CRESSIDA.
_Beauty like hers is genius._
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Lucy slept little that night. At the first flush of the magnificent
summer dawn she was astir, making her preparations for the traveller's
breakfast.
She had changed suddenly, from a demure and rather frigid maiden to a
loving and anxious woman. Perhaps the signet-ring on her middle finger
was a magic ring, and had wrought the charm.
Frank's notice to quit had been so short, that he had been obliged to
apply for various necessaries to Darrell, who, with Lord Watergate, had
supplied him with the main features of a tropical outfit. His ship
sailed that day, at noon, so there was little time to be lost. He came
over at an unconscionably early hour to Number 20B, for there was much
to be said and little opportunity for saying it.
Lucy, displaying a truly feminine mixture of the tender and the
practical, packed his bag, strapped his rugs, and put searching
questions as to his preparations for travel. Already, womanlike, she had
taken him under her wing, and henceforward the minutest detail of his
existence would be more precious to her than anything on earth.
Gertrude, when she had kissed the vivid young face in sisterly farewell,
saw the lovers drive off to the station and wondered inwardly at their
calmness.
Later in the day, coming into the studio, she found Lucy quietly engaged
in putting a negative into the printing-frame.
"It is his," she said, looking up with a smile; "I never felt that I had
a right to do it before."
At luncheon, Phyllis reminded her that to-night was the night of Mr.
Darrell's _conversazione_ at the Berkeley Galleries, for which he had
sent them two tickets.
"It's no good expecting Lucy to go; you will have to take me, Gerty,"
she announced.
Gertrude had a great dislike to going, and she said--
"Can't Fanny take you?"
"Edward and I are dining at the Septimus Pratts'," replied Fanny.
After much hesitation, she and her betrothed had had to resign
themselves to the inevitable, and dispense with the services of a
chaperon; a breach of decorum which Mr. Marsh, in particular, deplored.
"Are you very anxious about this party?" pleaded Gertrude.
"Oh Gerty, of course. And if you won't take me, I'll go alone," cried
Phyllis, with unusual vehemence.
Gertrude was indignant at her sister's tone; then reflected that it was,
perhaps, hard on Phyllis, to cut off one of her few festivities.
Phyllis, indeed, had not been very well of late, and demanded more
spoiling than ever. She coughed constantly, and her eyes were
unnaturally bright.
Gertrude ended by submitting to the sacrifice, and at ten o'clock she
and Phyllis found themselves in Bond Street, where the rooms were
already thronged with people.
Phyllis had blazed into a degree of beauty that startled even her
sister, and made her the frequent mark for observation in that brilliant
gathering.
Her grey dress was cut low, displaying the white and rounded slenderness
of her shoulders and arms; the soft brown hair was coiled about the
perfect head in a manner that afforded a view of the neck and its
graceful action; her eyes shone like stars; her cheeks glowed
exquisitely pink. Wherever she went, went forth a sweet strong
fragrance, the breath of a great spray of tuberose which was fastened in
her bodice, and which had arrived for her that day from an unnamed
donor.
Darrell's greeting to both the sisters had been of the briefest. He had
shaken hands unsmilingly with Phyllis; he and Gertrude had brought their
finger-tips into chill and momentary contact, without so much as lifting
their eyes, and Gertrude had felt humiliated at her presence there.
She had not seen Darrell since his Private View, more than six weeks
ago; and now, as she stood talking to Lord Watergate, her eye, guided by
a nameless curiosity, an unaccountable fascination, sought him out. He
was looking ill, she thought, as she watched him standing in his host's
place, near the doorway, chatting to an ugly old woman, whom she knew to
be the Duchess of Kilburne; ill, and very unhappy. Happiness indeed, as
she instinctively felt, is not for such as he--for the egotist and the
sensualist.
Her acute feminine sense, sharpened perhaps by personal soreness, had
pierced to the second-rateness of the man and his art. Beneath his
arrogance and air of assured success, she read the signs of an almost
craven hunger for pre-eminence; of a morbid self-consciousness; an
insatiable vanity. And for all the stupendous cleverness of his
workmanship, she failed to detect in his work the traces of those
qualities which, combined with far less skill than his, can make
greatness.
As for her own relations to Darrell, the positions of the two had
shifted a little since the first. In the brief flashes of intercourse
which they had known, a drama had silently enacted itself; a war
without words or weapons, in which, so far, she had come off victor. For
Sidney had ceased to regard her as merely ridiculous; and she, on her
part, was no longer cowed by his aggressive personality, by the
all-seeing, languid glance, the arrogant, indifferent manner. They stood
on a level platform of unspoken, yet open distaste; which, should
occasion arise, might blaze into actual defiance.
Lord Watergate, as I have said, was talking to Gertrude; but his glance,
as she was quick to observe, strayed constantly toward Phyllis. She had
wondered before this, as to the measure of his admiration for her
sister; it seemed to her that he paid her the tribute of a deeper
interest than that which her beauty and her brightness would, in the
natural course of things, exact.
As for Phyllis, she was enjoying a triumph which many a professional
beauty might have envied. People flocked round her, scheming for
introductions, staring at her in open admiration, laughing at her
whimsical sallies.
"That young person has a career before her."
"Who is she?"
"Oh, one of Darrell's discoveries. Works at a photographer's, they say."
"Darrell is painting her portrait."
"No, not her portrait; but a study of 'Cressida.'"
"Cressida!
"'There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks----'"
"Hush, hush!"
Such floating spars of talk had drifted past Gertrude's corner, and had
been caught, not by her, but by her companion.
