Oh, THEY were determined not to do this; and their touching patience was the measure of their great need.They would sit by the hour, uncomplaining, till I was ready to use them; they would come back on the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if they were not.I used to go to the door with them to see in what magnificent order they retreated.I tried to find other employment for them--I introduced them to several artists.But they didn't "take," for reasons I could appreciate, and I became conscious, rather anxiously, that after such disappointments they fell back upon me with a heavier weight.They did me the honour to think that it was I who was most THEIR form.They were not picturesque enough for the painters, and in those days there were not so many serious workers in black and white.Besides, they had an eye to the great job I had mentioned to them--they had secretly set their hearts on supplying the right essence for my pictorial vindication of our fine novelist.They knew that for this undertaking I should want no costume-effects, none of the frippery of past ages--that it was a case in which everything would be contemporary and satirical and, presumably, genteel.If I could work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour would of course be long and the occupation steady.
One day Mrs.Monarch came without her husband--she explained his absence by his having had to go to the City.While she sat there in her usual anxious stiffness there came, at the door, a knock which Iimmediately recognised as the subdued appeal of a model out of work.
It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I easily perceived to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian acquainted with no English word but my name, which he uttered in a way that made it seem to include all others.I had not then visited his country, nor was I proficient in his tongue; but as he was not so meanly constituted--what Italian is?--as to depend only on that member for expression he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the employment in which the lady before me was engaged.I was not struck with him at first, and while I continued to draw I emitted rough sounds of discouragement and dismissal.He stood his ground, however, not importunately, but with a dumb, dog-like fidelity in his eyes which amounted to innocent impudence--the manner of a devoted servant (he might have been in the house for years), unjustly suspected.Suddenly I saw that this very attitude and expression made a picture, whereupon I told him to sit down and wait till I should be free.There was another picture in the way he obeyed me, and I observed as I worked that there were others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with his head thrown back, about the high studio.He might have been crossing himself in St.Peter's.Before I finished I said to myself: "The fellow's a bankrupt orange-monger, but he's a treasure."When Mrs.Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to open the door for her, standing there with the rapt, pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice.As I never insisted, in such situations, on the blankness of the British domestic, Ireflected that he had the making of a servant (and I needed one, but couldn't pay him to be only that), as well as of a model; in short Imade up my mind to adopt my bright adventurer if he would agree to officiate in the double capacity.He jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashness (for I had known nothing about him), was not brought home to me.He proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose.
It was uncultivated, instinctive; a part of the happy instinct which had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it.He had had no other introduction to me than a guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist.
He had wandered to England in search of fortune, like other itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small green handcart, on the sale of penny ices.The ices had melted away and the partner had dissolved in their train.My young man wore tight yellow trousers with reddish stripes and his name was Oronte.He was sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old clothes of my own he looked like an Englishman.He was as good as Miss Churm, who could look, when required, like an Italian.
