Revenge!

"This is hardly the dress a man is supposed to wear in London when he makes an afternoon call on a lady, Miss Linderham," said the young man, with a laugh, "but I had either to come this way or not at all, for my time is very limited. I thought it was too bad to leave the country without giving you an opportunity to apologise for your conduct last night, and for the additional insult of hiring me for two hours this afternoon. And so, you see, I came."

"I am very glad you did," replied Miss Linderham. "I was much disappointed when they telephoned me this afternoon that you had resigned. I must say that you look exceedingly well in that outfit, Lord Stansford."

"Yes," said the young man, casting a glance over himself; "I am compelled to admit that it is rather becoming. I have had the pleasure of attracting a good deal of attention as I came along the street."

"They took you for a cowboy, I suppose?"

"Well, something of that sort. The small boy, I regret to say, was so unfeeling as to sing 'He's got 'em on,' and other ribald ditties of that kind, which they seemed to think suited the occasion. But others looked at me with great respect, which compensated for the disadvantages. Will you pardon the rudeness of a pioneer, Miss Linderham, when I say that you look even more charming in the studio dress than you did in ball costume, and I never thought that could be possible?"

"Oh," cried the girl, flushing, perhaps, because the crimson paint on the palette she had picked up reflected on her cheek. "You must excuse this working garb, as I did not expect visitors. You see, they telephoned me that you were not coming."

The deluded young man actually thought this statement was correct, which in part it was, and he believed also that the luxuriant hair tossed up here and there with seeming carelessness was not the result of an art far superior to any the girl herself had ever put upon canvas.

"So you are off to South Africa?" she said.

"Yes, the Cape."

"Oh, is the Cape in South Africa?"

"Well, I think so," replied the young man, somewhat dubiously, "but I wouldn't be certain about it, though the steamship company guarantee to land me at the Cape, wherever it is."

The girl laughed.

"You must have given it a great deal of thought," she said, "when you don't really know where you are going."

"Oh, I have a better idea of direction than you give me credit for. I am not such a fool as I looked last night, you know; then I belonged to Spink and Company, and was sublet by them to old Heckle; now I belong to myself and South Africa. That makes a world of difference, you know."

"I see it does," replied Miss Linderham. "Won't you sit down?"

The girl herself sank into an armchair, while Stansford sat on a low table, swinging one foot to and fro, his wide-brimmed hat thrown back, and gazed at the girl until she reddened more than ever. Neither spoke for some moments.

"Do you know," said Stansford at last, "that when I look at you South Africa seems a long distance away!"

"I thought it was a long distance away," said the girl, without looking up.

"Yes; but it's longer and more lonely when one looks at you. By Jove, if I thought I couldn't do better, I would be tempted to take that two thousand a year offer of yours and–"

"It wasn't an offer of mine," cried the girl hastily. "Perhaps the lady I was thinking of wouldn't have agreed to it, even if I had spoken to her about it."

"That is quite true; still, I think if she had seen me in this outfit she would have thought me worth the money."

"You think you can make more than two thousand a year out in South Africa? You have become very hopeful all in a moment. It seems to me that a man who thinks he can make two thousand a year is very foolish to let himself out at two guineas an evening."

"Do you know, Miss Linderham, that was just what I thought myself, and I told the respectable Spink so, too. I told him I had had an offer of two thousand a year in his own line of business. He said that no firm in London could afford the money. 'Why,' he cried, waxing angry, 'I could get a Duke for that.'"

"'Well,' I replied, 'it is purely a matter of business with me. I was offered two thousand pounds a year as ornamental man by a most charming young lady, who has a studio in South Kensington, and who is herself, when dressed up as an artist, prettier than any picture that ever entered the Royal Academy'; that's what I told Spink."

The girl looked up at him, first with indignation in her eyes, and then with a smile hovering about her pretty lips.

"You said nothing of the sort," she answered, "for you knew nothing about this studio at that time, so you see I am not going to emulate your dishonesty by pretending not to know you are referring to me."

"My dishonesty!" exclaimed the young man, with protest in his voice. "I am the most honest, straightforward person alive, and I believe I would take your two thousand a year offer if I didn't think I could do better."

"Where, in South Africa?"

"No, in South Kensington. I think that when the lady learns how useful I could be around a studio—oh, I could learn to wash brushes, sweep out the room, prepare canvases, light the fire; and how nicely I could hand around cups of tea when she had her 'At Homes,' and exhibited her pictures! When she realises this, and sees what a bargain she is getting, I feel almost certain she will not make any terms at all."

The young man sprang from the table, and the girl rose from her chair, a look almost of alarm in her face. He caught her by the arms.

