COLOUR
Circumstances sometimes make us virtuous against our will.
George Morris was pottering about at the back of the dusty, dingy little picture shop, while the dealer had gone to fetch the picture backing George had come in for, when he noticed set away on a shelf a little sketch and paused before it fascinated. It was a most attractive little thing, all red: everything in it was a delightful warm, rich, glowing crimson. The background was red—the interior of a room full of firelight. A bed hung with red curtains occupied the centre with an undraped woman’s figure of the loveliest lines, getting into it: one ivory knee pressed the side of the bed: her fair hair, glinting with red in the firelight, fell over her shoulders and her rounded arm, uplifted to draw aside the curtain. Underneath the picture was written the one word, “RUBY.”
George Morris, city man, living in the suburbs with Mrs. Morris in the dull, solid round of English existence, felt his heart leap up suddenly in response to the call of the picture. Under a plain, prosaic exterior this man had a deep natural love for romance, a thirst for adventure, a longing for the “wine, woman and song” that seemed never to form a part of his humdrum life. He thought of Mrs. Morris and her dull, plain face and the ginger-brown gown she seemed to live in. Why did she always wear brown, he wondered? Why not red, for instance? He thought of their bedroom at Meadow View, Mervyn Road: its linoleum floor, its iron bedstead, its white walls, its narrow grate filled with tissue paper and never guilty of a fire. In fact, it was always so cold that Maria Morris wore very thick nightgowns and woolly jackets to keep warm, and the electric light was so expensive now that she would hardly allow it to be used upstairs, and always said they could just as well undress in the dark.
George sighed. Why was Maria like that and his bedroom like that? Why should he not have a rich, warm, red room like this ... and ... and...?
“There you are, sir: the best three-ply there is for picture backing.”
George turned round with a start. He had quite forgotten his errand.
The dealer was peering at him through his spectacles, the thin wood in his hand.
“Er—ah!—thank you very much,” he stammered. “Er—this picture here—what price is it?” He indicated the little red sketch.
“Oh, that’s not for sale,” replied the man. “It’s just a bit an artist brought in to show me. He’s painting quite a big picture. It’s for the Salon, I believe.”
“Oh,” murmured George, “not for the Academy?” He felt disappointed he couldn’t buy the sketch, and if the picture was going to Paris he would never see it again.
The dealer shook his head doubtfully. “No. I think not. Colour’s a bit too warm for England, I should say.”
The door bell sprang at the moment, and the dealer looked round a pile of frames into the front shop.
“Why, here is Mr. Brookes himself!” he exclaimed. And George saw a tall slight young man with the artist’s slouch-hat and a flowing tie come in and nod to the shopman. “There’s a gentleman here admiring your picture,” the latter said, and George approached him eagerly.
“I do indeed,” he said. “It’s a wonderful picture. I’m sorry I won’t ever see the big one.”
The artist flushed with pleasure. “You can come and see it now, if you like,” he said in a pleased tone. “My shanty’s only a stone’s throw from here; two tubes of purple madder, please, Smith, and chalk them up, will you? I haven’t a cent on me.”
George’s heart beat. A visit to a real studio with an artist to see this glorious red picture! He accepted at once. What a comfort that Maria had always been out to tea lately and there was no need for him to hurry back.
When the artist had got his paints and George had paid for his purchase, they left the shop together and walked to the studio.
It was in a side street, and you went down a long slope from the pavement to a wooden door which the artist opened with his latchkey, and George walked through a small passage into a great, untidy, comfortable room that, with its hint of gaiety and dissolute romance, delighted him. There were deep chairs everywhere, a huge dais in one corner all draped in gorgeous red, a stove in the centre glowing hot, a deep cushioned semi-circular lounge half round it. One corner of the room was walled off with voluminous blue curtains to form the artist’s bedroom. The whole end of the room farthest from this was window, but it only looked into a quiet green garden with high walls round affording complete seclusion. There was a delightful litter of pictures all about, a mass of flowers by the sunny window, an aviary of singing birds, soft Turkey rugs on the floor, and the perfume of scented cigarettes in the air. George liked it. He liked it much better than the stiff drawing room with the starched white curtains and high hard chairs of Meadow View.
The artist drew forward two big chairs and then, going to the dais pulled on a cord. The curtains flew apart and there was the picture! Then he threw himself into one of the chairs while George took the other, and the two men gazed at the canvas in silence.
“Wonderful woman she is,” remarked the artist after a minute between the puffs of his cigarette. “Bit of a mystery. Calls herself Mrs. Brown, but don’t believe that’s her real name. Can’t make out what she’s doing it for: whether it’s the money or for the fun of it; little of both, perhaps. She’s not a regular model evidently, but she’s one of the best I ever had. Good figure, isn’t it?”
