IN CUPID'S CHAINS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9497, 28 April 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

IN CUPID'S CHAINS.

BY CHARLES GARVICE, Author of Once in a Life," "A Life's Mistake,' " Better Than Life," " On Love's Altar ; or A Fatal Fancy," " She Trusted Him." "Paid For," *' Elaine," etc. CHAPTER XXVll.— (Continued.) Harry Richmond took the block on his broad shoulder and followed Madge up to the studio. "Chosen a piece? Let me see," said the sculptor. " Hem! the best piece in the yard, isn't it ? Well, it can't be too good." Harry Richmond passed into the studio, still carrying the block, and as he did so, the young woman, the paid model, who was going out of the door leading to the street, turned. Her pale, careworn face went) whiter than the marble itself, and as she shrunk back against the -open door she uttered a sharp cry, her eyes fixed upon Harry Richmond, with a mass of stone upheld by his muscular arm. " What is the matter ?" said Mr. Gerard, with a frown; for your artist objects to the expression of emotion unless it serves his purpose. " Are you faint, my girl ?" The girl pub her hand to her eyes for a moment, then let them drop, and gazed fixedly, searchingly at Harry Richmond. He stood as calm and emotionless as one of the statues, a grave surprise and pity on his handsome face. " She has sat too long. She is tired,'' he said; and setting down the block of marble, ho poured out a'glass of water from a jug and took it to her. " Drink this," he said. She took it with trembling hands and looked up at him with the same fearful, anxious scrutiny. Then she sighed heavily and raised the glass to her lips. " You—you don'b know me 1" she whispered. ,„ . , L He looked at her with brows bent thoughtfully. " No," he said. " That is, I have seen you here once or twice." She put the glass down with another sigh, drew the thin shawl round her, and went out. Harry Richmond turned to the others with a question on his lips; but the sculptor had placed Madge in her proper pose, and had evidently quite forgotten his last model and her slight fainting fit. Harry Richmond stood looking on for a few minutes, then, as if remembering that he was wasting his *' master's" time, reluctantly, and with a sigh, went back to the yard again. Mr. Gerard worked with the absorption of a genius. ' ' " This is going to be one of my best bits of work," he said, almost to himself, as he washed his clayey bands. "Yes, I'm in luck. There will be at least one statue with a lovely face in the next Academy." He was absorbed, so fully in the seventh heaven—the artist's heaven—that lie let her go without a word ; in fact, scarcely knew that she had gone. ■Madge glanced toward the yard as she left the studio. Harry Richmond was still at work, and the chisel and mallet made their wonted music. When she reached home she found Silas Fletcher awaiting her, and the sight of him made her start guiltily. She had forgotten him—yes, clean forgotten him ! She could not raise her eyes to his face as he pressed her hand and stared at her with his passionladen eyes. . "Sorry I couldn't come last night, Madge," he said. '«Fact is, I was kept at the office till late. I'm one of a ' corner' in cotton. There, you couldn't understand me if I tried to explain it. Bub if we can pull the thing through properly it will make a man of me. I shall be next door to a-, hundred-thousand-pounder. Think of that ! You'll ride in your carriage and pair, Madge ; mark my words." "Is that Mr. Silas?" cried Mr. Gordon, feebly, awakened from sleep by the unrausijj cal voice. " How—how is the book getting' on ? I want to see the proofs." "Oil, the book's all right—getting on stunningly," said Silas, carelessly. Then he turned to Madge : " I've had a letter from the gu v'nor. My word, but things are going it at the Chase ! Lord Norman's gob engaged to Lady Sybil Belamoor, of The Grange. It's in all the society papers." • "Yes," said Madge, gravely. She was thinking at the moment of Harry Richmond, the man who so strangely resembled Lord Norman. She felt that she ought to toll Silas Fletcher of her ricquainanco with him, but she shrunk from doing 80. " Yes, it's a big match. He owns, or will own, half the country, and she's one of the real swells. Bub I sha'n't envy them. She's as cold as ice, and he—well, he's gob the devil's own temper!" " I hope they will be happy," said Madge, almost inawdibly;

