"But, first of all," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, looking in some
annoyance at the brace of terriers circling and barking round them, "we
must take the dogs home, otherwise no talk will be possible."
"You have no more business to do?"
His companion smiled.
"Everything Lady Henry wants is here," she said, pointing to the bag
upon her arm which had been handed to her, as Sir Wilfrid remembered,
after some whispered conversation, in the hall of Crowborough House by
an elegantly dressed woman, who was no doubt the Duchess's maid.
"Allow me to carry it for you."
"Many thanks," said Mademoiselle Le Breton, firmly retaining it, "but
those are not the things I mind."
They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made conversation
impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long battle between
them and their leader. If they were let loose, it seemed to Sir Wilfrid
that they ranged every area on the march, and attacked all elderly
gentlemen and most errand-boys.
"Do you always take them out?" he asked, when both he and his companion
were crimson and out of breath.
"Always."
"Do you like dogs?"
"I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again."
"As for me, I wish they had but one neck!" said Sir Wilfrid, who had but
just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out of the
interior of a pastry-cook's hand-cart which had been rashly left with
doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible
guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie
meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the
very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box, standing near the entrance
of a mews.
"So you commonly go through the streets of London in this whirlwind?"
asked Sir Wilfrid, again, incredulous, when at last they had landed
their charges safe at the Bruton Street door.
"Morning and evening," said Mademoiselle Julie, smiling. Then she
addressed the butler: "Tell Lady Henry, please, that I shall be at home
in half an hour."
As they turned westward, the winter streets were gay with lights and
full of people. Sir Wilfrid was presently conscious that among all the
handsome and well-dressed women who brushed past them, Mademoiselle Le
Breton more than held her own. She reminded him now not so much of her
mother as of Marriott Dalrymple. Sir Wilfrid had first seen this woman's
father at Damascus, when Dalrymple, at twenty-six, was beginning the
series of Eastern journeys which had made him famous. He remembered the
brillance of the youth; the power, physical and mental, which radiated
from him, making all things easy; the scorn of mediocrity, the
incapacity for subordination.
"I should like you to understand," said the lady beside him, "that I
came to Lady Henry prepared to do my very best."
"I am sure of that," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily recalling his thoughts
from Damascus. "And you must have had a very difficult task."
Mademoiselle Le Breton shrugged her shoulders.
"I knew, of course, it must be difficult. And as to the drudgery of
it--the dogs, and that kind of thing--nothing of that sort matters to me
in the least. But I cannot be humiliated before those who have become my
friends, entirely because Lady Henry wished it to be so."
"Lady Henry at first showed you every confidence?"
"After the first month or two she put everything into my hands--her
household, her receptions, her letters, you may almost say her whole
social existence. She trusted me with all her secrets." ("No, no, my
dear lady," thought Sir Wilfrid.) "She let me help her with all her
affairs. And, honestly, I did all I could to make her life easy."
"That I understand from herself."
"Then why," cried Mademoiselle Le Breton, turning round to him with
sudden passion--"why couldn't Lady Henry leave things alone? Are
devotion, and--and the kind of qualities she wanted, so common? I said
to myself that, blind and helpless as she was, she should lose nothing.
Not only should her household be well kept, her affairs well managed,
but her salon should be as attractive, her Wednesday evenings as
brilliant, as ever. The world was deserting her; I helped her to bring
it back. She cannot live without social success; yet now she hates me
for what I have done. Is it sane--is it reasonable?"
"She feels, I suppose," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely, "that the success is
no longer hers."
"So she says. But will you please examine that remark? When her guests
assemble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with them? I have
proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And if I am to be
there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like the housemaid.
Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother's little flat in Bruges,
with the two or three friends who frequented it, I was brought up in as
good society and as good talk as Lady Henry has ever known."
They were passing an electric lamp, and Sir Wilfrid, looking up, was
half thrilled, half repelled by the flashing energy of the face beside
him. Was ever such language on the lips of a paid companion before? His
sympathy for Lady Henry revived.
"Can you really give me no clew to the--to the sources of Lady Henry's
dissatisfaction?" he said, at last, rather coldly.
Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
"I don't want to make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in another
voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less proud than
her self-assertion. "I--I was brought up in poverty, and my mother died
when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the poor defend
themselves--by silence. I learned not to talk about my own affairs. I
couldn't afford to be frank, like a rich English girl. I dare say,
sometimes I have concealed things which had been better made plain. They
were never of any real importance, and if Lady Henry had shown any
consideration--"
Her voice failed her a little, evidently to her annoyance. They walked
on without speaking for a few paces. "Never of any real importance?" Sir
Wilfrid wondered.
