After his day's work, he had spent an hour among the pictures at
Burlington House. He was lingering before an exquisite landscape,
unwilling to change this atmosphere of calm for the roaring street,
when a voice timidly addressed him:
"Mr. Otway!"
How altered! The face was much, much older, and in some indeterminable
way had lost its finer suggestions. At her best, Olga Hannaford had a
distinction of feature, a singularity of emotional expression, which
made her beautiful in Olga Florio the lines of visage were far less
subtle, and classed her under an inferior type. Transition from
maidenhood to what is called the matronly had been too rapid; it was
emphasised by her costume, which cried aloud in its excess of modish
splendour.
"How glad I am to see you again!" she sighed tremorously, pressing his
hand with fervour, gazing at him with furtive directness. "Are you
living in England now?"
Piers gave an account of himself. He was a little embarrassed but quite
unagitated. A sense of pity averted his eyes after the first wondering
look.
"Will you--may I venture--can you spare the time to come and have tea
with me? My carriage is waiting--I am quite alone--I only looked in for
a few minutes, to rest my mind after a lunch with, oh, such tiresome
people!"
His impulse was to refuse, at all costs to refuse. The voice, the
glance, the phrases jarred upon him, shocked him. Already he had begun
"I am afraid"--when a hurried, vehement whisper broke upon his excuse.
"Don't be unkind to me! I beg you to come! I entreat you!"
"I will come with pleasure," he said in a loud voice of ordinary
civility.
At once she turned, and he followed. Without speaking, they descended
the great staircase; a brougham drove up; they rolled away westward.
Never had Piers felt such thorough moral discomfort; the heavily
perfumed air of the carriage depressed and all but nauseated him; the
inevitable touch of Olga's garments made him shrink. She had begun to
talk, and talked incessantly throughout the homeward drive; not much of
herself, or of him, but about the pleasures and excitements of the
idle-busy world. It was meant, he supposed, to convey to him an idea of
her prosperous and fashionable life. Her husband, she let fall, was for
the moment in Italy; affairs of importance sometimes required his
presence there; but they both preferred England. The intellectual
atmosphere of London--where else could one live on so high a level?
The carriage stopped in a street beyond Edgware Road, at a house of
more modest appearance than Otway had looked for. Just as they
alighted, a nursemaid with a perambulator was approaching the door;
Piers caught sight of a very pale little face shadowed by the hood, but
his companion, without heeding, ran up the steps, and knocked
violently. They entered.
Still the oppressive atmosphere of perfumes. Left for a few minutes in
a little drawing-room, or boudoir, Piers stood marvelling at the
ingenuity which had packed so much furniture and bric-tate-brac, so
many pictures, so much drapery, into so small a space. He longed to
throw open the window; he could not sit still in this odour-laden
hothouse, where the very flowers were burdensome by excess. When Olga
reappeared, she was gorgeous in flowing tea-gown; her tawny hair hung
low in artful profusion; her neck and arms were bare, her feet
brilliantly slippered.
"Ah! How good, how good, it is to sit down and talk to you once
more!--Do you like my room?"
"You have made yourself very comfortable," replied Otway, striking a
note as much as possible in contrast to that of his hostess. "Some of
these drawings are your own work, no doubt?"
"Yes, some of them," she answered languidly. "Do you remember that
pastel? Ah, surely you do--from the old days at Ewell!"
"Of course!--That is a portrait of your husband?" he added, indicating
a head on a little easel.
"Yes--idealised!"
She laughed and put the subject away. Then tea was brought in, and
after pouring it, Olga grew silent. Resolute to talk, Piers had the
utmost difficulty in finding topics, but he kept up an everyday sort of
chat, postponing as long as possible the conversation foreboded by his
companion's face. When he was weary, Olga's opportunity came.
"There is something I _must_ say to you----"
Her arms hung lax, her head drooped forward, she looked at him from
under her brows.
"I have suffered so much--oh, I have suffered! I have longed for this
moment. Will you say--that you forgive me?"
"My dear Mrs. Florio"--Piers began with good-natured expostulation, a
sort of forced bluffness; but she would not hear him.
"Not that name! Not from _you_. There's no harm; you won't--you can't
misunderstand me, such old friends as we are. I want you to call me by
my own name, and to make me feel that we are friends still--that you
can really forgive me."
