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?”