Their minds apparently continued the conversation though their lips were
silent, for presently Julie Le Breton said, abruptly:
"Of course I am speaking of matters where Lady Henry might have some
claim to information. With regard to many of my thoughts and feelings,
Lady Henry has no right whatever to my confidence."
"She gives us fair warning," thought Sir Wilfrid.
Aloud he said:
"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand, but of
actions."
"Like the visit to the Duncombes'?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that's only one of several instances
Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led me to make these
friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am to break them. But
she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my life, too precious--"
Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir Wilfrid
found himself listening for every word.
"No," she resumed. "If it is a question of renouncing the friends I have
made in her house, or going--it will be going. That may as well be
quite clear."
Sir Wilfrid looked up.
"Let me ask you one question, mademoiselle."
"Certainly. Whatever you like."
"Have you ever had, have you now, any affection for Lady Henry?"
"Affection? I could have had plenty. Lady Henry is most interesting to
watch. It is magnificent, the struggles she makes with her infirmities."
Nothing could have been more agreeable than the modulation of these
words, the passage of the tone from a first note of surprise to its
grave and womanly close. Again, the same suggestions of veiled and
vibrating feeling. Sir Wilfrid's nascent dislike softened a little.
"After all," he said, with gentleness, "one must make allowance for old
age and weakness, mustn't one?"
"Oh, as to that, you can't say anything to me that I am not perpetually
saying to myself," was her somewhat impetuous reply. "Only there is a
point when ill-temper becomes not only tormenting to me but degrading to
herself.... Oh, if you only knew!"--the speaker drew an indignant
breath. "I can hardly bring myself to speak of such _misères_. But
everything excites her, everything makes her jealous. It is a grievance
that I should have a new dress, that Mr. Montresor should send me an
order for the House of Commons, that Evelyn Crowborough should give me a
Christmas present. Last Christmas, Evelyn gave me these furs--she is the
only creature in London from whom I would accept a farthing or the value
of a farthing."
She paused, then rapidly threw him a question:
"Why, do you suppose, did I take it from her?"
"She is your kinswoman," said Wilfrid, quietly.
"Ah, you knew that! Well, then, mayn't Evelyn be kind to me, though I am
what I am? I reminded Lady Henry, but she only thought me a mean
parasite, sponging on a duchess for presents above my station. She said
things hardly to be forgiven. I was silent. But I have never ceased to
wear the furs."
With what imperious will did the thin shoulders straighten themselves
under the folds of chinchilla! The cloak became symbolic, a flag not to
be struck.
"I never answer back, please understand--never," she went on, hurriedly.
"You saw to-day how Lady Henry gave me her orders. There is not a
servant in the house with whom she would dare such a manner. Did I
resent it?"
"You behaved with great forbearance. I watched you with admiration."
"Ah, _forbearance!_ I fear you don't understand one of the strangest
elements in the whole case. I am _afraid_ of Lady Henry, mortally
afraid! When she speaks to me I feel like a child who puts up its hands
to ward off a blow. My instinct is not merely to submit, but to grovel.
When you have had the youth that I had, when you have existed, learned,
amused yourself on sufferance, when you have had somehow to maintain
yourself among girls who had family, friends, money, name, while you--"
Her voice stopped, resolutely silenced before it broke. Sir Wilfrid
uncomfortably felt that he had no sympathy to produce worthy of the
claim that her whole personality seemed to make upon it. But she
recovered herself immediately.
"Now I think I had better give you an outline of the last six months,"
she said, turning to him. "Of course it is my side of the matter. But
you have heard Lady Henry's."
And with great composure she laid before him an outline of the chief
quarrels and grievances which had embittered the life of the Bruton
Street house during the period she had named. It was a wretched story,
and she clearly told it with repugnance and disgust. There was in her
tone a note of offended personal delicacy, as of one bemired against
her will.
Evidently, Lady Henry was hardly to be defended. The thing had been
"odious," indeed. Two women of great ability and different ages, shut up
together and jarring at every point, the elder furiously jealous and
exasperated by what seemed to her the affront offered to her high rank
and her past ascendency by the social success of her dependant, the
other defending herself, first by the arts of flattery and submission,
and then, when these proved hopeless, by a social skill that at least
wore many of the aspects of intrigue--these were the essential elements
of the situation; and, as her narrative proceeded, Sir Wilfrid admitted
to himself that it was hard to see any way out of it. As to his own
sympathies, he did not know what to make of them.
