The Tiger Lily Part 18

Then, throwing the board aside, he began to pace the studio impatiently.

"What nonsense!" he muttered. "What craze is this! Her face is nothing to me. I'm overwrought. Worry and work are having their effect. I have had no exercise either lately. Yes: that's it: I'm overdone."

He stood hesitating for a few moments, and then thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out five shillings.

"I'll rout out Pacey and Leronde, and we'll go up the river for a row."

He rang the bell and waited, giving one more glance at his picture, and then turning it face to the wall, with the curtain drawn.

He had hardly finished when Keren-Happuch's step was heard at the door, and she knocked and entered.

"You ring, please, sir?"

"Yes. Take this money. No--no--stop a moment. She would be hurt," he muttered, and, hastily wrapping it in a sheet of note-paper at the side table, he thrust the packet into an envelope, fastened it down, and directed it to La Signora Azacci.

"There, Keren-Happuch," he said.

"Don't call me that now, please, Mr. Dale, sir. I likes the other best, 'cause you don't do it to tease me, like Mr. Pacey."

"Well then, Miranda, my little child of toil," he said merrily, "I have wrapped up this money because the young lady might not like it given to her loose. It isn't that I don't trust you."

The girl laughed.

"Zif I didn't know that, sir. Why, you give me a fi' pun' note to get changed once."

"So I did, Miranda, and will again."

"And sovrins lots o' times. I don't mind."

"Give this to the Italian lady."

"Is she a lady, sir? I think she is sometimes, and sometimes I don't, 'cause she's so shabby. Why, some o' them models as comes could buy her up out and out."

"Yes, Miranda; but don't be so loquacious."

"No, sir, I won't," said Keren-Happuch, wondering the while what the word meant.

"Tell her that I'm not well this morning, and have gone into the country for a day, but I hope to see her at the same time to-morrow morning."

"There, I knowed you wasn't well, sir," cried the girl eagerly.

"Pooh! only a little seedy."

"But was she to come at the reg'lar time this morning, sir?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then she ain't comin', sir, for it's nearly an hour behind by the kitchen clock."

Dale glanced at his watch in astonishment, then at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Keren-Happuch was quite correct in every respect, for the model did not come, and Dale felt so startled by this that he did not leave the studio all day, but spent it with a growing feeling of trouble.

That night, to get rid of the anxiety which kept his brain working, he sought out his two friends and dined with them at one of the cafes, eating little, drinking a good deal, and sitting at last smoking, morose and silent, listening to Leronde's excited disquisitions on art, and Pacey's bantering of the Frenchman, till it was time to return to his studio, which he entered with a shudder, to cross to his room.

Keren-Happuch had been up and lit the gas, leaving one jet burning with a ghastly blue flame, and when this was turned up, the place seemed to be full of shadows, out of which the various casts and busts looked at him weirdly.

"Phew! how hot and stuffy the place is," he muttered. "Am I going to be ill--sickening for a fever? Bah! Rubbish! I drank too much of that Chianti."

The Italian name of the wine of which he had freely partaken suggested the Conte, but only for a moment, and then he was brooding again over the failure of the model to keep her appointment.

"Surely she is not ill," he said excitedly; then, with an angry gesticulation, "well, if she is, what is it to me? Poor woman! she will get better, and I must wait."

He hurried into his room, and turned up the gas there, but he could not rest without going back into the studio and turning the gas on full before dragging round the great easel, and throwing back the curtains to unveil the picture, with its graceful white figure standing right out from the group like sunlit ivory. But a shadow was cast upon the upper part by a portion of the curtain whose rings had caught upon the rod, and a strange shudder ran through him, for the paper he had used to hide the face looked dark, and, to his excited vision, took the form of the close black veil, through which a pair of brilliant eyes appeared to flash.

s.n.a.t.c.hing back the curtain, he wheeled the easel into its place, with its face to the wall, turned down the gas after fastening the door, and threw himself upon his bed to lie tossing hour after hour, never once going right off to sleep, but thinking incessantly of the beautiful model, and the masked face whose eyes burned into his brain.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

AFTER THE LAPSE.

Dale's hands trembled, and there were feverish marks in his cheeks as he dressed next morning, and then walked into his sitting-room and rang.

The breakfast things were laid, and in a few minutes Keren-Happuch came through the studio with his coffee and toast, while an hour later, without daring to speak to him, she bore the almost untouched breakfast away.

As soon as he was alone, he made an effort to master himself, and walked firmly into the studio, drew forward his easel, and after removing the curtain, stood there to study his work and criticise and mark its failings.

He found none to mark, but stood there waiting for its living, breathing model, knowing well enough that he must check the madness attacking him--at once, in its incipient stage.

"I'm as weak a fool as other men," he muttered. "Bah! I can easily disillusionise myself. I'll insist upon her removing her veil to-day.

It is that and the foolish wish to see her face that has upset me, I being in a weak, nervous state. Once I've finished and had the work framed, I really will give up painting for a few weeks and rest."

That maddening day pa.s.sed, but no model came, and as soon as it was dark he went out, but not until the last post had come in that was likely to bring him a letter of excuse from his sitter.

He went straight to the street where Jaggs lodged, to learn that he was away from home. The people of the house thought that he had gone down somewhere in the country to sit for an artist who was doing a sea-picture, but they were not sure whether it was Surrey or Cornwall.

Somewhere Leather Lane way, Jaggs had told him that the father lived.

Perhaps he was ill, and his child was nursing him. But how could he go about asking at random in that neighbourhood about the missing model?

But he did, seeking out first one and then another handsome picturesque vagabond belonging to the artistic Italian colony, and questioning them, but without avail. They had never heard the name.

He tried a lodging-house or two, upon whose steps Italian women were seated, dark-eyed, black-haired, and with showy gla.s.s bead necklaces about their throats. But no; those who could understand him neither knew the name, nor had they heard of a Sardinian patriot whose daughter went out to sit.

Dale returned to his rooms to pa.s.s another sleepless night, hoping that the next morning would put an end to his anxiety, fever, or excitement, whichever it was--for he savagely refrained from confessing to himself that he grasped what his trouble might be.

But the morning came, and seven more mornings, to find him seated before his unfinished picture, practising a kind of self-deceit, and telling himself that he was feverish, haggard, and mentally careworn on account of his dread of not being able to finish his picture as satisfactorily as he could wish.

He had tried hard during the interval, but, in spite of all his efforts, he had been able to get tidings of neither Jaggs nor the model the man had introduced; while to make his state the more wretched, Pacey had not been near him, and for some unaccountable reason Leronde, too, had stayed away.