Cynthia West made a delightful picture as she stood in the glow of the
firelight and the rose-shaded lamps. Her dress, of deep red Indian silk,
partly covered with puffings of soft-looking net of the same shade, was
cut low, to show her beautiful neck and throat; the sleeves were very
narrow, so that the whole length of her finely-shaped arm could be seen.
Her dusky hair gave her all the stateliness of a coronet; swept away
from her neck to the top of her head, it left only a few stray curls to
shadow with bewitching lightness and vagueness the smooth surface of the
exquisite nape. What was even more remarkable in Cynthia than the beauty
of her face was the perfection of every line and contour of her body;
the supple, swelling, lissom figure was full of absolute grace; she
could not have been awkward if she had tried. It was the characteristic
that chiefly earned her the admiration of men; women looked more often
at her face.
"Are you alone?" said Hubert, smiling, and holding out both his hands,
in which she impulsively placed her own.
"Quite alone. Madame has gone out; only the servants are in the house.
How charming! We can have a good long chat about everything!"
"Everything!" said Hubert, sinking with a sigh of relief into the low
chair that she drew forward. "I shall be only too happy. I have
stagnated since I saw you last--which was in March, I believe--an age
ago! It is now April, and I am absolutely ignorant as to what has been
going on during the last few weeks."
"You have been in the country?" laughed Cynthia. "How I pity you!"
"You do not like the country?"
"Not one little bit. I had enough of it when I was a child."
"You were brought up in the country, were you?" said Hubert carelessly.
"I should never have taken you for a country-bred girl--although your
physique does not speak of town-life, after all."
"Is that meant for a compliment?" said Cynthia, the clear color suddenly
rising in her cheeks. "Bah--I do not like compliments--from some people!
I should like to forget all about my early life--dull tiresome days! I
began to live only when I came to London."
"Which was when you were about fifteen, was it not? You have never told
me where you lived before that."
Cynthia made a little _moue_ of disgust.
"You have always been much too polite hitherto to ask unpleasant
questions. I tell you I want to forget those earlier years. If you must
know, I was at school."
"I beg your pardon," said Hubert; "I had no idea that the subject was so
unpleasant to you, or I would not have alluded to it, of course."
Cynthia gave him a quick look.
"You have a right to ask," she said, in a lower voice. "I suppose I
ought to tell you the whole story; but----"
There was strong reluctance in her voice.
"You need do nothing of the kind. I have no right at all; don't talk
nonsense, Cynthia. After all, what is the use of raking up old
reminiscences? I have always held that it is better to put the past
behind us--to live for the present and the future. All of us have
memories that we would gladly forget. Why not make it a business of life
to do so?"
"'Forgetting those things which are behind,'" Cynthia murmured.
She was sitting on a very low chair, her hands loosely clasped before
her, her eyes searching the embers of the fire. Hubert looked at her
curiously.
"I never heard you quote Scripture before," he said, half laughing.
"Why not? There are plenty of things in the Bible worth thinking about
and quoting too," said Cynthia briskly, but with a sudden change of
attitude. "It would be better for us both, I have no doubt, if we knew
it a little better, Mr. Lepel. Aren't you going to smoke? It does not
seem at all natural to see you without a cigar in your mouth."
"What a character to give me! Smoke in this rose-tinted room?"
"Madame's friends all smoke here. You need not be an exception. She
herself condescends at times to the luxury of a cigarette."
"You call it a luxury?"
"Certainly. Madame has initiated me. But you will understand that I
don't display my accomplishment to every one."
"No--don't," said Hubert, a trifle gravely.
She looked round at him with a pretty defiance in her eyes and a laugh
upon her face.
"Don't you approve?" she said mockingly. "Ah, you have yet something to
learn! It is quite evident that you have been spending Easter in the
country, and its gentle dulness hangs about you still."
"Gentle dulness!" Hubert thought involuntarily of Enid. Yes, the term
fitted her very well. Timid, gentle, dull--thus unjustly he thought of
her; while, as to Cynthia--whatever Cynthia's faults might be, she was
not dull--a great virtue in Hubert's eyes.
"I think you could make me approve of anything you do," he said, as he
rose in obedience to her invitation to light his cigar. "Some people
have the grace of becomingness; they adorn all they touch."