"No. I have been only too yielding," said Mademoiselle Le Breton,
sorely, when her tale was done. "I am ashamed when I look back on what I
have borne. But now it has gone too far, and something must be done. If
I go, frankly, Lady Henry will suffer."
Sir Wilfrid looked at his companion.
"Lady Henry is well aware of it."
"Yes," was the calm reply, "she knows it, but she does not realize it.
You see, if it comes to a rupture she will allow no half-measures. Those
who stick to me will have to quarrel with her. And there will be a great
many who will stick to me."
Sir Wilfrid's little smile was not friendly.
"It is indeed evident," he said, "that you have thought it all out."
Mademoiselle Le Breton did not reply. They walked on a few minutes in
silence, till she said, with a suddenness and in a low tone that
startled her companion:
"If Lady Henry could ever have felt that she _humbled_ me, that I
acknowledged myself at her mercy! But she never could. She knows that I
feel myself as well born as she, that I am _not_ ashamed of my parents,
that my principles give me a free mind about such things."
"Your principles?" murmured Sir Wilfrid.
"You were right," she turned upon him with a perfectly quiet but most
concentrated passion. "I have _had_ to think things out. I know, of
course, that the world goes with Lady Henry. Therefore I must be
nameless and kinless and hold my tongue. If the world knew, it would
expect me to hang my head. I _don't!_ I am as proud of my mother as of
my father. I adore both their memories. Conventionalities of that kind
mean nothing to me."
"My dear lady--"
"Oh, I don't expect you or any one else to feel with me," said the voice
which for all its low pitch was beginning to make him feel as though he
were in the centre of a hail-storm. "You are a man of the world, you
knew my parents, and yet I understand perfectly that for you, too, I am
disgraced. So be it! So be it! I don't quarrel with what any one may
choose to think, but--"
She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence. They were
walking through the purple February dusk towards the Marble Arch. It was
too dark to see her face under its delicate veil, and Sir Wilfrid did
not wish to see it. But before he had collected his thoughts
sufficiently his companion was speaking again, in a wholly
different manner.
"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact with
some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She raised her
veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears. "That never
happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return. If there is
a breach--"
"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss Le
Breton, listen to me for a few minutes. I see perfectly that you have a
great deal to complain of, but I also see that Lady Henry has something
of a case."
And with a courteous authority and tact worthy of his trade, the old
diplomat began to discuss the situation.
Presently he found himself talking with an animation, a friendliness, an
intimacy that surprised himself. What was there in the personality
beside him that seemed to win a way inside a man's defences in spite of
him? Much of what she had said had seemed to him arrogant or morbid. And
yet as she listened to him, with an evident dying down of passion, an
evident forlornness, he felt in her that woman's weakness and timidity
of which she had accused herself in relation to Lady Henry, and was
somehow, manlike, softened and disarmed. She had been talking wildly,
because no doubt she felt herself in great difficulties. But when it was
his turn to talk she neither resented nor resisted what he had to say.
The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times, as
though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most, and there
were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only asked in truth
for a little sympathy and understanding.
"I shall soon be calling her 'my dear' and patting her hand," thought
the old man, at last, astonished at himself. For the dejection in her
attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt a warm desire to
sustain and comfort her. More and more thought, more and more
contrivance did he throw into the straightening out of this tangle
between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for Lady Henry's sake, not,
surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But--ah! those two poor, dead folk,
who had touched his heart long ago, did he feel the hovering of their
ghosts beside him in the wintry wind?
At any rate, he abounded in shrewd and fatherly advice, and Mademoiselle
Le Breton listened with a most flattering meekness.
"Well, now I think we have come to an understanding," he urged,
hopefully, as they turned down Bruton Street again.
Mademoiselle Le Breton sighed.
"It is very kind of you. Oh, I will do my best. But--"
She shook her head uncertainly.
"No--no 'buts,'" cried Sir Wilfrid, cheerfully. "Suppose, as a first
step," he smiled at his companion, "you tell Lady Henry about
the bazaar?"
"By all means. She won't let me go. But Evelyn will find some one else."
"Oh, we'll see about that," said the old man, almost crossly. "If you'll
allow me I'll try my hand."
Julie Le Breton did not reply, but her face glimmered upon him with a
wistful friendliness that did not escape him, even in the darkness. In
this yielding mood her voice and movements had so much subdued
sweetness, so much distinction, that he felt himself more than melting
towards her.
