The Tiger Lily

Chapter Thirteen.

A Strange Sitting

“Yes,” said Dale to himself again, “Art is my mistress. I have betrayed one, fought clear of the web of another, and now I am free to keep true to the only one I love.”

And all through that visit of the Italian, he worked on with a strange eagerness, till, at what seemed to be the end of an hour at most, his model made a sudden movement.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “I ought to have told you to rest more often. Stanca?” For he recalled a word meaning fatigued or wearied.

“Si – si,” she said quickly, and pointed to the clock on the mantelpiece, when, to Dale’s astonishment, he saw that the two hours had elapsed, and that his model had quickly resumed her cloak. Then, without a word, she crossed to the door of the inner room, and about a quarter of an hour later emerged, to find him standing back studying his morning’s work.

“Grazie,” he cried, and then pointed to the roughly sketched in figure. “Bravo!” he added, smiling.

She bent her head in a quiet, dignified manner, and raking up another Italian word or two, Armstrong said —

“A rivederia – au revoir.”

“Ah, monsieur speaks French!” she cried in that tongue, but with a very peculiar accent.

“Yes, badly,” he replied, also in French. “That is good; now we can get on better. Can you come to-morrow at the same time?”

“I am at monsieur’s service.”

“Then I shall expect you. Thank you for your patient attention. Another time, pray rest when you are fatigued.”

She bowed in a stately manner, and pointed to the door which he had locked, and as soon as it was unfastened, passed out without turning her head.

Dale stood working at his sketch for another hour, and then turned it to the wall, to light his pipe and begin thinking about his model now that he had ceased work.

It was quite mysterious her insisting upon keeping her face covered. Why was it? Had she some terrible disfigurement, or was it from modesty? Possibly. Her manner was perfect. She was evidently miserably poor, and seemed eager to gain money to support her father – he had quite grasped that – and the poor creature being compelled to stoop to this way of earning a livelihood, she naturally desired to remain incognito. Well, it was creditable, he thought; but the first idea came back. She was evidently a woman gifted by nature with an exquisite form, and at the same time, by accident or disease, her countenance was so marked that she was afraid of her clients being repelled, and declining to engage her.

“Ah, well, signora, the mysterious Italienne, I will respect your desire to remain incog. It is nothing to me,” said Dale, half aloud, as he sent a cloud of blue vapour upward. “I may congratulate myself, though, on my good fortune in finding such a model.”

He sat back in his chair, dwelling upon the figure, and then went twice over to his canvas, to compare his work with the figure in his imagination, and returned to his seat more than satisfied.

Then he put work aside, and began thinking of home, and the sweet sad face he could always picture, with its eyes gazing reproachfully at him.

“Yes,” he said, with a sigh; “poor darling! It was fate. I was not worthy of her. When the misery and disappointment have died away – Heaven bless her! – she will love and be the wife of a better man, unless – unless some day she forgives me – some day when I have told her all.”

The next morning he was all in readiness and expectant. The light was good for painting, and his mind was more at rest, for there was no letter from the Contessa. But for a few moments he was angry with himself on finding that he felt a kind of pique at the readiness with which she had given up writing her reproaches. But that passed off, and as the time was near for the coming of the model, he drew the easel forward to see whether, after the night’s rest, he felt as satisfied with his work as he did the previous day. But he hardly glanced at the figure, for the eyes were gazing at him in a terribly life-like way, full of scorn and reproach; and as he met them, literally fascinated by the work to which his imagination lent so much reality, he shuddered and asked himself whether he had after all been able to free himself from the glamour – dragged himself loose from the spell of the Circe who had so suddenly altered the even course of his life.

He was still contemplating the face, and wondering whether others would look upon it with the fascination it exercised upon him, when Keren-Happuch came up to announce the arrival of his model, who entered directly after, to look at him sharply through her thick veil.

He uttered a low sigh full of satisfaction, for her coming was most welcome. It would force his attention to his work.

“Good morning,” he said gravely and distinctly, in French. “You are very punctual.”

She bowed distantly, and then her attention seemed to be caught by the face upon the canvas, and she drew near to stand gazing at it attentively.

She turned to him sharply. “The lady who sat for that: why did she not stay for you to finish the portrait?”

Dale started, half wondering, half annoyed by his model’s imperious manner.

“It is great!” she said. Then in a quick, eager tone: “The lady you love?”

He was so startled by the suddenness of the question, that he replied as quickly —

“No, no. It is not from a model. It is imagination.”

