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Page 16
A VISITOR FROM PARIS.
It was seven o'clock in the evening, ten days after Jack's second
encounter with Madge Foster, and a blaze of light shone from the big
studio that overlooked Ravenscourt Park. The lord and master of it was
writing business letters, a task in which he was assisted by frequent
cigarettes. A tray containing whisky, brandy and siphons stood on a
Moorish inlaid smoking stand, and suggested correctly that a visitor was
expected. At noon Jack had received a letter from Victor Nevill, of whom
he had seen nothing since their meeting at Strand-on-the-Green, to say
that he was coming out at eight o'clock that night to have a chat over
old times. Alphonse, being no longer required, had gone to his lodgings
near by.
"It will be a bit awkward if Nevill wants his dinner," Jack said to
himself, in an interval of his letter writing. "I'll keep him here a
couple of hours, and then take him to dine in town. He's a good fellow,
and will understand. He'll find things rather different from the Paris
days."
There was a touch of pardonable pride in that last thought, for few
artists in London could boast of such luxuriously decorated quarters, or
of such a collection of treasures as Jack's purse and good taste had
enabled him to gather around him. The hard oak floor, oiled and polished
by the hands of Alphonse, was sparsely strewn with Oriental rugs and a
couple of tiger skins. A screen of stamped leather hid three sides of
the French stove. The eye met a picturesque confusion of inlaid cabinets
with innumerable drawers, oak chests and benches, easy chairs of every
sort, Chippendale trays and escritoires, Spanish lanterns dangling from
overhead, old tables worn hollow on top with age, countless weapons and
pieces of armor, and shelves stacked with blue delf china and rows of
pewter plates. A long costume case flashed its glass doors at a cosy
corner draped with art muslin. On the walls, many of them presented by
friends, were scores of water-colors and oil paintings, etchings and
engravings, no two of them framed alike. Minor articles were scattered
about in profusion, and a couple of bulging sketch-books bore witness to
their owner's summer wanderings about England.
The letters finished and stamped, Jack closed his desk with a sigh of
relief. The evening was chilly, and he had started a small fire of coals
in the grate--he used his stove only in wintry weather. He pulled a big
chair to the blaze, stretched his legs against the fender, and fell
straightway into a reverie; an expression that none of his English
companions had ever seen there softened his handsome face.
"I wonder what she is doing now," he thought. "I fancy I can see her
sitting opposite to her father, at the dinner table, with the soft
lamplight on her lovely cheeks, and that bewitching look in her eyes.
I am a conceited fool to believe that she cares for me, and yet--and
yet--By Jove, I would marry her in a minute. She is the most winsome
girl I ever saw. It is not like the passion I had for Diane--I was a
foolish, hot-headed boy then. Madge would be my good angel. In spite of
myself, she has come into my life and taken a deep hold on my heart--I
can't put her out again. Jack, my boy, you had better have gone on that
sketching tour--better have fled to Devonian wilds before it was too
late."
But was it too late now? If so, the fact did not seem to trouble Jack
much, for he laughed softly as he stirred the fire. He, the impregnable
and boastful one, the woman-hater, had fallen a victim when he believed
himself most secure. It was unutterably sweet to him--this second
passion--and he knew that it was not to be shaken off.
During the past ten days he had seen Madge frequently. Nearly every
afternoon, when the fading sun glimmered through a golden haze, he had
wandered down to Strand-on-the-Green, confident that the girl would not
be far away, that she would welcome him shyly and blushingly, with that
radiant light in her eyes which he hoped he could read aright. They had
enjoyed a couple of tramps together, when time permitted--once up the
towing-path toward Richmond, and again down the river to Barnes.
They were happy hours for both. Madge was unconventional, and would
have resented a hint that she was doing anything in the least improper.
She had left boarding school two years before, and since then she had
rejoiced in her freedom, not finding life dull in the sleepy Thames-side
suburb of London. As for Jack, his conscience gave him few twinges in
regard to these surreptitious meetings. It would be different, he told
himself, had Stephen Foster chosen to receive him as a visitor. But he
had gathered, from what Madge told him, that her father was eccentric,
and detested visitors--that he would permit nothing to break the
monotonous and regular habits of the secluded old house. Madge admitted
that one friend of his, a young man, came sometimes; but she intimated
unmistakably that she did not like him. Jack was curious to know what
business took Stephen Foster to town every day, but on that subject the
girl never spoke.
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