THE EASY DESCENT.
Mr. O'Boyneville presented himself at Pevenshall early in the month
of February, in response to Cecil's renewed entreaty that she might
be allowed to return to her home and its duties. There was no small
sacrifice involved in his tearing himself from the delights of the
law-courts even for a few days; but having once turned his back upon
Westminster Hall, he abandoned himself freely to the pleasures of
social intercourse. He was delighted with his wife's improved looks,
and thanked Mrs. Lobyer in his heartiest manner for the change which
her influence had wrought.
"However closely I may stick to my work, you must never lead such a
dreary life again, dear," he said.
"She never shall," cried Flo eagerly. "We are coming to town in March.
Mr. Lobyer has taken a house in Mortimer Gardens--one of those new
houses overlooking Hyde Park--and I mean to be tremendously gay; and
Cecil must come to all my parties."
Lady Cecil declared that the gaieties at Pevenshall were sufficient to
last her a twelvemonth; but neither Mr. O'Boyneville nor Mrs. Lobyer
would hear of this; and there was a friendly compact concluded between
them, to the effect that Cecil was not to be permitted to bury herself
alive in Brunswick Square during the ensuing season.
Mr. O'Boyneville spent three days at Pevenshall, where he made himself
as completely at home as it was his custom to make himself wherever he
went. There was a dash of the Yankee in the character of the popular
Hibernian, and it was not in him to be constrained or ill at ease by
reason of any lurking doubts as to his own merits. Big, and hearty,
and genial, he stood with his back against Mr. Lobyer's own particular
mantelpiece, and talked down the best of the club-men and the grandest
of the county squires; careless whom he pleased or whom he offended.
Major Gordon dined at Pevenshall on one of the three days; and Mr.
O'Boyneville attacked him on the subject of the late war. Always well
posted in his _Times_, the barrister seemed to be as familiar with the
Indian campaign as the man who had been through it.
"And how about that affair at Allacapoodur, when Sir Tristram Belpier
made his fellows put their lances under their left arms, and job
downwards as they rode over the enemy? That lying down of the Sikhs
and firing after the charge was a clever move; but they got it hot
that day. And what of Colonel Menkinson's tactics at Bundlebad? was
that charge of the light infantry a wise thing or not?" demanded
Mr. O'Boyneville. This sort of conversation went on all through the
dinner. At first there was some slight reserve in the Major's manner
to Lady Cecil's husband; but the ice melted little by little beneath
the influence of Indian reminiscences; and before the evening ended, a
friendly familiarity had arisen between the two men.
The barrister begged that Major Gordon would make a point of visiting
Brunswick Square whenever he found himself in London; and the Major
responded with a vaguely-polite acknowledgment which committed him to
nothing.
"You are a kind of relative of my wife's, you know," said Mr.
O'Boyneville; "and we ought to know more of each other."
* * * * *
Very early in March, Mrs. Lobyer's thoroughbred chestnuts and powdered
footmen astonished the quiet inhabitants of Bloomsbury, and Cecil
found herself seated by her friend's side in the Lady's Mile. Whatever
preference she might have had for the dull tranquillity of her own
drawing-room she was obliged to forego; for her husband and her friend
conspired together in order to force her into the agreeable whirlpool
of West-end London. And then she was really attached to Flo. She was
really anxious about this frivolous, unstable creature, surrounded by
so many temptations, supported by so little moral strength. She was
really concerned for the tranquillity of Mrs. Lobyer's life; for Sir
Nugent Evershed had taken possession of chambers in St. James's Street,
and was to be met very frequently at the new house in Mortimer Gardens;
and where Florence Lobyer was concerned, Sir Nugent and danger were
associated in the mind of Lady Cecil.
In the new Tyburnian mansion all the glories of Pevenshall were
repeated on a smaller scale. There were more encaustic tiles, more
parqueterie floors, more bronze and or-molu balustrades, more
ceilings picked out in gold and colour, more monster Sèvres vases,
and tiger-skin rugs. The glittering freshness and brightness of the
rooms had an oppressive effect upon the senses of people accustomed to
ordinary dwellings.
