CHAPTER III.
IT so happened that as Anne Brown was walking quickly home she was overtaken by Melton Perry.
“What’s that book, Annie?” he inquired, as they walked side by side.
“Mr Hamlin gave it me—it’s his poems.”
“Let me see.” Perry was more peremptory than usual.
He turned over the leaves as they went along, and then returned it to her.
“You may read that,” he said—“it’s sad trash, but you may read it. All poetry isn’t fit for women to read,” he added, by way of explanation.
The gift of this book somehow disturbed Perry’s equanimity.
page: 137“What made him give you that book?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir. We were talking about the ‘Vita Nuova.’”
“A lot of confounded medieval twaddle,” cried Perry. “Why don’t you read ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’ or ‘The Heir of Redclyffe’? that’s the right sort of thing.”
She seemed hurt, and they were silent. Suddenly Perry said, with some roughness—
“I’m sorry to inconvenience Hamlin, but this will be the last of the sittings. I am going to send you to the sea‐side with the children in a day or two. Little May needs change of air. When you return, Mr Hamlin will be leaving Florence.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Anne Brown; and a kind of suppressed spasm passed across her face.
Perry saw it.
“It’s high time,” he said to himself.
Melton Perry could not screw up his courage page: 138 till he and his wife and Hamlin had already finished dinner that evening.
“I say, Hamlin,” he began, lighting his pipe, while Mrs Perry artistically twisted a cigarette in her long brown fingers—“d’you think you could finish off that picture with only one more sitting? I’m sure Mrs Perry thinks it is time for the children to go down to the sea‐side—only, of course, she doesn’t like disturbing you in your work.”
“Go down to the sea‐side!” exclaimed Mrs Perry, not at all mollified by her husband’s deference; “who talks of going to the seaside? and what has that to do with his work?”
“You forget, my dear, that you said this morning that May requires change of air—and, of course, Annie will be required to take the children down to Viareggio. I am extremely sorry for you, old fellow, but I fear you must finish that picture—at least so far as Annie is concerned—by the beginning of next week.”
“I see,” answered Hamlin, briefly. For the first time in his life almost, he felt angry with page: 139 his old friend; an unspeakable resentment at this interference with what he considered already as his.
“I see nothing of the sort,” burst out Mrs Perry; “I will never, never permit dear Hamlin’s masterpiece to be spoilt. I would rather take the children to the sea‐side myself—oh yes. I would rather they did not go at all. My children are the dearest things I possess, but I have no right selfishly to prefer their welfare to the completion of such a picture. I should never forgive myself. That unfinished picture, that strange, terrible Venus, would haunt me in my dreams, and I should hear the whole world asking me, ‘What have you done with a thing meant for our joy?’”
“Bosh!” cried Perry, stretching out his legs and puffing at his pipe—“rubbish! A fine thing if May gets low fever again: much you’ll think of Hamlin’s masterpiece then.”
“May shall not have fever,” answered Mrs Perry, haughtily; “and Hamlin’s masterpiece, which you choose to sneer at—”
page: 140“Oh, please, don’t bother about my masterpieces!” interposed Hamlin.
“—Shall not be sacrificed. You shall take the children to the sea‐side, Melton; and Annie shall continue to give him as many sittings as he may wish.” And then, passing over her husband’s nauseous existence, she began a mellifluous and irrelevant conversation with Hamlin across him.
But after two or three minutes Perry could stand it no longer.
“Damn your sea‐side!” he suddenly burst out.
“Melton!” shrieked Mrs Perry, falling back on her chair.
“Damn your sea‐side!” repeated Perry. “Haven’t you eyes in your head to understand that the sea‐side has nothing to do with the matter? The children no more require to go to Viareggio than I require to be made Khan of Tartary. What is required is that an honest girl, who was intrusted to us by an old friend, should not get to be talked of as a—”
page: 141“This loathsome coarseness is too much for me. Adieu, Mr Hamlin!” and Mrs Perry flounced out of the room.
“Lord deliver us from womankind!” exclaimed Perry, as the door shut upon his wife, and he fell back in his chair. “What a nice breakfast I shall have to‐morrow!”
Hamlin did not answer, but merely lit another cigarette, and looked into the smouldering fire.
“Hamlin, old boy,” resumed Perry, “don’t be down upon me. I really am confoundedly sorry to bother you—indeed I am; but—you see—about this girl—”
“I understand,” answered Hamlin, shortly; “don’t let’s talk about it.”
“But—please don’t be in a rage with me, Watty,” cried Perry, appealingly; “really I don’t know what to do. You see, it’s not as if she were an ordinary girl or an ordinary servant; then I should say—hang it, please yourself!”
“Sweet morals!” sneered Hamlin.
page: 142“But with her it’s different; I’m sure you must recognise that yourself. Now I don’t mean to say you are in the least to blame, or that the girl cares the least scrap about you; but still, this sort of thing won’t do. I know you’re the last man to do a dirty thing—indeed you’re the only man whom I would have permitted to go on so long. But then, quite without meaning anything, all that sitting, and talking, and discussing poetry and ‘Vita Nuova’ together—without knowing it, it puts ideas into a girl’s head, makes her dissatisfied, that sort of thing, and the result is that she goes to the bad. And then, here in Florence especially, a girl’s none the better looked at for having sat, if even only to one man. People begin to talk (at the villa it was another matter), stories go round, and it becomes difficult for her to get a respectable situation.”
“You needn’t say any more,” cried Hamlin, with almost feminine impatience. All this gave him a sense of moral nausea.
“You understand, old fellow, I don’t mean page: 143 it about you in particular,” persisted Perry; “indeed you’ve behaved like Sir Bors, Sir Percival, and Sir Galahad all rolled into one. But it’s the fatality of the circumstances, the beastly world about us. You’re not angry, are you, with me?”
“Not a bit,” answered Hamlin, quietly, minutely examining one of the pictures on the wall, which was not worth looking at, and had been thoroughly looked at by him already; “not a bit, my dear Perry. I suppose you have no objection to Miss Brown giving me one more morning?”
“Not the least—two, or even three, for the matter of that. I was only anxious not to spin out things indefinitely.”
“One more sitting will be more than enough,” answered Hamlin. “By the way, before I go, I want to do a drawing of little Mildred.”
