Christian climbed the stairs at Duke Street, and let himself into his
apartments, with painstaking precautions against being overheard. There
was an excess of zeal about Falkner which might easily impel him to
present himself for service at even this most unseasonable hour.
The young man had still only formless notions of what he was going to
do, but it was at least plain to him that Falkner was to have no part in
the proceedings. He drew off his varnished boots as a further measure
of security, and then, with more hesitation, removed his cloak and coat,
and raised the inside blinds at the two windows. This sitting-room of
his had rather pleased him formerly. He could recall having taken quite
an affectionate interest in buying and arranging the rugs and pictures
and bookcases with which he had supplemented the somewhat gaunt
furnishing of his predecessor. But now, in this misty and reluctant
light of the London morning, nothing seemed good to him as he looked
about.
The pretty things of his own selection said no more to him than did the
chattels he had taken over from a stranger. There was no spirit of home
in them.
He moved noiselessly to the adjoining bedroom, and drew the curtains
there as well, and glanced round. Here, too, he had the sense of
beholding the casual appointments of a hotel chamber. Nothing made an
appeal of intimacy to him. He reflected that in a day or two he
should not be able to remember how his room looked--even if his memory
attempted the fatuous task. Duke Street had been engraved on his cards
for six months, but it had not made the faintest mark on his heart.
With an air of decision, he suddenly began to drag forth his clothes
from the wardrobe and drawers, and spread them on the bed. In the tiny
dressing-room beyond were piled his traveling bags, and these he brought
out into the light. Upon consideration, however, the original impulse
to take a good many things weakened and dwindled. To begin with, their
secret removal was in no way practicable. Moreover, now that he thought
of it, he did not want them. They would be simply encumbrances. He would
take with him only the smallest handbag, with a change of linen and a
few brushes.
Finally, the conviction that even this must be a nuisance became clear
to him, and he desisted from the random packing he had begun. Still
moving about as silently as possible, he changed his ceremonial tie for
one of every-day wear, and put on a suit of sober-colored tweeds, and
his easiest brown boots. The transfer of his watch, some loose gold
and the roll of notes from one set of pockets to another, completed his
preparations in the bedchamber. He tiptoed out to the larger room,
and there, upon reflection, wrote a few lines for Falkner’s direction,
saying merely that he was called away, and that matters were to go on as
usual until he returned or sent further orders. He separated a banknote
from the roll to place inside this note, but on second thoughts wrote
a check instead, and sealing and directing the envelope, laid it in a
conspicuous place on the table.
He noticed then, for the first time, that there were some letters from
the evening post for him, neatly arranged on this table. He opened the
nearest, and glanced at its contents: it was a note from his second
cousin, Lady Milly Poynes, the fair-haired, fair-faced, fair-brained,
fair-everything sister of Lord Lingfield, reminding him that she was
depending upon his escort for the Private View of the Academy, and that
the time for getting tickets was running very short. He laughed aloud
at the conceit of the Royal Academy rising in his path as an obstacle
at such a moment--and without more ado thrust this with the unopened
letters into his pocket. Then, when he had made sure once more that he
had his check-book, nothing remained to be done. He went softly forth,
without so much as a thought of taking a farewell glance behind him,
found a soft dark hat in the hallway and then closed the outer door with
great care upon the whole Duke Street episode of his life.
“You are not to see me here again in a hurry,” he confided aloud to the
banisters and steps, when he had descended to the first floor. Then he
laughed to himself, and tripped gaily down the remaining flight.
There was no hesitation now in his mood. He walked briskly back through
the square, and then down Waterloo Place, till he came to the Guards’
Memorial. He moved round this to the front, and looked up at one of the
three bronze Guardsmen with the confident air of familiarity. He knew
this immutable, somber face under every shifting aspect of light and
shadow; he had stared at the mantling greatcoat and the huge bearskin of
this hero of his a hundred times. The very first day of his arrival in
London he had made the acquaintance of this statue, and had started,
dazed and fascinated, at the strange resemblance it suggested. Thus his
boy-father must have looked, with the beard and the heavy dress of
the Russian winter. The metal figure came to mean to him more than all
London beside. In the sad, strong, silent countenance which gazed down
upon him he read forever the tragedy that gripped his heartstrings.
