THE geniality of Adolph Keller had a tonic effect upon June’s depression. She crossed his threshold with a sense of extreme relief, as one who finds a refuge from the storm. He closed the door of the flat, and then led the way into a spacious room with a high ceiling which was fixed up as a studio.
It was not without an air of comfort. The main part had been screened off; within a small but seductive inner space a bright fire mingled pleasant gleams with the radiance of the electric lamp. Two low wicker chairs were set invitingly near the hearth, and a table piled with books and magazines was between them. Amid these, however, space had been found for a tobacco jar, a siphon, a glass and a bottle of whisky. On the floor was a French novel, which he had laid down open to let her in.
Mr. Keller, evidently, was making himself comfortable for the night. The contrast between this snug and cheerful room and the rising fog, from which June had just escaped, struck her at once as delightful. With a little sigh of gratitude, she sank at the cordial invitation of her host into the first of the easy chairs.
He remembered her quite well, of course, yet for the moment he had forgotten her name, and what to June was the more surprising, the appointment she had made with him for that very afternoon seemed to have passed right out of his mind. Yet she was quick to see, for her wits were now working at high pressure, that this strange forgetfulness was in her favour. At any rate, it was going to help her in the task of keeping, as far as possible, the Van Roon out of the case.
“Lyons’, wasn’t it, we met at? One day last week? Your name’s——?”
“I’m Miss Gedge.” June’s tone was a shade “stand off,” for that appeared to be correct in the circumstances.
“Miss Gedge—yes—of course. Stupid of me to forget.” He fixed the eye of a man with a sense of humour upon this odd visitor. “I’ve a shocking memory for names. Very glad to see you, anyhow, Miss Gedge.” He took the low chair opposite with the calm and easy air of a model host. “And very nice of you to come on a damp and foggy night.”
The tone, rather than the words, put it up to June to explain her coming. She did so rather awkwardly, with a touch of “nerves.” Yet before committing herself to any positive statement as to why she was there, she was careful to dispose the parcel she carried as far beyond the range of his eyes as was possible at the side of the wicker chair in which she sat.
“You told me the other day”—She found it impossible to control the queer little tremble in her voice—“that you wanted an artist’s model, and that my hair was just the colour you were looking for.”
“By Jove, yes,” he laughed. “Your hair’s topping.” The laugh deepened to enthusiasm. “It’s the colour I want, to a hayseed.” An eye of veiled appraisement passed slowly over her. “And what’s almost as important there’s stooks of it.”
“Yes, there is,” said June, doing her best to pick up his light tone of intimacy. “It is important, I suppose, for an artist’s model to have hair long and thick.”
“Ra-ther!” As he looked at her sideways, out of the corner of one eye, his tone seemed to change a little; and then he got up alertly from his chair, the mantle of the model host again upon him. “I’m afraid there’s not much to offer you in the way of refreshment. There’s only whisky. If you’ll excuse me a minute, I’ll fetch another glass.”
“Oh, no, please, not for me,” said June quickly. She was very tired and horribly depressed, but she had been strictly brought up.
The host seemed a little amused by her vehemence. He looked at her keenly with a pair of curious, small, near-set eyes, which June liked even less now than when she had noticed them first. “Well, have a cigarette, anyhow. These are like mother’s milk.” And he offered a box of Virginia.
June also declined a cigarette, in the same odd, rather fluttered tone which caused him to smile in a way that added to her nervousness.
“No? Well, make yourself comfy, anyhow. Draw your chair up to the fire.”
She thanked him in a voice which, in spite of itself was a little prim, and which assured him that she was quite warm enough where she was. The attempted lightness and ease had gone; a subtle sense of fear, bred of hidden danger yet without any root in fact or logic, was rising in her. The position itself was embarrassing, yet so far Mr. Keller had shown no wish to presume upon it. Up till now he had been easy and charming; but June, in spite of worldly inexperience, had the intuitions of her sex to guide her; and she felt instinctively that there might be a great deal behind these graces. She was grateful all the same; they were much needed balm for many bruises.
