XX
JUNE was not a timid girl. She had no lack of courage; and now that a chance had been given her to reason things out, a feeling akin to fear promptly yielded to mere annoyance. And even that emotion took wings when she had had time to glance at the hat of peach-coloured velours. Its owner looked harmless enough. He was a man of thirty, or perhaps a little more; he wore a well-cut black jacket, a pair of rather baggy trousers of a light grey check, a silk collar, a flowing bow tie, a diamond ring on the little finger of the left hand. The general effect of what to June was a decidedly interesting personality was somehow to fulfil her preconceived idea of an artist.
As soon as the man felt the gaze of June upon him, he swept off the hat of peach-coloured velours with a gesture at once easy and graceful, fortified it with a smile at which it would have been impossible to take offence, and said with a slight lisp,
“Miss Graham?”
“I am not Miss Graham,” said June calmly. She always prided herself upon her self-possession. Just now it seemed to help her considerably.
The man carried off his question with such an air of tact that it must have ranked as a bona fide mistake had not June been aware that he had crossed the road and followed her into the shop. Rather strangely, as soon as he took it upon himself to speak to her, the lingering sense of vexation gave way to curiosity. The mere look of the man had the power to excite an immediate interest, but June was careful to keep strictly upon her guard.
He ordered a bottle of ginger beer, and when the waitress had gone for it, he turned to June and said, with the companionable air of an old friend: “It’s funny, but you are exactly like a girl I used to know.”
“Why funny?” asked June bluntly.
The nature of the question, and the look of June’s keen eye made the man smile a little. Evidently she was a bit of a character. It appeared to stimulate him.
“It’s always funny when you mistake someone for someone else.”
“Is it?” said June, warily.
“Don’t you agree,” he said, with a laugh that sounded decidedly pleasant.
“It’s a thing I should never think of doing myself.”
“You are lucky.” He was amused by her bluntness. “I wish I had your good memory.”
The tea arrived, and June poured it out in a spirit of thankfulness. As soon as she had drunk half a cup, which was reviving, she forgot all about her annoyance in a new feeling of exhilaration tempered by quiet amusement.
“You are most remarkably like a Scotch girl I used to know in Paris,” said the man, taking up the thread of conversation, after having drunk a little, a very little, ginger beer.
“Am I?” said June, coolly.
“She was an artist’s model. Sometimes she used to sit for me.”
“Are you an artist?” said June, allowing herself to become interested, for the reason perhaps that she simply could not help it.
“Of sorts,” was the answer. “I studied several years in Paris before the war.”
From the moment he had sat down at the next table and June had been able to get a clear view of him she had somehow known that art was his calling. He looked an artist so emphatically that there would have been something fatally wrong with the cosmos had he turned out to be anything else.
In spite of a determination to be cautious indeed, she was not equal to the task of repressing an ever growing curiosity. Art had lately come to have a magic meaning for her.
“What kind of pictures do you paint?”
“Portraits and the figure chiefly.”
“Do you ever paint landscapes?”
“They are not quite my line of country,” said the man. “Portraits and the figure are what I go for as a rule. I am looking for a model now. Would you like to sit to me?”
“I don’t know.” June spoke doubtfully. “I don’t think I could.”
“Haven’t you ever sat?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Time you began. You are just the sort of girl.”
“Why am I?”
“For one thing you have personality.”
This was a surprising and rather thrilling corroboration of Mr. Boultby. At the back of her mind the old druggist had always figured as “a bit of a gasbag” with a ready flow of conversation and a gift of easy compliment. But it would seem that this estimate did him less than justice. Mr. Boultby was better informed than she had thought. And at this moment a phrase he had used came back to her with a force that was a little startling. “A girl as good-looking as you can always get a living,” Mr. Boultby had once said.
“I suppose you mean my hair?” said June naïvely.
He showed two rows of very white and level teeth in a smile which piqued her curiosity.
“Partly your hair, and partly your figure,” he said, taking a second tiny sip of ginger beer. “Why not come and try? I have a studio in Haliburton Street, just out of Manning Square.”
June shook a doubtful head. She then gave a glance sideways at the imbiber of the ginger beer. Her knowledge of the world was slender, but she was not a fool, and there was something about this “forthcomingness” which even exceeded that of Mr. Boultby himself, that warned her to be careful.
“You’d be well paid, of course.”
“How much?” June had no false modesty when it came to a question of money. This was an aspect of the matter that had not struck her until then.
“I’d pay you five shillings an hour,” he said lightly. “And ten for the altogether.”
June’s heart gave a leap. To a girl in her position it was a princely reward. Such an offer seemed most tempting. But a moment’s consideration of the issues it raised brought on a sudden fit of shyness.
“I don’t think I could,” she said.
“Why not?” The eyes of the man were now fixed intently upon her face.
“Oh, I don’t——”
“Not enough, eh?”
She felt his eyes so forcibly upon her that she coloured hotly.
“It isn’t that.”
“What’s your reason then?”
“I’ve not been used to that sort of thing.”
He smiled broadly.
“It’s only a matter of keeping still. Of course, I shall not press you to sit for ‘the altogether’ if you had rather not.”
“The altogether” was Greek to June.
However, she did not confess her ignorance, but was content to make a mental note to ask William what it meant. And at the moment she did so the thought of William brought the Van Roon to her mind.
“I suppose you know a lot about pictures?” An idea was forming already in that practical head.
“Perhaps I know as much about them as some people,” said the man, beginning to roll a cigarette. June could not help feeling that his answer was in piquant contrast to what William’s would have been had such a question been put to him. It had a self-complacency which even if it implied deep knowledge was also open to criticism.
“What do you think a Van Roon would be worth?”
“A Van Roon!” he said, offhandedly. “Well, you know, that might depend on many things.”
“They are very valuable, I suppose,” said June, trying to look innocent.
“Very valuable indeed, at the present time. Privately, I think they are overrated. The Flemish School is being run to death, but of course, that’s only my opinion.”
“Would it be worth a hundred pounds?”
“What! A Van Roon!” The man laughed. “My good girl, you might multiply a hundred pounds by a hundred, and then think you had got ‘some’ bargain if you found yourself the owner of a Van Roon.”
“This mightn’t be a good one.” June spoke cautiously. She saw at once that it would be wise “to go slow.”
“All Van Roons are good, you know. But some, of course, are a bit better than others.”
“I’ve been told it is one of the best,” said June, after a moment’s deliberation.
“Which are you talking about? The one in the National Gallery, I suppose. That’s the only Van Roon in this country. The Americans have robbed us of three within the last ten years.”
“Yes, I’ve heard so,” said June, with a wise air.
“In my humble opinion, it can’t be compared with the chap in the Louvre, and they say that its stable companion, which was cut out of its frame back in the Nineties, and has never been found, is even finer.”
“Still you think it’s very valuable?”
“The one in the National Gallery? Sure! It wouldn’t be there, you know, if it wasn’t. The Flemish School is booming these days, and Van Roon is the pick of the bunch, and the least prolific. Tell me,” the man’s small and rather furtive eyes began to twinkle, “why are you so interested in Van Roons? Is it, by any chance, that you’ve got one for sale?” And he laughed very softly and gently at what he evidently considered a rich joke.
June looked at him gravely.
“It so happens that I have!” she said with a caution which seemed to give the value of drama to a simple announcement.