A LAME VICTORY
The intruder was not a person that had power to divide them; yet she
came between their hearts with a touch of steel.
“I am here in obedience to your commands in your telegram of this
evening,” Rosamund replied to Beauchamp’s hard stare at her; she
courteously spoke French, and acquitted herself demurely of a bow to
the lady present.
Renée withdrew her serious eyes from Beauchamp. She rose and
acknowledged the bow.
“It is my first visit to England, madame!”
“I could have desired, Madame la marquise, more agreeable weather for
you.”
“My friends in England will dispel the bad weather for me, madame”;
Renée smiled softly: “I have been studying my French-English
phrase-book, that I may learn how dialogues are conducted in your
country to lead to certain ceremonies when old friends meet, and
without my book I am at fault. I am longing to be embraced by you... if
it will not be offending your rules?”
Rosamund succumbed to the seductive woman, whose gentle tooth bit
through her tutored simplicity of manner and natural graciousness,
administering its reproof, and eluding a retort or an excuse.
She gave the embrace. In doing so she fell upon her conscious
awkwardness for an expression of reserve that should be as good as
irony for irony, though where Madame de Rouaillout’s irony lay, or
whether it was irony at all, our excellent English dame could not have
stated, after the feeling of indignant prudery responding to it so
guiltily had subsided.
Beauchamp asked her if she had brought servants with her; and it
gratified her to see that he was no actor fitted to carry a scene
through in virtue’s name and vice’s mask with this actress.
She replied, “I have brought a man and a maid-servant. The
establishment will be in town the day after tomorrow, in time for my
lord’s return from the Castle.”
“You can have them up to-morrow morning.”
“I could,” Rosamund admitted the possibility. Her idolatry of him was
tried on hearing him press the hospitality of the house upon Madame de
Rouaillout, and observing the lady’s transparent feint of a reluctant
yielding. For the voluble Frenchwoman scarcely found a word to utter:
she protested languidly that she preferred the independence of her
hotel, and fluttered a singular look at him, as if overcome by his
vehement determination to have her in the house. Undoubtedly she had a
taking face and style. His infatuation, nevertheless, appeared to
Rosamund utter dementedness, considering this woman’s position, and
Cecilia Halkett’s beauty and wealth, and that the house was no longer
at his disposal. He was really distracted, to judge by his forehead, or
else he was over-acting his part.
The absence of a cook in the house, Rosamund remarked, must prevent her
from seconding Captain Beauchamp’s invitation.
He turned on her witheringly. “The telegraph will do that. You’re in
London; cooks can be had by dozens. Madame de Rouaillout is alone here;
she has come to see a little of England, and you will do the honours of
the house.”
“M. le marquis is not in London?” said Rosamund, disregarding the dumb
imprecation she saw on Beauchamp’s features.
“No, madame, my husband is not in London,” Renée rejoined collectedly.
“See to the necessary comforts of the house instantly,” said Beauchamp,
and telling Renée, without listening to her, that he had to issue
orders, he led Rosamund, who was out of breath at the effrontery of the
pair, toward the door. “Are you blind, ma’am? Have you gone foolish?
What should I have sent for you for, but to protect her? I see your
mind; and off with the prude, pray! Madame will have my room; clear
away every sign of me there. I sleep out; I can find a bed anywhere.
And bolt and chain the house-door to-night against Cecil Baskelett; he
informs me that he has taken possession.”
Rosamund’s countenance had become less austere.
“Captain Baskelett!” she exclaimed, leaning to Beauchamp’s views on the
side of her animosity to Cecil; “he has been promised by his uncle the
use of a set of rooms during the year, when the mistress of the house
is not in occupation. I stipulated expressly that he was to see you and
suit himself to your convenience, and to let me hear that you and he
had agreed to an arrangement, before he entered the house. He has no
right to be here, and I shall have no hesitation in locking him out.”
Beauchamp bade her go, and not be away more than five minutes; and then
he would drive to the hotel for the luggage.
She scanned him for a look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and
laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such
a case. She saw Renée sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to
put on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in
deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be
some assurance that she did well in obeying him.