When Mr. Keller sat down again in the wicker chair, about two yards away from her, a sense of languor crept upon June. The warmth of the fire, the glow of the lamp, the notes of a singularly quiet voice were like a subtle drug. Alive to danger as she was, its caress was hard to resist. Such a position was one of acute peril, for she was literally throwing herself upon the mercy of a person who was very much an unknown quantity, yet what alternative was there?
“Don’t mind a pipe, I hope?” The polite voice from the chair opposite was not really ironical; it was merely kind and friendly, yet feminine intuition shivering upon the dark threshold of a mighty adventure knew well enough how easily a tone of that kind could turn to something else.
“Oh no, I don’t mind at all.” She tried again to get the right key, but a laugh she could not control, high-pitched and irrelevant, was horribly betraying.
“That’s all right then.”
For about a minute, Mr. Keller puffed away in a sort of whimsical silence. Then he said with a soft fall, whose mere sweetness had the power to alarm, “Your hair’s jolly. Very jolly indeed!”
June nervously muttered that she was very glad he liked it.
“So much of it, don’t you know. Awfully useful to me just now. Quantity’s almost as valuable as the colour. Does it reach your waist when you let it down?”
June, not without a little pride, said that her hair when let down reached below her waist.
“Capital!” said Mr. Keller, with a laugh. “The very thing I’m looking for just now. You’ll make a stunning Andromeda.”
June had not heard of Andromeda. She had read some Dickens, and a little George Eliot, and she could remember bits of Shakespeare learned at school, but her tastes were not literary. She pretended to know all about Andromeda, yet the next words of Mr. Keller were a proof that he was not deceived. June did not know, however, that he had pierced clean through her ignorance.
“She’s the altogether. A classical subject.”
“I like classical subjects myself.” Abruptly June’s mind went back to Miss Preece, the revered head mistress of the Blackhampton High School where it had been her privilege to spend one term. Her voice rose a whole octave, in its involuntary desire to approximate as closely as possible to that of a real lady.
“So do I.” Mr. Keller’s humorous purr was that of a man well pleased. “That’s capital.”
“You can’t beat classical subjects, can you?” said June, making a wild attempt to achieve the conversational.
Again Mr. Keller looked across at her out of those near-set eyes of which by now she was rather afraid. “No, you can’t,” he said. “So large and so simple, and yet they strike so deep. They are life itself. A sort of summing up, don’t you know, of all that has been, all that can be, all that will be.”
June responded with more composure than she had yet shewn that she supposed it was so. It was nice to listen to talk of this kind from a man of Mr. Keller’s polish. The chair was most comfortable, and how good it was to be in front of the bright fire! Her nerves were being lulled more and more as if by a drug; the sense of her peril amid this sea of danger into which she had plunged began to grow less.
“I expect,” said Mr. Keller, in a tone so friendly and so casual that it fed the new sense of peace which was now upon June, “I expect you are pretty well used to the altogether?”
Even if she did not know in the least what was meant by “the altogether,” it did not seem to be quite wise to confess such ignorance. “Ye-es, I suppose I am.” And in a weak attempt to rise to his own agreeable plane of intimacy she laughed rather foolishly.
“Capital!” said Adolph Keller. “You are a well built girl.” He sipped a little whisky. “Excellent shoulders. Figure’s full of fine lines. Bust well developed. Plenty of heart room. Everything just right.”
She coloured at the literal way in which he catalogued her points; even if it was done in the manner of an artist and a gentleman, one was a little reminded of a dog or a horse.
“I’ll fix you up a screen. And then you can get ready.” He sipped a little more whisky, and rose briskly and cheerfully. “Near the fire; it’s real chillsome to-night. And when you pose you can sit on top of it if you like.” He opened the lid of the coal box, and replenished the fire. “We must take care you don’t catch cold. If you feel a draught, you can have a rug round your knees. I only want to make a rough sketch of the lines of the figure, to begin with; the shoulders chiefly. It won’t take long. Quite sure you won’t have a finger?” He pointed to the whisky. “Buck you up a bit. You look rather down.”
June was quite sure that she would not have a finger. Mr. Keller passed beyond the screen into the studio itself to procure a second screen. June felt this activity to be alarming. It brought her up against the fact that she was there in the capacity of an artist’s model. Suddenly it dawned upon her that she was expected to take off her clothes.