"What do you think, Miss Linderham? You know the lady. Don't you think she would refuse to have anything to do with a cad like Billy Heckle, rich as he is, and would prefer a humble, hard-working farmer from the Cape?"

The girl did not answer his question.

"Are you going to break my arms as you threatened to do his wrists last night?"

"Maggie," he whispered, in a low voice, with an intense ring in it, "I am going to break nothing but my own heart if you refuse me."

The girl looked up at him with a smile.

"I knew when you came in you weren't going to South Africa, Dick," was all she said; and he, taking advantage of her helplessness, kissed her.

PURIFICATION

Eugène Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Café Égalité, allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier, but rather a fleeting shade of unhappiness which showed he was a man to whom the world was being unkind. On the opposite side of the little round table sat his friend and sympathising companion, Henri Lacour. He sipped his absinthe slowly, as absinthe should be sipped, and it was evident that he was deeply concerned with the problem that confronted his comrade.

"Why, in Heaven's name, did you marry her? That, surely, was not necessary."

Eugène shrugged his shoulders. The shrug said plainly, "Why, indeed?

Ask me an easier one."

For some moments there was silence between the two. Absinthe is not a liquor to be drunk hastily, or even to be talked over too much in the drinking. Henri did not seem to expect any other reply than the expressive shrug, and each man consumed his beverage dreamily, while the absinthe, in return for this thoughtful consideration, spread over them its benign influence, gradually lifting from their minds all care and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, and a blue sky overhead.

"A man must live," said Caspilier at last; "and the profession of decadent poet is not a lucrative one. Of course there is undying fame in the future, but then we must have our absinthe in the present. Why did I marry her, you ask? I was the victim of my environment. I must write poetry; to write poetry, I must live; to live, I must have money; to get money, I was forced to marry. Valdorême is one of the best pastry-cooks in Paris; is it my fault, then, that the Parisians have a greater love for pastry than for poetry? Am I to blame that her wares are more sought for at her shop than are mine at the booksellers'? I would willingly have shared the income of the shop with her without the folly of marriage, but Valdorême has strange, barbaric notions which were not overturnable by civilised reason. Still my action was not wholly mercenary, nor indeed mainly so. There was a rhythm about her name that pleased me. Then she is a Russian, and my country and hers were at that moment in each other's arms, so I proposed to Valdorême that we follow the national example. But, alas! Henri, my friend, I find that even ten years' residence in Paris will not eliminate the savage from the nature of a Russian. In spite of the name that sounds like the soft flow of a rich mellow wine, my wife is little better than a barbarian. When I told her about Tenise, she acted like a mad woman— drove me into the streets."

"But why did you tell her about Tenise?"

"Pourquoi? How I hate that word! Why! Why!! Why!!! It dogs one's actions like a bloodhound, eternally yelping for a reason. It seems to me that a11 my life I have had to account to an inquiring why. I don't know why I told her; it did not appear to be a matter requiring any thought or consideration. I spoke merely because Tenise came into my mind at the moment. But after that, the deluge; I shudder when I think of it."

"Again the why?" said the poet's friend. "Why not cease to think of conciliating your wife? Russians are unreasoning aborigines. Why not take up life in a simple poetic way with Tenise, and avoid the Rue de Russie altogether?"

Caspilier sighed gently. Here fate struck him hard. "Alas! my friend, it is impossible. Tenise is an artist's model, and those brutes of painters who get such prices for their daubs, pay her so little each week that her wages would hardly keep me in food and drink. My paper, pens, and ink I can get at the cafés, but how am I to clothe myself? If Valdorême would but make us a small allowance, we could be so happy. Valdorême is madame, as I have so often told her, and she owes me something for that; but she actually thinks that because a man is married he should come dutifully home like a bourgeois grocer. She has no poetry, no sense of the needs of a literary man, in her nature."

Lacour sorrowfully admitted that the situation had its embarrassments. The first glass of absinthe did not show clearly how they were to be met, but the second brought bravery with it, and he nobly offered to beard the Russian lioness in her den, explain the view Paris took of her unjustifiable conduct, and, if possible, bring her to reason.

Caspilier's emotion overcame him, and he wept silently, while his friend, in eloquent language, told how famous authors, whose names were France's proudest possession, had been forgiven by their wives for slight lapses from strict domesticity, and these instances, he said, he would recount to Madame Valdorême, and so induce her to follow such illustrious examples.

The two comrades embraced and separated; the friend to use his influence and powers of persuasion with Valdorême; the husband to tell Tenise how blessed they were in having such a friend to intercede for them; for Tenise, bright little Parisienne that she was, bore no malice against the unreasonable wife of her lover.