Forever Honor, standing aloft, held the laurel wreath poised high above
the warrior’s head--immovable in the air, never to descend to touch its
mark. Christian had seen this wreath always through moist eyes.
This morning, for a wonder, no tearful impulse came to him as he
looked upward. The impassive face was as gravely fine as ever, but
its customary effect of pathos was lacking. There even seemed in its
sightless eyes a latent perception of Christian’s altered mood. He
lifted his hat soberly and saluted the statue.
Toward the Strand now he made his way, walking blithely, and humming to
himself. He could not forbear to smile at a policeman he passed in front
of St. Martin’s. Two elderly and much bewrapped cabmen stood stamping
their feet beside a shelter, and they pointed toward their ridiculous
old horses and battered growlers as he came along, with an air that
moved him to glee. He gave them a shilling to divide, and went on,
conscious of a novel delight in himself and in the world at large.
The big clock showed it to be half-past five. There was no blue in the
sky, but the mist of daybreak was abating, and the air was milder. Not a
living creature was visible along the naked length of the Strand. At the
end, the beautiful spire of St. Mary’s rose from the dim grays about its
base, exquisite in tints and contour as an Alpine summit in the moment
before sunrise.
A turning to the left opened to Christian, unexpectedly, a scene full of
motion and color. He had not thought himself so near Covent Garden,
but clearly this must be it. He walked up toward the busy scene of
high-laden vans, big cart-horses and swarming porters, wondering why
no sign of all this activity was manifest in the sleeping Strand below,
barely a stone’s throw distant. He saw the glowing banks of flowers
within, as he approached, and made toward them, sighing already with
pleasure at the promise they held out to him.
He might have read in the papers that it was a backward and a grudging
April, this year, in the matter of flowers. But to Christian, no memory
of the exuberant South suggested any rivalry with this wonderful show
of northern blossoms. Tulips and daffodils, amaryllis and azaleas,
rhododendrons, carnations, roses--he seemed to have imagined to himself
nothing like this before. He spent over an hour among them, in the end
making numerous purchases. At each stall he gave an address--always the
same--and exacted the pledge of delivery at eight o’clock.
At last he could in reason buy nothing more, and he went out to look
about him. He found the place where the market-men take drinks at
all hours, and food and coffee when nature’s sternest demands can be
positively no longer disregarded--but it did not invite his appetite.
Some further time he spent in gazing wondering at the vast walls of
vegetables and fruit being tirelessly built up and pulled down again,
pondering meanwhile the question whether he should breakfast before
eight o’clock, or at some indefinitely later hour. He partially solved
the problem at length by buying a small box of Algerian peaches, and
eating them where he stood. Then some exceptionally fine bananas tempted
him further, and he finished with a delicate little melon from Sicily.
How it carried him back to the days of his youth--this early morning
fragrance of the fresh fruit! It was as if he were at Cannes again--only
buoyant now, and happy, and oh, so free! And in his pocket he could feel
whenever he liked the soft, munificent crackle of over four thousand
francs! The sapphire Mediterranean had surely never been so lovely to
his gaze as was now the dingy Strand below.
The laggard hour came round at last. He descended to Arundel Street, and
discovered the house he wanted, and found just within the entrance two
or three of the flower-laden porters awaiting his arrival, For the rest,
the building seemed profoundly unoccupied. He led the way up to the
third floor, and had the plants set down beside the locked door which
bore the sign “Miss Bailey.” Other similarly burdened porters made their
appearance in turn, till the narrow hallway looked like a floral annex
to the Garden itself.
He waited alone with his treasures for what seemed to him a very long
time, then descended and stood at the street door till he was tired,
then climbed the stairs again. The extraordinary quiet of the big
building, filled with business offices as it was, puzzled him. He had
no experience of early-morning London to warn him that English habits
differed from those of the continent. It occurred to him that perhaps it
was a holiday--conceivably one of those extraordinary interludes called
Bank Holidays--and he essayed a perplexing computation in the calendar
in the effort to settle this point.
