A QUARREL.
When the door opened and Florimel glided in, the painter sprang to his
feet to welcome her, and she flew softly, soundless as a moth, into his
arms; for the study being large and full of things, she was not aware
of the presence of Malcolm. From behind a picture on an easel, he saw
them meet, but shrinking from being an open witness to their secret,
and also from being discovered in his father’s clothes by the sister
who knew him only as a servant, he instantly sought escape. Nor was it
hard to find, for near where he stood was a door opening into a small
intermediate chamber, communicating with the drawing-room, and by it
he fled, intending to pass through to Lenorme’s bedroom, and change
his clothes. With noiseless stride he hurried away, but could not help
hearing a few passionate words that escaped his sister’s lips before
Lenorme could warn her that they were not alone--words which, it seemed
to him, could come only from a heart whose very pulse was devotion.
“How _can_ I live without you, Raoul?” said the girl as she clung to
him.
Lenorme gave an uneasy glance behind him, saw Malcolm disappear, and
answered,
“I hope you will never try, my darling.”
“Oh, but you know this can’t last,” she returned, with playfully
affected authority. “It must come to an end. They will interfere.”
“Who can? Who will dare?” said the painter with confidence.
“People will. We had better stop it ourselves--before it all comes out,
and we are shamed,” said Florimel, now with perfect seriousness.
“Shamed!” cried Lenorme. “--Well, if you can’t help being ashamed of
me--and perhaps, as you have been brought up, you can’t-- do you not
then love me enough to encounter a little shame for my sake? I should
welcome worlds of such for yours!”
Florimel was silent. She kept her face hidden on his shoulder, but was
already halfway to a quarrel.
“You don’t love me, Florimel!” he said, after a pause, little thinking
how nearly true were the words.
“Well, suppose I don’t!” she cried, half defiantly, half merrily; and
drawing herself from him, she stepped back two paces, and looked at
him with saucy eyes, in which burned two little flames of displeasure,
that seemed to shoot up from the red spots glowing upon her cheeks.
Lenorme looked at her. He had often seen her like this before, and
knew that the shell was charged and the fuse lighted. But within lay a
mixture even more explosive than he suspected; for not merely was there
more of shame and fear and perplexity mingled with her love than he
understood, but she was conscious of having now been false to him, and
that rendered her temper dangerous.
Lenorme had already suffered severely from the fluctuations of her
moods. They had been almost too much for him. He could endure them,
he thought, to all eternity, if he had her to himself, safe and sure;
but the confidence to which he rose every now and then that she would
one day be his, just as often failed him, rudely shaken by some new
symptom of what almost seemed like cherished inconstancy. If after all
she should forsake him! It was impossible, but she might. If even that
should come, he was too much of a man to imagine anything but a stern
encounter of the inevitable, and he knew he would survive it; but he
knew also that life could never be the same again; that for a season
work would be impossible-- the kind of work he had hitherto believed
his own rendered for ever impossible perhaps, and his art degraded
to the mere earning of a living. At best he would have to die and be
buried and rise again before existence could become endurable under the
new squalid condition of life without her. It was no wonder then if her
behaviour sometimes angered him; for even against a Will o’ the Wisp
that has enticed us into a swamp, a glow of foolish indignation will
spring up. And now a black fire in his eyes answered the blue flash in
hers; and the difference suggests the diversity of their loves: hers
might vanish in fierce explosion, his would go on burning like a coal
mine. A word of indignant expostulation rose to his lips, but a thought
came that repressed it. He took her hand, and led her--the wonder
was that she yielded, for she had seen the glow in his eyes, and the
fuse of her own anger burned faster; but she did yield, partly from
curiosity, and followed where he pleased --her hand lying dead in his.
It was but to the other end of the room he led her, to the picture of
her father, now all but finished. Why he did so, he would have found
it hard to say. Perhaps the Genius that lies under the consciousness
forefelt a catastrophe, and urged him to give his gift ere giving
should be impossible.
Malcolm stepped into the drawing-room, where the table was laid as
usual for breakfast: there stood Caley, helping herself to a spoonful
of honey from Hymettus. At his entrance she started violently, and her
sallow face grew earthy. For some seconds she stood motionless, unable
to take her eyes off the apparition, as it seemed to her, of the late
marquis, in wrath at her encouragement of his daughter in disgraceful
courses. Malcolm, supposing only she was ashamed of herself, took no
farther notice of her, and walked deliberately towards the other door.
Ere he reached it she knew him. Burning with the combined ires of
fright and shame, conscious also that, by the one little contemptible
act of greed in which he had surprised her, she had justified the
aversion which her woman-instinct had from the first recognized in him,
she darted to the door, stood with her back against it, and faced him
flaming.