_," Oh, yes; so do I-at least, I don't care. Brat it's evident that he's head over heels in love'. What do you think he wants?" Madge smiled gravely. •' Why, he wants a bust of her My guVnor has, written to me about it. I'm to find out a sculptor of the best—and send him down regardless of expense. That's just like the swells, isn't it?" he remarked, contemptuously. " A city man would ask the price first, and make a proper contract of it; but Lord Norman is too high and mighty for that. I've got to find a man and send him down at once, post haste, and regardless of the cost." Madge thought of Mr. Gerard. . " There is a famous sculptor lives in this house," she said.

" Does he ?" exclaimed Mr. Silas, pricking up his ears. "Oh, come, now 1 He can'b be very famous, or he wouldn't hang out at such diggings as these." " But he cares nothing for money," said Madge, " and he is a great sculptor." Is he ?" said Mr. Silas. " Well, I'll see him, and see if we can't come to terms. Of course"—with a cunning gleam in his eyes "I shall want my commission." " Your commission ?"

" Oh, never mind; you don't understand business," said Mr. Silas, with a laugh of tolerant contempt. " I'll see to it; leave it to me. All is fish that comes to the net of a city man. But isn't Lord Norman going it! The guv'nor says that the money is flying like leaves in autumn—quite poetical, isn't it?—nothing's good enough for the young lord; and the old man—the earl, I mean—sits there like a stuffed mummy, and can't say a word. Enough to make a fellow laugh, isn't ib ?" Then glancing ab Madge's sad, grave face, he shifted the subject. "You— haven't forgotten our bargain, Madge ?" " M o," she said, faintly. Then she looked up at the vulgar, commonplace face, the face which was so true au index of the vulgar, commonplace mind, and tried to tell him of Harry Richmond. But ib seemed like sacrilege, and—she could not.

" I'll look that sculptor fellow up at once," he said, a little later on. "From the little I know of Lord Norman, and from my guv'nor's letter, I should say he's nob the man to brook any delay. The worst of ib is," he added, as he held Madge's small, cool hand in his big, moist palm, " that I've got to go down there to-morrow. It's a beastly nuisance, and—and I shall miss you, Madge. I wish I could think you'd miss me 1" Madge tried, honestly tried, to respond to the love-lorn look and voice, but her heart rebelled, and Mr. Silas had to be contonb with her gentle "Good-bye," as he marched down the stairs in search of Mr. Gerard, the famous sculptor. CHAPTER XXVIII. To put it in the slang of the day, Lord Norman was, though in a highly decorous manner, "painting the county red." The Chase had been filled all through the Christmas week with a very large and an exceedingly "gay" party ; a party which delighted in very late dinners, baccarat until the early morning, and breakfast consisting principally of grilled bones and curry. lb was a party that rode hard, played hard, flirted hard, and if it did not drink hard was only restrained from doing so for fear of losing its last shred of reputation ; but as it consisted of the very cremc de la crane of London society, and was as full of titles as a hedge is of blackberries in September ; the world—even the quist world of Devonshire—had not a word to say against it, bub was quite willing to dine, hunt, and dance with it; and of this gathering of smart and choice spirits, Lord Norman was the very soul. The young heir to Chesney Chase and the earldom seemed mad—mad with the pride of youth, the consciousness of wealth and strength, and, most of all, mad in his love for Sybil Delamoor. He seemed, indeed, intoxicated with happiness ;so much so that Lady Delamoor was startled out of her limp serenity into a remonstrance. " I—l am afraid Norman is—is rather wild, Sybil," she said, one day, just after the young man had ridden away with flushed face and glittering eyes, and urging his high-spirited horse into a mad gallop down the Grange avenue. Lady Sybil looked after his fast-retreat-ing form with a smile of conscious power and gratified vanity. "Because he rides hard, mamma ?" she said. "Because—well, because he does everything hard," murmured Lady Delamoor, gravely. "He is terribly excitable. The other night at dinner he looked so—so strange that I thought, really I thought he had had too much wine." Lady Sybil smiled. "I know. He read your thoughts in your face and told me of ib. He had not had too much wino. He said"she paused and smiled again, but without a traco of shyness—" he said that it was because 1 had been sitting next him, and he was thinking that I should soon be his." Lady Delamoor looked shocked. " Really, Sybil 1" " Well," she retorted, " what is there so dreadful in that ? I should hate a lukewarm lover. lam rather cold myself." "Yes," assented Lady Delamoor, with a sigh. " And one loves one's opposite, you know. Do not be afraid, mamma. Norman will settle down when we are married, and be as staid as even you can desire. Ab any rate, you mustn't expect me to find fault with him for being very much in love with me." She paused a moment, then laughed softly. " Have you heard of his last freak ?" " No," said Lady Delamoor, with a glance almost of alarm. " \Vb ab is it ?"