“Ah!” she said, and she looked at the picture more closely. “You thought of her and painted. You are very able, monsieur, but I like it not. It makes me to shiver, I know not why. It makes me afraid to look.”

“Then don’t look,” said Dale, in an annoyed tone. “You will cover it, please, monsieur. The face is so angry; it gives me dread.”

“Pish!” ejaculated Dale. “Very well, though. Get ready, please. I want to do a long morning’s work.”

“Monsieur will pay me,” she said, holding out her hand in its well-mended glove.

He took out a couple of half-crowns, which she almost snatched, and then, without a word, pointed to the door almost imperiously.

He nodded shortly, and went to fasten it, while she glided into the inner room, and in a wonderfully short space of time returned ready, took her place upon the dais, dropped the cloak, and he began to paint.

“Monsieur has not covered the dreadful head,” she said hoarsely.

Without a word he took a square of brown paper, gummed it, and covered the face; then in perfect silence he went on painting, deeply interested in his work as his sketch took softer form and grew rapidly beneath his brush.

But the work did not progress so fast as on the previous day: he was painting well, but the black head, so incongruous and weird of aspect, posed upon the beautiful female form he was transferring to canvas, irritated him, and as he looked at his model from time to time, he could see that a pair of piercing eyes were watching him.

Half-an-hour had passed, when there was a low, weary sigh.

“We will rest a little,” he said quietly, and pointing to a chair and the screen, he devoted himself to an unimportant part of the work for some ten minutes, but to be brought back to his model by her words —

“I am waiting, monsieur.”

He started and resumed his work, remembering to pause for his patient model to rest twice over, and then to continue, and grow so excited over his efforts – painting so rapidly – that when he heard another weary sigh he glanced at the clock, and found that he had kept his model quite a quarter of an hour over her time.

“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle,” he said. “You must be very weary.”

“Yes, very weary,” she said sadly, as she moved towards the door, glancing over her right shoulder at the picture. “It is better now. I can look at your work; the dreadful face makes me too much alarmed.”

“A strange sitting,” he said. “Two veiled faces.” There was a quick look through the thick veil, but she walked on into the room, and in due time passed him on her way, bowed distantly, and went out, leaving Dale motionless by his canvas, gazing after her at the door, and conjuring up in his mind the figure he had so lately had before him.

He recovered himself with a start, and raised one hand to his forehead.

Chapter Fourteen.

Life’s Fever

It was with a novel feeling of anxiety that Dale waited for the coming of his model. A peculiar feverish desire to know more of her position had come over him, and he made up his mind to question her about her father and the cause of his exile. Jaggs had said that he had had to flee for life and liberty, and if he questioned her about these she would, foreigner-like, become communicative.

It was nothing to him, of course. This woman – lady perhaps, for her words bespoke refinement – would answer his purpose till the picture was finished. She was paid for her services, and when she was no longer required, there was an end of the visits to his studio.

He told himself all this as he sat before his great canvas, working patiently, filling up portions, and preparing for his model’s coming. And as he worked on, with the figure as strongly marked as the model, the softly rounded contour of the graceful form began to glow in imagination with life, and at last Dale sprang from his seat, threw down palette and brushes, and shook his head as if to clear it from some strange confusion of intellect.

“How absurd!” he said aloud, and trying to turn the current of his thoughts, they drifted back at once to his model, and he gazed at his work, wondering which of his ideas was correct about her persistently keeping her face covered.

“She cannot be disfigured,” he muttered. “It must be for reasons of her own. – She is, as I thought, forced to undertake a task that must be hateful to her. – I wonder whether her face is beautiful too?”

“Bah! what is it to me?” he muttered angrily. “I do not want to paint her face, and yet she must be very beautiful.”

He sat down again before his canvas, thoughtful and dreamy, picturing to himself what her face might be, and the next minute he had seized a drawing-board upon which grey paper was already stretched, picked up a crayon, and with great rapidity sketched in memories of dark aquiline faces that he had studied in Home and Paris, with one of later time – one of the women of the Italian colony which lives by the patronage of artists.

These soon covered the paper, and he sat gazing at them, wondering which would be suited to the figure he was painting.

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 cafés, 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.

Snatching 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 passed, 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 glass 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 pass 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.

He was seated, wild-eyed and despairing, one morning, when Keren-Happuch came running in, breathless with her exertions to reach the studio, and bear the news which she felt would be like life to the young artist.

“Here she is, sir!” panted the girl, “she’s come at last;” and then ran down to open the front door.