"There is nothing in the world to forgive," he insisted, in the same
tone. "Of course we are friends! How could we be anything else?"
"I behaved infamously to you! I can't think how I had the heart to do
it!"
Piers was tortured with nervousness. Had her voice and manner declared
insincerity, posing, anything of that kind, he would have found the
situation much more endurable; but Olga had tears in her eyes, and not
the tears of an actress; her tones had recovered something of their old
quality, and reminded him painfully of the time when Mrs. Hannaford was
dying. She held a hand to him, her pale face besought his compassion.
"Come now, let us talk in the old way, as you wish," he said, just
pressing her fingers. "Of course I felt it--but then I was myself
altogether to blame. I importuned you for what you couldn't give.
Remembering that, wasn't your action the most sensible, and really the
kindest?"
"I don't know," Olga murmured, in a voice just audible.
"Of course it was! There now, we've done with all that. Tell me more
about your life this last year or two. You are such a brilliant person.
I felt rather overcome----"
"Nonsense!" But Olga brightened a little. "What of your own brilliancy?
I read somewhere that you are a famous man in Russia----"
Piers laughed, spontaneously this time, and, finding it a way of
escape, gossiped about his own achievements with mirthful exaggeration.
"Do you see the Derwents?" Mrs. Florio asked of a sudden, with a
sidelong look.
So vexed was Otway at the embarrassment he could not wholly hide, and
which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive
bluntness.
"I have met Miss Derwent in society."
"I don't often see them," said Olga, in a tone of weariness. "I suppose
we belong to different worlds."
At the earliest possible moment, Piers rose with decision. He felt that
he had not pleased Mrs. Florio, that perhaps he had offended her, and
in leaving her he tried to atone for involuntary unkindness.
"But we shall see each other again, of course!" she exclaimed,
retaining his hand. "You will come again soon?"
"Certainly I will."
"And your address--let me have your address----"
He breathed deeply in the open air. Glancing back at the house when he
had crossed the street, he saw a white hand waved to him at a window;
it hurried his step.
On the following day, Mrs. Florio visited her friend Miss Bonnicastle,
who had some time since exchanged the old quarters in Great Portland
Street for a house in Pimlico, where there was a larger studio
(workshop, as she preferred to call it), hung about with her own and
other people's designs. The artist of the poster was full as ever of
vitality and of good-nature, but her humour had not quite the old
spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly
improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change
appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than
the grotesque. She received her fashionable visitant with off-hand
friendliness, not altogether with cordiality.
"Oh, I've something to show you. Do you know that name?"
Olga took a business-card, and read upon it: "Alexander Otway, Dramatic
& Musical Agent."
"It's his brother," she said, in a voice of quiet surprise.
"I thought so. The man called yesterday--wants a fetching thing to boom
an Irish girl at the halls. There's her photo."
It represented a piquant person in short skirts; a face neither very
pretty nor very young, but likely to be deemed attractive by the public
in question. They amused themselves over it for a moment.
"He used to be a journalist," said Olga. "Does he seem to be doing
well?"
"Couldn't say. A great talker, and a furious Jingo."
"Jingo?"
"This woman is to sing a song of his composition, all about the Empire.
Not the hall; the British. Glorifies the Flag, that blessed rag--a
rhyme I suggested to him, and asked him to pay me for. It's a taking
tune, and we shall have it everywhere, no doubt. He sang a verse--I
wish you could have heard him. A queer fish!"
Olga walked about, seeming to inspect the pictures, but in reality much
occupied with her thoughts.
"Well," she said presently, "I only looked in, dear, to say
how-do-you-do."
Miss Bonnicastle was drawing; she turned, as if to shake hands, but
looked her friend in the face with a peculiar expression, far more
earnest than was commonly seen in her.
"You called on Kite yesterday morning."
Olga, with slight confusion, admitted that she had been to see the
artist. For some weeks Kite had suffered from an ailment which confined
him to the house; he could not walk, and indeed could do nothing but
lie and read, or talk of what he would do, when he recovered his
health. Cheap claret having lost its inspiring force, the poor fellow
had turned to more potent beverages, and would ere now have sunk into
inscrutable deeps but for Miss Bonnicastle, who interested herself in
his welfare. Olga, after losing sight of him for nearly two years, by
chance discovered his whereabouts and his circumstances, and twice in
the past week had paid him a visit.
