'Is it ruined?' the Colonel inquired. He was as brightly true as his
wife and he looked simply as if Lyon's question could not be serious.
'For the love of sitting to you? My dear fellow, if I had thought of it
I would!'
'Nor you either?' the painter demanded of Mrs. Capadose.
Before she had time to reply her husband had seized her arm, as if a
highly suggestive idea had come to him. 'I say, my dear, that
woman--that woman!'
'That woman?' Mrs. Capadose repeated; and Lyon too wondered what woman
he meant.
'Don't you remember when we came out, she was at the door--or a little
way from it? I spoke to you of her--I told you about her.
Geraldine--Grenadine--the one who burst in that day,' he explained to
Lyon. 'We saw her hanging about--I called Everina's attention to her.'
'Do you mean she got at my picture?'
'Ah yes, I remember,' said Mrs. Capadose, with a sigh.
'She burst in again--she had learned the way--she was waiting for her
chance,' the Colonel continued. 'Ah, the little brute!'
Lyon looked down; he felt himself colouring. This was what he had been
waiting for--the day the Colonel should wantonly sacrifice some innocent
person. And could his wife be a party to that final atrocity? Lyon had
reminded himself repeatedly during the previous weeks that when the
Colonel perpetrated his misdeed she had already quitted the room; but he
had argued none the less--it was a virtual certainty--that he had on
rejoining her immediately made his achievement plain to her. He was in
the flush of performance; and even if he had not mentioned what he had
done she would have guessed it. He did not for an instant believe that
poor Miss Geraldine had been hovering about his door, nor had the
account given by the Colonel the summer before of his relations with
this lady deceived him in the slightest degree. Lyon had never seen her
before the day she planted herself in his studio; but he knew her and
classified her as if he had made her. He was acquainted with the London
female model in all her varieties--in every phase of her development and
every step of her decay. When he entered his house that September
morning just after the arrival of his two friends there had been no
symptoms whatever, up and down the road, of Miss Geraldine's
reappearance. That fact had been fixed in his mind by his recollecting
the vacancy of the prospect when his cook told him that a lady and a
gentleman were in his studio: he had wondered there was not a carriage
nor a cab at his door. Then he had reflected that they would have come
by the underground railway; he was close to the Marlborough Road
station and he knew the Colonel, coming to his sittings, more than once
had availed himself of that convenience. 'How in the world did she get
in?' He addressed the question to his companions indifferently.
'Let us go down to luncheon,' said Mrs. Capadose, passing out of the
room.
'We went by the garden--without troubling your servant--I wanted to show
my wife.' Lyon followed his hostess with her husband and the Colonel
stopped him at the top of the stairs. 'My dear fellow, I _can't_ have
been guilty of the folly of not fastening the door?'
'I am sure I don't know, Colonel,' Lyon said as they went down. 'It was
a very determined hand--a perfect wild-cat.'
'Well, she _is_ a wild-cat--confound her! That's why I wanted to get him
away from her.'
'But I don't understand her motive.'
'She's off her head--and she hates me; that was her motive.'
'But she doesn't hate me, my dear fellow!' Lyon said, laughing.
'She hated the picture--don't you remember she said so? The more
portraits there are the less employment for such as her.'
'Yes; but if she is not really the model she pretends to be, how can
that hurt her?' Lyon asked.
The inquiry baffled the Colonel an instant--but only an instant. 'Ah,
she was in a vicious muddle! As I say, she's off her head.'
They went into the dining-room, where Mrs. Capadose was taking her
place. 'It's too bad, it's too horrid!' she said. 'You see the fates
are against you. Providence won't let you be so disinterested--painting
masterpieces for nothing.'
'Did _you_ see the woman?' Lyon demanded, with something like a
sternness that he could not mitigate.
Mrs. Capadose appeared not to perceive it or not to heed it if she did.
'There was a person, not far from your door, whom Clement called my
attention to. He told me something about her but we were going the other
way.'
'And do you think she did it?'
'How can I tell? If she did she was mad, poor wretch.'
'I should like very much to get hold of her,' said Lyon. This was a
false statement, for he had no desire for any further conversation with
Miss Geraldine. He had exposed his friends to himself, but he had no
desire to expose them to any one else, least of all to themselves.
'Oh, depend upon it she will never show again. You're safe!' the Colonel
exclaimed.
'But I remember her address--Mortimer Terrace Mews, Notting Hill.'
'Oh, that's pure humbug; there isn't any such place.'
'Lord, what a deceiver!' said Lyon.
'Is there any one else you suspect?' the Colonel went on.
'Not a creature.'
'And what do your servants say?'
'They say it wasn't _them_, and I reply that I never said it was. That's
about the substance of our conferences.'
'And when did they discover the havoc?'