" Nothing very dreadful. He is going to have a bust of me carved. Heaven only .snows how many of my portraits he has already ; but lie says that nothing but my face in marble will satisfy him." "It is— it is absurd," said Lady Delamoor. "I shall speak to him and try and dissuade him from the idea. No one has a statuette carved until after she is married, and only then if she happens to be a celebrity." " Well, and am I nob a celebrity ?" said Lady Sybil, raising her exquisitely pencilled brows and looking down at the fair and rather troubled face by the fire with icy hauteur. "Is there not a paragraph devoted to me in each number of the society papers ? Doesn't all the world know of my engagement, the exact number of the wedding presents, and what my gowns are going to be?" Lady Delamoor sighed. " Sometimes "—she faltered—" sometimes, Sybil, this engagement, much as I desired ib, almost frightens me. He—ho is so wild and restless, and — and I cannot forget the poor earl shut up in his rooms, speechless and powerless amid all this gayety." Sybil shrugged her shoulders. " Norman can't help his uncle's illness. The earl was once young himself, I suppose, and knew what ib was to be in love." Andsheglancedsingificantlyathermofcher. The pale face of the older woman flushed, and she averted it hastily. "At any rate, 1 object to the idea of the bust," she said, quietly. Lady Sybil laughed softly. " Your objection comes too late, dear," she murmured in her languid tones. " Norman has just told me that a sculptor is coming down to-night, and that you and I are to go over to the Chase to-morrow to give the man a sitting. He is a famous sculptor— l forget his name—and Norman has given him carte blanche. It is to be exhibited in the next Academy, and will, so Norman says, create quite an excitement. He says that it will be the most beautiful —" Sho broke off with a laugh. "But you will not care to hear his ' lover's flattery,' will you, clear ?" and nestling into one of the softest chairs, 3he took up a book, as if the subject were exhausted. *' Gorman had Bpoken truly, for at that moment Mr. Gerard was at the inn. He had declined Lord Norman's invitation to stay at the Chase during the progress of the bust. "Iknow what that means," he said as he sat beside the fire smoking his old brier pipe, as much beloved as burned, which is,saying a deal "It means living a life of gilded slavery, in the company of men and women who either treat you with open disdain, or a patronage which is worse than the coldest scorn. Besides, J cannot work with people looking on who know nothing of art, and yet persist in chatting the most arrant rubbish about it." The companion he addressed was Harry Richmond ; for just before he was starting Mr. Gerard had called out of the window to him and told him that he wished Richmond to go with him. Harry stared and did nob look overwhelmed with joy ; for in an instant he reflected that leaving London meant loaving ; Madge.