"I wanted to tell you," pursued Miss Bonnicastle, in a steady,
matter-of-fact voice, "that he's going to have a room in this house,
and be looked after."
"Indeed?"
There was a touch of malice in Olga's surprise. She held herself rather
stiffly.
"It's just as well to be straightforward," continued the other. "I
should like to say that it'll be very much better if you don't come to
see him at all."
Olga was now very dignified indeed.
"Oh, pray say no more I quite understand--quite!"
"I shouldn't have said it at all," rejoined Miss Bonnicastle, "if I
could have trusted your--discretion. The fact is, I found I couldn't."
"Really!" exclaimed Olga, red with anger. "You might spare me insults!"
"Come, come! We're not going to fly at each other, Olga. I intended no
insult; but, whilst we're about it, do take advice from one who means
it well. Sentiment is all right, but sentimentality is all wrong. Do
get rid of it, there's a good girl. You're meant for something better."
Olga made a great sweep of the floor with her skirts, and vanished in a
whirl of perfume.
She drove straight to the address which she had seen on Alexander
Otway's card. It was in a decently sordid street south of the river; in
a window on the ground floor hung an announcement of Alexander's name
and business. As Olga stood at the door, there came out, showily
dressed for walking, a person in whom she at once recognised the
original of the portrait at Miss Bonnicastle's. It was no other than
Mrs. Otway, the "Biddy" whose simple singing had so pleased her
brother-in-law years ago.
"Is it the agent you want to see?" she asked, in her tongue of County
Wexford. "The door to the right."
Alexander jumped up, all smiles at the sight of so grand a lady. He had
grown very obese, and very red about the neck; his linen might have
been considerably cleaner, and his coat better brushed. But he seemed
in excellent spirits, and glowed when his visitor began by saying that
she wished to speak in confidence of a delicate matter.
"Mr. Otway, you have an elder brother, his name Daniel."
The listener's countenance fell.
"Madam, I'm sorry to say I have."
"He has written to me, more than once, a begging letter. My name
doesn't matter; I'll only say now that he used to know me slightly long
ago. I wish to ask you whether he is really in want."
Alexander hesitated, with much screwing of the features.
"Well, he may be, now and then," was his reply at length. "I have
helped him, but, to tell the truth, it's not much good. So far as I
know, he has no regular supplies--but it's his own fault."
"Exactly." Olga evidently approached a point still more delicate. "I
presume he has worn out the patience of _both_ brothers?"
"Ah!" The agent shook his head, "I'm sorry to say that the _other's_
patience--I see you know something of our family circumstances--never
allowed itself to be tried. He's very well off, I believe, but he'll do
nothing for poor Dan, and never would. I'm bound to admit Dan has his
faults, but still----"
His brows expressed sorrow rather than anger on the subject of his
hard-fisted relative.
"Do you happen to know anything," pursued Olga, lowering her voice, "of
a transaction about certain--certain letters, which were given up by
Daniel Otway?"
"Why--yes. I've heard something about that affair."
"Those letters, I always understood, were purchased from him at a
considerable price."
"That's true," replied Alexander, smiling familiarly as he leaned
across the table. "But the considerable price was never paid--not one
penny of it."
Olga's face changed. She had a wondering lost, pained look.
"Mr. Otway, are you _sure_ of that?"
"Well, pretty sure. Dan has talked of it more than once, and I don't
think he could talk as he does if there wasn't a real grievance. I'm
very much afraid he was cheated. Perhaps I oughtn't to use that word; I
daresay Dan had no right to ask money for the letters at all. But there
was a bargain, and I'm afraid it wasn't honourably kept on the other
side."
Olga reflected for a moment, and rose, saying that she was obliged,
that this ended her business. Alexander's curiosity sought to prolong
the conversation, but in vain. He then threw out a word concerning his
professional interests; would the lady permit him to bespeak her
countenance for a new singer, an Irish girl of great talent, who would
be coming out very shortly?
"She has a magnificent song, madam! The very spirit of
Patriotism--stirring, stirring! Let me offer you one of her photos.
Miss Ennis Corthy--you'll soon see the announcements."
Olga drove away in a troubled dream.