “and heard your voice here. Will you come with me, please?”

And so she went out, deigning not one look at that insult of her own face, nor one word to the hangdog perpetrator of it. She went out, as cold as ice, and I saw Gogo, standing by the door, droop his head as she passed. Tingling with the joy of battle, I followed her. I knew that my long martyrdom was nearing its end.

Outside in the hall she turned to me, quite stiff--I wondered how her limp corsets could support so much dignity--and bade me retire to my room till she should send for me.

“And if it is to find you on your knees,” she said, “why, by so much will the duty I have to perform be made the easier.”

Well, to do her justice, I believe that her heart was as near broken as one can be.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I answered. “Do you want to flog me? ’Twould scarce improve your case, I think, with Mr. de Crespigny.”

I ran up lightly, humming to myself. I heard her give a little gasp, and then go on her way to the parlour. Nobody came near me while I waited, until, in a little while, a servant knocked, to summon me. I went down at once, as jaunty as you please. Father Pope was with her, I saw, as I entered the room.

“I wonder how much of the truth she has told him?” I thought.

She was seated, perfectly colourless, while her companion stood, lowering and uneasy, by a table hard by. She bent a little forward, drawing her breath, I fancied, with difficulty, and addressed me at once.

“You have asked pardon of God, I hope?”

I tossed my head.

“For what, madam? What have I done?”

She appealed to the priest, with a little momentary helpless gesture; then bit her thin lips, as if stung by his silent perversity to resolution.

“For the deceit you have long practised on us,” she said.

“O, madam,” I answered, “do you refer to the gentleman’s attentions to me? I could hardly be so immodest as to confess of them to you, when I did not even know to what end they were advanced.”

She held up her hand dully.

“I allude to your privately sitting to him for--for that--for his model,” she said.

“Why, I had my respected example, madam,” said I. “I didn’t know but what we were expected to accommodate the gentleman, seeing you yourself gave us the lead.”

She rose quickly, striking her hand on the table.

“To make of yourself, pledged to Heaven, a shame and a wanton in his eyes! O, ’twas infamous!--Not that,” she checked herself hurriedly, “I blame him--not altogether. Art is a strange creditor, that makes demands, scarce comprehensible to us, upon those who practise it. But, _you_”--

“Are you blaming _me_, madam,” I cried, “because he has not paid _you_ to your liking?”

She turned away, as if quite sick. Father Pope took up the tale.

“Silence!” he roared, “you little dirty liar and trollop!”

“O, no doubt!” I piped him back, “because I rejected _your_ attentions.”

He took a step forward, his great fist clenched, his glasses blazing. I don’t know how he might not have forgotten himself, had not Lady Sophia come quickly between.

“Hush!” she said. “It is all to end here, Father.” She turned quietly on me. “Father Pope is, I am sorry to say, justified. You have deceived us in more things than one, Diana. It is not so long, I must tell you, since I heard from the Sisters of les Madelonnettes that your original story of your unhappy mother’s death was false, she having but a few months ago returned penitent and broken to die in the very convent she had so shamed and disgraced.”

I gazed at her, bewildered, for an instant, and then, as the truth penetrated me, with a horror and passion beyond control.

“O,” I cried, “this is too much! And I believed her long dead of grief; and you never told me--never let me see her: and I think you are the wickedest woman in the world!”

She stood staring at me, silent, as if stricken.

“_Cave anguem!_” sneered the priest, with a brutal laugh.

I turned upon the pale woman with a furious stamp.

“Why did you never let me know? How dared you keep it from me? I will go to law about it and have you hanged!”

“If I could have thought”--she began, in a whisper; “if I have by chance done wrong”--

“Wrong!” I cried violently, “you have done me nothing but wrong since I came here. You have always misunderstood and disbelieved in me; and now, it seems, you had no right to adopt me at all.”

I ended with a torrent of tears.

“I want to leave you,” I sobbed; “I want to go away into the convent, and be at peace where no one can hate and slander me.”

“Ha!” said Father Pope, moving, and hunching his shoulders, “then there our wishes jump, and no time like the present. So go collect your duds.”

“Diana!” whispered madam again, in her stunned way, and made a little movement towards me. But I shrunk from her, shivering.

“No, don’t touch me--_please_,” I said. “I’ll go to the Sisters, who’ll be kind to me. I’ll do anything you want--only not stop here.”

I saw her put her hand to her heart as I tottered from the room. Then I ran upstairs, and hurried to put some little properties together.

I quite acquiesced in the movement--was eager to hasten it, in fact. The truth is, that, of Wellcot and the convent, the latter appeared to me by far the less formidable as a present asylum. Any further meeting here between me and Noel was rendered virtually impossible; nor was it likely that the outraged spinster would prove so accommodating to our purposes as the artless little fatties across the valley. One need have no fear of being buried alive in a dovecot.

While I was hastily collecting a few necessaries, my sweet girl crept in, and made a little sweet nuisance of herself, distressing and impeding me.

“There, dearest,” I said, as I wrought preoccupied, “you are the best of loving chickens, and I shall have plenty of use for you by and by. Only at present--there, don’t pout--I am too jubilant in the prospect of escape to cling and kiss and cry with you. I’m not going to Land’s End, only across the way; and mind, no more communications from a certain gentleman, miss, unless on my behalf.”

She promised, with new floods of tears.

“Then,” I said, pushing her playfully away, “find me my vinaigrette, child. Father Pope is going to convey me in the carriage.”