Chapter Twenty Six.
The News Spreads.
“If I have sinned,” muttered Armstrong, as he leaned back in his chair, for when from time to time he tried to walk about, a painful sensation of giddiness seized upon him, “I am having a foretaste of my punishment. How long he is—how long he is!”
But still Leronde did not come, and to occupy his mind, the sufferer sat and thought out a plan for their journey, which he concluded would mean a cab to Liverpool Street, then the express to Harwich, the boat to Ostend; next, where the seconds willed: and afterwards—
“What?” said the wretched man, with a strange smile. “Ah, who knows! If it could only be oblivion—rest from all this misery and despair!”
He rose to try and write a letter or two, notably one to Cornel, but the effort was painful, and he crept back to his chair.
“She will know—she will divine—that I preferred to die,” he muttered, “Ah, at last! Why, he has been hours.”
For there was a step outside, and then the door was thrown open, as he lay back, with his aching eyes shaded by his hand.
“Come at last, then!” he sighed; and the next moment he started, for the studio door was banged to, and locked. “You, Joe?”
“Yes, I’ve come at last,” cried Pacey, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and striding up, to stand before him with his legs far apart.
“Well, then, shake hands and go,” said Armstrong quietly. “I’m not well. I’ve had an accident.”
“Accident?” roared Pacey. “Yes, you have had an accident, the same as a man has who goes and knocks his head against a wall.”
“What do you mean?” cried Armstrong, starting.
“Mean? I mean that you’re the biggest fool that fortune ever pampered and spoiled.”
“Joe Pacey!”
“Hold your tongue, idiot, and listen to me. Here you are, gifted by nature with ten times the brains of an ordinary man; you can paint like Raphael or Murillo; fame and fortune are at your feet; and you have the love waiting for you of one of the sweetest, most angelic women who ever stepped this earth.”
“Pacey!”
“Hold your tongue, boy! Haven’t I been like a father to you ever since you came into this cursed village? Haven’t I devoted myself to you as soon as I saw you were a good fellow, full of genius? I’m a fool to say so, but in my wretched, wrecked life, I felt that I’d found something to live for at last, and that I could be proud and happy in seeing you, who are as much an Englishman as I am in blood, rise to the highest pitch of triumph; while, if you grew proud then and forgot me, it wouldn’t matter; I could afford it, for you had achieved success.”
“You’ve been a good true adviser to me, Joe, ever since I have known you.”
“And you have turned out the most ungrateful dog that ever breathed. Morals? You’ve no more morals than a mahlstick. You had everything man could wish for, and then you must kick it all over, and break the heart of an angel.”
“Let her rest. Say what you like to bully me, Joe. It’s all true. I don’t fight against it. But you can’t understand it all. Say what you like, only go and leave me. I want to be alone.”
“Do you?” cried Pacey excitedly. “Then I don’t want you to be. So the Conte gave you that crack on the head, did he?”
“What!” cried Armstrong, springing up. “How came you to think that?”
“How came I to think that? Why, I was told by a chattering French ape.”
“Leronde? Told you?”
“Of course he did. Came to me to be your other second.”
“The idiot! Where is he?”
“Locked up where he’ll stay till I let him loose.”
Armstrong used a strong expression.
“And so we must have a duel, must we? Go out to Belgium to fight this Italian organ-grinder. Curse him, and his Jezebel of a wife!”
“Silence, man!” cried Armstrong excitedly. “Pacey, no more of this! Where is Leronde? He must be set free at once. My honour is at stake.”
“His what?” cried Pacey, bursting into a roar of ironical laughter. “My God! His honour! You adulterous dog, you talk to me of your honour and duelling, and all that cursed, sickly, contemptible code that ought to have been dead and buried, and wondered at by us as a relic of the dark ages—you talk to me of that? Why, do you know what it means? First and foremost, murdering Cornel Thorpe: for, as sure as heaven’s above us, that organ-man will shoot you like the dog you are, and in killing you he’ll kill that poor girl. I swear it. She can’t help it. She gave her love to you, poor lassie, and she’s the kind of woman who loves once and for all. There’s the first of it. As for you, well, the best end of you is that you should be buried at once, out of the way, as you would be if I let you go to meet this man.”
