The Orchard of Tears Part 32

He watched her with scarcely veiled eagerness, and Flamby, placing the end of her cigarette in a silver ash-tray, seemed to be thinking.

"Is she--well-known?"

James recognised familiar symptoms and his hopes leapt high. "If I show you the canvas and you recognise the model will you promise not to tell anybody? I am painting it by a new process. I got the idea from Wiertz.

The violet gauze of the veil is only indicated yet."

Flamby nodded, watching him wide-eyed. Her expression was inscrutable.

He crossed the big studio and wheeled an easel out from the recess in which it had been concealed. The canvas was draped and having set it in a good light he turned, taking a step forward. "No telling," he said.

"No," replied Flamby, rising from her extemporised _diwan_.

James towered over her slight figure vastly. "Give me a kiss and I will believe you," he said.

Flamby felt a tingling sensation and knew that a flush was rising from her neck to her brow, but with success in view she was loth to abandon her scheme. "Show me first," she said.

"Oh, no. Be a sport, kid. You might do me no end of harm if you blabbed.

Give me a kiss and I shall know we are pals." He placed his hand on Flamby's shoulder and she tried not to shrink. The rich colour fled from her cheeks and her oval face a.s.sumed that even, dusky hue which was a danger signal, but which Orlando James failed to recognise for one.

"I don't want to kiss you; I want to see the picture."

"And I don't want you to see the picture until you have kissed me,"

replied James, smiling confidently and clasping his arm around Flamby's shoulders. "Only one tiny kiss and I shall know I can trust you."

He drew her close, and Flamby experienced a thrill of terror because of the strength of his arm and her own helplessness. But she averted her face and thrust one hand against James's breast, fighting hard to retain composure. He bent over her and thereupon Flamby knew that the truce must end. Her heart began to throb wildly.

"I won't kiss you!" she cried. "Let me go!"

Orlando James looked into her face, now flushed again and found the lure of Flamby's lips to be one beyond his powers of rejection. "Don't get wild, kiddie," he said softly. "You need not be cruel."

"Let me go," repeated Flamby in a low voice.

He held her closer and his face almost touched hers. Whereupon the storm burst. "Are you going to let me go?" said Flamby breathlessly; and even as she spoke James sought to touch her lips. Flamby raised her open hand and struck him hard upon the cheek. "_Now_ will you let me go!"

Orlando James laughed loudly. "You lovely little devil," he cried. "I shall kiss you a hundred times for that."

Backward swung Flamby's foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his s.h.i.+n. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had wrought the discomfiture of Fawkes. James threw both arms around her and lifted her bodily, as one lifts a child, smiling into her face. She battled against him, hand and foot, but could strike with slight force because of her helpless position. He crushed her to him and kissed her on the lips. As he did so she remembered the form of her French shoes and raising her right foot she battered madly at his knee with the high wooden heel. One of the blows got home, and uttering a smothered curse James dropped her, but did not release her.

"You low dirty swine!" she cried at him.

He held her by her arms and now she suddenly twisted violently, writhed and wrenched herself free, leaving a velvet sleeve in James's grasp and leaping back from him, one creamy shoulder bared by the tattered gown and her wonderful hair loosened and foaming about her head to lend her the aspect of a beautiful Bisharin girl, wild as the desert gazelle.

James saw that she wore an antique gold locket upon a thin chain about her neck. He clutched at her, but she bounded back again, her eyes blazing dangerously and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the j.a.panese cabinet. With all her strength she hurled it at his head.

"Take that," she screamed, flus.h.i.+ng scarlet--"blast you!"

He ducked, inhaling sibilantly, but a corner of the little cabinet struck his forehead, and he stumbled, caught his foot against a cus.h.i.+on and fell across the table amid a litter of china and silver ware. He clutched at the draped picture, and canvas and easel fell cras.h.i.+ng to the floor, revealing the nearly completed _Circa.s.sian_. Flamby sprang across the studio, wrenched open the door and ran out banging it behind her. As it closed she fell back against it, panting--and saw Paul Mario approaching from the direction of Chauvin's.