“Oh, perfect, perfect!” replied George rapturously. He couldn’t take his eyes off the picture. He sat before it spellbound, clasping his British umbrella in both hands as it stood between his British knees gazing at the vivid, barbaric riot of beautiful colour and suggestion that appealed so to his romantic un-British heart. “What’s her face like?”
“Oh, nothing very much. Not a bad little face when she smiles and gets some colour; but you see I didn’t want the face for that picture.”
“No, quite so, quite so,” assented George.
“Larky woman, I should think,” went on the artist. “Married to a sort of dull brute of a husband—doesn’t care about her; leaves her alone all day.”
“Pig!” grunted George indignantly. “Can you imagine a man having a woman like that and neglecting her?”
The artist laughed.
“Well, marriage is a killing atmosphere. I don’t know what she may be at home, she’s amusing enough when she comes in here.”
“What do you know about her? Where did you meet her?”
“The funny part is I don’t know anything. She just walked in here one afternoon: said she was bored to death and had no romance or fun in her life, and no money of her own to spend. Said she’d sit as a model if I’d have her. I wasn’t much struck at first: she was rather badly dressed, you know; but we talked a little bit and I got rather interested. I’d had the idea for this picture for a long time, I hadn’t a model, and she was cheap and very willing to learn and be civil, which all of them are not, and so there it was. She’s been coming to me for quite a time now, and it’s good, the picture, isn’t it? I’m hoping it’ll make a big hit.”
George nodded. He was grasping his umbrella feverishly, his hands rolling and unrolling the silk flaps nervously. He would do it, he would. He’d have this one bit of romance in his life to cherish and look back upon.
He turned to the insouciant artist who, with his head tilted back and the cigarette in his teeth and his leg hanging over one arm of the chair, was contemplating his work with satisfaction through half-closed eyes.
“I think I heard you say in that shop you were a little pressed for ready money,” he said in his rather stiff way.
The artist laughed. “Dead broke, my dear sir, that’s what I am! Why? Are you thinking of making me an offer for the picture?”
George leant nearer him.
“The picture’s good,” he said hoarsely, for his throat felt dry, “but it’s the woman I want. Do you want to make twenty pounds? Well, here’s your chance. Get her for me. Get her here. Lend me the studio for a few hours. Fix up those red curtains, have it just like the picture, red lights, red fire, red roses, red everything. Get her posing just like that, mind, just like that; then you clear out and leave us alone.”
The artist was sitting bolt upright now staring at Mr. George Morris as if he could not believe his eyes or his ears, as indeed he could not. Was this really the very respectable old party he had met in the shop? His eyes were glowing, his face flushed. He looked almost young and handsome. What an astounding proposition from such an orthodox-looking old Briton! Still, twenty pounds....
“But I don’t suppose for one minute she’d consent,” he said after an astonished pause of reflection.
George made an angry movement of impatience.
“Unless you muddle things,” he said, “she won’t know anything about it. You won’t ask her anything.”
“But I don’t see....” began the other.
“Look here. You get the lady to come to an ordinary sitting; just as usual. You fix up everything, just as it is there, as you always do, I suppose. I’m waiting behind those curtains there. Then you get her to pose just like that: you step back to get something, brush or what-not. You slip behind the curtains and then clear out of the studio and I am left in your place. What’s to prevent you doing that?”
“Nothing. Only it seems rather a bad trick for me to play her and she may disappoint you, she may....”
“Never mind,” returned George calmly now. “If I muddle my own affairs when you leave us that’s my business; nothing to do with you. You get your twenty all the same.”
“When?” asked the artist dubiously.
“When I look through those curtains,” returned George intimating the artist’s walled-off bedroom behind them, “and see this picture in life. When you pass me to go out I’ll slip the notes into your hand.”
Mr. James Brookes looked down on the floor in silent thought. He didn’t like the idea at all. Still, he was very hard up and perhaps his model would not mind. She seemed very good natured. He could pass it off as a practical joke.
“I don’t half like it,” he said after a minute. “Still, I’ll do it.”
“When?”
“Day after to-morrow she’s coming—four to six. You’d better be here by three-thirty, so there’s no chance of her seeing you come in.”
George got up with a strange fire of joy in his heart. Here was romance, intrigue, adventure, coming into his life at last!
He cast his eyes round the studio with its inviting air of ease, its bright colours, its luxury, which seemed to belie, or was it the cause of its owner’s poverty?
“I envy you your life,” he said, buttoning up his coat and gazing at the innumerable portraits of brunettes and blondes on the studio walls. “There must be so much beauty, poetry, colour in it, novelty, change.” And he sighed, thinking of his eighteen years at Meadow View with Maria.
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned the artist. “One gets sick of it, you know; so many women and all jealous and squabbling with one another. One longs sometimes for a home and a little peace and quietness.”
