The Tiger Lily

“Be quiet, Leronde,” cried Armstrong firmly. “Joe, old fellow, let me – a word – explain.”

“Explain?” growled Pacey, as the young Parisian shrugged his shoulders and stood aside to begin rolling up a cigarette with his thin deft fingers.

“Stop, Joe!” cried Armstrong, “you shall not go. The letter is some request about the picture – for another artist to finish it. Here, read it, and satisfy yourself.”

He tore open the scented missive, glanced at it, and was about to hand it over to his friend; but a few words caught his eye, and he crushed the paper in his hand, to stand flushed and frowning before his friend.

“All right: I see,” said the latter, with a bitter, contemptuous laugh. “We’re a paltry, weak lot, we men. Poor little daughter of the stars and stripes across the herring-pond! I’m sorry, for I did think I could believe your word.”

“Dear boys – ole men!” cried Leronde, advancing once more to play mediator.

“Shut up!” roared Pacey, so fiercely that the young Frenchman frowned, folded his arms across his chest, and puffed out a cloud of smoke in defiance.

“Joe, I swear – ”

“Thank you,” said Pacey ironically. “I can do enough of that as I go home;” and, swinging open the door, he strode out and went downstairs, whistling loudly the last popular music-hall air.

“Aha! he flies,” cried Leronde, biting through his cigarette, the lighted end falling to the floor, while he ground up the other between his teeth. “I go down. He insult me – he insult you, my dear friend. I pull his nose on ze door mat, and say damn.”

“Be quiet, lad!” cried Armstrong fiercely. “It is nothing to do with you. It is my affair.”

“Yes, I understand, dear ole man,” said Leronde, placing his fingers to his lips, and nodding his head a great deal, while Armstrong stood dreamy and thoughtful, frowning, as if undecided what to do. “I know I am French – man of the whole world, my friend. I love the big Pacie. So good, so noble, but he is not young and handsome. The lady, she prefaire my other good friend. What marvel? And the good Pacie is jealous.”

“No, no; you do not understand.”

“But, yes. Cherchez la femme! It is so always. They make all the mischief in the great world, but we love them always the same.”

“I tell you that you do not understand,” cried Armstrong angrily.

“Well, no; but enough, my friend. Ah, there is so much in a lettaire that is perfumed. I do not like it; you two are such good friends – my best friends; you, the American, he, the big honest Jean Bull. I do not like you to fight, but there, what is it? – a meeting for the honour in Hyde Park, a few minutes wiz the small sword, a scratch, and then you embrace, and we go to the déjeûner better friends than before. You are silent. I will make another cigarette.”

“I was thinking,” said Dale slowly.

“What – you fear to ask me to be your second? Be of good courage, my friend. I will bear your cartel of defiance, and ask him who is his friend.”

“Bah!” ejaculated Dale, so roughly that Leronde frowned. “There, don’t take any notice of me, old fellow,” he cried. “Sit down and smoke. You will excuse me.”

Leronde bowed, and Armstrong hurried into his inner room, where he smoothed out the note, and read half aloud and in a disconnected way: —

“How can you stay away – those long weary weeks – my unhappy state – force me to write humbly – appealingly – my wretched thoughts – Lady Grayson – her double looks of triumph over me – will not believe it of you – could not be so base for such a heartless woman as that – heartbroken – my first and only love – won from me my shameless avowal – not shameless – a love as true as ever given – for you so good and noble. In despair – no rest but in the grave – forgive your coldness. Come back to me or I shall die – die now when hope, love, and joy are before me. You must – you shall – I pray by all that is true and manly in your nature – or in my mad recklessness and despair I shall cast consequences to the winds and come to you.”

Dale crushed up the letter once again, and as he stood frowning and thoughtful, he struck a match, lit the paper, and held it in his hand till it had completely burned out, scorching his hand the while. Then, going to the window, he blew the tinder out and saw it fall.

“The ashes of a dead love,” he muttered; and then quickly, “No, it was not love. The mad fancy of the moment. There, it is all over. Poor woman! if all she says is honest truth, she must fight it down, and forgive me if I have been to blame. Yes; some day I can tell her. She will not forgive me, for there is nothing to forgive. Poor little woman! Ah, if the one who loves us could see and know all – the life, the thoughts of the wisest and best man who ever breathed! Nature, you are a hard mistress. Well, that is over; but poor old Joe! He will find out the truth, though, and ask my pardon. Everything comes to the man who waits.”

He crossed to a desk lying on a table by his bed, opened it, took out a photograph, and gazed at it for a few moments before replacing it with a sigh.

“You can be at rest, little one. Surely I am strong enough to keep my word.”

Then he started and bit his lip, for a hot flush came to his temples as the last words in the letter he had burned rose before him: “cast consequences to the winds and come to you.”

He shivered at the idea, as for the moment he saw the beautiful, passionate woman standing before him with her pleading eyes and outstretched hands.

“No!” he cried aloud, “she would not go to the man who treats her with silence and – ”

“Did you call me, mon ami?” said a voice at the door.

“No, old fellow; I’m coming,” cried Dale; and then to himself, as one who has mastered self. “That is all past and gone – in ashes to the winds. Now for work.”

Chapter Eight.

In the Scales

“Nothing like hard work. I’ve conquered,” said Dale to himself one morning, as he sat toiling away at his big picture, whose minor portions were standing out definitely round the principal figure, which had been painted in again and again, but always to be cleaned off in disgust, and was now merely sketched in charcoal.

He was waiting patiently for the model who was to attend to stand for that figure – the figure only – for Pacey’s idea had taken hold, and, though he could not dwell upon it without a nervous feeling of dread, and asking himself whether it was not dangerous ground to take, he had determined, as he thought, to prove his strength, to endeavour to idealise the Contessa’s features for his Juno. It was the very countenance he wished to produce, and if he could have caught her expression and fixed it upon canvas that day when the Conte entered, so evidently by preconcerted arrangement with Lady Grayson, the picture would have been perfect.

“It need not be like her,” he argued; “it is the expression I want.”

He knew that in very few hours he could produce that face with its scornful eyes, but he always put it off.

After a time, when the trouble there was not so fresh, it would be more easy – “and the power to paint it as I saw it then have grown faint,” he added in despair, with the consequence that between the desire to paint a masterpiece, and the temptation to which he had been exposed, the face of Lady Dellatoria was always before him, sleeping and waking; though had he made a strong effort to cast out the recollection of those passionate, yearning eyes, the letters he received from time to time would have kept the memory fresh.

“At last!” he cried that morning, as steps were heard upon the stairs. “But she has not a light foot. I remember, though: they told me that she was a fine, majestic-looking woman.”

There was a tap at the door.

“Come in.”

Jupiter himself, in the person of Daniel Jaggs, thrust in his noble head.

“All right, Emperor, come in,” said Dale, going on painting, giving touches to the background of his Olympian scene, with its group of glowing beauties, who were to be surpassed by the majesty of the principal figure still to come. “What is it? Don’t want you to-day.”

“No, sir. I knowed it was a lady day, but I’ve come with a message from one.”

“Not from Lady – ”

He ceased speaking, and his heart beat heavily. Jaggs had been to and from Portland Place with the canvas. Had she made him her messenger?

“Yes, sir; from Lady Somers Town.”

“What?” cried Dale, with a sigh of relief, though, to his agony, he felt that he longed to hear from the Contessa again.

“Lady Somers Town, sir; that’s what Mr Pacey used to call her. Miss Vere Montesquieu of the Kaiserinn.”

“Miss Vere Montesquieu!” said Dale contemptuously.

“Well, that’s what she calls herself, sir. Did you say what was her real name, sir?”