Then, of a sudden, a thought--a couple of thoughts--sped across him. He
drew himself rather sharply together.
"Mr. Delafield, I gather, has been a good deal concerned in the whole
matter?"
Mademoiselle Le Breton laughed and hesitated.
"He has been very kind. He heard Lady Henry's language once when she was
excited. It seemed to shock him. He has tried once or twice to smooth
her down. Oh, he has been most kind!"
"Has he any influence with her?"
"Not much."
"Do you think well of him?"
He turned to her with a calculated abruptness. She showed a little
surprise.
"I? But everybody thinks well of him. They say the Duke trusts
everything to him."
"When I left England he was still a rather lazy and unsatisfactory
undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had developed. Do you know
what his chief interests are now?"
Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
"I'm really afraid I don't know," she said, at last, smiling, and, as it
were, regretful. "But Evelyn Crowborough, of course, could tell you all
about him. She and he are very old friends."
"No birds out of that cover," was Sir Wilfrid's inward comment.
The lamp over Lady Henry's door was already in sight when Sir Wilfrid,
after some talk of the Montresors, with whom he was going to dine that
night, carelessly said:
"That's a very good-looking fellow, that Captain Warkworth, whom I saw
with Lady Henry last night."
"Ah, yes. Lady Henry has made great friends with him," said Mademoiselle
Julie, readily. "She consults him about her memoir of her husband."
"Memoir of her husband!" Sir Wilfrid stopped short. "Heavens above!
Memoir of Lord Henry?"
"She is half-way through it. I thought you knew."
"Well, upon my word! Whom shall we have a memoir of next? Henry
Delafield! Henry Delafield! Good gracious!"
And Sir Wilfrid walked along, slashing at the railings with his stick,
as though the action relieved him. Julie Le Breton quietly resumed:
"I understand that Lord Henry and Captain Warkworth's father went
through the Indian Mutiny together, and Captain Warkworth has some
letters--"
"Oh, I dare say--I dare say," muttered Sir Wilfrid. "What's this man
home for just now?"
"Well, I _think_ Lady Henry knows," said Mademoiselle Julie, turning to
him an open look, like one who, once more, would gladly satisfy a
questioner if they could. "He talks to her a great deal. But why
shouldn't he come home?"
"Because he ought to be doing disagreeable duty with his regiment
instead of always racing about the world in search of something to get
his name up," said Sir Wilfrid, rather sharply. "At least, that's the
view his brother officers mostly take of him."
"Oh," said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, "is there
anything particular that you suppose he wants?"
"I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions," said Sir Wilfrid,
lifting his shoulders. "But you and Lady Henry seemed well acquainted
with him."
The straw-colored lashes veered her way.
"I had some talk with him in the Park this morning," said Julie Le
Breton, reflectively. "He wants me to copy his father's letters for Lady
Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as possible. He
feels nervous when they are out of his hands."
"Hm!" said Sir Wilfrid.
At that moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The vigor with
which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of
his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one moment believe that General
Warkworth's letters had been the subject of the conversation he had
witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had
anything whatever to say to it.
Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.
"Thank you very much," she said, gravely and softly.
Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at all. But
he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled feelings.
"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation.
Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry."
Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.
Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.
"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of annoyance. "I
wonder whether I made any real impression upon her. Hm! Let's see
whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her. He seemed to be
pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous view to take, for a
woman of that _provenance._"
* * * * *
An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the
Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling it
essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with
regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the first person
he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample
fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that
shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and
almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency,
confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little
topsy-turvy.
Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk
with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then, after an
appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day,
both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the
same subject stirred in both their minds.
"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor, with a
smile, as he lighted another cigarette.
"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But else
there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully well."
"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She has
really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is that most
of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the Minister
lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and agreeable creatures
in the world."
Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was telling
scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who
sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's
careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned
around him; he was the spoiled child of the dinner, and knew it.
"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le Breton,"
said Bury, turning to his host.
"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to protect her,
and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has poured out her
grievances to you, hasn't she?"
"Alack, she has!"
"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She has
really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand pities."
"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"
The Minister gave a shrug.
"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady Henry's
state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle Julie always
appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in other ways she has
really worn herself to death for the old lady. It makes one rather
savage sometimes to see it."
"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"
Montresor laughed.
"Oh, as to perfection--"
"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of it?"
The Minister smiled a little oddly.
"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very astute
lady."