Dale staggered and turned giddy, but listened with eyes fixed upon the door, hardly daring to believe till he saw it open, and the dark, closely veiled figure enter quickly.

Then there was a reaction, and he asked himself why he had suffered like this. What was the poorly dressed woman who had just entered to him?

His lips parted, but he did not speak, only waited.

“Am I too late?” she said, in her strongly accented French. “Some other? The picture finished?”

“No,” he said coldly; and he wondered at her collected manner as he caught the glint of a pair of searching eyes. “I have waited for you. Why have you been so long?”

“I have been ill,” she said simply, and her tones suggested suffering.

“Ill?” he cried excitedly; and he took a step towards her with outstretched hand. “I am very sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, and ignoring the extended hand. “I am once more well, and I must be quick. Shall I stay one more hour every day and you pay me more? Oh, no. For the same!”

“Yes, pray do,” he said huskily, and he thrust his hand into his pocket to pay her in advance according to his custom, but she ignored the money as she had previously passed his hand without notice, and after pointing to the door, she hurried through into his room, to return in a wonderfully short space of time and take her place upon the dais.

Dale began to paint eagerly, feverishly, so as to lose himself in his work, but in a few minutes he raised his eyes to see the glint of those which seemed to be watching him suspiciously through the thick veil, as if ready to take alarm at the slightest word or gesture on his part, and at once the power to continue his work was gone. He felt that he must speak, and in a deep husky voice he began —

“You have been very ill, then?”

“Yes, monsieur,” curtly and distantly.

“I wondered very much at not seeing you. I was alarmed.”

“I do not see why monsieur should feel alarm.”

“Of course, on account of my picture,” he said awkwardly. Then laying down his palette and brushes, he saw that the model gave a sudden start, but once more stood motionless as he took out his pocket-book, and withdrew the pencil.

“Will you give me your address?”

“Why should monsieur wish for my address?”

“To communicate with you. If I had known, I should have been spared much anxiety. Tell me, and I will write it down.”

“With that of the women who wait monsieur’s orders? No!”

This was spoken so imperiously that Dale replaced the pencil and book, and took up palette and brushes.

“As you will,” he said, and he began to paint once more.

But the power to convey all he wished to the canvas had gone, and he turned to her again.

“Tell me more about yourself,” he said. “You are a foreigner, and friendless here in England: I know that, but tell me more. I may be of service to you.”

“Monsieur is being of service to me. He pays me for occupying this degrading position to which I am driven.”

There was so much angry bitterness in her tones that Dale was again silenced; but his pulse beat high, and as he applied his brush to his canvas from time to time, there were only results that he would have to wipe away.

“I am sorry you consider the task degrading,” he said at last. “I have endeavoured to make it as little irksome as I could.”

“Monsieur has been most kind till now,” she said quickly; and then, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, “monsieur forgets that I am waiting. His pencil is idle.”

He started angrily, and went on painting, but the eyes were still watching him, and, strive all he would, there was the intense desire growing once more to see that face which was hidden from him so closely. He knew that he ought to respect his visitor’s scruples, but he could not, and again and again he shivered with a sensation nearly approaching to dread. But the wish was still supreme. That black woollen veil piqued him, and after a few minutes of worthless work, he asked her if she was weary.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Then we will rest a few minutes.”

“No, monsieur; go on. I am your slave for the time.”

He started at her words, and as much at her tone, which was as full of hauteur as if she were some princess. But now, instead of this driving him in very shame to continue his work, it only impressed him the more. There was a mystery about her and her ways. The almost insolent contempt with which she treated him made him angry, and his anger increased to rage as he fully realised how weak and mortal he was as man. He tried not to own it to himself, but he knew that a strange passion had developed itself within him, and with mingled pleasure and pain he felt that this beautiful woman could read him through and through, and that hour by hour her feelings toward him became more and more those of contempt.

He did not stop to reason, for he was rapidly becoming blind to everything but his unconquerable desire to see her face. There were moments when he felt ready to rage against himself for his weakness and, as he called it, folly; but all this was swept away, and at last, as the sitting went on and the model haughtily refused to leave the dais for a time to rest, he found himself asking whether there was not after all truth in the old legends, and whether, enraged by his shrinking from Lady Dellatoria’s passionate avowals, the author of all evil had not sent some beautiful demon to tempt him and show him how weak he was after all. It was maddening, and at last he threw down palette and brushes to begin striding up and down the room, carefully averting his eyes from his model, who stood there as motionless as if she were some lovely statue.

At last he returned to his canvas.