Finally there began the sounds of steps, and the opening and closing of
doors, below him. A tow-headed boy in buttons came up to his landing,
stared in vacuous amazement at him and the flowers and passed on to the
next floor. Noises of occupancy rose from the well of the staircase to
bear him countenance, and suddenly a lift glided up past him in this
well. He had not noticed the ropes or the iron caging before. He heard
the slamming of the lift doors above, and the dark carriage followed on
its smooth descent. Christian reproached himself for not having rung the
bell and questioned the lift-man. He considered the feasibility of doing
it now, but was deterred by the fear that the man would resent it. Then
the lift came up again--and was stopping at his floor. There was a sharp
note of girlish laughter on the instant of the halt, answered by a male
guffaw.
A slight, erect, active young woman emerged from the lift, her
face alive with mirth of some unknown character. Behind her, in the
obscurity, Christian saw for an instant the vanishing countenance of
the liftman, grinning widely. This hilarity, somehow, struck in him an
unsympathetic chord.
The young woman, still laughing, spread an uncomprehending glance over
Christian and his flowers. She moved past him, key in hand, toward the
door which he had been guarding, with a puzzled eye upon him meanwhile.
With the key in the lock she turned and decided to speak.
“What might all this be--the Temple Flower Show or the Crystal Palace?”
she asked, with banter in her tone.
“These are for Miss Bailey,” said Christian, quite humbly.
“Must be some mistake,” said the girl decisively. “Did she order them
herself? Were you there at the time? Did you see her? Where do they come
from?”
Christian advanced a little into the light. “She has not ordered them,”
he said, in his calmest voice. “I have not seen her for a long time. But
I have brought them for her, and I think you may take it from me that
they are hers.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she replied, lightly but with grace. “I didn’t
understand. Things are forever being brought here that belong somewhere
else. Men are so stupid in finding their way about! Well--I suppose we
must get them inside. That is your idea, isn’t it?”
She spoke very rapidly, and with a kind of metallic snap in her tones.
Christian answered her questions by a suave assenting gesture. “Miss
Bailey is not likely to turn up much before half-past nine,” she went
on, as if he had made the inquiry. “She lives so far out, and just now
we’re not very busy. There’s nothing doing in new plays at this time of
the year, and the lady novelists are all getting their own typewriters.
If you’ll lend a hand, we’ll carry the things in.” Between them they
bore in the various pots, and the big bouquets loosely wrapped in blue
paper. The girl led the way through a large working-room to a smaller
apartment, fitted as an office but containing also a sofa and a tall gas
cooking-stove--and here on desk and center-table, chairs and windowsill,
they placed the flowers. Christian watched her as she deftly removed
their paper wrappings. She had a comely, small face of aspect at once
alert and masterful. The skin was peculiarly fair, with a tinge of rose
in the cheeks so delicately modulated that he found it in rivalry with
the “Mrs. Pauls” she was unpacking. Her light hair was drawn plainly
down over the temples in a fashion which he felt was distinguished, but
said to himself he did not like. Her shrewd eyes took calm cognizance of
him from time to time.
“They are very beautiful indeed,” she remarked with judicial approval,
upon the completion of her task. Then, as upon an afterthought, she
moved rapidly about, peering under the branches of the growing plants,
and separating the cut flowers lightly with her hands. “There is no card
anywhere, is there? I suppose you will want to leave a message? Here are
pen and ink--if you wish to write anything.”
“Thank you,” Christian began, smilingly but with obvious hesitation. He
looked at his watch. “If you don’t mind--if you’re quite sure I shan’t
be in the way--I think I should like to wait till Miss Bailey comes.”
“Oh, you won’t be in the way,” the girl replied. She regarded him
meditatively, with narrowed eyes. “I shouldn’t dust this room in any
event--since the flowers are here; but you mustn’t come out into the
big room--unless you want to get choked with blacks. Would you like a
morning paper? I can send a boy out for one.”
“Thank you--you are very good--no,” Christian answered. “There are some
books here--I shall amuse myself.”