“So!” she cried, “this is how my lady’s kindness is abused! The
insolence! Her groom goes and sits for his portrait in her father’s
court dress!”
As she ceased, all the latent vulgarity of her nature broke loose,
and with a contracted _pff_ she seized her thin nose between her
thumb and fore-finger, to the indication that an evil odour of fish
interpenetrated her atmosphere, and must at the moment be defiling the
garments of the dead marquis.
“My lady shall know of this,” she concluded, with a vicious clenching
of her teeth, and two or three nods of her neat head.
Malcolm stood regarding her with a coolness that yet inflamed
her wrath. He could not help smiling at the reaction of shame in
indignation. Had her anger been but a passing flame, that smile would
have turned it into enduring hate. She hissed in his face.
“Go and have the first word,” he said; “only leave the door and let me
pass.”
“Let you pass indeed! What would you pass for?--The bastard of old
Lord James and a married woman!--I don’t care _that_ for you.” And she
snapped her fingers in his face.
Malcolm turned from her and went to the window, taking a newspaper from
the breakfast-table as he passed, and there sat down to read until the
way should be clear. Carried beyond herself by his utter indifference,
Caley darted from the room and went straight into the study.
Lenorme led Florimel in front of the picture. She gave a great start,
and turned and stared pallid at the painter. The effect upon her was
such as he had not foreseen, and the words she uttered were not such as
he could have hoped to hear.
“What would _he_ think of me if he knew?” she cried, clasping her hands
in agony.
That moment Caley burst into the room, her eyes lamping like a cat’s.
“My lady!” she shrieked, “there’s MacPhail, the groom, my lady, dressed
up in your honoured father’s bee-utiful clo’es as he always wore when
he went to dine with the Prince! And, please, my lady, he’s that rude I
could ’ardly keep my ’ands off him.”
Florimel flashed a dagger of question in Lenorme’s eyes. The painter
drew himself up.
“It was at my request, Lady Lossie,” he said.
“Indeed!” returned Florimel, in high scorn, and glanced again at the
picture.
“I see!” she went on. “How could I be such an idiot! It was my groom’s,
not my father’s likeness you meant to surprise me with!”
Her eyes flashed as if she would annihilate him.
“I have worked hard in the hope of giving you pleasure, Lady Lossie,”
said the painter, with wounded dignity.
“And you have failed,” she adjoined cruelly.
The painter took the miniature after which he had been working, from
a table near, handed it to her with a proud obeisance, and the same
moment dashed a brushful of dark paint across the face of the picture.
“Thank you, sir,” said Florimel, and for a moment felt as if she hated
him.
She turned away and walked from the study. The door of the drawing-room
was open, and Caley stood by the side of it. Florimel, too angry to
consider what she was about, walked in: there sat Malcolm in the
window, in her father’s clothes, and his very attitude, reading the
newspaper. He did not hear her enter. He had been waiting till he could
reach the bedroom unseen by her, for he knew from the sound of the
voices that the study door was open. Her anger rose yet higher at the
sight.
“Leave the room,” she said.
He started to his feet, and now perceived that his sister was in the
dress of a servant. He took one step forward and stood--a little
mazed--gorgeous in dress and arms of price, before his mistress in the
cotton gown of a housemaid.
“Take those clothes off instantly,” said Florimel slowly, replacing
wrath with haughtiness as well as she might. Malcolm turned to the door
without a word. He saw that things had gone wrong where most he would
have wished them go right.
“I’ll see to them being well aired, my lady,” said Caley, with sibilant
indignation.
Malcolm went to the study. The painter sat before the picture of the
marquis, with his elbows on his knees, and his head between his hands.
“Mr Lenorme,” said Malcolm, approaching him gently.
“Oh, go away,” said Lenorme, without raising his head. “I can’t bear
the sight of you yet.”
Malcolm obeyed, a little smile playing about the corners of his mouth.
Caley saw it as he passed, and hated him yet worse. He was in his own
clothes, booted and belted, in two minutes. Three sufficed to replace
his father’s garments in the portmanteau, and in three more he and
Kelpie went plunging past his mistress and her maid as they drove home
in their lumbering vehicle.
“The insolence of the fellow!” said Caley, loud enough for her mistress
to hear notwithstanding the noise of the rattling windows. “A pretty
pass we are come to!”
But already Florimel’s mood had begun to change. She felt that she had
done her best to alienate men on whom she could depend, and that she
had chosen for a confidante one whom she had no ground for trusting.
She got safe and unseen to her room; and Caley believed she had only to
improve the advantage she had now gained.