"There might be some hope for a _parvenu_, if he could live long
enough to wear the edge off his wealth," said one of the clubmen, after
dining for the first time in Mortimer Gardens; "but the modern span
of life does not give a millionaire time to overcome the appalling
freshness of his possessions. He is like a working man in his Sunday
clothes. The Sunday clothes are always new. In such a house as this
you see the stamp of the _nouveau riche_ on every object, from the
virgin gilding on the ceilings to the untarnished lacquer on the letter
weights. Show me a man's carpets, and I will tell you the length of
his pedigree. The _vieille roche_ rarely indulges in fresh upholstery.
At Lord Scamander's you can poke your cane through the carpet; and if
any one attempted to draw the window-curtains, they would crumble into
ashes, like the draperies of a house in Pompeii. Old Lady Teucer will
have an action for damages brought against her some day, if she doesn't
take up her stair-carpets; for one runs the risk of breaking one's neck
every time one calls on her. If I were a millionaire, I would watch
the sales at Christie's, and buy up all the dilapidated buhl cabinets
and rotten tapestry, in order that I might swear they had belonged to
my great-grandfather. I wouldn't have an ounce of plate on my table
of a later date than the reign of Queen Anne, or a sound carpet on my
floors."
Mr. Lobyer was supremely indifferent as to what his guests might please
to say or to think about him. In London, as in Yorkshire, the cares of
the speculator had possession of him. That undying worm which torments
the rich man, who never knows when he has made enough money, and is
always trying by every tortuous and darksome process to make more,
had made its home in the breast of Mr. Lobyer; and for such a man
the frivolous pleasures which amuse ordinary people have very little
attraction. In London as in Yorkshire, Mr. Lobyer had amusements of his
own and companions of his own, and left his wife to amuse herself after
her own fashion, and amongst whatever acquaintance she might choose for
herself. For this helpless young creature--so lonely amidst so much
splendour, so friendless amidst so many friends--Cecil felt unbounded
compassion.
"But what am I, that I should be any comfort or protection to her?" the
barrister's wife thought sadly. "Who could be weaker than I was at the
first sound of _his_ voice? Who could cling more wickedly to the memory
of the past than I have done since I have seen him?"
At her husband's wish Lady Cecil went back amongst her old set. The
season was a brilliant one, and she went out two or three times a-week.
Sometimes with her aunt, often with Mrs. Lobyer; sometimes, but very
seldom, with Mr. O'Boyneville. He wished her to be gay and happy; and
she obeyed him. At first with reluctance; but by-and-by with a guilty
pleasure. The words which Ruth spoke to Naomi contain the epitome of a
wife's duty; and Cecil had long abandoned all hope of doing her duty
in such a spirit. Her husband's people were not her people; his home
was not her home. If she had been suffered to go her own way, she would
have observed the letter of her duty; and the spirit would perhaps have
come to her in due time. But a kind of fatality seemed to pervade her
life; and the hand which should have sustained her within the quiet
precincts of her home pushed her, with well-intentioned ruthlessness,
out into the world.
Hector Gordon came to London in April; and Lady Cecil met him very
often. There were so many places at which they were likely to meet,
and they were constantly meeting, though the Major paid no visit in
Brunswick Square; whereupon the barrister condemned him as a snob, who
did not care to risk his reputation by being seen in an unfashionable
neighbourhood.
Lady Cecil and Hector met very often. At first the icy reserve with
which they accosted each other seemed an insuperable barrier, not to be
broken down or worn away; but little by little this freezing coldness
of manner gave place to a gradual thaw. Some chance allusion to the
past, to a book read at Fortinbras, the subject of some old argument
worn threadbare in those idle autumn days, carried them back all at
once to something of the old intimacy; as it had been before the storm
cloud of passion disturbed the serenity of their friendship.
Mrs. MacClaverhouse was delighted to have her nephew with her again,
and he came to Dorset Square as he pleased. If by a series of
coincidences he happened generally to be there when Lady Cecil was
with her aunt, the dowager was too frivolous and too much absorbed by
her own pleasures and her own interests to be alarmed by the fact.
She was very fond of Hector; and she knew that his return to England
had brought her many things which were dear to her heart. Besides his
usual tribute of Indian shawls and ivory caskets, the Major made his
aunt many substantial and useful offerings. He begged her to recruit
her exhausted cellar from the stores of his wine-merchant; and with his
own pencil marked the choicer vintages in the merchant's catalogue. He
presented the dowager with a stylish landau in place of the phantom
chariot; and in divers manners enhanced that lady's comfort and
respectability by his generosity.
