The brilliant woman, ignorant of his meaning, but comprehending only
that he deemed her inconstant and unworthy, stood with tears in her
eyes--tears which sprang partly from sorrow, partly from offence. She
knew within herself that she was heartless and wrong; but, none the
less, she felt herself aggrieved.
"Claudia," he said at last, looking straight at her, "our mutual
protestations of love ended long ago. We have been friends--close
friends; but as for love, well, when a woman really loves a man she does
not bestow her smiles upon a score of other admirers."
"Ah! you reproach me for being smart," she cried. "I am a woman, and
may surely be forgiven any little _caprices de coeur_."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Your attachment to me was one of your caprices, Claudia."
"Then you don't believe that I really have within my heart one atom of
real affection for you?" she asked seriously.
"Your love for me is dead," he answered gravely. "It died long ago.
Since then you have made other conquests, and to-day half London is at
your feet. I, Dudley Chisholm, am a man who has had an unwelcome
popularity thrust upon him, and it is only in the natural order of
things that I should follow in your train. But, as my place in your
heart has long ago been usurped, why should we, intimate friends as we
are, make a hollow pretence that it still exists?"
His voice remained calm and unbroken during his speech, yet there was an
accent in it that thrilled through her heart. As she listened, stirred
at heart by a strange emotion, her truer nature told her that she had by
her caprice and folly fallen in his esteem. She had left the greatness
that was pure and lofty for the greatness which was nothing better than
tinsel.
"Once, Claudia, I loved you. In those days, before your marriage, you
were my ideal--my all in all. You wedded Dick, and I--well, I can
honestly say that during those two years of your married life I never
entered your house. We met, here and there, at various functions, but I
avoided you when I could, and never accepted your invitations. Why, you
ask? Well, I'll tell you. Because I loved you."
Her head was bowed; a stifled sob escaped her.
"When you were free," he went on, "it was different. In your grief you
wrote to me, and I at once came to you. At first you were mournful in
your retirement; then of a sudden, after a few short months, you were
seized by an overweening ambition to become a queen of society. I
watched you; I saw your indiscretions; I spoke to you, and your answer
was an open defiance. Then it was that my sympathy with you gradually
diminished. You had become a smart woman, and had developed that
irremediable disorder which every smart woman nowadays is bound sooner
or later to develop--a callous heart. The crowd of men about you became
as so many puppets ready to execute your imperious will, and soon, as I
expected, the fiery breath of scandal seared your good name. You
laughed, knowing well that the very fact of your being talked about
added lustre to your popularity as a smart hostess. I regretted all
this, because my belief in your honesty--that belief which had first
come to me long ago in the green meadows round about Winchester--was
utterly shattered. The naked truth become exposed--you were deceiving
me."
"No, Dudley!" the woman wailed beseechingly. "Spare me these
reproaches! I cannot bear them--and least of all from you. I have been
foolish--very foolish, I admit. Had you been my husband I should have
been a different woman, leading a quiet and happy life, but as I am
now--I--" She burst into a torrent of tears without finishing her
confession.
"If you acknowledge what I have said to be the truth, Claudia, we are
agreed, and more need not be said," he observed, when, a few moments
later, she had grown calm again.
"You are tired of me, Dudley," she declared, suddenly raising her head
and looking straight into his eyes. "We have been--close friends, shall
I say? long enough. You have found some other woman who pleases you--a
woman more charming, more graceful than myself. Now, confess to me the
truth," she said with deep earnestness. "I will not upbraid you," she
went on in a hard, strained voice. "No, I--I will be silent. I swear I
will. Now, Dudley, tell me the truth."
"I have met no woman more beautiful than yourself, Claudia," Chisholm
answered in a deep tone. "You have no rival within my heart."
"I don't believe it!" she cried fiercely. "You could never reproach me
as you have done unless some woman who is my enemy had prompted you.
Your father has written to you, that I know; but you are not the man to
be the slave of paternal warnings. No," she said harshly, "it is a
woman who has drawn you away from me. I swear not to rest till I have
found out the truth!"
When she showed her _griffes_, this bright _capricieuse_, the leader of
the smartest set in town, was, he knew, merciless.
But at that moment he only smiled at her sudden outburst of jealousy.
"I have already spoken the truth," he said. "I have never yet lied to
you."
