The History of David Grieve Part 77

'Say that kind of thing again,' he said calmly, 'and I walk straight out of that door, and you set eyes on me for the last time. That would be what you want, I dare say. All I wish to point out is, that you would be a great fool. I have not come here to-day to waste words, but to propose something to your advantage--your money-advantage,' he repeated deliberately, looking round the dismal building with its ill-mended gaps and rents, and its complete lack of the properties and appliances to which the humblest modern artist pretends. 'To judge from what I heard in Paris, and what I see, money is scarce here.'

His piteous sudden wish to soften her, to win a kind word from her, from anyone, had pa.s.sed away. He was beginning to take command of her as in the old days.

'Well, maybe we are hard up,' she admitted slowly. 'People are such brutes and won't wait, and a sculptor has to pay out for a lot of things before he can make anything at all. But that statue will put it all right,' and she pointed behind her to the Maenad. 'It's me--it's the one you tried to put a stopper on.'

She looked at him darkly defiant. She was leaning back on one arm, her foot beating with the trick familiar to her. For reckless and evil splendour the figure was unsurpa.s.sable.

'When he sells that,' she went on, seeing that he did not answer, 'and he will sell it in a jiffy--it is the best he's ever done--there'll be heaps of money.'

David smiled.

'For a week perhaps. Then, if I understand this business aright--I have been doing my best, you perceive, to get information, and M.

Montjoie seems to be better known than one supposed to half Paris--the game will begin again.'

'Never you mind,' she broke in, breathing quickly. 'Give me my money--the money that belongs to me--and let me alone.'

'On one condition,' he said quietly. 'That money, as you remember, is in my hands and at my disposal.'

'Ah! I supposed you would try to grab it!' she cried.

Even he was astonished at her violence--her insolence. The demon in her had never been so plain, the woman never so effaced. His heart dropped within him like lead, and his whole being shrank from her.

'Listen to me!' he said, seizing her strongly by the hand, while a light of wrath leapt into his changed and bloodshot eyes. 'This man will desert you; in a year's time he will have tired of you; what'll you do then?'

'Manage for myself, thank you! without any canting interference from you. I have had enough of that.'

'And fall again,' he said, releasing her, and speaking with a deliberate intensity; 'fall again--from infamy to infamy!'

She sprang up.

'Mind yourself!' she cried.

Miserable moment! As he looked at her he felt that that weapon of his old influence with her which, poor as it was, he had relied on in the last resort all his life, had broken in his hand. His own act had robbed it of all virtue. That pang of 'irreparableness'

which had smitten Elise smote him now. All was undone--all was done!

He buried his face in his hands an instant. When he lifted it again, she was standing with her arms folded across her chest, leaning against an iron shaft which supported part of the roof.

'You had better go!' she said, still in a white heat. 'Why you ever came I don't know. If you won't give me that money, I shall get it somehow.'

Suddenly, as she spoke, everything--the situation, the subject of their talk, the past--seemed to be wiped out of David's brain. He stared round him helplessly. Why were they there--what had happened?

This blankness lasted a certain number of seconds. Then it pa.s.sed away, and he painfully recovered his ident.i.ty. But the experience was not new to him--it would recur--let him be quick.

This time a happier instinct served him. He, too, rose and went up to her.

'We are a pair of fools,' he said to her, half bitterly, half gently; 'we reproach and revile each other, and all the time I am come to give you not only what is yours, but all--all I have--that it may stand between you and--and worse ruin.'

'Ruin!' she said, throwing back her head and catching at the word; 'speak for yourself! If I am Montjoie's mistress, Elise Delaunay was yours. Don't preach. It won't go down.'

'I have no intention of preaching--don't alarm yourself,' he replied quietly, this time controlling himself without difficulty.'

'I have only this to say. On the day when you become Montjoie's wife, all our father's money--all the six hundred pounds Mr. Gurney paid over to me in January, shall be paid to you.'

She started, caught her breath, tried to brazen it out.

'What is this idiocy for?' she asked coldly. 'What does marrying matter to you?'

He sank down again on the chair by the stove, being, indeed, unable to stand.

'Perhaps I can't tell you,' he said, after a pause, shading his face from her with his hand; 'perhaps I could not make plain to myself what I feel. But this I know--that this man with whom you are living here is a man for whom n.o.body has a good word. I want to give you a hold over him. But first--stop a moment, '--he dropped his hand and looked up eagerly, 'will you leave him--leave him at once? I could arrange that.'

'Make your mind easy,' she said shortly; 'he suits me--I stay. I went with him, well, because I was dull--and because I wanted to make you smart for it, if you're keen to know!--but if you think I am anxious to go home, to be cried over by Dora and lectured by you, you're vastly mistaken. I can manage him! I have my hold on him--he knows very well what I am worth to him.'

She threw her head back superbly against the iron shaft, putting one arm round it and resting her hot cheek against it as though for coolness.

'Why should we argue?' he said sharply--after a wretched silence.

'I didn't come for that. If you won't leave him I have only this to say. On the day he marries you, if the evidence of the marriage is satisfactory to an English lawyer I have discovered in Paris and whose address I will give you, six hundred pounds will be paid over to you. It is there now, in the lawyer's hands. If not, I go home, and the law does not compel me to hand you over one farthing.'

She was silent, and began to pace up and down.

'Montjoie despises marriage,' she said presently.

'Try whether he despises money too,' said David, and could not for the life of him keep the sarcastic note out of his voice.

She bit her lip.

'And when, if it is done, must this precious thing be settled?'

'If your marriage does not take place within a month, Mr.

O'Kelly--I will leave you his address,' he put his hand into his pocket--'has orders to return the money--'

'To whom?' she inquired, struck by his sudden break.

'To me, of course,' he said slowly. 'Is it perfectly plain? do you understand? Now, then, listen. I have inquired what the law is--you will have to be married both at the mairie and by the chaplain at the British emba.s.sy.'

She stopped suddenly in her walk and confronted him.

'If I am married at all,' she said abruptly, 'I shall be married as a Catholic.'

'A Catholic!' David stared at her. She enjoyed his astonishment.

'Oh, I have had that in my mind for a long time,' she said scornfully. 'There is a priest at that church with the steps, you know, near that cemetery place on the hill, who is very much interested in me indeed. He speaks English. I used to go to confession. Madame Cervin told me all about it, and how to do it; I did it exact! Oh, if I am to be married, that will make it plain sailing enough. It was awkward--while--'

She broke off and sat down again beside him, pondering and smiling as he had seen her do in Manchester, when she had the prospect of a new dress or some amus.e.m.e.nt that excited her.

'How have you been able to think about such things?' he asked her, marvelling.

'Think about them! What was the good of that? It's the churches I like, and the priests. Now there _is_ something to see in the Paris churches, like the Madeleine--worth a dozen St. Damian's,--you may tell Dora that.

The flowers and the dresses and the music--they _are_ something like.