Mr. Gibbs entered. An artist stood at his easel.
"Mr. Bodenham?"
"I am Mr. Bodenham."
"I am Mr. Gibbs. I have just purchased your picture at the Academy, "St.i.tch! St.i.tch! St.i.tch!"" Mr. Bodenham bowed. "I--I wish to make a--a few inquiries about--about the picture."
Mr. Gibbs was as nervous as a schoolboy. He stammered and he blushed.
The artist seemed to be amused. He smiled.
"You wish to make a few inquiries about the picture--yes?"
"About the--about the subject of the picture. That is, about--about the model."
Mr. Gibbs became a peony red. The artist"s smile grew more p.r.o.nounced.
"About the model?"
"Yes, about the model. Where does she live?"
Although the day was comparatively cool, Mr. Gibbs was so hot that it became necessary for him to take out his handkerchief to wipe his brow.
Mr. Bodenham was a sunny-faced young man. He looked at his visitor with laughter in his eyes.
"You are aware, Mr. Gibbs, that yours is rather an unusual question. I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, and we artists are not in the habit of giving information about our models to perfect strangers.
It would not do. Moreover, how do you know that I painted from a model?
The faces in pictures are sometimes creations of the artist"s imagination. Perhaps oftener than the public think."
"I know the model in "St.i.tch! St.i.tch! St.i.tch!""
"You know her? Then why do you come to me for information?"
"I should have said that I knew her years ago."
Mr. Gibbs looked round the room a little doubtfully. Then he laid his hand on the back of a chair, as if for the support, moral and physical, which it afforded him. He looked at the artist with his big, grave eyes.
"As I say, Mr. Bodenham, I knew her years ago--and I loved her."
There was a catch in his voice. The artist seemed to be growing more and more amused. Mr. Gibbs went on:
"I was a younger man then. She was but a girl. We both of us were poor.
We loved each other dearly. We agreed that I should go abroad and make my fortune. When I had made it, I was to come back to her."
The big man paused. His listener was surprised to find how much his visitor"s curious earnestness impressed him. "I had hard times of it at first. Now and then I heard from her. At last her letters ceased. About the time her letters ceased, my prospects bettered. Now I"m doing pretty well. So I"ve come to take her back with me to the other side.
Mr. Bodenham, I"ve looked for her everywhere. As they say, high and low. I"ve been to her old home, and to mine--I"ve been just everywhere.
But no one seems to know anything about her. She has just clean gone, vanished out of sight. I was thinking that I should have to go back, after all, without her, when I saw your picture in the Academy, and I knew the girl you had painted was Nelly. So I bought your picture--her picture. And now I want you to tell me where she lives."
There was a momentary silence when the big man finished.
"Yours is a very romantic story, Mr. Gibbs. Since you have done me the honour to make of me your confidant, I shall have pleasure in giving you the address of the original of my little picture--the address, that is, at which I last heard of her. I have reason to believe that her address is not infrequently changed. When I last heard of her, she was--what shall I say?--hard up."
"Hard up, was she? Was she very hard up, Mr. Bodenham?"
"I"m afraid, Mr. Gibbs, that she was as hard up as she could be--and live."
Mr. Gibbs cleared his throat:
"Thank you. Will you give me her address, Mr. Bodenham?"
Mr. Bodenham wrote something on a slip of paper.
"There it is. It is a street behind Chelsea Hospital--about as unsavoury a neighbourhood as you will easily find."
Mr. Gibbs found that the artist"s words were justified by facts--it was an unsavoury neighbourhood into which the cabman found his way. No. 20 was the number which Mr. Bodenham had given him. The door of No. 20 stood wide open. Mr. Gibbs knocked with his stick. A dirty woman appeared from a room on the left.
"Does Miss Brock live here?"
"Never heard tell of no such name. Unless it"s the young woman what lives at the top of the "ouse--third floor back. Perhaps it"s her you want. Is it a model that you"re after? Because, that"s what she is--leastways I"ve heard "em saying so. Top o" the stairs, first door to your left."
Mr. Gibbs started to ascend.
"Take care of them stairs," cried the woman after him. "They wants knowing."
Mr. Gibbs found that what the woman said was true--they did want knowing. Better light, too would have been an a.s.sistant to a better knowledge. He had to strike a match to enable him to ascertain if he had reached the top. A squalid top it was--it smelt! By the light of the flickering match he perceived that there was a door upon his left.
He knocked. A voice cried to him, for the second time that day:
"Come in!"
But this voice was a woman"s. At the sound of it, the heart in the man"s great chest beat, in a sledge-hammer fashion, against his ribs.
His hand trembled as he turned the handle, and when he had opened the door, and stood within the room, his heart, which had been beating so tumultuously a moment before, stood still.
The room, which was nothing but a bare attic with raftered ceiling, was imperfectly lighted by a small skylight--a skylight which seemed as though it had not been cleaned for ages, so obscured was the gla.s.s by the acc.u.mulations of the years. By the light of this skylight Mr. Gibbs could see that a woman was standing in the centre of the room.
"Nelly!" he cried.
The woman shrank back with, as it were, a gesture of repulsion. Mr.
Gibbs moved forward. "Nelly! Don"t you know me? I am Tom."
"Tom?"
The woman"s voice was but an echo.
"Tom! Yes, my own, own darling, I am Tom."
Mr. Gibbs advanced. He held out his arms. He was just in time to catch the woman, or she would have fallen to the floor.
CHAPTER II