Lord Watergate frowned, as he mentally finished the quotation, which
struck him as being in shocking taste. He had adopted, unconsciously, a
protective attitude towards the Lorimers; their courage, their
fearlessness, their immense ignorance, appealed to his generous and
chivalrous nature. He made up his mind to speak to Darrell about that
baseless rumour of the Cressida.
Gertrude, on her part, was not too absorbed in conversation to notice
what her sister was doing. She saw at once that, in spite of some
thrills of satisfied vanity, Phyllis was not enjoying herself. There was
a restless, discontented light in her eyes, a half-weary recklessness in
her pose, as she leant against the edge of a tall screen, which filled
Gertrude with wonder and anxiety. She felt, as she had felt so often
lately, that Phyllis, her little Phyllis, whom she had scolded and
petted and yearned over for eighteen years, was passing beyond her ken,
into regions where she could never follow.
The evening wore itself away as such evenings do, in aimless drifting to
and fro, half-hearted attempts at conversation, much mutual staring, and
a determined raid on the refreshment buffet, on the part of people who
have dined sumptuously an hour ago.
"Our English social institutions," Darrell said aside to Lord Watergate;
"the private view, where every one goes; the _conversazione_, where no
one talks."
Lord Watergate laughed, and went back to Gertrude, to propose an attack
on the buffet, by way of diversion; and Sidney, with his inscrutable air
of utter purposelessness, made his way through the crowd to where
Phyllis stood in conversation with two young men.
Some paces off from her he paused, and stood in silence, looking at her.
Phyllis shot her glance to his, half-petulant, half-supplicating, like
that of a child.
It was late in the evening, and this was the first attempt he had made
to approach her. Darrell advanced a step or two, and Phyllis lowered her
eyes, with a sudden and vivid blush.
"At last," said Darrell, in a low voice, as the two young men
instinctively moved off before him.
"You are just in time to say 'good-night' to me, Mr. Darrell."
Darrell smiled, with his face close to hers. His smile was considered
attractive--
"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone."
"It is not 'good-night,' but 'good-bye,' that I have come to say."
The brilliant and rapid smile had passed across his face, leaving no
trace.
"What do you mean, Mr. Darrell?"
"I mean that I am going away to-morrow."
"For ever and ever?" Phyllis laughed, as she spoke, turning pale.
"For several months. I have important business in Paris."
"But you haven't finished my portrait, Mr. Darrell."
Sidney looked down, biting his lip.
"Shall you be able to finish it in time for the Grosvenor?"
"Possibly not."
"Now you are disagreeable," cried Phyllis, in a high voice; "and
ungrateful, too, after all those long sittings."
"Not ungrateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Under cover of the
crowd he had taken both her hands, and was pressing them fiercely at
each repetition, while his miserable eyes looked imploringly into hers.
"You are hurting me." Her voice was low and broken. She shrank back
afraid.
"Good-bye--Phyllis."
Gertrude, coming back from the refreshment-room a minute later, found
Phyllis standing by herself, in an angle formed by one of the screens,
pale to the lips, with brilliant, meaningless eyes.
"We are going home," said Gertrude, walking up to her.
"Oh, very well," she answered, rousing herself; "the sooner the better.
I am not well." She put her hand to her side. "I had that pain again
that I used to have."
Lord Watergate, who stood a little apart, watching her, came forward and
gave her his arm, and they all three went from the room.
In the cab Phyllis recovered something of her wonted vivacity.
"Isn't it a nuisance," she said, "Mr. Darrell is going away for a long
time, and doesn't know when he will be able to finish my portrait."
Gertrude started.
"Well, I suppose you always knew that he was an erratic person."
"You speak as if you were pleased, Gerty. I am very disappointed."
"Put not your trust in princes, Phyllis, nor in fashionable artists, who
are rather more important than princes, in these days," answered
Gertrude, secretly hoping that their relations with Darrell would never
be renewed. "He has tired of his whim," she thought, indignant, yet
relieved.
Mrs. Maryon opened the door to them herself.
Phyllis shuddered as they went upstairs. "That bird of ill-omen!" she
cried, beneath her breath.
"Poor Mrs. Maryon. How can you be so silly?" said Gertrude, who herself
had noted the long and earnest glance which the woman had cast on her
sister.
In the sitting-room they found Lucy sewing peacefully by the lamplight.
"You hardly went to bed at all last night; you shouldn't be sitting up,"
said Gertrude, throwing off her cloak; while Phyllis carefully detached
the knot of tuberose from her bodice, as she delivered herself for the
second time of her grievance.
Afterwards, going up to the mantelpiece, she placed the flowers in a
slender Venetian vase, its crystal flecked with flakes of gold, which
Darrell had given her; took the vase in her hand, and swept upstairs
without a word.
"I do not know what to think about Phyllis," said Gertrude.
"You are afraid that she is too much interested in Mr. Darrell?"
"Yes."
"She does not care two straws for him," said Lucy, with the conviction
of one who knows; "her vanity is hurt, but I am not sure that that will
be bad for her."
"He is the sort of person to attract----" began Gertrude; but Lucy
struck in--
"Why, Gerty, what are you thinking of? he must be forty at least; and
Phyllis is a child."
Something in her tones recalled to Gertrude that clarion-blast of
triumph, in the wonderful lyric--
"Oh, my love, my love is young!"
"At any rate," she said, as they prepared to retire, "I am thankful that
the sittings are at an end. Phyllis was getting her head turned. She is
looking shockingly unwell, moreover, and I shall persuade her to accept
the Devonshires' invitation for next month."
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]