Beauchamp closed the door on her. He walked back to Renée with a
thoughtful air that was consciously acted; his only thought being—now
she knows me!
Renée looked up at him once. Her eyes were unaccusing, unquestioning.
With the violation of the secresy of her flight she had lost her
initiative and her intrepidity. The world of human eyes glared on her
through the windows of the two she had been exposed to, paralyzing her
brain and caging her spirit of revolt. That keen wakefulness of her
self-defensive social instinct helped her to an understanding of her
lover’s plan to preserve her reputation, or rather to give her a corner
of retreat in shielding the worthless thing—twice detested as her cloak
of slavery coming from him! She comprehended no more. She was a house
of nerves crowding in against her soul like fiery thorns, and had no
space within her torture for a sensation of gratitude or suspicion; but
feeling herself hurried along at lightning speed to some dreadful
shock, her witless imagination apprehended it in his voice: not what he
might say, only the sound. She feared to hear him speak, as the
shrinking ear fears a thunder at the cavity; yet suspense was worse
than the downward-driving silence.
The pang struck her when he uttered some words about Mrs. Culling, and
protection, and Roland.
She thanked him.
So have common executioners been thanked by queenly ladies baring their
necks to the axe.
He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really
an agony of a man torn to pieces.
“I have done the best.”
This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil
Beauchamp.
“You think so?” said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in
its mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note,
which was more assent than question.
“I am sure of it. I believe it. I see it. At least I hope so.”
“We are chiefly led by hope,” said Renée.
“At least, if not!” Beauchamp cried. “And it’s not too late. I have no
right—I do what I can. I am at your mercy. Judge me later. If I am ever
to know what happiness is, it will be with you. It’s not too late
either way. There is Roland—my brother as much as if you were my wife!”
He begged her to let him have Roland’s exact address.
She named the regiment, the corps d’armée, the postal town, and the
department.
“Roland will come at a signal,” he pursued; “we are not bound to
consult others.”
Renée formed the French word of “we” on her tongue.
He talked of Roland and Roland, his affection for him as a brother and
as a friend, and Roland’s love of them both.
“It is true,” said Renée.
“We owe him this; he represents your father.”
“All that you say is true, my friend.”
“Thus, you have come on a visit to madame, your old friend here—oh!
your hand. What have I done?”
Renée motioned her hand as if it were free to be taken, and smiled
faintly to make light of it, but did not give it.
“If you had been widowed!” he broke down to the lover again.
“That man is attached to the remnant of his life: I could not wish him
dispossessed of it,” said Renée.
“Parted! who parts us? It’s for a night. Tomorrow!”
She breathed: “To-morrow.”
To his hearing it craved an answer. He had none. To talk like a lover,
or like a man of honour, was to lie. Falsehood hemmed him in to the
narrowest ring that ever statue stood on, if he meant to be stone.
“That woman will be returning,” he muttered, frowning at the vacant
door. “I could lay out my whole life before your eyes, and show you I
am unchanged in my love of you since the night when Roland and I walked
on the Piazzetta...”
“Do not remind me; let those days lie black!” A sympathetic vision of
her maiden’s tears on the night of wonderful moonlight when, as it
seemed to her now, San Giorgio stood like a dark prophet of her present
abasement and chastisement, sprang tears of a different character, and
weak as she was with her soul’s fever and for want of food, she was
piteously shaken. She said with some calmness: “It is useless to look
back. I have no reproaches but for myself. Explain nothing to me.
Things that are not comprehended by one like me are riddles I must put
aside. I know where I am: I scarcely know more. Here is madame.”
The door had not opened, and it did not open immediately.
Beauchamp had time to say, “Believe in me.” Even that was false to his
own hearing, and in a struggle with the painful impression of
insincerity which was denied and scorned by his impulse to fling his
arms round her and have her his for ever, he found himself
deferentially accepting her brief directions concerning her boxes at
the hotel, with Rosamund Culling to witness.
She gave him her hand.
He bowed over the fingers. “Until to-morrow, madame.”
“Adieu!” said Renée.