"Never, until to-day," was her sharp retort. "I suppose you think that,
because of your responsible official position, you ought now to develop
into the old fogey, marry some scraggy girl with red hair and half a
million, and settle down to sober statesmanship and the Carlton. As you
have found the future partner of your joys, you think it high time to
drop an undesirable acquaintance."
Her words were hard ones, spoken in a tone of biting sarcasm. In an
instant his countenance grew serious.
"No, Claudia," he protested quickly. "You entirely misjudge me. I have
neither the intention nor the inclination to marry. Moreover, I confess
to you that I am becoming rather tired of the everlasting monotony of
the House. The scraggy female with the red hair, who, according to your
gospel, is to be the _chatelaine_ of Wroxeter, is still unselected. No.
You have not understood me, and have formed entirely wrong conclusions
as to my motive in speaking as I have. I repeat that the step I am now
taking is one for our mutual advantage. People may talk about us in
Belgravia, but they must not in Battersea."
"And you wish every one to know that we have quarrelled?" she said
petulantly. He saw by her countenance that she was still puzzled. Was
it possible that she was thinking of the unknown Muriel, whom she had
declared he must marry?
As a matchmaker, Claudia was certainly entering upon an entirely new
_role_.
"We shall not quarrel, I hope," he answered.
"Why should we? By mutual consent we shall merely remain apart."
There was another long and painful silence. Her chiffons slowly rose
and fell as she sighed. What he had said had produced a greater
impression upon her than he anticipated. No other man could have spoken
to her as he had done, for every word of his brought back to her the
long-forgotten days of their youthful love, and of those passionate
kisses beneath the stars. In those brief moments she tried to examine
her heart, but could not decide whether she still loved him, or whether
his intention of leaving her had only aroused within her a sense of
offended dignity.
"And your determination is never to see me?" she asked him in a
despondent tone of voice.
"I shall only meet you upon chance occasions in society," was his
answer.
"And when people have forgotten--then you will return to me? Give me
your promise, Dudley."
"I cannot promise."
"Ah!" she cried; "why not at once confess what I believe is the truth,
that you have grown tired of me?"
"No. I have not grown tired," he declared in a fervent voice. "We have
always been firm friends, and I hope that our friendship will continue.
For my own part, my regard for you, Claudia, is not in the least
impaired. You are a woman, and the victim of circumstances. Hence, I
shall always remain faithfully your friend."
"Dudley," she said in a calmer tone, speaking very earnestly, "remember
that women never change their natures, only their faces. So long have
we been associated, and such intimate friends have we been, that I have
grown to regard you as my own personal property. _C'est assez_."
"I quite understand," answered the man in whom Her Majesty's Prime
Minister possessed such complete confidence. "You should, for your own
sake, Claudia, regard this matter in a proper light. If we do not by
our actions give the lie direct to all this tittle-tattle, then an open
scandal must result. Surely if we, by mutual consent, remain apart, we
may still remain in _bon accord_?"
"But you are mine, Dudley!" she cried, again throwing her snowy,
half-bare arms around his neck and kissing him passionately.
"Then since you hold me in such esteem, why not act in my interests?" he
asked, for in argument he was as shrewd as a man could possibly be, and
had passed with honours through that school of _finesse_, the Foreign
Office.
"I--well, I decline to release you, if your freedom is to be used in
dallying at the side of another woman," she replied, heedless of his
question.
"But I have no intention of doing so. Surely you know my nature well
enough? You know how fully occupied I am as Under-Secretary, and that
my presence here from time to time has scarcely been in harmony with my
duties at the Foreign Office and in the House. I have little leisure;
and I do not possess that inclination for _amourettes_ which somehow
appears to seize half the legislators sent to Westminster."
"I know! I know!" she replied, still clinging to him, stroking the dark
hair from his brow with the velvety hand which he had so often kissed.
"I admit that you have always been loyal to me, Dudley. Sometimes, with
a woman's quick jealousy, I have doubted you, and have watched you
carefully, always, however, to find my suspicions utterly unfounded. Do
you remember what you told me when we walked together in the park at
Wroxeter that morning last summer? Do you recollect your vows of
eternal friendship to me--unworthy though I may be?" She paused, and
there was a slight catch in her voice.
