Kitabı oku: «The Tiger Lily», sayfa 6
Chapter Fifteen.
After the Lapse
Dale’s hands trembled, and there were feverish marks in his cheeks as he dressed next morning, and then walked into his sitting-room and rang.
The breakfast things were laid, and in a few minutes Keren-Happuch came through the studio with his coffee and toast, while an hour later, without daring to speak to him, she bore the almost untouched breakfast away.
As soon as he was alone, he made an effort to master himself, and walked firmly into the studio, drew forward his easel, and after removing the curtain, stood there to study his work and criticise and mark its failings.
He found none to mark, but stood there waiting for its living, breathing model, knowing well enough that he must check the madness attacking him – at once, in its incipient stage.
“I’m as weak a fool as other men,” he muttered. “Bah! I can easily disillusionise myself. I’ll insist upon her removing her veil to-day. It is that and the foolish wish to see her face that has upset me, I being in a weak, nervous state. Once I’ve finished and had the work framed, I really will give up painting for a few weeks and rest.”
That maddening day passed, but no model came, and as soon as it was dark he went out, but not until the last post had come in that was likely to bring him a letter of excuse from his sitter.
He went straight to the street where Jaggs lodged, to learn that he was away from home. The people of the house thought that he had gone down somewhere in the country to sit for an artist who was doing a sea-picture, but they were not sure whether it was Surrey or Cornwall.
Somewhere Leather Lane way, Jaggs had told him that the father lived. Perhaps he was ill, and his child was nursing him. But how could he go about asking at random in that neighbourhood about the missing model?
But he did, seeking out first one and then another handsome picturesque vagabond belonging to the artistic Italian colony, and questioning them, but without avail. They had never heard the name.
He tried a lodging-house or two, upon whose steps Italian women were seated, dark-eyed, black-haired, and with showy glass bead necklaces about their throats. But no; those who could understand him neither knew the name, nor had they heard of a Sardinian patriot whose daughter went out to sit.
Dale returned to his rooms to pass another sleepless night, hoping that the next morning would put an end to his anxiety, fever, or excitement, whichever it was – for he savagely refrained from confessing to himself that he grasped what his trouble might be.
But the morning came, and seven more mornings, to find him seated before his unfinished picture, practising a kind of self-deceit, and telling himself that he was feverish, haggard, and mentally careworn on account of his dread of not being able to finish his picture as satisfactorily as he could wish.
He had tried hard during the interval, but, in spite of all his efforts, he had been able to get tidings of neither Jaggs nor the model the man had introduced; while to make his state the more wretched, Pacey had not been near him, and for some unaccountable reason Leronde, too, had stayed away.
He was seated, wild-eyed and despairing, one morning, when Keren-Happuch came running in, breathless with her exertions to reach the studio, and bear the news which she felt would be like life to the young artist.
“Here she is, sir!” panted the girl, “she’s come at last;” and then ran down to open the front door.
Dale staggered and turned giddy, but listened with eyes fixed upon the door, hardly daring to believe till he saw it open, and the dark, closely veiled figure enter quickly.
Then there was a reaction, and he asked himself why he had suffered like this. What was the poorly dressed woman who had just entered to him?
His lips parted, but he did not speak, only waited.
“Am I too late?” she said, in her strongly accented French. “Some other? The picture finished?”
“No,” he said coldly; and he wondered at her collected manner as he caught the glint of a pair of searching eyes. “I have waited for you. Why have you been so long?”
“I have been ill,” she said simply, and her tones suggested suffering.
“Ill?” he cried excitedly; and he took a step towards her with outstretched hand. “I am very sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and ignoring the extended hand. “I am once more well, and I must be quick. Shall I stay one more hour every day and you pay me more? Oh, no. For the same!”
“Yes, pray do,” he said huskily, and he thrust his hand into his pocket to pay her in advance according to his custom, but she ignored the money as she had previously passed his hand without notice, and after pointing to the door, she hurried through into his room, to return in a wonderfully short space of time and take her place upon the dais.
Dale began to paint eagerly, feverishly, so as to lose himself in his work, but in a few minutes he raised his eyes to see the glint of those which seemed to be watching him suspiciously through the thick veil, as if ready to take alarm at the slightest word or gesture on his part, and at once the power to continue his work was gone. He felt that he must speak, and in a deep husky voice he began —
“You have been very ill, then?”
“Yes, monsieur,” curtly and distantly.
“I wondered very much at not seeing you. I was alarmed.”
“I do not see why monsieur should feel alarm.”