The girl turned to leave him, and then on second thought moved over
to the window and lifted the sash. “There’ll be no objection to your
smoking if you like,” she informed him. Then she went out, closing the
door behind her.
Christian walked to the window in turn, and looked down over the flowers
to the narrow street below. It was full of young men in silk hats,
toiling up the granite ascent like black ants. He reflected that they
must be clerks and shopmen, going to their daily work from the Temple
station or the Embankment. The suggestion of monotonous bondage which
their swarming progress toward the wage-earning center gave forth,
interested him. He yawned pleasurably at the thought of his own superb
emancipation from duties and tasks of all descriptions.
He strolled over to the bookcase above the desk, and glanced at the
volumes revealed through its glass doors. They seemed very serious
books, indeed. “Economics of Socialism,” “Capitalist Production,” “The
Ethics of Socialism,” “Towards Democracy”--so the titles ran that first
met his eye. There were other groups--mainly of history and the
essayists--but everything was substantial. His glance sought in vain any
lightsome gleam of poetry or fiction. The legend on a thin red book,
“Civilization: Its Cause and Cure,” whimsically caught his attention. He
put his hand to the key in the bookcase door to get out the volume;
then, hesitating, yawned, and looked over the shelves once more. There
was nothing else--and really he desired to read nothing.
He would half recline in comfort upon the sofa instead, until his friend
came. As a pleasing adjunct to this plan, he drew the table up close,
and found room upon it, by crowding them together, for most of the
flowers that had been bestowed elsewhere. He seated himself at his ease,
with his head resting against the wall, and surveyed the plants and
blossoms in affectionate admiration. It was delicious to think how
naïve her surprise would be--how great her pleasure! Truly, since his
discovery of his birthright, remarkable and varied as had been his
experiences, he had done nothing else which afforded him a tithe of the
satisfaction he felt now glowing in all his veins. Here, at last, by
some curious and devious chance, he had stumbled upon the thing that was
genuinely worth doing.
He could hear the cheerful girl in the next room, whistling gently to
herself as she moved the furniture about. There came presently the sound
of other female voices, and then a sustained, vibrant rattle, quaintly
accentuated like the ticking of a telegraph key, which he grew
accustomed to, and even found pleasant to the ear.
He put his feet up on the edge of the sofa--and nestled downward till
his head was upon it as well. A delicate yet pervasive fragrance from
the table close beside him aroused his languid curiosity. Was it the
perfume of carnations or of roses?
He closed his eyes the better to decide.
In the outer room, Miss Connie Staples permitted herself numerous and
varied speculations as to the identity and purposes of the young man
with the flowers, the while she dusted the typewriters, distributed the
copy for the morning’s start and set the place in order. She had her
sleeves rolled up, and had wound a big handkerchief about her hair;
beneath this turban her forehead scored itself in lines of perplexed
wonderment as to this curious early caller--but when two other girls
arrived, she suffered them to put aside their things and begin work
without so much as hinting at what had happened. A third girl, coming a
little later, brought in a stray blossom which she had picked up in the
corridor outside. She mentioned the fact, and even laid stress upon it,
but got no syllable of explanation.
This was all simple enough, but at half-past nine the arrival of still
another of the sex put Miss Connie’s resources to an unexpected test.
A handsome, youngish woman, very well dressed indeed, appeared suddenly
upon the threshold of the workroom, knocking upon the door and pushing
it wide open at the same instant. She looked curiously about, and then
point-blank into the face of the girl who came toward her. It was a
glance of independent and impersonal criticism which the two exchanged,
covering with instantaneous swiftness an infinitude of details as to
dress, coiffure, complexion, figure, temperament and origin. Connie
wondered if the new-comer was really quite a lady, long before she
formulated an inquiring thought about her errand. Even as she finally
looked this question of business, she decided that it was an actress
with a play for the provinces, and asked herself if she did not seem to
recognize the face. The visitor, for her part, saw that Connie’s teeth
were too uneven to be false, and that her waist was overlong, and that
her hair was not thick enough to be worn flat over the temples, much
less to justify so confident a manner. In all, something less than a
second of time had elapsed.