"Alas! I am fully aware of all my failings, of all my indiscretions, of
all my caprices; but surely you do not heed this spiteful gossip which
is going the rounds? You do not believe me so black as I am painted--do
you?" and again she stroked his brow with her caressing hand.
"I believe only what I have seen with my own eyes," he answered rather
ambiguously. "You have been indiscreet--extremely indiscreet--and I
have often told you so. But your ambition was to become the most _chic_
woman in town, and you have accomplished it. At what cost?"
She made no response. Her head was bowed.
"Shall I tell you at what cost?" he went on very gravely. "At the cost
of your reputation--and of mine."
"Ah! forgive me, Dudley!" she cried quickly. "I was blind then, dazzled
by the compliments heaped upon me, bewildered by the wealth that had so
suddenly become mine after poor Dick's death. I was rendered callous to
everything by my foolish desire to shine as the smartest and most
popular woman in London. I did not think of you."
"Exactly," he said. "Your admission only clinches my argument that,
although we have been close friends, no real affection has of later
years existed between us. Frankly, had you loved me, you could not have
acted with such reckless indiscretion as to risk my name, my position,
and my honour."
He spoke a truth which admitted of no question.
"Now," he went on at last, slowly unclasping her clinging arms from his
neck. "It is already late and I have an important appointment at the
Foreign Office, for which I am overdue. We must part."
"Never!" she cried wildly. "You shall not leave me like this! If you
do, I shall call at your chambers every day, and compel you to see me."
"Then I must give orders to Parsons not to admit you," he answered quite
calmly.
"That man of yours is an old bear. Why don't you get rid of him, and
have some one less fossilised?" she exclaimed in a gust of fury. "When
I called the other day with Lady Meldrum, he was positively rude."
"Lady Meldrum!" exclaimed Chisholm, pricking up his ears. "Who's she?"
"Oh, a woman who has rather come to the front of late--wife of old Sir
Henry Meldrum, the great Glasgow iron-master. We were driving past, and
I wanted to see you, so she came in with me, rather than wait in the
cold. Quite a smart woman--you ought to know her."
"Thanks," responded the Under-Secretary coldly. "I have no desire to
have that pleasure. Smart women don't interest me in the least."
"That is meant, I suppose, as a compliment," she observed. "You are
certainly in a very delightful mood to-day, Dudley."
"I have at least spoken the truth," he said, piqued by the knowledge
that for some mysterious reason this woman was conniving with a new star
in the social firmament, Lady Meldrum, wife of his pet abomination, a
Jubilee knight, to effect his marriage with the unknown Muriel--her
daughter, of course.
"You have unearthed and placed before me all the most ugly phases of my
career," cried the unhappy woman with a quick, defiant glance; "and now,
after your flood of reproaches, you declare that in future we are to be
as strangers."
"For the sake of our reputations."
"Our reputations? Rubbish!" she laughed cynically. "What reputation
has either of us to lose?" He bit his lip. A hasty retort arose within
him, but he succeeded in stifling it.
"We need not, I think, discuss that point," he said very coldly.
She stood in silence waiting for him to proceed.
"Well," she asked at last, with an air of mingled defiance and sarcasm.
"And what more?"
"Nothing. I have finished. I have only to wish you adieu."
"Then you really intend to abandon me?" she asked very gravely, her
small hand trembling.
"I have already explained my intentions. They were quite clear, I
think."
"And you decline to reconsider them?"
"They admit of no reconsideration," he answered briefly.
"Very well then, adieu," she said in a cold and bitter voice, for in
those few moments her manner had changed, and she was now a frigid,
imperious woman with a heart of stone.
"Adieu, Claudia," he said, bending with a stiff courtliness over the
hand she had extended to him. "You will one day see that this step of
mine has saved us both from degradation and ruin. Good-bye. Recollect
that even though we are apart, I remain still, as I have ever been, your
devoted friend."
Her hand dropped limply from his grasp as she stood there like a
beautiful statue in the centre of the room. With a final glance at her
he turned and walked straight out.
For a moment after the door had closed, she still remained in the same
position in which he had left her. Then, in a sudden frenzy of
uncontrollable passion, she hooked her nervous fingers in her chiffons
and tore them into shreds.
"He has defied me!" she exclaimed wildly, bursting into a flood of hot
tears. "He has defied me, and cast me off--_me, who love him_!"