'They never discovered it at all. I noticed it first--when I came back.'
'Well, she could easily have stepped in,' said the Colonel. 'Don't you
remember how she turned up that day, like the clown in the ring?'
'Yes, yes; she could have done the job in three seconds, except that the
picture wasn't out.'
'My dear fellow, don't curse me!--but of course I dragged it out.'
'You didn't put it back?' Lyon asked tragically.
'Ah, Clement, Clement, didn't I tell you to?' Mrs. Capadose exclaimed in
a tone of exquisite reproach.
The Colonel groaned, dramatically; he covered his face with his hands.
His wife's words were for Lyon the finishing touch; they made his whole
vision crumble--his theory that she had secretly kept herself true. Even
to her old lover she wouldn't be so! He was sick; he couldn't eat; he
knew that he looked very strange. He murmured something about it being
useless to cry over spilled milk--he tried to turn the conversation to
other things. But it was a horrid effort and he wondered whether they
felt it as much as he. He wondered all sorts of things: whether they
guessed he disbelieved them (that he had seen them of course they would
never guess); whether they had arranged their story in advance or it was
only an inspiration of the moment; whether she had resisted, protested,
when the Colonel proposed it to her, and then had been borne down by
him; whether in short she didn't loathe herself as she sat there. The
cruelty, the cowardice of fastening their unholy act upon the wretched
woman struck him as monstrous--no less monstrous indeed than the levity
that could make them run the risk of her giving them, in her righteous
indignation, the lie. Of course that risk could only exculpate her and
not inculpate them--the probabilities protected them so perfectly; and
what the Colonel counted on (what he would have counted upon the day he
delivered himself, after first seeing her, at the studio, if he had
thought about the matter then at all and not spoken from the pure
spontaneity of his genius) was simply that Miss Geraldine had really
vanished for ever into her native unknown. Lyon wanted so much to quit
the subject that when after a little Mrs. Capadose said to him, 'But can
nothing be done, can't the picture be repaired? You know they do such
wonders in that way now,' he only replied, 'I don't know, I don't care,
it's all over, _n'en parlons plus_!' Her hypocrisy revolted him. And
yet, by way of plucking off the last veil of her shame, he broke out to
her again, shortly afterward, 'And you _did_ like it, really?' To which
she returned, looking him straight in his face, without a blush, a
pallor, an evasion, 'Oh, I loved it!' Truly her husband had trained her
well. After that Lyon said no more and his companions forbore
temporarily to insist, like people of tact and sympathy aware that the
odious accident had made him sore.
When they quitted the table the Colonel went away without coming
upstairs; but Lyon returned to the drawing-room with his hostess,
remarking to her however on the way that he could remain but a moment.
He spent that moment--it prolonged itself a little--standing with her
before the chimney-piece. She neither sat down nor asked him to; her
manner denoted that she intended to go out. Yes, her husband had trained
her well; yet Lyon dreamed for a moment that now he was alone with her
she would perhaps break down, retract, apologise, confide, say to him,
'My dear old friend, forgive this hideous comedy--you understand!' And
then how he would have loved her and pitied her, guarded her, helped her
always! If she were not ready to do something of that sort why had she
treated him as if he were a dear old friend; why had she let him for
months suppose certain things--or almost; why had she come to his studio
day after day to sit near him on the pretext of her child's portrait, as
if she liked to think what might have been? Why had she come so near a
tacit confession, in a word, if she was not willing to go an inch
further? And she was not willing--she was not; he could see that as he
lingered there. She moved about the room a little, rearranging two or
three objects on the tables, but she did nothing more. Suddenly he said
to her: 'Which way was she going, when you came out?'
'She--the woman we saw?'
'Yes, your husband's strange friend. It's a clew worth following.' He
had no desire to frighten her; he only wanted to communicate the impulse
which would make her say, 'Ah, spare me--and spare _him_! There was no
such person.'
Instead of this Mrs. Capadose replied, 'She was going away from us--she
crossed the road. We were coming towards the station.'
'And did she appear to recognise the Colonel--did she look round?'
'Yes; she looked round, but I didn't notice much. A hansom came along
and we got into it. It was not till then that Clement told me who she
was: I remember he said that she was there for no good. I suppose we
ought to have gone back.'
'Yes; you would have saved the picture.'
For a moment she said nothing; then she smiled. 'For you, I am very
sorry. But you must remember that I possess the original!'
At this Lyon turned away. 'Well, I must go,' he said; and he left her
without any other farewell and made his way out of the house. As he went
slowly up the street the sense came back to him of that first glimpse of
her he had had at Stayes--the way he had seen her gaze across the table
at her husband. Lyon stopped at the corner, looking vaguely up and down.
He would never go back--he couldn't. She was still in love with the
Colonel--he had trained her too well.