The Real Thing | Page 4

a "sunk" piece of
painting, as well as of a vague allusion to vanished beauty. She was as
tall and straight, in her degree, as her companion, and with ten years
less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look whose face was
not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask showed
friction as an exposed surface shows it. The hand of time had played
over her freely, but only to simplify. She was slim and stiff, and so
well-dressed, in dark blue cloth, with lappets and pockets and buttons,
that it was clear she employed the same tailor as her husband. The
couple had an indefinable air of prosperous thrift--they evidently got a
good deal of luxury for their money. If I was to be one of their luxuries
it would behove me to consider my terms.
"Ah, Claude Rivet recommended me?" I inquired; and I added that it
was very kind of him, though I could reflect that, as he only painted
landscape, this was not a sacrifice.
The lady looked very hard at the gentleman, and the gentleman looked
round the room. Then staring at the floor a moment and stroking his
moustache, he rested his pleasant eyes on me with the remark:
"He said you were the right one."
"I try to be, when people want to sit."
"Yes, we should like to," said the lady anxiously.
"Do you mean together?"
My visitors exchanged a glance. "If you could do anything with ME, I
suppose it would be double," the gentleman stammered.
"Oh yes, there's naturally a higher charge for two figures than for one."

"We should like to make it pay," the husband confessed.
"That's very good of you," I returned, appreciating so unwonted a
sympathy--for I supposed he meant pay the artist.
A sense of strangeness seemed to dawn on the lady. "We mean for the
illustrations--Mr Rivet said you might put one in."
"Put one in--an illustration?" I was equally confused.
"Sketch her off, you know," said the gentleman, colouring.
It was only then that I understood the service Claude Rivet had
rendered me; he had told them that I worked in black and white, for
magazines, for story-books, for sketches of contemporary life, and
consequently had frequent employment for models. These things were
true, but it was not less true (I may confess it now--whether because the
aspiration was to lead to everything or to nothing I leave the reader to
guess), that I couldn't get the honours, to say nothing of the
emoluments, of a great painter of portraits out of my head. My
"illustrations" were my pot-boilers; I looked to a different branch of art
(far and away the most interesting it had always seemed to me), to
perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in looking to it also to make
my fortune; but that fortune was by so much further from being made
from the moment my visitors wished to be "done" for nothing. I was
disappointed; for in the pictorial sense I had immediately SEEN them. I
had seized their type--I had already settled what I would do with it.
Something that wouldn't absolutely have pleased them, I afterwards
reflected.
"Ah, you're--you're--a--?" I began, as soon as I had mastered my
surprise. I couldn't bring out the dingy word "models"; it seemed to fit
the case so little.
"We haven't had much practice," said the lady.
"We've got to DO something, and we've thought that an artist in your
line might perhaps make something of us," her husband threw off. He
further mentioned that they didn't know many artists and that they had
gone first, on the off-chance (he painted views of course, but
sometimes put in figures--perhaps I remembered), to Mr. Rivet, whom
they had met a few years before at a place in Norfolk where he was
sketching.
"We used to sketch a little ourselves," the lady hinted.
"It's very awkward, but we absolutely MUST do something," her

husband went on.
"Of course, we're not so VERY young," she admitted, with a wan
smile.
With the remark that I might as well know something more about them,
the husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocket-
book (their appurtenances were all of the freshest) and inscribed with
the words "Major Monarch." Impressive as these words were they
didn't carry my knowledge much further; but my visitor presently
added: "I've left the army, and we've had the misfortune to lose our
money. In fact our means are dreadfully small."
"It's an awful bore," said Mrs. Monarch.
They evidently wished to be discreet--to take care not to swagger
because they were gentlefolks. I perceived they would have been
willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same