“What a pity we can’t change places,” mused George as he walked home thinking over the artist’s words. Then he fell to wondering what the model’s face would be like. “A nice little face when she smiles and gets some colour,” the artist had said, and it rather took his fancy. Ruby! It was a sweet name! And she, like himself, was sighing for romance in her life, was evidently just as lonely and unappreciated as he was. By the time he got back to Mervyn Road, his face had assumed its usual chastened expression.
Maria seemed rather more dull and sour than usual.
“Why didn’t you come back to tea?” she enquired.
George flushed.
“You have been out so often to tea lately,” he said.
“Well, I wasn’t to-day,” she snapped. “You might let me know when you’re not coming home till dinner.”
“I’ll be at the office late, I know, the day after to-morrow,” replied George, trying to speak naturally, but getting redder and redder.
“All right,” returned Maria, “I’m glad to know it. I’ll go and have tea with Aunt Emma.”
“Do, my dear, and I’ll get back in time for dinner.”
“I should hope so,” rejoined Maria.
George was amiability itself that evening. The glow of the picture had got into his heart and warmed it, and that night he could not sleep for thinking of it. What might not this adventure lead up to? He had heard of men who had cosy little flats, the existence of which was unknown to their lawful wives. He had always thought this very wrong, but now he began to feel sympathy with those men. Perhaps, like himself they had dull, unsympathetic wives; perhaps they, too, were yearning after colour in their lives. A little flat and all furnished in red, which could be kept very warm so that its occupant could wear those nice pink and blue things he saw in the windows of the Burlington Arcade, and dispense with woolly jackets. Silk stockings, too! He had often thought it would be nice to have someone to take those neat boxes of silk stockings home to that he saw on the counter of men’s shops when he went to buy his ties. He had never thought of Maria. Silk stockings didn’t go with Meadow View—they went with little flats. Of course, it might be rather expensive, but then, why should he not spend something on his own amusements? He was very liberal with Maria. She was always buying new hats. Now last year, she had had—how many? There was the hat with the green feathers, and—er—er the hat with the green feathers, and—and—the hat with the green feathers. Well, there, he couldn’t think of any other hat, so he supposed she had had only one last year, and finally, trying to find another hat for Maria, he fell asleep.
The great day came and with a beating heart, Mr. George Morris left his office early and hurried to the studio, arriving there some minutes before the appointed time. The artist let him in himself, and George thought the studio looked more attractive than ever. The sun was streaming through the lowered red blinds, the stove was burning brightly, there were flowers on the many little tables and a heavy fragrance from burning pastilles in the air. He was quite sorry to have to go into the dark recesses of the bedroom in the corner, but his host insisted on it and gave him a chair well back against the wall away from the curtain. He gave him a paper, but as it was too dark to read there with any comfort and he was strictly enjoined not to make the faintest noise, so that he could not turn its pages, it was obvious the paper was not much use to him. And how could anyone read in that state of high-strung expectation in which Mr. George Morris now found himself?
After sitting there alone in the obscurity for what seemed an interminable time, he heard a ring at the main door and the artist going out to answer it. They seemed to linger a long time at the door and he thought he heard some ripples of laughter that set all his pulses beating. Then he heard the studio door open and evidently two persons entering. But he was disappointed that he could not hear their conversation, hardly their voices through the muffling folds of the heavy curtains. He was afraid to leave his seat and approach nearer the curtains for fear lest some noise of his movement might betray him. The model’s ears might be sharper than his own. There was quite a long pause of silence, and he wondered what they were doing. Perhaps the model was undressing. Then he heard the moving of furniture and supposed the scene was being arranged. The heavy bed with its elaborate red drapery that figured in the picture had to be pushed to its right position on the dais. He sat impatiently on his chair, the notes all ready in his hand to be given to the artist in that blissful moment when he should pass by him on his way out, leaving him alone with the adorable model.
At last his host’s light step approached the other side of the curtains, a hand was laid on them, and he heard his voice say: “I’ll just fetch that tube,” and then the curtains were pulled apart.
Morris sprang to his feet and stood spellbound. There was the lovely picture in the life, the warm interior, the gorgeous bed, the crimson lights and in the centre, the feminine figure of lovely whiteness with the flowing hair in the pose of just getting into bed.
The artist passed swiftly by him, pulled the notes out of George’s nerveless hand as he stood there staring, then passed on noiselessly to the door which he closed behind him with the faintest click. Faint though it was, it came to George’s ears and roused him. He was alone—the room, the scene, the model was his! With outstretched arm he rushed forward to clasp this beauty, this dream, this delight to him. He reached the dais. His arms were almost round her lovely shoulders when the model turned.
A shriek rang through the studio: “George!”
“Maria!”