"He brings sunshine with him wherever he goes," said the incautious
dowager. "And to think that he should be a widower, with all the girls
in London setting their caps at him, I dare say! Oh Cecil, Cecil, what
a pity you were in such a hurry to marry that big blustering barrister!"
This was the most cruel blow which Mrs. MacClaverhouse had ever
inflicted on her niece. Cecil's reproachful look smote her with some
sense of shame.
"Well, I know I encouraged Mr. O'Boyneville," she said; "and of course
he's a very excellent fellow, and tolerably well off--only tolerably,
as things go nowadays. But still it _is_ a pity, you know, Cecil.
However, there is nobody to be blamed; for who could imagine that poor
namby-pamby wife of Hector's was going to die?"
"Auntie, you mustn't talk like that," Cecil answered hastily. "My
husband is good and kind and generous-minded, and I am very happy with
him."
This last statement was false; and what is worse, the speaker knew
it to be false. But she fancied that it was her duty to say it,
nevertheless. Perhaps she had some faint hope that by force of
repetition it would come in time to be true.
At what point did the path in which she was treading swerve from its
straight course and become a fatal and crooked way, leading she knew
not whither? Lady Cecil never knew when her footsteps first strayed
across the invisible border-line between right and wrong; but she did
know that a time came when her eyes met her husband's honest glance
with a gaze that was not altogether fearless, when a vague sense of
remorse oppressed her in her husband's presence.
Alas for that fatal whirlpool of West-end life, those dangerous
meetings on staircases and in conservatories, those idle mornings at
horticultural fêtes, those sunny afternoons on race-courses, where the
clamour of half-a-million voices drowns the insidious whisper of one
voice for all but the too eager listener! and the chance encounters in
the crowd, and the water parties, and the festal gatherings in shadowy
gardens by the rippling river! Alas for all the machinery which the
modern Mephistopheles finds made ready for his hand when he undertakes
the perdition of any given victim!
Before the season was over Cecil and Hector had drifted back into the
old companionship. No word had been uttered by the Major to which
the most fiery of Hibernian husbands could have taken objection. But
the friendship of a man and a woman who have at one period in their
lives been something more than friends is very apt to be a dangerous
friendship. In this whirlpool of West-end life Cecil had no time for
self-examination--even if self-examination were a process to which the
human mind is inclined. If she was doing wrong--if she had passed the
impalpable boundary-line, she shut her eyes to the fact, and would
not remember those hidden dangers towards which she was drifting. If
the days on which she met Hector Gordon were very pleasant to her,
she beguiled herself with the idea that her pleasure arose from other
causes than the soldier's presence. What was he but an element in the
crowd? And as a woman is not gifted with the faculty of logic, Cecil
did not take the trouble to ask herself why the crowd seemed so dull
and vapid without him.
She could see Mrs. Lobyer's danger, for that was a peril of a palpable
and obvious nature. It is impossible for a young matron to indulge
in a chronic flirtation with one of the most eligible single men of
the season unnoticed and unslandered. But Flo did not object to being
slandered a little. The furtive glances of dowagers and the whispers of
faded beauties gave zest to her life.
"It's no use talking to me, Cecil," she said when her friend
remonstrated with her. "You know that I care about as much for Sir
Nugent Evershed as I care for this parasol; but it gives me tone to
have him dancing attendance upon me. He brings me people whom Mr.
Lobyer's money would never beguile across my threshold; and I should be
a lost creature without him."
"But if your father were to hear one malicious word about you, Flo----"
"My dearest Cecil, that is just the kind of thing one's father never
does hear. If I were to commit a murder to-morrow, I should like to
know who would tell my father any thing about it. Unless he read the
affair in the newspapers, he might go down to his grave in happy
ignorance of my iniquity. And after I had been hung, his acquaintance
would shake their heads and say, 'That sad attack of bronchitis,--so
young--so lovely; but I always told Mrs. Lobyer that the throat was the
vulnerable part,--' and so on."