“I want to see Miss Bailey--Miss Frank Bailey,” explained the stranger,
graciously.
Connie conveyed to her, with courteous brevity, the fact that Miss
Bailey had not yet arrived. “Is it something that I can do?” she added.
The other shook her head, and showed an affable thread of white between
her freshened lips. “No, I will wait for her,” she answered, and threw
a keen glance about the place. “That’s her private room, isn’t it?” she
asked, nodding at the closed door to the right. “I will wait in there,”
she decided, in the same breath, and began moving toward it.
Connie alertly headed her off. “If you will kindly take a seat here--”
she interposed, standing in front of her visitor.
“It’s too noisy out here,” remarked the other; “those horrid machines
would give me a headache. That _is_ her private room, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately,” Connie began, lowering her voice, “the room belongs to
another office. Or rather, I should say, it is locked. Miss Bailey will
be here--with the key--very shortly now.”
“Oh, it’s all right--I’m her sister,” explained the other, in no wise
resenting the ineffectual fabrications. She pushed forward past the
reluctant girl with a resolute step, and put her hand on the knob of the
tabooed door. “Make your mind quite easy, my dear,” she remarked over
her shoulder, sinking her voice in turn in deference to the situation;
“you’ve done all that could be expected of you--and I’ll tell her so.”
Then, with a momentary gleam of good nature on her pretty face, which
the short transparent veil she wore to her chin seemed to accentuate
rather than mask, she opened the door, threw up her head with a swift,
puzzled glance at what she saw, and then tiptoed gracefully into the
room, closing the door with painstaking noiselessness behind her.
Miss Frances Bailey entered her office not many minutes later, her
cheeks aglow with the morning air as the wheelwoman meets it. She nodded
cheerfully to Connie, and beyond her to the girls at the machines, as
her hand sought for a hat-pin at the back of her head.
“Any word from the Lyceum?” she asked. “And what does that
Zambesi-travel manuscript make?”
Connie ignored industrial topics. “There are people waiting in there to
see you,” she announced, in low, significant tones.
The mistress was impressed by the suggestion of mystery. “People? What
people?” she asked, knitting her brows.
“One of them says she’s your sister. And the other is a young
gentleman--he came first--and he brought--”
“My sister?” interrupted Miss Bailey. “Cora! Something dreadful must
have happened--for she never got out so early as this before in her
life. Is she in mourning? Did she seem upset?”
“_Not_ a bit of it!” said Connie, reassuringly. She added, following the
other toward the private office: “I tried my best to keep her out here.”
“Why should you?” asked Frances, with wide-open eyes.
“Oh, well--you’ll see,” replied the girl, evasively. “I told you there
was some one else in there.”
Frances opened the door--and Connie noted that she too lifted her head
and stared a little, and then cautiously closed the door behind her. She
pondered this as she returned to her machine, and she curled her
thin lip when she took up the copies of the first act of an amateur’s
romantic play, to underscore the business directions with red ink, and
sew on brown paper covers. Intuition told her that a much better drama
was afoot, here under her very nose.
Inside her office, Miss Bailey surrendered herself to frank astonishment
at what she beheld.
Bestowed in obvious discomfort upon her sofa, behind an extraordinary
bank of potted plants and bright, costly greenhouse flowers, was a young
man fast asleep. Her eye took in as well her sister, who sat near the
head of the sofa, but she could wait. The interest centered in this
sleeping stranger, who made himself so much at home in the shelter
of his remarkable floral barricade. She moved round the better to
scrutinize his face, which was tilted up as if proudly held even in
slumber. Upon examination she recognized the countenance; and in a swift
moment of concentration tried to think what his presence might signify.
Then she turned to her sister, and lifted her calm brows in mute
inquiry.
“Oh, my dear--what splendid business!” whispered Cora, her glance
beaming upward from the sofa to the standing figure. “And mind, Frank,
I’m in it! I’m in it up to my neck! I sent him to you, dear.”
The girl looked down at them both, and deliberated before she spoke.