“If you let me?” raged Armstrong.
“Yes, if I let you; for I won’t. Why, you’re mad. That Jezebel has turned your brain, and I’ll have you in a strait waistcoat, and then in a padded room, before I’ll let you go to save your honour and his. Ha, ha! His honour! The Italian greyhound! He never took any notice of his wife till he found she had a lover, but was after as many light-famed creatures as there are cards in the devil’s books. Then—his honour! Ha, ha! his honour! Why, the whole gang of French and Italian monkeys never knew what honour is, and never will. Now then, I said I’d thrash you, and I have. I only wish Dellatoria had jolly well fractured your skull, so as to make you an invalid for six months. Look here; I’ve locked up Leronde, I’ll lock up you, and if the Conte comes here, I’ll kick him downstairs.”
“You are mad. I must meet him.”
“I’m not mad, and you shan’t meet him.”
“You mean well, Pacey, but it is folly to go on like this. Run back and set Leronde at liberty.”
“I’m going to do what I like, not what you like,” cried Pacey fiercely, pulling out a knife; “and first of all, I’ll finish that cursed picture.”
He swung the great easel round, and in a few minutes had slashed the canvas to ribbons, and torn it from the frame.
“There’s an end of that!” he roared.
“So much the better,” said Armstrong, who had looked on unmoved.
“Oh! you like that, then?” cried Pacey. “You’re coming round.”
“Now go,” said Armstrong, “and end this folly.”
“You’ll swear first of all that you will not meet this man?”
“I’ll swear I will,” said Armstrong coldly.
“He’ll shoot you dead.”
“I hope so.”
“Armstrong, lad, listen to me,” said Pacey, calming down. “You’ll be sensible?”
“Yes.”
“And give it up? For poor Cornel’s sake?”
“Silence! or you’ll drive me really mad.”
“Now then, get your hat, and come with me.”
“Will you go?”
“Will you come with me?”
“Look here,” said Armstrong. “I can bear no more. I want to be cool and act like a man to the end, but you are pushing me to the very brink.—Will you go?”
“Yes,” said Pacey, buttoning up his coat. “I’m off now, boy.”
“Where?”
“Straight to the police. I’ll swear a breach of the peace against you both, and have you seized, or bound over, or something. This meeting shan’t take place. For Cornel’s sake—do you hear? For her sake, so there!”
He strode to the door, unlocked it, opened, and banged it loudly behind him, and Armstrong stood thinking what course he ought to pursue, while Pacey went straight away, not to the police, but to Thorpe’s hotel, where he told the doctor how matters stood.
“I don’t know what you are to do, sir,” said Thorpe coldly. “I wash my hands of the whole business. He has behaved horribly to my poor sister, and turned her brain. Let him go and be shot.”
“Likely,” growled Pacey. “Nice Christian advice to give. Why, it would kill her.”
“Not it. She has too much womanly determination in her, poor girl. But I can do nothing. She has been to him again and again in opposition to my wishes—forgotten all her woman’s dignity.”
“To try and save your old schoolfellow, her lover.”
“Bah! she has cast him off, sir, as the scoundrel deserves.”
“Not she,” said Pacey. “She loves him still in spite of all, and in time she would forgive him, if he behaved like a man.”
“Not if I can prevent it,” retorted Thorpe. “She shall not forgive him.”
“Well, sir,” said Pacey, “I have not come to dispute with you about that. He is almost your brother, and he is in deadly peril of his life. That Italian has challenged him; they will fight, as sure as we stand here, and the malignant, spiteful scoundrel will shoot Armstrong like a dog.”
“Nonsense! What can he care for such a wife?”
“Nothing; but his honour is at stake.”
“His honour!” cried Thorpe contemptuously.
“Exactly so. What such men call their honour. Armstrong will evade me somehow, and go off to Belgium, I am sure; and if he does, he is so careless of his own life now, in his despair, misery, and degradation, that he will never come back alive.”
“Pish!”
“It is a fact, sir. I have heard that Dellatoria is deadly with sword or pistol, and he has been out more than once before—Good heavens, Miss Thorpe! are you there?”
“Yes,” said Cornel slowly, as she came forward from the door leading into an inner room. “I have heard every word.”