Between Florence Lobyer and Major Gordon there arose a very cordial
alliance. He as well as Sir Nugent had the power of bringing nice
people to Mrs. Lobyer's house; and to surround herself with such people
was now the supreme ambition of that lady's mind. All the substantial
glories and grandeurs of this life--all the splendours that can be
bought with money were hers--and she had now only to find eligible
guests for her brilliant drawing-rooms, the last fashionable lions to
roar at her crowded assemblies. Directly Aladdin has hung up his roc's
egg, he begins to spread his lures for the _élite_ of the city; and
will be miserable if they remember his father's trade, and are slow to
attend his parties. All the best military men in London were known to
Hector Gordon; and through his agency the heaviest of martial swells
were secured for Mrs. Lobyer's evenings. Her gratitude was boundless.
Her dear Major Gordon could not come to Mortimer Gardens too often.
"And you must come to Pevenshall in September," she said. "I believe
the woods swarm with hares and pheasants--if you care for that sort
of thing--and you shall bring as many people as you like; and dear
Mrs. MacClaverhouse must come, and Cecil of course. We shall not go
on the Continent this year. I couldn't go through another autumn of
picture-galleries and cathedrals without endangering the state of my
brain."
While Flo extended the circle of her acquaintance, and vied with
women of established position in the splendour and number of her
entertainments, William Crawford went his quiet way, and held himself
aloof from the parvenu grandeurs of Mortimer Gardens. The "Dido" was
an undisputed success, and Florence received the congratulations of
her artistic acquaintance on her father's triumph. There was another
success of the season, which she heard of with strangely-mingled
feelings of pleasure, pride, and shame--the achievement of a young
landscape-painter called Foley, whose "Sunset on the Danube" had raised
him at once to no mean position in the ranks of young painters. Flo
went to see the picture, and thought a little sadly of her old adorer.
There were two little bits by the same hand, hanging low down beneath
larger subjects; and finding both these bits unsold on the day of the
private view, Mrs. Lobyer secured them for Pevenshall. For some unknown
reason she did not choose that her own name should appear in the
transaction, and commissioned Sir Nugent to buy the pictures.
As the season advanced, Cecil spent less and less of her time in
Bloomsbury. If she contrived to dine at home three or four times
a-week, her mornings were generally spent in some fashionable
amusement, her evenings devoted to some fashionable assembly.
Mrs. Lobyer had her box on the grand tier at Covent Garden; and was
never happy unless her dearest Cecil accompanied her to hear every
new opera, and to criticise every début. So, when there were no other
engagements, there was always the opera; and it seemed as if Cecil was
never again to spend her evenings at home.
What did it matter? Mr. O'Boyneville had his after-dinner sleep, and
his papers; then his long evening in the seclusion of his study. He
received his cups of tea from the respected Pupkin, instead of from
the white hands of his wife; and beyond this, Lady Cecil's absence or
presence must have been the same to him.
This is how Cecil reasoned when her conscience smote her on the
subject of her perpetual gaieties. Of course she was quite ignorant of
that vague sense of satisfaction,--that dim consciousness of a dear
companionship,--which the barrister had been wont to derive from his
wife's presence even while he slept. And was not her husband always the
first to urge her acceptance of every tempting invitation?
"Enjoy yourself as much as you can while the season lasts, dear," he
said; "and don't trouble yourself about me. In a few years I shall have
made the future safe; and then you shall have a house at the West-end,
and I'll enjoy life with you."
At the opera Cecil almost always met Hector Gordon. He was one of the
privileged visitors to Mrs. Lobyer's box, and he availed himself of his
privilege very frequently; not dropping in for a few minutes between
the acts to murmur polite inanities, with his opera-hat in his hand,
but abandoning his stall altogether, and taking up his place behind
Cecil's chair.
One night when Sir Nugent Evershed was in attendance upon Mrs. Lobyer,
and when the two were too much engaged by their own conversation
to be observant of their companions, Hector Gordon spoke to Cecil
for the first time of that unforgotten interview at Fortinbras. The
frozen barrier that had separated them at first had long ago melted.
A dangerous friendship had arisen between them; but as yet no fatal
word--no actual transgression of the right, had sullied Cecil's life.
