The Tiger Lily Part 14

He rose from the chair, tapped the ashes out of his pipe, looking at them thoughtfully, and picked up his hat from where he had cast it upon the dusty floor. He then turned to face Dale, holding out his hand, but the artist did not see it, and sat buried in thought.

"Good-bye, old lad," said Pacey again.

Dale sprang to his feet, saw the outstretched hand, and drew back, shaking his head.

"Shake hands," said Pacey again, more loudly.

"No," said Dale bitterly; "you cannot think of me as of old."

"No; but more warmly perhaps, for there is pity mingled with the old friends.h.i.+p that I felt. I came here this afternoon, as schoolboys say, to make it up. I was in ignorance then; now I have eaten of the bitter fruit and know. Armstrong, lad, knowing all this, and as one who, with all his reckless Bohemianism and worldliness, has kept up one little habit taught by her long dead, how can I say `forgive me my trespa.s.ses'

to-night if, with such a temptation as yours, I can't forgive?"

Dale gazed at him wildly, and Pacey went on.

"The bond between us two is stronger now, lad, so strong that I think it would take death to snap the cord. Good-bye. If you do not see me soon, it is not that we are no longer friends."

Then their hands joined in a firm grip, and Pacey slowly left the room, muttering to himself as he pa.s.sed out into the square--

"Fallen so low, to rise so high. Yes, I must save him, and there is only one way in which it can be done."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

JAGGS MAKES A DISCOVERY.

Letter after letter, which had remained unanswered.

"Their scent sickens me," Dale cried pa.s.sionately, as he committed them to the flames unread, for he frankly owned to himself that he dare not read one, lest he should falter in the resolution he had made.

For he had struggled hard to fight against his fate, and though tied and tangled by the threads which still clung to him, he had mockingly told himself that he was not mad enough to venture into the spider's web again.

Then, twice over, he had hastily drawn a curtain in front of his great picture upon Keren-Happuch coming up to the studio to bring in a card-- the Conte's--and bit his lip with rage and mortification as that gentleman was shown up, in company with Lady Grayson.

The visit on the first occasion was to complain about Dale's curt refusal to go on with the picture; while the young artist haltingly gave as his reason that it was impossible for him to complete Lady Dellatoria's portrait on account of a large work that he was compelled to finish. And all the while Lady Grayson, with the reckless effrontery of her nature, looked at him mockingly, her eyes laughingly telling him that he was a poor weak coward, and that she could read him through and through.

Then came the second visit with the wretched Italian, blindly, or knowingly, to use him as a screen for his own amours, almost imploring him to come.

"Lady Dellatoria is so disappointed," he said volubly. "She takes the matter quite to heart. No doubt, Mr. Dale, there is a little vanity in the matter--the desire to be seen in the exhibition, painted by the famous young American artist."

"There are plenty of men, sir, who would gladly undertake the commission," said Dale angrily. "I beg that you will not ask me again."

"Mr. Dale, you are cruel," cried Lady Grayson. "Our poor Contessa will be desolate. Let me plead for you to come and finish the work."

"Aha! yes," cried the Conte, wrinkling up his face, though it was full enough before of premature lines. "A lady pleads. You cannot refuse her."

Dale gave the woman a look so full of contempt and disgust that she coloured and then turned away, shrugging her shoulders.

"He is immovable," she said to the Conte.

"No, no! Body of Bacchus! I understand;" and he placed his finger to his lips, and half closing his eyes, signed to Dale to step aside with him. "Mr. Dale," he whispered, "Lady Dellatoria has set her mind upon this, and I see now: a much more highly paid commission that you wish to do for some one. That shall not stand in the way. Come, I double the amount for which we--what do you name it? Ah, yes--bargained."

Dale turned upon him fiercely.

"No, sir!" he cried; "it is not a question of money. No sum would induce me to finish that portrait."

"Ah, well: we shall see," said the Conte. "Do not be angry, my young friend. Lady Dellatoria will be eaten by chagrin. But we will discuss the matter no more to-day. Good morning."

He held out his hand to Lady Grayson, but she did not take it. She moved toward Dale, and held out her gloved fingers.

"Good morning, Mr. Dale," she said merrily. "You great men in oil are less approachable than a Prime Minister." Then in a low tone: "It is not true, all this show of opposition. I am not blind."

She turned and gave her hand to the Conte, and they left the studio, Armstrong making no effort to show them out, but standing motionless till he heard the door close, when, with a gesture of contempt and disgust, he threw open the windows and lit his pipe.

A minute later he had thrown the pipe aside and taken out Cornel's letter to read; but the words swam before his eyes, and he could only see the face hidden behind that curtain.

"Poor little talisman!" he said, sadly apostrophising the letter, "you have lost your power. Evil is stronger than good, after all."

"Good-bye, little one," he continued, "for ever. You would forgive me if you knew all, for I am drifting--drifting, and my strength has gone."

Two days pa.s.sed--a week, and hour by hour he had waited, fully expecting that Valentina would come. He shrank from the meeting, but felt that it must be, for her influence seemed to be over him sleeping or waking, her eyes always gazing into his.

But she did not come. Only another note, and this he read in its brevity, for it contained but these words--

"You will drive me to my death."

"Or me to mine," he muttered, as he burned the letter; and then, in a raging desire to crush down the thoughts which troubled him, he turned to his work.

"Never!" he cried fiercely. "I will not go. If she comes here--well, if she does. That mockery of a man will track her some day, and then, in spite of English law, there will be a meeting, and he will kill me.

I hope so. Then there would be rest."

The picture which he had now stubbornly set himself to finish, as if he were urged by some unseen power, progressed but slowly. "The Emperor"

came to sit, and tried to mould his features into the desired aspect with more or less success; but, in spite of inquiries, and interview after interview with different models recommended by brother artists as suitable to stand for the figure, Dale's taste was too fastidious to be satisfied, and Juno's face alone looked scornfully from the canvas.

Pacey had been again and again, but only in a friendly way, to chat as of old, sometimes bringing with him Leronde to gossip and fence with, at other times alone. No reference was made to the picture or the past.

"I shall never finish it," said Dale, as he sat alone one day gazing at his canvas. "What shall I do--go abroad? Joe would come with me, and all this horrible dream might slowly die away."

"No," he muttered, after a pause; "it would not die. Better seek the true forgetfulness. Do all men at some time in their lives suffer from such a madness as mine?"

His musings were interrupted by a step upon the stairs, and he hastily drew the curtain before hi? canvas.

A single rap, which sounded as if it had been given with the k.n.o.b of a walking-stick, came upon the door panel, and directly afterwards, in answer to a loud "Come in," Jaggs entered with the knocker in his hand, to wit, a silk umbrella--one of those ingenious affairs formed by sewing all the folds where they have been slit up by wear and tear, and declared by the kerb vendor as being better than new--a fact as regards the price.

"Ah, Jaggs, good morning," said Dale. "But I don't want you. I shall let your face go as it is."

"Quite right, sir," said the man, glancing at the curtain. "Couldn't be better; but I didn't come about that."

"Oh, I see," said Dale sarcastically. "Your banker gone on the Continent?"

"The Emperor" drew himself up, and looked majestic in the face and pose of the head, shambling as to his legs, and extremely deferential in the curve of his body and the position of his hands and arms.