“Of course, on account of my picture,” he said awkwardly. Then laying down his palette and brushes, he saw that the model gave a sudden start, but once more stood motionless as he took out his pocket-book, and withdrew the pencil.
“Will you give me your address?”
“Why should monsieur wish for my address?”
“To communicate with you. If I had known, I should have been spared much anxiety. Tell me, and I will write it down.”
“With that of the women who wait monsieur’s orders? No!”
This was spoken so imperiously that Dale replaced the pencil and book, and took up palette and brushes.
“As you will,” he said, and he began to paint once more.
But the power to convey all he wished to the canvas had gone, and he turned to her again.
“Tell me more about yourself,” he said. “You are a foreigner, and friendless here in England: I know that, but tell me more. I may be of service to you.”
“Monsieur is being of service to me. He pays me for occupying this degrading position to which I am driven.”
There was so much angry bitterness in her tones that Dale was again silenced; but his pulse beat high, and as he applied his brush to his canvas from time to time, there were only results that he would have to wipe away.
“I am sorry you consider the task degrading,” he said at last. “I have endeavoured to make it as little irksome as I could.”
“Monsieur has been most kind till now,” she said quickly; and then, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, “monsieur forgets that I am waiting. His pencil is idle.”
He started angrily, and went on painting, but the eyes were still watching him, and, strive all he would, there was the intense desire growing once more to see that face which was hidden from him so closely. He knew that he ought to respect his visitor’s scruples, but he could not, and again and again he shivered with a sensation nearly approaching to dread. But the wish was still supreme. That black woollen veil piqued him, and after a few minutes of worthless work, he asked her if she was weary.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Then we will rest a few minutes.”
“No, monsieur; go on. I am your slave for the time.”
He started at her words, and as much at her tone, which was as full of hauteur as if she were some princess. But now, instead of this driving him in very shame to continue his work, it only impressed him the more. There was a mystery about her and her ways. The almost insolent contempt with which she treated him made him angry, and his anger increased to rage as he fully realised how weak and mortal he was as man. He tried not to own it to himself, but he knew that a strange passion had developed itself within him, and with mingled pleasure and pain he felt that this beautiful woman could read him through and through, and that hour by hour her feelings toward him became more and more those of contempt.
He did not stop to reason, for he was rapidly becoming blind to everything but his unconquerable desire to see her face. There were moments when he felt ready to rage against himself for his weakness and, as he called it, folly; but all this was swept away, and at last, as the sitting went on and the model haughtily refused to leave the dais for a time to rest, he found himself asking whether there was not after all truth in the old legends, and whether, enraged by his shrinking from Lady Dellatoria’s passionate avowals, the author of all evil had not sent some beautiful demon to tempt him and show him how weak he was after all. It was maddening, and at last he threw down palette and brushes to begin striding up and down the room, carefully averting his eyes from his model, who stood there as motionless as if she were some lovely statue.
At last he returned to his canvas.
“You must be tired now,” he said hurriedly. “Rest for a while.”
“I’m not tired now,” she replied coldly, “if monsieur will continue.”
“I cannot paint to-day,” he said hoarsely. “You trouble me. What I have done is valueless.”
“I trouble monsieur?” she said coldly. “Am I not patient? – can I be more still?”
He made a mighty effort over self, and for the moment conquered. Seizing his brushes and palette, he began to paint once more, but in a reckless way, as if merely to keep himself occupied, but as he turned his eyes from his canvas from time to time to study the beautiful model, standing there in that imperious attitude, strange, mysterious, and weird, with the black enmasking above the graceful voluptuous figure, he lost more and more the self-command he had maintained.
For a few minutes he told himself that he was mistaken, that her eyes must be closed; but it was, he knew too well, a mere mental subterfuge: they were gleaming through that black network, and piercing him to the very soul.
He could bear it no longer, and again throwing down brushes and palette, he paced the room for a minute or two before turning to the marble figure standing so motionless before him.
“I tell you I cannot paint,” he cried angrily. “It is as if you were casting some spell over me. I must see your face. Why do you persist in this fancy? Your masked countenance takes off my attention. I beg – I insist – remove that veil.”
“I do not quite understand monsieur,” she said coldly. “He speaks in a language that is not mine, neither is it his. He confuses me. I am trying to be a patient model, but everything is wrong to-day. Will he tell me what I should do to give him satisfaction?”
“Take off that veil!” cried Dale.
The model caught up the cloak and flung it around her shoulders.