" What is the matter said Mr. Gerard. "Have you grown so fond of London slush and fog that you can't bear to tear yourself away for a few days ?" ;; : 5 . V " I will go, sir," said Harry; and aa hour afterward he had been ready to accompany his master. - • - '■*• " I don't know that I've much use for you, now I've broughb you," said Mr. Gerard as they sab in the train, and he laughed absently. " Bub, anyway, you can : prepare the clay and help keep the idiots off me. Tell them, if they want to talk, that they may talk to you ;'that* I'm stone deaf — 'stone' is distinctly good !—or that I bite if I'm spoken to." - : " Very well," Harry Richmoud had reponded. . - • He had been looking out of the carriage window as the train whirled along—loosing out with a grave thoughtfulness— Mr. Gerard had asked him what he was thinking of. " Iwas wondering wehther I had ever lived in the country," he had replied. " You don't remember 2 "No," was the reply. ;*'Bub," he had added, almost to himself, "perhaps I may some day." " Some people would give all they possess to lose their memory, as you have done, Richmond," Mr. Gerard had remarked. Harry Richmond had been very thoughtful all through the journey, and he was still silenb and preoccupied as the two now sat before the fire in the inn parlour and smoked their pipes. " 1 wonder what this young lady is like," growled the sculptor, presently. " Not half as beautiful as—as the bust I have left at home," he added. Harry Richmond knew that he meant that of Madge, and he coloured swiftly. "Why did you leave it ?" he said, gravely. Mr. Gerard pushed his hand through his thick, iron-grey hair. " Why ? Well, for several reasons. One, because that vulgar city fellow what was his name ?—Fletcher, offered me a large sum any sum, indeed, to come down, and we airtists love money like other people ; bub the strongest reason was—" He paused. "Do you know what happens to the men who cub diamonds ? Sometimes when they have a large stone of extraordinary lustre, they grow so absorbed in ib that they get lost, and are in danger of becoming mad. Then the manager of the works takes them off that big diamond and sets them to work on smaller and duller stones, and they recover their sanity. That little bust was a big diamond to me, Richmond. Don't be uneasy," he laughed, grimly, as Harry Richmond moved in his chair and frowned at the fire with a suddenly troubled face. " The poor diamond cutter knows all the time he is in love with the stone that it never can by any possibility be his; and I have known the same of Madge—Miss Gordon. She is worthy of a younger, a better man than the grizzled sculptor, and the grizzled sculptor knows it. Don't sigh like that, man, or you'll put the fire out," and he laughed again,, and eyed the handsome face curiously. Before Harry Richmond could speak— he had been going to do so—the gill of the inn brought a note bo Mr. Gerard. He opened ib and read it, then tossed ib across the table to Harry. " Lord Norman," said the note, "will be obliged if Mr. Gerard will come up to the Chase this evening and confer with Lord Norman respecting Lady Sybil Delamoor's bust."

" Will you go?" asked Harry. " I certainly will not," said the sculptor, leaning further back in his chair and stretching out his legs. "I would not leave this fire to-night at the bidding of a king— unless it were the kins: of sculptors or painters. I'd go through the blackness of a Siberian forest for either of these any night. But 1 do nob leave here for any swell son or nephew of an earl. Besides," and he sent out a volume of smoke with contemptuous anger, "what the devil does he mean by confer I have come to sculp, not to confer. If, when I have done the thing, his serene high mightiness doesn't like it, he can leave it. He turned to the girl, who stood open-mouthed and fingering her apron in a delicious condition of awe and admiration, for to her Lord Norman was a kind of demigod. "Tell the messenger that Mr. Gerard is in bed—or dead—which you like ; and bring us another mug of this old ale. But wait—stop I" he exclaimed. "If Lord Norman wants to * confer,' why shouldn't he ' confer' with you, Richmond ? Yes, yes, you shall go. I see you are shocked at my rude independence." "Igo ?" said Harry Richmond. " Whab good could 1 do?" Mr. Gerard laughed. Tho idea tickled him, and he stuck to it. " Kings and queens have their ambassadors ; why shouldn't a sculptor have his ? Yes, you shall go. Tut, man J I can see you are dying to do so. Get your hat and coat, and see this sprig of nobility and talk to him. You know enough of the jargon to do that. Tell him—oh, tell him what you like, bub let him fully understand that I have come to sculp, not toconfer. 'Confer!'" and with a grunt he refilled his pipe and settled himself deeper into his chair, as if he never meant to leave it, or as if only dynamite would force him from it. Harry Richmond hesitated, bub only for a moment. It was his place to obey. He put on his hab and coat and went outside. A groom was standing by the door drinking a glass of hot grog. He touched his bat to Harry. " Are you ready, sir ?" he asked. Harry Richmond nodded and they started.