Her sin had been that she had wilfully shut her eyes to the perils
of such a friendship,--that she had obstinately refused to see the
gulf towards the brink of which her footsteps were straying. She had
loved him so dearly;--alas for her broken marriage-vow, she loved
him so dearly still!--and his companionship was so sweet to her. She
could not banish this charm from her life. This year, for the first
time since those autumn days at Fortinbras, she had known entire
happiness--dangerous happiness,--fatal happiness, perhaps; but that
all-absorbing delight of the present,--that brief intoxication of
perfect joy, which shuts out all thought of the future.
If she had sinned unconsciously until to-night, she must henceforward
sin with a full knowledge of her guiltiness: for to-night the flimsy
veil of a pretended friendship was rent aside, and Hector Gordon spoke
to her as he had no right to speak to another man's wife.
The conversation arose out of one of those accidental commonplaces from
which such conversations generally do arise. It began amidst the crash
of a chorus in the _Huguenots_. The Major had been admiring Cecil's
bouquet of white azalias. As he bent over the flowers, he tried to
draw one of the frail blossoms away from the rest, but Cecil took the
bouquet from his hand.
"You will spoil it," she said; "those fragile flowers will not bear
being disturbed."
"And you refuse me even that? Do you know that I have not a shred of
ribbon, a scrap of writing, a book, a flower, not the smallest object
that has belonged to you?"
She tried to look at him bravely, but the guilty throbbing of her heart
told her how weak she was, and her eyelids fell under his gaze; the
same gaze she remembered at Fortinbras, but with less mournfulness and
more passion.
"What of that?" she asked; "why should you have any thing of mine?"
He did not answer her question, but continued, in a tone of reproach:
"And now that I want to take away some relic of to-night--perhaps the
last night that I may ever spend in your society--you refuse me even a
flower--a flower that your hand has touched!"
"The last night?" said Cecil.
"Yes, in all probability, the last night. These are no times for
feather-bed soldiers. We have sailing orders for Japan, and we shall
leave London in a few days."
"And you go to Japan?"
"Naturally, I go where my regiment goes. Are you sorry that I am going?
Oh Cecil, for pity's sake tell me that you are sorry!"
"I am very sorry."
She would have recalled the words the moment they were spoken, but it
was too late. The soldier's head bent in the shadow of the curtain, and
his hand clasped hers. She drew it away from him indignantly; but she
was obliged to repress any overt expression of her indignation, since
Florence and Sir Nugent were so very close at hand.
"I am sorry on my aunt's account," she said; "for myself individually
your departure can make very little difference. If your regiment
were not ordered to Japan, I suppose it would be sent to Manchester,
or Edinburgh, or York, or Dublin. You would be quite as far away at
Manchester as you can be in Japan."
"Do you think the distance between London and Manchester would separate
me from you, Cecil? Do you think any distance--the whole width of the
world--would divide me from you if----But you talk to me as if I were
the most commonplace acquaintance on your visiting-list. You have
always been cruel to me:--cruel to-night; cruel at Fortinbras; cold
and cruel. You thought that what you did was for the best, but it was
not for the best; and if you had loved me you could never have done
it. I tried to do my duty, but I was never really happy with that poor
devoted girl. I was never really happy with her, though I was heartily
sorry for her untimely fate. At the best I was only resigned. And then
I come back to England, and find you married to a man who is utterly
unsuited to you----"
"Major Gordon," exclaimed Cecil, "it is cowardly of you to talk to me
like this, when you know that I am powerless to answer you. Do you wish
me to get up and go away in order to escape from you?"
All this was said in a half-whisper, amidst the crash of the orchestra.
"Cecil, I have a right to speak to you,--the right of the wrong you
have done me. My life was in your hands that day at Fortinbras. If you
had loved me, surely you would have helped me to escape from the tie
that had become so painful to me. A word from you that day would have
saved me. I should have written honestly to my poor girl, telling her
all the truth; and I know she was too generous to have withheld my
release. But you did not love me, and you sent me back to India to do
my duty. It is very easy for a woman who does not know what love is to
preach eloquently about honour and duty----"
"Major Gordon!"
"If you had loved me, you would not have married so soon after I left
England. If you had loved me, you would have been true to my memory a
little longer."