“Now, quick!” cried Dale excitedly, “that veil!”
“Monsieur is ill. Shall I call for help?”
“No, no, I am not ill. Once more I beg, I pray of you – take off that veil.”
“But monsieur is so strange – so unlike himself,” she cried, as, taking another step forward, Dale caught the hand which held the cloak in his.
“Now!” he cried wildly, with his eyes flashing, and trying to pierce the woollen mask – “that veil!” For a moment the warm soft hand clung to his convulsively, and the other rose with the arm in a graceful movement towards the shrouded face; but, as if angry with herself for being about to yield to his mad importunity, she snatched away the hand he held, and with the other thrust him back violently.
“It is infamous!” she cried, with her eyes flashing through the veil. “It is an insult. Monsieur, it is to the woman you love that you should speak those words;” and, with an imperious gesture, she stepped down from the dais as if it had been her throne, and with her face turned toward Dale, she walked with calm dignity, her head thrown back, and the folds of the cloak gathered round her, to the inner door, passed through, and for the first time, when it was closed, he heard the lock give a sharp snap as it was shot into the socket Dale stood motionless in the middle of the studio, his eyes bloodshot and his pulses throbbing heavily, unable for some little time either to think or move.
“Yes,” he muttered, as he grew calmer; “it was an insult, and she revenges herself upon me. An hour ago I was to her a chivalrous man in whose honour she could have faith. Now I am degraded in her eyes to the level of the brute, and – she trusts me no longer. Do I love this woman whose face I have never seen, or am I going mad?”
But he was alone now, and he grew more calm as the minutes glided by; and once more making a tremendous effort to command himself, he waited as patiently as he could for the opening of the door.
In a few minutes there was the sharp snap again of the lock being turned, the door was thrown open, and the tall dark figure swept out into the great studio with head erect and indignant mien.
She had to pass close by him to reach the farther door, but she looked straight before her, completely ignoring his presence till in excited tones he said – “One moment – pray stop.”
She had passed him, but she arrested her steps and half turned her head as a queen might, to listen to some suppliant who was about to offer his petition.
“Forgive me,” he panted. “I was not myself. You will forget all this. Do not let my madness drive you away.”
He was standing with his hands extended as if to seize her again, but she gathered her cloak tightly round her, so that he could see once more the curves and contour of the form he had transferred to canvas, as she passed on to the door, where she stopped and waited for him, according to his custom, to turn the key.
Her mute action and gesture dragged him to the door as if he were completely under her influence; and, throwing it open, he once more said pleadingly, and in a low deep voice which trembled from the emotion by which he was overcome —
“Forgive me: I was half mad.”
But she made no sign. Walking swiftly now, she passed out on to the landing, descended the staircase, and as he stood listening, he heard the light step and the rustling of her garments, till she reached the heavy front door, which was opened and closed with a heavy, dull, echoing sound.
But still Dale did not move. He stood as if bound there by the spell of which he had spoken, till all at once he uttered a faint cry, snatched his hat, and followed her out into the street.
Too late. There was no sign of the black cloaked figure, and, after hurrying in different directions for several minutes, he returned to his studio utterly crushed.
“Gone!” he muttered, as he threw himself into a chair. “I shall never see her more. Great heavens! Do I love this woman? Am I so vile?”
“Please, sir, may I come in?”
Dale started up and tried to look composed, as little Keren-Happuch entered with a note in her hand.
“One o’ them scented ones, sir,” said the girl. “It was in the letter-box. I found it two hours ago, but I did not like to bring it in.”
As soon as Dale was alone, his eyes fell upon the Contessa’s well-known hand, and, without opening the letter, he gazed at it, and recalled the past.
At last his lips parted, and he said thoughtfully —
“Loved me with an unholy love. It is retribution! She must have felt as I do now.”
Chapter Sixteen.
Job Pacey at Home
Pacey sat back in a shabby old chair, in a shabby room. The surroundings were poor and yet rich – the former applying to the furniture, the latter to the many clever little gems presented to him by his artist friends, many of whom were still poor as he, others high up on the steps leading to the temple of fame.
Joseph Pacey’s hair needed cutting, and his beard looked tangled and wild; and as he sat back in his slippers, he looked the very opposite of his vis-à-vis, the exquisitely neat, waxed-moustached, closely clipped young Frenchman who assisted briskly in the formation of the cloud of smoke which floated overhead by making and consuming cigarettes, what time the tenant of the shabby rooms nursed a huge meerschaum pipe, which he kept in a glow and replenished, as he would an ordinary fire, by putting a pinch of fresh fuel on the top from time to time.