Ib was rather a dark night, bub still light enough for them to see their road, and they walked on until they came in sight of the Chase.

The many windows blazing with light startled Harry Richmond from his reverie, a reverie in which the principal, indeed, the only figure, was that of Madge Gordon. He looked up, surprised and interested. " Is that the house ?"

Yes, air," replied the man, respectfully. It's a fine place, isn't it?" It is," said Harry. Is anything out of the ordinary going on there? There seems so much light and music," he added; for as they ascended the steps the sound of a violin and a piano floated out to them. " Oh, it's only the usual thing," said the groom, carelessly, and with a touch of pride. "His lordship's gob a big party staying at the Chase. They've just had dinner, and are enjoying themselves with a little music. Presently they'll take to card playing, and keep it up till morning. After that those of 'em who haven't thought it worth while to go to bed, will get some grilled bones and be out with the hounds— there's a meet to-morrow morning—and you may beb your life Lord Norman will be one of 'em." Harry Richmond looked round with curiosity and interest. The place seemed a f>alace oven to him who was used to the arge houses of London. "He must be very rich, this Lord Norman," he said, rather to himself than to the groom ; bub the man heard him. "Rich? I should think so. There's no end to the money. He'll be the richest man in this county, and in any other, for aught I know, when the earl dies." "The earl said Harry. " Yes, his uncle. He's up there," he pointed to some dimly lighted windows on the first floor. "Paralysed or something of thf) sort. Here we are," he broke off as they reached the hall. "You go in, sir, and send up your name. I mustn't enter the house by this front way." Harry stepped into the hall and looked round. The vast size and air of patrician antiquity struck him, and so absorbed him that he forgot the business that had brought him there, until a footman, in the rich livery which the retainers had worn since Lord Norman's reign, came forward and eyed him expectantly—expectantly, but yob respectfully, for there was the unmistakable sign of the aristocrat in the tall, slight figure and the handsome face. "Lord Norman wishes to see me," said Harry Richmond. "At least—well, say, ' Mr. Gerard ;' his lordship will understand then." Ho turned as he spoke to look at a magnificent palm standing near a man in armour, and so brought' hi« face into the light. The footman started. '" Good Lord !'* he exclaimed. Harry Richmond turned to him with grave surprise. The man recovered his composure as if with an effort, and still eyeing the handsome face covertly, said : : "This way, sir." He showed Harry into Lord Norman's private smoking-room and closed the door. Harry looked round. Following Lord Norman's instructions, Robins had converted the once dingy room into a comfortable den. Ib looked what it was— private snuggery—and Harry Richmond noticed that all the dooip were double— is, one of wood and the inner one of baize—and that the single window was covered by a

curtain of heavy velvet. A lamp, turned down very low, lighted the room but dimly. "Lord Norman likes to be quiet sometimes," he thought "only sometimes," he added to himself, with his grave smile ; for the footman had left the inner door of baize open, and a peal of laughter penetrated to the room. ,

' A moment or two afterward he heard a quick, firm step, the door was thrown open, and a young man in oveningdress entered. He stood for a moment looking round in he semi-darkness ; then, with a "Curse the idiot! why didn't he turn up the light ?" he went to the table, on the other side of which Harry Richmond stood, and turned up the lamp. Then, saying, How do you do, Mr. G«rard ? Awfully good of you to—" He raisud his eyes to Harry Richmond's face. Th? civil greeting died away, the handsome face lost its reckless flush and became suddenly pinched and livid, the dark eyes distended until the whites showed all round the pupils, and with a cry of horror he clutched the table to prevent himself from falling. "My God!" burst from his pallid lips. "I—l must be mad or—or drunk !" He staggered toward the door, looking over his shoulder at Harry Richmond's ' surprised face, as if he meant to fly from some spectre; and then with an oath and a wild laugh—a laugh of desperate defiance— flung himself against the door and confronted his visitor. [To bo continued.]