VIII

In the glance which Paul gave Flamby there was something odic and strange. He experienced a consciousness of giving and a consciousness of loss. Flamby was aware of intense shame and mad joy. She threw her arm over her bare shoulder to hide it and shrank back against the door not daring to raise her eyes again. She was trembling violently. Beneath her downcast lashes she could see the door of Chauvin's studio, and suddenly she determined to fly there for shelter, as had been her original intention. She started--but Paul held her fast. Flamby hid her face against his coat.

"Flamby--who has done this?" Paul's voice was very low and very steady.

Flamby swallowed emotionally, but already her quick wit was at work again and she realised that Paul must be prevented from entering James's studio, must be spared a sight of the picture which lay upon the floor.

"We were--just ragging," she said tremulously, "and it got too rough. So I--ran out My dress is torn, you see." She did not look up. Paul's Harris tweed coat had a faint odour of peat and tobacco. She realised that she was clutching him for support.

He was carrying a light Burberry on his arm, and he held it open for her. "Slip this on, Flamby," he said, in the same low, steady voice, "and sit there on the ledge for a moment." He helped her to put on the coat, which enveloped her grotesquely, led her to the low parapet which surrounded the figure of the dancing faun and stepped toward the door of James's studio.

Flamby leapt up and clutched his arm with both hands. "No, no!" she cried. "You must not go in there! Oh, please listen to me! I don't want you to go in."

Paul half turned, looking down at her. "Don't excite yourself, Flamby. I shall not be a moment."

But she clutched him persistently until, looking swiftly up at him, she saw the pallor of his olive skin and the expression in his eyes. She allowed him to unlock her fingers from his arm and she dropped down weakly on to the narrow stone ledge as he crossed to the studio door. It was very still in the courtyard. Some sparrows were chirping up on a roof, but the sounds of the highroad were muted and dim. Paul grasped the bra.s.s handle and sought to turn it. As he did so Flamby realised that James had bolted the door. Paul stood for a moment looking at the ma.s.sive oak and then turned away, rejoining Flamby. "Come along to Chauvin's," he said. "I will get a cab for you."

The only occupant of Chauvin's studio was a romantic-looking man wearing a very dirty smock, a man who looked like an ill.u.s.tration for _La Vie de Boheme_, so that a stranger must have mistaken him for a celebrated artist although he actually combined the duties of a concierge with those of a charwoman. He displayed no surprise when Flamby came in, wild-haired, arrayed in Paul's Burberry.

"See if you can get a taxi, Martin," said Flamby, dropping into a huge Jacobean arm-chair over which a purple cloak was draped. A King Charles spaniel who had been asleep on a cus.h.i.+on awoke immediately and jumped on to her knees. Flamby caressed the little animal, looking down at his snub-nosed face intently. Paul walked up and down the studio. He began speaking in a low voice.

"I had hoped, Flamby, that you had done as I once asked you to do and dropped--Orlando James."

"I did," said Flamby quickly and continuing to caress the spaniel. "I wrote to Don the very night you told me to."

"And I am sure that Don agreed with me."

"He did, yes. But--Don knows I still pretend to be friends with--James."

Paul stood still, facing her, but she did not look up. "Don knows this?"

Flamby nodded her head. She did not seem to care that her hair was in disorder. "He knows that I hate James, though," she added.

"I don't understand at all. Whatever can have induced you to trust yourself in that ruffian's studio?"

"I've been before. It was my fault. I made him think he was doing fine."

"Doing fine?"

"He is so infernally conceited. I wanted to let him down. But he got desperate. He is not a man; he's a pig. But I threw a cabinet at him."

"Did you hit him?" asked Paul grimly.

"Yes; but I wish it had been a brick."

"So do I," replied Paul. "I shall not ask you for particulars, Flamby, but I shall take certain steps which will make London too hot to hold Mr. Orlando James." His restrained pa.s.sion was electric and it acted upon Flamby in a curious way and seemed to set her heart singing.

When Martin returned to report that a cab waited, Paul walked out under the arch to the street and having placed Flamby in the cab, he held her hand for a moment and their glances met. "Dear little wild-haired Flamby," he said, and his voice had the same note of tenderness which she had heard in it once before and of which she had dreamed ever since.

"Take care of yourself, little girl. You belong to the clean hills and the sweet green woods which I almost wish you had never left."