"What a magnificent compliment! I will immediately put it to the test,"
said Cynthia lightly. She had also risen, and was examining a little
silver box on the mantelpiece. "Here Madame keeps her Russian
cigarettes," she said. "I have not set up a stock of my own, you see.
Now give me a light. There--I can do it quite skilfully!" she said, as
she placed one of the tiny _papelitos_ between her lips and gave one or
two dainty puffs. "Now does it become me?"
"Excellent well!" said Hubert, who was leaning back in an enormous
chair, so long and deep that one lay rather than sat in it, and
regarding her with amusement. "'All what you do, fair creature, still
betters what is done.'"
"Then I'm content," said Cynthia, seating herself and holding the
cigarette lightly between her fingers.
She still kept it alight by an occasional little puff; but Hubert smiled
to see that her enjoyment of it was, as a humorist has said of his first
cigar, "purely of an intellectual kind." She enjoyed doing what was
unusual and _bizarre_--that was all. He wondered whence she sprang, this
brilliant creature of earth with instincts so keen, desires so ardent,
mind and imagination so much more fully developed than was usual with
girls of her age. Cynthia's beauty was undeniable; but even without
beauty, save that of youth, she would have been striking and remarkable.
She was not conscious of his continued gaze at her; she seemed to be
lost in thought--perhaps of her earlier years, for presently she said in
a reflective tone--
"You were surprised at my quoting Scripture. I wonder why? I do not
seem such a bad person that I must not quote the Bible, do I?"
"Certainly not."
"I used to be at the head of the Bible-class always when I was at St.
Elizabeth's," she said dreamily. She did not notice that Hubert gave a
little start when he heard the name.
"Your school was called St. Elizabeth's?"
"Yes."
"At East Winstead?"
"Yes"--this time rather hesitatingly. "Why?"
"Did you happen to know a girl called Jane Wood?"
The two looked at each other steadily for a minute or two. Hubert had
spoken with resolute quietness; he thought that Cynthia's expression
hardened, and that her color failed a little as she replied--
"I remember her quite well. She ran away."
"Before you left?"
"Before I left," said the girl, looking down at the cigarette she had
taken from her lips and held between her fingers. Suddenly she threw it
into the fire, and sitting erect, while a hot flush crossed her face,
went on, "Why do you want to know?"
"Oh, nothing! What sort of a girl she was, for instance."
"A wild little creature--a horrid, ungrateful, bad-tempered girl!
They--we were all glad when she went."
"Why, the old woman--what's her name?--Sister Louisa--said that she was
a general favorite!"
"I'm sure she wasn't. When were you there?"
"The day after her departure, I think."
"And what took you there, Mr. Lepel?" There was a touch of bewilderment
in Cynthia's voice.
"Curiosity, for the most part."
"No one was at the school whom you knew, I suppose?"
"No," said Hubert, reflecting that Jane Wood had gone before he paid his
visit.
Perhaps Cynthia did not understand this point. At any rate, she looked
relieved.
"I was glad when my time came to leave," she said more freely.
"Did you not like the place?"
"Pretty well. It was frightfully, awfully dull!"
"And yet you had never known anything more exciting? Were you really
conscious at the time that it was dull, or did you realise its dulness
only afterwards?"
"Oh, I must have had it in my blood to know the difference between
dulness and enjoyment," she said lightly; "otherwise----"
"Well--otherwise?"
"Otherwise," she said smiling at him, "how should I know it now? There
is a vast difference between dulness and enjoyment--as vast as that
between happiness and misery; and I know them both."
"Cynthia," he said, rising and leaning towards her--"Cynthia, child, you
do enjoy your present life--you are happy, are you not?"
She looked at him silently. The smile faded; he noticed that her bosom
rose and fell more quickly than before.
"You think I ought to be?" she said. "But why? Because I have been in
Italy--because I have had a little success or two--because people say
that I am handsome and that I have a voice? That is not my idea of
happiness, Mr. Lepel, if it is yours; but you know as well as I do that
it is not happiness at all. It is excitement if you like, but nothing
else--not even enjoyment."
"What would you call enjoyment then, Cynthia? What is your idea of
happiness?" Her hurried breathing seemed to have infected him with like
shortness of respiration; there was a fire in his eyes.