“Humph!” he ejaculated, frowning. “And so you think he has got the feminine fever badly?”
“But you do say it funny, my friend,” said Leronde. “Why, of course. Toujours – always the same. As we say – ‘cherchez la femme.’ Vive la femme! But helas! How she do prove our ruin, and turn us as you say round your turn.”
There was silence for a few moments, during which, as he sat shaggy and frowning in the smoke, Pacey looked as if some magician were gradually turning his head into that of a lion.
“Seen him the last day or two?”
“Yes,” said Leronde, putting out his tongue and running the edge of a newly rolled cigarette paper along the moist tip. “I go to see him yesterday.”
“Well. What did he say?”
“And I ask him to come for an hour to the Vivarium to see the new ballet.”
“I asked you what he said.”
“He say – ‘Go to the devil.’”
“Well, did you go?”
“Yes. I come on here at once.”
Pacey glowered at him, but his French friend was innocent of any double entendre; and at that moment there was a sharp knock at the outer door – the well-worn oak on the staircase of Number 9 Bolt Inn.
“Aha! Vive la compagnie!” cried Leronde.
“Humph! Some one for money,” muttered Pacey. “Who can it be? Well, it doesn’t matter: I’ve got none. – Here, dandy,” he said aloud, “open the door. Shut the other first, and tell whoever it is that I cannot see him. Engaged – ill – anything you like.”
“Yes, I see. I am a fly,” said the young Frenchman, and, passing through the inner door, he closed it after him and opened the outer, to return in a minute with two cards.
“Who was it?” growled Pacey.
“A lady and gentleman. I told them you could not see any one, and they are gone.”
Pacey snatched the cards, glanced at them, uttered an ejaculation, and springing up, he threw down his pipe, and nearly did the same by his companion as he rushed to the door, passed out on to the landing, and began to run down the stairs.
“My faith, but he is a droll of a man,” muttered Leronde, pointing his moustache; “but I love him. Aha! always the woman. How he run as soon as he read the name. We are all alike, we men. What was it? Mees Torpe and – faith of a man – she was pretty. Mees! I thought it was her husband at first. H’m! The lover perhaps.”
The door flew open again and Pacey returned, showing in Cornel Thorpe and her brother.
“Here, Leronde,” cried Pacey excitedly. “Excuse me – very particular business, old fellow.”
“You wish me to go?” said Leronde stiffly, as he waited for an introduction.
“If you wouldn’t mind, and – look here,” continued Pacey, drawing him outside. “Don’t be hurt, old fellow – this is very particular. You saw the names on the cards?”
“Oh yes.”
“Not a word then to Armstrong.”
“I do not tiddle-taddle,” said Leronde stiffly. “That’s right. I trust you, old fellow. Come back at six, and we’ll go and dine in Soho.”
“But – the lady?”
“Bah! Nonsense, man! This is business. Au revoir – till six.”
Pacey hurried back and closed both doors, to find his visitors standing in the middle of the room, Cornel pale and anxious, and her brother stern, distant, and angry of eye.
“I did not expect you, Miss Thorpe,” cried Pacey warmly. “Pray sit down.”
“I think my sister and I can finish our interview without sitting down, sir. You are Mr Joseph Pacey?”
“I am,” said the artist, as coldly now as the speaker.
“And you wrote to my sister – ”
“Michael, dear, I will speak to Mr Pacey, please,” said Cornel, and she turned to the artist and held out her hand. “Thank you for writing to me, Mr Pacey,” she continued. “I thought it better, as my brother was coming to England, to accompany him and see you myself.”
She sank into the chair Pacey had placed for her, and after a contemptuous look round at the shabby surroundings, the doctor followed her example.
“My brother is angry, Mr Pacey; he is indignant on my behalf. He thinks me foolish and obstinate in coming here to see you, and that I am lowering myself, and not displaying proper pride.”
“I do,” said the doctor firmly.
“Out of his tender love for me, Mr Pacey,” Cornel continued, with her sweet pathetic voice seeming to ring and find an echo in the old artist’s heart; “but I felt it to be my duty to come to know the truth.”
“You have done wisely, madam,” said Pacey. “When I wrote you it was in the hope that you would come and save a man whom I have liked – there, call it sentimentality if you please – loved as a brother – I ought to say, I suppose, as a son.”
“Your letter, sir, suggested that my old schoolfellow – the man who was betrothed to my sister – has in some way gone wrong.”
Pacey bowed his head.