Henri Lacour paused opposite the pastry-shop on the Rue de Russie that bore the name of "Valdorême" over the temptingly filled windows. Madame Caspilier had not changed the title of her well-known shop when she gave up her own name. Lacour caught sight of her serving her customers, and he thought she looked more like a Russian princess than a shopkeeper. He wondered now at the preference of his friend for the petite black-haired model. Valdorême did not seem more than twenty; she was large, and strikingly handsome, with abundant auburn hair that was almost red. Her beautifully moulded chin denoted perhaps too much firmness, and was in striking contrast to the weakness of her husband's lower face. Lacour almost trembled as she seemed to flash one look directly at him, and, for a moment, he feared she had seen him loitering before the window. Her eyes were large, of a limpid amber colour, but deep within them smouldered a fire that Lacour felt he would not care to see blaze up. His task now wore a different aspect from what it had worn in front of the Café Égalité. Hesitating a moment, he passed the shop, and, stopping at a neighbouring café, ordered another glass of absinthe. It is astonishing how rapidly the genial influence of this stimulant departs!

Fortified once again, he resolved to act before his courage had time to evaporate, and so, goading himself on with the thought that no man should be afraid to meet any woman, be she Russian or civilised, he entered the shop, making his most polite bow to Madame Caspilier.

"I have come, madame," he began, "as the friend of your husband, to talk with you regarding his affairs."

"Ah!" said Valdorême; and Henri saw with dismay the fires deep down in her eyes rekindle. But she merely gave some instructions to an assistant, and, turning to Lacour, asked him to be so good as to follow her.

She led him through the shop and up a stair at the back, throwing open a door on the first floor. Lacour entered a neat drawing-room, with windows opening out upon the street. Madame Caspilier seated herself at a table, resting her elbow upon it, shading her eyes with her hand, and yet Lacour felt them searching his very soul.

"Sit down," she said. "You are my husband's friend. What have you to say?"

Now, it is a difficult thing for a man to tell a beautiful woman that her husband—for the moment—prefers some one else, so Lacour began on generalities. He said a poet might be likened to a butterfly, or perhaps to the more industrious bee, who sipped honey from every flower, and so enriched the world. A poet was a law unto himself, and should not be judged harshly from what might be termed a shopkeeping point of view. Then Lacour, warming to his work, gave many instances where the wives of great men had condoned and even encouraged their husbands' little idiosyncrasies, to the great augmenting of our most valued literature.

Now and then, as this eloquent man talked, Valdorême's eyes seemed to flame dangerously in the shadow, but the woman neither moved nor interrupted him while he spoke. When he had finished, her voice sounded cold and unimpassioned, and he felt with relief that the outbreak he had feared was at least postponed.

"You would advise me then," she began, "to do as the wife of that great novelist did, and invite my husband and the woman he admires to my table?"

"Oh, I don't say I could ask you to go so far as that," said Lacour; "but–"

"I'm no halfway woman. It is all or nothing with me. If I invited my husband to dine with me, I would also invite this creature—What is her name? Tenise, you say. Well, I would invite her too. Does she know he is a married man?"

"Yes," cried Lacour eagerly; "but I assure you, madame, she has nothing but the kindliest feelings towards you. There is no jealousy about Tenise."

"How good of her! How very good of her!" said the Russian woman, with such bitterness that Lacour fancied uneasily that he had somehow made an injudicious remark, whereas all his efforts were concentrated in a desire to conciliate and please.

"Very well," said Valdorême, rising. "You may tell my husband that you have been successful in your mission. Tell him that I will provide for them both. Ask them to honour me with their presence at breakfast to- morrow morning at twelve o'clock. If he wants money, as you say, here are two hundred francs, which will perhaps be sufficient for his wants until midday to-morrow."

Lacour thanked her with a profuse graciousness that would have delighted any ordinary giver, but Valdorême stood impassive like a tragedy queen, and seemed only anxious that he should speedily take his departure, now that his errand was done.

The heart of the poet was filled with joy when he heard from his friend that at last Valdorême had come to regard his union with Tenise in the light of reason. Caspilier, as he embraced Lacour, admitted that perhaps there was something to be said for his wife after all.

The poet dressed himself with more than usual care on the day of the feast, and Tenise, who accompanied him, put on some of the finery that had been bought with Valdorême's donation. She confessed that she thought Eugène's wife had acted with consideration towards them, but maintained that she did not wish to meet her, for, judging from Caspilier's account, his wife must be a somewhat formidable and terrifying person; still she went with him, she said, solely through good nature, and a desire to heal family differences. Tenise would do anything in the cause of domestic peace.

