CHAPTER XXVI. LOST FAITH.
“For your own sake, if not for mine, Robert, do not begin drinking the first thing in the morning,” Cherokee pleaded.
“I must, I must; my nerves are all shattered. I will stop when I have won the laurels of art,” and he poured the fiery poison into the sugared glass.
“Does Marrion know breakfast is waiting?” he asked.
“I suppose not.” Cherokee felt her voice trembling, she was almost certain he had gone; there was a dreariness about the place, an utter loneliness, that made her feel that she would not hear his voice that morning.
Robert touched the bell, and when the servant answered, he bade her:
“Tell Mr. Latham breakfast is ready.”
“Mr. Latham went away in the night,” the servant answered. “I suppose he won’t be back soon, as he took a grip with him.”
In sudden temper Robert cried: “You don’t mean it, has he gone home?”
“I don’t know, sir, he went towards the station about a half hour before the New York train was due.”
“That will do, leave us,” he ordered the maid.
“Now, Cherokee, tell me why Marrion has left me?”
“Mr. Latham may prefer to make his own excuse,” she answered, quietly.
“Never mind that assumed dignity; I know the reason as well as you could tell me. This letter I found on the studio floor gives the villain away,” and thrusting it at her, he demanded: “Read it aloud.”
She nervously unfolded it and read:
“My Dear Latham:
I presume you know I too was painting the ‘Athlete.’ My model is a failure, a disappointment. Come to New York at once, and pose for me at your own price.
Yours, anxiously,
Willard Frost.”
When she finished the letter she could not find a suitable answer, so she did not answer at all. Robert did not like silence, he liked to have things explained, cleared up.
He looked at his wife with grave severity, and demanded:
“You knew this was what called him away.”
“I did not,” was her truthful and emphatic reply.
“Oh, God!” in a frenzy, “just to think how I trusted him; his word and honor were dear to my very soul; but now—now I hate him, I curse him; if I ever prayed, I might pray that the train would be wrecked and dash him to his eternal, just reward.”
“Robert, Robert!” the gentle voice pleaded, “hold him not guilty without defense; he is still your friend.”
“Hush! tell me nothing. It is a plain case of villainy; he has been bought off; he has robbed me of my future,” and Robert quit the table and went at once to his room. The insanity of drink held festival in his delirious brain.
The next few hours found him in a deplorable condition. The reaction from his fit of inebriety had been a severe shock to his system, not especially strong at best, and this, together with Marrion’s sudden flight, preyed sharply on his mind, and he suffered a sort of nervous prostration.
“My picture! my masterpiece is unfinished! it can never be finished without him!” was the substance of his raving.
Never before had Cherokee seen such woe in his countenance. She knew the painting was almost completed, and that he could finish it from the picture he had of Marrion, taken purposely to aid him, even when the model was there; but to mention anything so as to manage a way out of the pit into which he imagined he had fallen merely infuriated him, and did no good.
“Marrion must come back to me; send for him; tell him I cannot win without him,” he cried, scarcely above a whisper, he was so weak. Never before had the one desire of man’s life been strained through his face and speech like this.
Cherokee was deeply moved, yet she could not understand how he could charge Marrion with double-dealing and treachery, with conduct so entirely at variance with the whole tenor of his gracious life. How could he think that Willard Frost, that crafty, remorseless villain, could purchase the manhood of Marrion Latham. If Robert had only known how much that friend had suffered and borne for him, he would have worshipped where he now condemned.
“Cherokee,” he called from the bed, “what am I to do?”
“Rest and then go to work; your picture is almost finished; it already shows the touch of a master-hand, and it is perfect so far as you have done. Marrion had other reasons for going away from us; believe me, he will make it all right.”
She was ever gentle and tender toward him, and worked quietly, yet constantly.
The task of reforming a man takes a great deal of time, more than a life has to give, frequently, but she had been strengthened by the promise from Marrion to aid her, though now she must bear it alone.
She looked in the glass, and in the depths of it she found not the face that once smiled at her—ah! that other face, its wild-rose bloom had faded; the lips that used to tremble as if with joy alive are thinner now and they do not tremble; they are firm and somewhat sad. The hair that used to slip from its confinement, and in golden torrents fall about the wild-rose face, is somber-hued, and stays where it is pinned.
Ah! she knows what youth means to a woman, and that is denied her.