"It is you who are cruel," cried Cecil.
She turned to look at him as she spoke--she had been looking towards
the stage before, with her face hidden from him--and he saw that her
eyes were filled with tears.
"Cecil," he exclaimed passionately, "you have been crying. Tell me
that you loved me that day; confess that you love me, and I will never
torment you again; only tell me that you love me, and I will go away to
Japan. You shall never see my face again."
"You know that I love you."
The curtain fell upon Valentine's passionate despair; and there were
passion and despair elsewhere than on the mimic scene. Cecil rose
suddenly and wrapped her opera-cloak round her.
"Will you send some one to fetch my carriage, Major Gordon?" she said.
"You are not going away, Cecil?" cried Flo; "there is the party at Mrs.
Hetherington's, you know. You promised to go with me."
"I can't go any where else to-night, dear. The heat and the music have
made my head ache."
"That's the worst of Meyerbeer. He's delightful, but he is very apt
to make one's head ache. If there could be a fault in an orchestra of
Costa's, I should think there were too many trombones in the orchestra
to-night. And you really can't go to Mrs. Hetherington's?--You may
order my carriage too, if you please, Sir Nugent; I sha'n't stop for
the last act."
The two ladies left the theatre together, escorted by Sir Nugent and
the Major. It was Hector who handed Cecil into her brougham; and in
bidding her good-night he bent his head over the carriage-window and
kissed the gloved hand resting in his.
"God bless you!" he said; "God bless you, and good-bye!"
She saw him standing under the portico with uncovered head as her
carriage drove away; and she thought that she had heard his voice and
seen his face for the last time.
"How can I ever go home?" she said to herself; "how can I ever go home
and look into my husband's face after what I have listened to to-night?"
And then she began to wonder if it could indeed be that she had fallen
into the dreadful list of false and wicked wives, whose lives are
foul secrets to be hidden from the eyes of unsuspecting husbands. She
remembered the women whom she had met in society; the women whose sins
were suspected but not discovered; the women about and around whom
there hovered an impalpable cloud, but who faced the world boldly
notwithstanding, secure in the strength of their beauty, or rank, or
wit, and defiant of mankind.
Lady Cecil had met such women, and had contemplated them with that
morbid curiosity which all social mysteries inspire. But to-night she
thought of them with a shuddering horror.
"Shall I ever be ranked among them?" she asked herself; "or can I
hold myself any better than them henceforward? I have let a man talk
to me of his love; I have confessed my own mad folly. But he will go
away--thank God for that!--he will go away; and I will try to forget
all the folly and wickedness of this year."
She sat back in a corner of her carriage with her hands clasped upon
her knees. Could there be a stranger picture than this--of a woman
seated in her brougham in all her fashionable finery, praying for
strength to escape sin? Even as she prayed, the thought that Hector
Gordon was indeed going to leave England filled her soul with a dull
despair. She was never to see him any more. The sweet intoxication of
the bright summer-time had come to an end; the brief dream had been
succeeded by all the bitterness of the awakening.
"Why should he have spoken to me as he did to-night?" she thought: "we
were so happy,--and if our happiness was sinful, I was unconscious of
the sin. After to-night I can never look upon his face or hear his
voice again without deliberate treachery to my husband."
During the week succeeding this evening at the opera, Lady Cecil
withdrew herself entirely from that frivolous circle in which Mrs.
Lobyer reigned supreme. It was in vain that the devoted Florence sent
one of the matched footmen to Brunswick Square in a hansom day after
day with little perfumed notes of entreaty or reproach. Cecil withdrew
herself into her dingy back drawing-room as into a fortress, and
declined to yield to the advances of the enemy. She pleaded nervous
headache, and a general disinclination for society; and she implored
Mrs. Lobyer not to come to see her, as rest was all she wanted.
"In a few days I have no doubt I shall be able to come to you, dear.
In the mean time do not trouble yourself about me. I know how many
engagements you have, and I beg you to attend to them without thought
of me," she wrote, while the matched footman waited in the hall, and
wondered at the manners and customs of the faithful Pupkin.