The shop assistant told the pair, when they had dismissed the cab, that madame was waiting for them upstairs. In the drawing-room Valdorême was standing with her back to the window like a low-browed goddess, her tawny hair loose over her shoulders, and the pallor of her face made more conspicuous by her costume of unrelieved black. Caspilier, with the grace characteristic of him, swept off his hat, and made a low, deferential bow; but when he straightened himself up, and began to say the complimentary things and poetical phrases he had put together for the occasion at the café the night before, the lurid look of the Russian made his tongue falter; and Tenise, who had never seen a woman of this sort before, laughed a nervous, half-frightened little laugh, and clung closer to her lover than before. The wife was even more forbidding than she had imagined. Valdorême shuddered slightly when she saw this intimate movement on the part of her rival, and her hand clenched and unclenched convulsively.

"Come," she said, cutting short her husband's halting harangue, and sweeping past them, drawing her skirts aside on nearing Tenise, she led the way up to the dining-room a floor higher.

"I'm afraid of her," whimpered Tenise, holding back. "She will poison us."

"Nonsense," said Caspilier, in a whisper. "Come along. She is too fond of me to attempt anything of that kind, and you are safe when I am here."

Valdorême sat at the head of the table, with her husband at her right hand and Tenise on her left. The breakfast was the best either of them had ever tasted. The hostess sat silent, but no second talker was needed when the poet was present. Tenise laughed merrily now and then at his bright sayings, for the excellence of the meal had banished her fears of poison.

"What penetrating smell is this that fills the room? Better open the window," said Caspilier.

"It is nothing," replied Valdorême, speaking for the first time since they had sat down. "It is only naphtha. I have had this room cleaned with it. The window won't open, and if it would, we could not hear you talk with the noise from the street."

The poet would suffer anything rather than have his eloquence interfered with, so he said no more about the fumes of naphtha. When the coffee was brought in, Valdorême dismissed the trim little maid who had waited on them.

"I have some of your favourite cigarettes here. I will get them."

She arose, and, as she went to the table on which the boxes lay, she quietly and deftly locked the door, and, pulling out the key, slipped it into her pocket.

"Do you smoke, mademoiselle?" she asked, speaking to Tenise. She had not recognised her presence before.

"Sometimes, madame," answered the girl, with a titter.

"You will find these cigarettes excellent. My husband's taste in cigarettes is better than in many things. He prefers the Russian to the French."

Caspilier laughed loudly.

"That's a slap at you, Tenise," he said.

"At me? Not so; she speaks of cigarettes, and I myself prefer the Russian, only they are so expensive."

A look of strange eagerness came into Valdorême's expressive face, softened by a touch of supplication. Her eyes were on her husband, but she said rapidly to the girl–"

"Stop a moment, mademoiselle. Do not light your cigarette until I give the word."

Then to her husband she spoke beseechingly in Russian, a language she had taught him in the early months of their marriage.

"Eugenio, Eugenio! Don't you see the girl's a fool? How can you care for her? She would be as happy with the first man she met in the street. I—I think only of you. Come back to me, Eugenio."

She leaned over the table towards him, and in her vehemence clasped his wrist. The girl watched them both with a smile. It reminded her of a scene in an opera she had heard once in a strange language. The prima donna had looked and pleaded like Valdorême.

Caspilier shrugged his shoulders, but did not withdraw his wrist from her firm grasp.

"Why go over the whole weary ground again?" he said. "If it were not Tenise, it would be somebody else. I was never meant for a constant husband, Val. I understood from Lacour that we were to have no more of this nonsense."

She slowly relaxed her hold on his unresisting wrist. The old, hard, tragic look came into her face as she drew a deep breath. The fire in the depths of her amber eyes rekindled, as the softness went out of them.

"You may light your cigarette now, mademoiselle," she said almost in a whisper to Tenise.

"I swear I could light mine in your eyes, Val.," cried her husband. "You would make a name for yourself on the stage. I will write a tragedy for you, and we will–"

Tenise struck the match. A simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of thunder filled the room. The glass in the window fell clattering into the street. Valdorême was standing with her back against the door. Tenise, fluttering her helpless little hands before her, tottered shrieking to the broken window. Caspilier, staggering panting to his feet, gasped—

"You Russian devil! The key, the key!"

He tried to clutch her throat, but she pushed him back.

"Go to your Frenchwoman. She's calling for help."

Tenise sank by the window, one burning arm over the sill, and was silent. Caspilier, mechanically beating back the fire from his shaking head, whimpering and sobbing, fell against the table, and then went headlong on the floor.

Valdorême, a pillar, of fire, swaying gently to and fro before the door, whispered in a voice of agony—

"Oh, Eugene, Eugene!" and flung herself like a flaming angel—or fiend —on the prostrate form of the man.