"Oh," she said looking away from him and holding her hands tightly
clasped upon her knee, "it is not different from other women's ideas of
happiness--it is quite commonplace! It means a safe happy home of my
own, with no reasonable fear that distrust or poverty or sin should
invade it--congenial work--a companion that I could love and trust and
work for and care for----" she stopped short.
"A husband," said Hubert slowly, "and children to kiss your lips and
call you 'Mother,' and a man's love to soften and sweeten all the days
of your life." She nodded, but did not speak. "And I," he said, with an
irrepressible sigh--"I want a woman's love--I want a home too, and all
the sweet charities of home about me. Yes, that is happiness."
"It will be yours by-and-by, I suppose," said Cynthia, in a rather
choked voice--he told her that he was engaged to be married.
"I see no probability," he answered drily. "She--her guardian will not
allow an engagement."
"But--she loves you?"
"I do not think so; I am sure indeed that she does not!"
"And you--you care for her?"
"No; by Heaven, I do not!"
"Then by-and-by you will meet somebody whom you love."
"I have met somebody now," said Hubert, in a curiously dogged tone;
"but, as I am sure that she does not care a pin for me, there is no harm
in letting the secret out."
"Who is she?"--in a startled tone.
"She is a singer. She used to be an actress; but she has a magnificent
voice and is in training for the operatic stage. She will be a great
star one day, and I shall worship her from afar. But I have never met
anybody in the world who will ever be to me what that woman might have
been."
"How do you know," said Cynthia, in a scarcely audible voice, "that you
are not so much to her as she is--you say--to you?"
"How do I know? I am certain of it--certain that she regards me as a
useful, pleasant friend who is anxious to do his best for her in the
musical world, and nothing more. If I dreamed for a moment that I was
nearer and dearer to her than that, I should hold my tongue. But, as it
is, knowing that I am not worthy to kiss the hem of her garment, and
that if she knew all my unworthiness she would be the first to bid me
begone, I do not fear--now, once and once only--to tell her that I love
her with all my heart and mind and body and soul, and that I ask nothing
from her but permission to love on until the last day of my life."
"Now, once and once only?" repeated Cynthia.
She looked up and saw that he stood ready for departure. His face was
pale, his lips were tightly set, and his eyes sent forth a strange
defiant gleam which she had never seen before. He made three strides
towards the door before she collected herself sufficiently to start up
and speak.
"No--no--you must not go! One moment! And what if--if"--she could
hardly get out the words--"what if the woman that you loved had loved
you too, ever since you saved her from poverty and disgrace and worse
than death in the London streets?"
She held out her arms to him, as if praying him to save her once again.
He stood motionless, breathing heavily, swaying a little, as if impelled
at one moment to turn away and at another to meet her extended hands.
"Then," he said at last--"then I should be of all men most miserable!"
It was illogical, it was weak, it was base, after those words, to yield
to the tide of passion which for the first time in his life surged up in
his soul with its full strength and power. And yet he did yield--why,
let those who have loved like him explain. As soon as he had uttered his
protest, and it seemed as if the battle should be over and these two
divided from each other for evermore, the two leapt together, and were
clasped in each other's arms.
She lay upon his breast; his arms were around her, his lips pressed
passionately to hers. In the ecstacy of that moment conscience was
forgotten, the past was obliterated; nothing but the fire and energy of
love remained. And then--quite suddenly--came a revulsion of feeling in
the mind of the man whose guilt had, after all, not left him utterly
without remorse. To Cynthia's terror and dismay, he sank upon his knees
before her, and, with his arms clasped round her waist, and his face
pressed close to her slight form, burst into a passion, an agony of
sobs. She did not know what to do or say! she could but entreat him to
be calm, repeating that she loved him--that she would love him to the
last day of her life. It was of no use, the agony would have its way.
He did not try to explain his singular conduct. When he rose at last, he
kissed her on the forehead, and, murmuring, somewhat inarticulately,
that he would see her on the morrow, he left the room. She heard the
street door close, and knew, with a strange mixture of fear and joy,
that he had gone, and that he loved her. In the consciousness of this
latter fact she had no fear of the morrow.
He might perhaps have kept his lips from an avowal of love, which was
afterwards bitter to him as death if he had known that at St.
Elizabeth's Cynthia West had once been known as the convict's daughter,
Jane Wood.