A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the dark-lined
face.
"What do you mean by that?"
"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I have known
three men, at least, _made_ by Mademoiselle Le Breton within the last
two or three years. She has just got a fresh one in tow."
Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned slightly from
the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.
"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.
The Minister smiled again and hesitated.
"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets at me
in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well when she has
been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you understand--who
frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her very good friends....
Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he added, with nonchalance.
"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the young
man?"
Montresor shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a power--all
the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It is very
curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite harmless."
"You and others don't resent it?"
"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she is rather
going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened upon me at once.
She must be thinking of little else."
Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the
door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone
assumed a certain asperity.
"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has something to
say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious even--the kind of
ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in so short a time."
"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused
Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"
He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his look
swept the face of his companion.
Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant gesture,
motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of
both men travelled across the table, then met again.
"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.
Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now
exhausted the number of the initiated.
* * * * *
When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting
for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid
fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well,
though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own
standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but
in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful
signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the
rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like
a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.
They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young
journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his
ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an
exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.
"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the
new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they
used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.
"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there
for twenty years."
And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and
staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to
interpose between him and his companions.
Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow
poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same
image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside
one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last
relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the
darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand,
had let her suffer and die alone?
V
On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night
with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to
his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the
mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the
lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top
of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft,
rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some
showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now
with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.
"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he thought,
contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart and sense to
his beloved London.
As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank
up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion--the noises
and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the
crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed
go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more
exalted post? "I've got plenty of money; why the deuce don't I give it
up, and come home and enjoy myself? Only a few more years, after all;
why not spend them here, in one's own world, among one's own kind?"
It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was answered
immediately by that other instinct, partly physical, partly moral, which
keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task. Idleness? No! That way
lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to
call on death--death, the secret pursuer, who is not far from each one
of us. No, no! Fight on! It was only the long drudgery behind, under
alien suns, together with the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead,
that gave value, after all, to this rainy, this enchanting
Piccadilly--that kept the string of feeling taut and all its
notes clear.
"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he turned down
St. James's Street.
"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have you
sprung from?"
Delafield explained that he had been dining with the Crowboroughs, and
was now going to his club to look for news of a friend's success or
failure in a north-country election.
"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half an hour.
I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."
"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir Wilfrid a
moment of hesitation.
"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked on.
"Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."
"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large milk depots
in town that I look after."
There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and Bury
surveyed him with a smile.
"No other attractions, eh?"
"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you how Dick
Mason was getting on?"
"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"
"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."
"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."
The young man laughed.
"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've left him in
charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"
"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick Mason?"
"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."
"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe you do."
And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm of his
companion.
Delafield reddened.
"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old school-fellow?"
"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk about."
Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached his ear.
"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."
"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."
"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't been a
miracle of wisdom."
"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.
"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"
"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married Evelyn's
aunt, her mother's sister."
"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie _ought_ to have called the
same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies, they don't.
By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger sister?"
"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a widow
for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives there
generally with her girl."
"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"
"No."
"She speaks of them?"
"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl was
presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But neither she
nor her mother cares for London."
"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid, pausing.
"Wasn't she in India this winter?"
"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by April."
"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and then at
Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember! She's a great
heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know! Somebody told me that
fellow Warkworth had been making up to her."
"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir Wilfrid
caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course, was just a
bit of Indian gossip."
"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were two
frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had recently been at
Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all given to take young
ladies' names in vain."
Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke Street house
and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir Wilfrid's rooms.
There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the same age
as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his smoking-coat,
offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid, strange to say, with
a large cup of tea.
"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of luxury, as he
sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly made pair of legs and
feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept the sleep of the just--on a
cup of tea at midnight--through the rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm
trying the receipt."
"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"
"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to dodder in
the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's all. Well, now,
Jacob, do you know anything about this Warkworth?"
"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose his
words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."
"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry Miss
Moffatt."
"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man, slowly.
"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling his
teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has Mademoiselle
Julie in that young soldier?"
Delafield looked into the fire.
"Has she any?"
"She seems to be moving heaven and earth to get him what he wants.
By-the-way, what does he want?"
"He wants the special mission to Mokembe, as I understand," said
Delafield, after a moment. "But several other people want it too."
"Indeed!" Sir Wilfrid nodded reflectively. "So there is to be one! Well,
it's about time. The travellers of the other European firms have been
going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your mademoiselle also is a bit
of an intriguer!"