In Friendships Guise | Page 7

was a troubled look in his eyes. He spoke the girl's name carelessly, then added in hurried tones:
"You must get into dry clothes at once, Jack, or you will be ill--"
"Just what I told him, sir," interrupted the landlord. "Young men will be reckless."
"I am going back to town to keep an engagement," Nevill resumed. "Can I do anything for you?"
"If you will, old chap," Jack said gratefully. "Stop at my studio," giving him the address, "and send my man Alphonse here with a dry rig."
"I'll go right away," replied Neville. "I can get a cab at Kew Bridge. Come and see me, Jack. Here is my card. I put up in Jermyn street."
"And you know where to find me," said Jack. "I am seldom at home in the evenings, though."
A few more words, and Neville departed. Jack was prevailed upon by the landlord to go to an upper room, where he stripped off his drenched garments and rubbed himself dry, then putting on a suit of clothes belonging to his host. The latter brought the cheering news that Miss Foster had taken a hot draught and was sleeping peacefully, and that it would be quite unnecessary to send for a doctor.
A little later Alphonse and a cab arrived at the rear of the Black Bull, where there was a lane for vehicular traffic, and Jack once more changed his attire. He left his card and a polite message for the girl, pressed a substantial tip on the reluctant landlord, and was soon rattling homeward up Chiswick high-road, feeling none the worse for his wetting, but, on the contrary, gifted with a keen appetite. He had sent his boat back to Maynard's.
"What a pretty girl that was!" he reflected. "It's the first time in five years I've given a serious thought to a woman. But I shall forget her as quickly--I am wedded to my art. It's rather a fetching name, Madge Foster. Come to think of it, it was hardly the proper thing to leave my card. I suppose I will get a fervid letter of gratitude from the girl's father, or the two of them may even invade my studio. How could I have been so stupid?"
He ate a hearty lunch, and set to work diligently. But he could not keep his mind from the adventure of the morning, and he saw more frequently the face of the lovely young English girl, than that of the swarthy Moorish dancer he was doing in oils.
Those five years had made a different man of Jack Clare--had brought him financial prosperity, success in his art, and contentment with life. He was now twenty-seven, clean-shaven, and with the build of an athlete; and his attractive, well-cut features had fulfilled the promise of youth. But for six wretched months, after that bitter night when Diane fled from him, he had suffered acutely. In vain his friends, none of whom could give him any clew to his betrayer, sought to comfort him; in vain he searched for trace of tidings of his wife, for her faithlessness had not utterly crushed his love, and the recollections of the first months of his marriage were very sweet to him. The chains with which the dancer of the Folies Bergere bound him had been strong; his hot youth had fallen victim to the charms of a face and figure that would have enslaved more experienced men.
But the healing power of time works wonders, and in the spring of the succeeding year, when Paris burst into leaf and blossom, Jack began to take a fresh interest in life, and to realize with a feeling little short of satisfaction that Diane's desertion was all for the best, and that he was well rid of a woman who must ultimately have dragged him down to her own level. The sale of his mother's London residence, a narrow little house in Bayswater, put him in possession of a fairly large sum of money. He left Paris with his friend Jimmie Drexell, and the two spent a year in Italy, Holland and Algeria, doing pretty hard work in the way of sketching. Jack returned to Paris quite cured, and with a determination to win success in his calling. He saw Drexell off for his home in New York, and then he packed up his belongings--they had been under lock and key in a room of the house on the Boulevard St. Germain--and emigrated to London. His great sorrow was only an unpleasant memory to him now. He had friends in England, but no relations there or anywhere, so far as he knew. His father, an artist of unappreciated talent, had died twenty years before. It was after his death that Jack's mother had come into some property from a distant relative.
Taking his