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.