Chapter Seventeen.
Another’s Love.
Four days had passed, and Armstrong had not left his place, but waited, hoping against hope, and at last sinking into a wild state of despair.
“I must have been mad,” he said again and again. “One false step leads to another, and I am going downward rapidly enough now.”
He smiled bitterly as he sat with his head resting upon his hand, feeling that he had driven his beautiful model away for ever, and vainly asking himself how it could be that so mad a passion had sprung up within him for a woman whose face he had never seen.
Then all at once he sprang to his feet, with his eyes flashing as he listened eagerly, and then a strange look of triumph began to glow in his countenance. “I must be more guarded,” he said to himself, “or she will take flight again:” and catching up palette and brush, he made a pretence of painting as he waited with his back to the door for the entrance of her whose step was heard ascending the stairs in company with Keren-Happuch. Then he heard the girl’s voice, and his heart sank like lead in doubt, for he felt that the model would have come up without being shown.
But the next moment he was full of hope as the door was opened, closed, and he heard the familiar rustle of the drapery, and the step across the floor.
He did not turn, but stood there with his heart beating violently, and a wild desire bidding him turn round quickly and snatch the veil from his models face. He was a coward, he told himself, not to have done so before. What did her anger matter? Had she not come back—penitent—friendly—
His heart gave a great leap.
—Loving, for she laid her hand upon his shoulder, and he turned round with a smile of triumph, to drop palette and brushes and turn white as ashes.
“Cornel!”
“Yes, Armstrong. The world grows very small now. You wanted me, and I am here.”
“I—I wanted you?” he faltered, as she took a step or two back, and then stood gazing at him wistfully, with her hands clasped before her, and a look of love, pity, and despair in her eyes that stung him through and through.
“Yes, Armstrong, I heard that you were in great peril. We were children together. Armstrong—you wanted help—and—I have come.”
He sank into the nearest chair with a groan, and she advanced slowly and stood close to him.
“I have felt for weeks that there was something: your letters were so different. Then they became fewer; then they ceased. But I said you were busy, and I waited so patiently, Armstrong, till that message came.”
“What message?” he cried hoarsely.
“That which told me I ought to join Michael, and help you in this time of need.”
“Who—who wrote to you?” he cried.
“There is no need to hide his name. Your dearest friend, Mr Pacey.”
“The wretched meddler!”
“The true, honest gentleman you have always said he was, Armstrong. I have come from him now.”
“The cowardly hound!” muttered Dale.
“No; your truest and best friend. He wrote to me for your sake and mine, Armstrong, and I have come.”
“What for?—to treat me with scorn and contempt?” he cried angrily, snatching at a chance to speak; “to tell me that all is over between us? Why have you not brought your brother with you, to horsewhip me and add his insults to your upbraidings?”
“Michael is here,”—Dale started, and looked with a coward’s glance at the door—“he is in London, but it was not his duty to come to the man who is my betrothed. I came alone to ask you—if it is all true?”
He drew a hoarse breath, and then forced himself to speak brutally, to hide the shame and agony he felt.
“Yes,” he said roughly; “it is all true.”
She winced as if he had struck her, and there was silence for a few moments before she spoke again, and then in a curiously changed voice, from her agony of heart.
“No, no,” she whispered at last; “it cannot be true. It is a strange dream. I cannot—I will not believe it.”
He strove again and again to speak, but no words would come. He tried to speak gently and ask her to forgive him, but in vain; and at last, even more brutally than before, he cried—
“I tell you it is true! If you knew all this, how could you come?”
There was a pause before Cornel spoke again, and then she drew herself up with an imperious gesture, and her words came firmly and full of defiance of the world.
“I came because I heard the man I loved was beaten down and wounded in the fight of life, and I said—‘What is it to me?—he loved me very dearly, and if he has been met by a strange temptation, and has fallen, my place is there. I will go to him, and remind him of the past, and point out again the forward way.’ Armstrong, that is why I have come.”
He groaned, and his voice was softened now, and half-choked by the agony and despair at his heart.
“Go back,” he said, “and forget me, Cornel; I am not the man you thought. I left you strong in my belief in self, ready for the fight, but your knight of truth and honour has turned out to be only a sorry pawn. I don’t ask you to forgive me: I only say, for your own sake, go, and forget that such a villain ever lived.”
“Then it is all true?” she said sternly.
“I don’t know what Joe Pacey has said,” he cried bitterly, as he gazed in the sweet womanly face before him, “but I make the only reparation that I can. I speak frankly, Cornel dear, and tell you that the worst he could say of me would not exceed the truth. Utterly unworthy—utterly base—I am not fit to touch your hand.”
As he spoke now in his excitement, he took a step toward her, and she drew back.
“Yes!” he cried bitterly; “you are right. Shrink from me and go.”
“No,” she said, after another pause, “I will not shrink from you; I will not upbraid; I will only say to you, Tear these scales from your eyes, and see, as Armstrong Dale, my old playfellow—brother—lover—used to see. Break from the entanglement, like the man you always were, and be yourself again.”
“No!” he groaned, “I am no longer master of myself. For God’s sake, go!”
“And leave you to this—caught in these toils, to struggle wildly for a time, and for what?—a life of misery and repentance? It is not true; you are too strong for this. Armstrong, for your own sake—for all at home—one brave effort. Pluck her from your heart.”
He looked at her sadly for a few moments, and then shook his head.
“Impossible!” he groaned. “It is too late.”
“No!” she cried excitedly; “even on the very edge there is time to drag you away. Armstrong—I cannot bear it—come with me, dearest. You loved me once; you made me care for you and think of you as all the world to me. This woman—she cannot love you as I do, dear. For I do love you with all my poor heart. Don’t quite break it, dear, for I forgive you everything, only come back with me now. Do you not hear me? I forgive you everything, and you will come.”
She staggered toward him with her arms open to clasp him to her breast, but he shrank away with a groan of despair.
“No,” he said; “it is too late—too late!”
She heaved a piteous sigh, and her hands fell to her sides. Then, with her head bent, she walked slowly to the door, passed out, and he heard her steps descending. A few moments later there were voices in the hall, followed by the heavy closing of the door, which seemed to shut him for ever from all that was good and true, alone with his despair as he turned to his canvas, where he gazed upon the form he had created, apparently the only memory of a mad passion which had crushed him to the earth.