She has been a good wife to me,
and she was a good daughter to her drunken old father--one of the greatest
scamps in London, who used to get his bread--or rather his gin--by standing
for Count Ugolino and Cardinal Wolsey, or anything grim and gray and
aquiline-nosed in the way of patriarchs. The girl Bessie was a model too in
her time; and it was in Jack Redgrave's painting-room--the pre-Raphaelite
fellow who paints fearfully and wonderfully made women with red hair and
angular arms--I first met her. Jack and I were great chums at that time--it
was just after I sold out--and I used to paint at his rooms. I was going in
for painting just then with a great spurt, having nothing but my brush to
live upon. You can guess the rest. As Bessie was a very pretty girl, and
neither she nor I had a sixpence wherewith to bless ourselves, of course
we fell in love with each other. Poor little thing, how pretty she used
to look in those days, standing on Jack's movable platform, with her hair
falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her
petticoat!--such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as
much as to say, 'I'm very tired of standing here; but I'm only a model, to
be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking
your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. I count for
nothing.' Poor little patient soul! she was so helpless and so friendless,
Clary.
Pages:
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484