“Cornel, dear, you hear this. It is sufficient. We do not wish to pry into Armstrong Dale’s affairs. We know enough. Now, are you satisfied?”
“No. – Mr Pacey, your words have formed a bond between us greater than existed before. I have heard of you so often from Armstrong, and come to you as our friend, in obedience to your letter. I ask you then to keep nothing back, but to speak to me plainly. Please remember that I am an American girl. I think we are different from your ladies here. Not bolder, but firm, plain-spoken, honest and true. We feel a true shame as keenly as the proudest of your patrician maidens; but we crush down false, and that is why I come to you instead of writing to and making appeals to the man whom I have known from childhood – the man who was betrothed to me, and who loved me dearly, as I loved him, only so short a time ago. There, you see how simply and plainly I speak, the more so that I know you have Armstrong Dale’s welfare at heart.”
“God knows I have,” said Pacey fervently.
“Then tell me plainly, Mr Pacey.”
“Cornel!”
“I will speak, Michael,” she said gently. “His happiness and mine depend upon my knowing the truth. – Mr Pacey, I am waiting.”
Pacey gazed at her with his face full of reverence for the woman before whom he stood, but no words left his lips.
“You are silent,” she said calmly. “You fear to tell me the worst. He is not ill: you said so. He cannot be in want of money. Then it is as I gathered from your letter: he has been led into some terrible temptation.”
Pacey bowed his head gravely.
“Now, are you satisfied?” said Thorpe earnestly. “I knew that it was so.”
“And I clung so fondly to the hope that it was not,” said Cornel, gazing straight before her, and as if she were thinking aloud. Then, turning to Pacey – “He was becoming famous, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Succeeding wonderfully with his art?”
“Grandly.”
“And now this has all come like a cloud,” sighed Cornel dreamily. Then again to Pacey, in spite of her brother’s frown, “Is she very beautiful?”
Pacey paused for a moment, and then said sadly – “Very beautiful.”
“And does she love him as he does her?”
“I fear so,” said Pacey at last.
Cornel drew a long and piteous sigh, and they saw the tears brimming in her eyes, run over, and trickle down her cheeks.
“Let us go, dear,” she said softly. “I was too happy for it to last. Forgive me: I felt that I must know – all. Good-bye, Mr Pacey,” she continued, holding out her hand, while her face was of a deadly white. “I am glad you wrote. You thought it would be best, but he must love her better than ever he loved me, and perhaps it is for his advancement.”
“It is for his ruin, I tell you,” cried Pacey fiercely.
“But you said she loved him. Is she not true and good?”
“Girl!” cried Pacey, with his brows knotted by the swelling veins, “can the devil who tempts a man in woman’s form be true and good?”
“Ah!”
Ejaculation as much as sigh, and accompanied by a wild look of horror. Then, with her manner completely changed, Cornel laid her hand upon Pacey’s arm.
“Who is this woman?” she said firmly.
Pacey compressed his lips, but the beautiful eyes fixed upon him forced the words to come, and in a low voice he muttered the Contessa’s name.
Then he stood looking at his visitor wonderingly, as, with her lips now white as if all the blood within them had fled to her heart, she said firmly —
“And the Conte?”
“Is a man of fashion – a dog – a scoundrel whom I could crush beneath my heel.”
“Cornel,” cried her brother firmly, “you have heard enough: you shall not degrade yourself by listening to these wretched details.”
“Yes, I have heard enough,” she said firmly; but she did not stir, only stood with her brows knit, gazing straight before her.
“Then now you will come back to the hotel,” cried the doctor eagerly.
“No: not yet,” she said, drawing herself up.
“Not yet?” cried Thorpe, in wonder at the firmness and determination she displayed.
“Not yet: I am going to see Armstrong Dale.”
“No,” cried Pacey excitedly. “You must not do that. I will see him and tell him you are here. It may bring him to his senses, and he will come to you.”
Cornel turned to him, smiling sadly.
“You tell me that he is slipping away into the gulf, and when I would go to hold out my hands to save him, you say, ‘Wait, and he will come to you!’”
“At any rate you cannot go,” cried Thorpe.
“Armstrong Dale is my affianced husband, and at heart, in his weakness and despair, he calls to me for help. I am going to him now.”
“And God speed your work!” cried Pacey excitedly, “for if ever angel came to help man in his sorest need, it is now.”
The next minute, without a word, Cornel Thorpe was walking alone down the old staircase to the street, while Pacey and her brother followed, as if they were in a dream.