“If you brought him here,” she said, “I think you’d better take him
away again. I can let you out by this other door. Let us have no more
publicity than necessary.”
“But you don’t in the least understand!” protested Cora, with her finger
raised in an appeal for quiet tones.
“No, I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand,” replied Frances
coldly. “There’s one thing _you_ don’t understand either, Cora: This is
my typewriting office; it isn’t a greenroom at all.”
“Then it well might be,” retorted the other, with a latent grin.
“Anything greener than its owner I never saw. Now listen--don’t be a
silly cuckoo! I met the youngster last night--and I worked him up till
he was mad to learn where you were to be found. I told him--and then
I went home, and I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ of you, dear--and so I
turned out at some extraordinary hour this mornin’--it is mornin’ by
this time, isn’t it?--and I came here, just to tell you that he was
askin’ after you--and I come in here--and lo! here’s the bird on his
little nest!--and see the flowers he’s brought from Covent Garden for
you!--and so I sit here like Patience on a monument, afraid to wink an
eyelash, so’s not to wake him till you come. That’s what I’ve done for
_you_, dear--and presently, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear what
you’ll do for me.”
Frances put a knee upon the chair before her, and rested with her hands
upon its back. She sighed a little, and bit her lips. A troubled look
came into her gray eyes.
“You might as well say all you have to say,” she said, slowly. “I don’t
in the least see what you’re up to--but then I never did.”
“No, dear, you never did,” responded Cora, smiling as if in pleased
retrospect. “But that’s no reason why I shouldn’t be a good sister
to you. If it’s one’s nature to be a good sister, why, then one will
be--and there you are, don’t you see? I take no credit to myself for
it.”
“Go on,” said the other. The two women spoke in hushed whispers, and
with each sentence stole glances of precaution toward the sleeper.
“Well, Frank, I look to you not to forget what I’ve done. I spent two
or three very hard hours last night talkin’ him round, and singin’ your
praises to him--and I put Covent Garden into his head, too---and here
he is! And I kept Eddy and Gus off his back, too--they were frightfully
keen to get at him--but I said no, and I held ’em to heel. It was all
for you, dear. They might have queered the whole pitch, if I’d given
’em their heads. But now about myself. I’m tired, dead tired, of
bein’ poor. Of course we get a little something from Lord Julius. But
Eddy--you know what Eddy is! No sooner does he pick himself up from
Epsom than Ascot gives him a fair knockout, and if he lives through the
Sandown Eclipse there’s Goodwood waitin’ for him with a facer. I
can’t understand it; other men seem to win sometimes--you’d think the
unluckiest duffer would get a look-in once in a while--but no, he just
gets hammered one meeting after another. And I’m tired of it, Frank! If
I could only go back to work! But if I get an engagement, then Eddy will
go playin’ the goat--he’s jealous of everybody about the place from the
bandmaster down to the carpenter’s boy--and that makes me unpopular--and
there we are, don’t you see! I’m worn out with it. But if I could have
eight hundred a year, or even six hundred or five at a pinch--God knows,
my wants are simple enough!--and have it paid to me personally, do you
see--why, then, life would be worth livin’. Now, what do you say?”
Frances looked moodily down at her distinguished sister, her lips
twisted in stormy amusement. “Why not say a thousand and be done with
it?” she demanded between set teeth, after an ominous pause. “One would
be as intelligent as the other. And oughtn’t I to set your Eddy up with
a racing stud while I’m about it? It’s true that I have about twenty
pounds a year for my own personal use, and Tom has a standing grievance
that I don’t give even _that_ to him--but don’t let that interfere with
your plans. Whatever you feel that you would like, just give it a name.
Couldn’t I lease one of the new Kaffir mansions in Park Lane for you? Or
would you prefer something in Grosvenor Square?”