"Such fellers hadn't ought to be allowed to live," said the superb
creature, in the confidential converse of the servants' hall; "which I
sawr him, while she kep' me waitin' for her note, washin' the glasses
in a little hole of a place over the ketching leads. And there was
boots on a mahogany slab waitin' to be took up stairs, which it's my
belief he'd cleaned 'em with his own hands. While there's sech fellers
as that in the world, you can't wonder if a man gets called a dam lazy
beggar for spendin' a quiet hour over his noospaper."
Hector Gordon called twice during the week after that performance of
the _Huguenots_ at which he and Cecil had assisted; but the barrister's
wife was denied to him on both occasions. There was a little scrawl
in pencil on the card which he left for her on the first visit.
"My regiment leaves on Wednesday. _Il faut que je te voie._" The
inestimable Pupkin brought the card on a salver and handed it solemnly
to his mistress. It seemed to her as if he had presented her with a
scorpion. She tore the flimsy pasteboard into half-a-dozen fragments,
and threw them under the empty grate directly the door had closed upon
the servant.
"He has no right to call here--he has no right to send me messages,"
she thought indignantly. And yet those two brief sentences, "My
regiment leaves on Wednesday.--_Il faut que je te voie_," repeated
themselves perpetually in her brain, like the scrap of a verse which
sometimes haunts one with absurd persistence.
On Tuesday Major Gordon called again, and again left a card with a
pencil-scrawl for the mistress of the house; and another card for the
barrister, with P. P. C. in the corner.
"_Tu es bien cruelle_," he had written on the card intended for
Cecil; and again Pupkin handed her the scorpion with all due
solemnity--although with by no means the cleanest of hands, having left
his blacking-brushes to attend the street-door.
The pencil-scrawl and the "_tu_" seemed to Cecil a supreme
impertinence; but when a woman has confessed to a man that she loves
him, he is apt to fancy himself privileged to employ that tender
pronoun. Lady Cecil destroyed this card as she had destroyed the first;
but she kissed the fragments before she cast them into the grate. She
had reached that stage in folly--or perhaps in wickedness--when a
woman's soul oscillates like a pendulum between right and wrong.
Mr. O'Boyneville espied the Major's card in the basket, as he took his
tea.
"Ah, by-the-bye, I saw by the _Gazette_ that your cousin's regiment
had the rout for Japan," he exclaimed as he examined the slim morsel
of pasteboard; "the Plungers haven't had much of a holiday after their
Indian exploits. And Gordon hasn't dined with us once, after all.
I suppose he has all the confounded impudence of your thoroughbred
military swell, and would consider he sacrificed himself if he came to
such a house as this."
The next day was wet and dismal. A wet summer day is the most
depressing of all days. Doleful organs alternated selections from the
_Trovatore_ with the "Old Hundredth," "Home, sweet home," and "I'm
leaving thee in sorrow, Annie"--with a dreadful emphasis upon the
Annie--below the windows of Brunswick Square, as Cecil sat in the
drawing-room trying to occupy herself; trying not to think of the
transport vessel which was to leave Southampton that day; trying not to
remember that it was just possible Hector Gordon might make one last
effort to see her before he left England.
If he had called in Brunswick Square that day, Cecil would have
resolutely refused to see him; and yet as the day wore on, a dreary
feeling took possession of her, which was something like the sense of
disappointment. The inevitable dinner-hour, the inevitable evening,
the disjointed scraps of information out of the _Times_ newspaper,
the joke that had convulsed a Westminster audience in the morning,
but which sounded so flat and vapid when recorded in the evening--all
the petty commonplaces which composed the dull routine of her married
life--seemed utterly intolerable to Cecil to-day. She had lived too
much with the butterflies of late; she had feasted on the intoxicating
perfumes of the rose-garden; and coming back to the hive of the working
bee, it was scarcely strange if she found his dwelling dreary and
darksome.
The day came to an end; the hopeless rain always pattering on the
pavements of the square; the organ-man always droning his "_Ah che la
morte_" somewhere or other within hearing. Mr. O'Boyneville came home
to his substantial commonplace dinner, and his after-dinner sleep; and
sitting under the dining-room lamp, with an unread novel lying open in
her lap, Cecil thought of the transport vessel which by this time must
have left Southampton Water and the green shores of the Wight behind
her.
"Thank God he is gone!" she thought; "can I ever be thankful enough for
that?"