Cora gazed up with such intentness at her unnatural sister that a bright
little tear came to shine at the corner of each eye. She put up her veil
then, and breathed a cautious sigh. “I didn’t expect this of you, dear,”
she said, submissively. “Of course it’s the old story--La Cigale, and
‘go-to-the ant-thou-sluggard’ and all that. I don’t see myself why a
typewriting machine should make one so fearfully stony-hearted; you get
callouses on your fingers, I know, but you needn’t get ’em on your
sisterly affections, one would think. But however”--she wiped her
eyes, drew down her veil and allowed a truculent note to sound in her
voice--“however, if you won’t play, why then neither will I. I’ve been
at pains to put this youngster in your way, but it won’t be much
trouble to shunt him out again. You mustn’t think you can walk on me
indefinitely, Frank. I’m the best-natured woman in the world, but even I
draw the line somewhere.”
“Draw it now then,” said the other, with stern promptitude. “Go away,
and take your friend with you and let me get to my work. I don’t know
what business either of you had coming here, at all.” As she spoke, she
moved to the outer private door, and turned the key in the lock. “You
can send for the flowers,” she added, “or I will have them taken over to
Charing Cross Hospital--whichever you like.”
Cora rose, her veiled face luminous with a sudden inspiration. “You
can’t quarrel with me, dear, no matter how hard you try.” She spoke in
low, cooing tones--a triumph of sympathetic voice production. “You’re
hard as nails, but I know you’re straight. I will trust my interests
absolutely in your hands. I leave it to you to do the fair thing by me.”
“The fair thing?” echoed Frances, in dubious perplexity. She puzzled
over the words and their elusive implication. “Your interests?” she
repeated--and saw Cora move round her to the unlocked door, and open
it--and still sought to comprehend what it was all about. Only when her
sister, smiling cordially once more, bent forward without warning and
pressed her veiled lips against her chin, and with a gentle “Goodbye,
dear!” stepped into the shadows without, did she recall the other
features of the situation.
“Here!” she called, with nervous eagerness, yet keeping her voice down,
“you’re not to run off like this. Take your man with you.”
“Softly, dear!” Cora enjoined her, from the dusk of the hallway. “Your
young women wouldn’t understand. No--I caught him for you, and I leave
him in your hands. I’m not in the least afraid to trust it all to you.
Bye-bye, dear.”
Frances went out and glared down the staircase, with angry expostulation
on her tongue’s end. But there was nobody to talk to. She could hear
only the brisk rustle of Cora’s skirts on the stone steps, a floor
below--and even that died away beneath the clatter of the machines
inside.
Returning over the threshold, she paused, and looked impatiently at
the flowers, and at the impassive, slumbering face beyond them. After a
little, the lines of vexation began to melt from her brow. In a musing
way, she put a hand behind her, and as if unconsciously closed and
locked the hall door again. Then she moved to the table, picked up some
of the loose blossoms and breathed in their fragrance, still keeping her
thoughtful gaze upon the young man. She found the face much older and
stronger than she remembered it--and in a spirit of fairness she said
to herself that it seemed no whit less innocent. But then perhaps all
sleeping faces looked innocent; she could recall that Cora’s certainly
did. Holding the carnations to her lips and nostrils, she examined in
meditative detail the countenance before her--delicately modeled, dark,
nervously high-spirited even in repose. Associations came back as she
gazed--the tender eagerness of the lad, the wistful charm with which his
fancy had invested England, the frank sweetness of the temperament he
had disclosed to her. He had been like a flower himself on that mellow
autumn day--as fresh and as goodly to the eye as these roses on
the table. But a winter had intervened since then--and what gross
disillusionments, what roughening and hardening and corroding
experiences had he not encountered! You could not tell anything by a
face in sleep; again she assured herself of that.
Why, when one came to think of it, it was enough that Cora had brought
him--or sent him, it mattered not which. Whence had she dispatched
him?--from some theatrical dance or late supper. It was true that he was
not in evening dress--and the thought gave her pause for a moment.
But he had been at some place where those wretched cousins of his were
present--for Cora had spoken of keeping both Eddy and Gus “off his
back”--whatever that might mean. And it was Cora herself who had told
him to go to Covent Garden and buy these flowers!
Frances, revolving these unpleasant reflections, discovered all at once
that the young man, without betraying by any other motion his awakening,
had opened his eyes and was looking placidly across the flowers into her
face.
She caught a quick breath, and frowned slightly at him.