It was a somewhat depressed company that found its straggling way into
the Duchess's drawing-room that evening between tea and dinner.
Miss Le Breton did not appear at tea. The Duchess believed that, after
her inspection of the house in Heribert Street, Julie had gone on to
Bloomsbury to find Madame Bornier. Jacob Delafield was there, not much
inclined to talk, even as Julie's champion. And, one by one, Lady
Henry's oldest _habitués_, the "criminals" of the night before,
dropped in.
Dr. Meredith arrived with a portfolio containing what seemed to be
proof-sheets.
"Miss Le Breton not here?" he said, as he looked round him.
The Duchess explained that she might be in presently. The great man sat
down, his portfolio carefully placed beside him, and drank his tea under
what seemed a cloud of preoccupation.
Then appeared Lord Lackington and Sir Wilfrid Bury. Montresor had sent a
note from the House to say that if the debate would let him he would
dash up to Grosvenor Square for some dinner, but could only stay
an hour.
"Well, here we are again--the worst of us!" said the Duchess, presently,
with a sigh of bravado, as she handed Lord Lackington his cup of tea
and sank back in her chair to enjoy her own.
"Speak for yourselves, please," said Sir Wilfrid's soft, smiling voice,
as he daintily relieved his mustache of some of the Duchess's cream.
"Oh, that's all very well," said the Duchess, throwing up a hand in mock
annoyance; "but why weren't you there?"
"I knew better."
"The people who keep out of scrapes are not the people one loves," was
the Duchess's peevish reply.
"Let him alone," said Lord Lackington, coming for some more tea-cake.
"He will get his deserts. Next Wednesday he will be _tête-à-tête_ with
Lady Henry."
"Lady Henry is going to Torquay to-morrow," said Sir Wilfrid, quietly.
"Ah!"
There was a general chorus of interrogation, amid which the Duchess made
herself heard.
"Then you've seen her?"
"To-day, for twenty minutes--all she was able to bear. She was ill
yesterday. She is naturally worse to-day. As to her state of mind--"
The circle of faces drew eagerly nearer.
"Oh, it's war," said Sir Wilfrid, nodding--"undoubtedly war--upon the
Cave--if there is a Cave."
"Well, poor things, we must have something to shelter us!" cried the
Duchess. "The Cave is being aired to-day."
The interrogating faces turned her way. The Duchess explained the
situation, and drew the house in Heribert Street--with its Cyclops-eye
of a dormer window, and its Ionian columns--on the tea-cloth with
her nail.
"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid, crossing his knees reflectively. "Ah, that makes
it serious."
"Julie must have a place to live in," said the Duchess, stiffly.
"I suppose Lady Henry would reply that there are still a few houses in
London which do not belong to her kinsman, the Duke of Crowborough."
"Not perhaps to be had for the lending, and ready to step into at a
day's notice," said Lord Lackington, with his queer smile, like the play
of sharp sunbeams through a mist. "That's the worst of our class. The
margin between us and calamity is too wide. We risk too little. Nobody
goes to the workhouse."
Sir Wilfrid looked at him curiously. "Do I catch your meaning?" he said,
dropping his voice; "is it that if there had been no Duchess, and no
Heribert Street, Miss Le Breton would have managed to put up with
Lady Henry?"
Lord Lackington smiled again. "I think it probable.... As it is,
however, we are all the gainers. We shall now see Miss Julie at her ease
and ours."
"You have been for some time acquainted with Miss Le Breton?"
"Oh, some time. I don't exactly remember. Lady Henry, of course, is an
old friend of mine, as she is of yours. Sometimes she is rude to me.
Then I stay away. But I always go back. She and I can discuss things and
people that nobody else recollects--no, as far as that's concerned,
you're not in it, Bury. Only this winter, somehow, I have often gone
round to see Lady Henry, and have found Miss Le Breton instead so
attractive--"
"Precisely," said Sir Wilfrid, laughing; "the whole case in a nutshell."
"What puzzles me," continued his companion, in a musing voice, "is how
she can be so English as she is--with her foreign bringing up. She has a
most extraordinary instinct for people--people in London--and their
relations. I have never known her make a mistake. Yet it is only five
years since she began to come to England at all; and she has lived but
three with Lady Henry. It was clear, I thought, that neither she nor
Lady Henry wished to be questioned. But, do you, for instance--I have no
doubt Lady Henry tells you more than she tells me--do you know anything
of Mademoiselle Julie's antecedents?"
Sir Wilfrid started. Through his mind ran the same reflection as that to
which the Duke had given expression in the morning--"_she ought to
reveal herself!_" Julie Le Breton had no right to leave this old man in
his ignorance, while those surrounding him were in the secret. Thereby
she made a spectacle of her mother's father--made herself and him the
sport of curious eyes. For who could help watching them--every movement,
every word? There was a kind of indelicacy in it.
His reply was rather hesitating. "Yes, I happen to know something. But I
feel sure Miss Le Breton would prefer to tell you herself. Ask her.
While she was with Lady Henry there were reasons for silence--"
"But, of course, I'll ask her," said his companion, eagerly, "if you
suppose that I may. A more hungry curiosity was never raised in a human
breast than in mine with regard to this dear lady. So charming,
handsome, and well bred--and so forlorn! That's the paradox of it. The
personality presupposes a _milieu_--else how produce it? And there is no
_milieu_, save this little circle she has made for herself through Lady
Henry.... Ah, and you think I may ask her? I will--that's flat--I will!"
And the old man gleefully rubbed his hands, face and form full of the
vivacity of his imperishable youth.
"Choose your time and place," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily. "There are very
sad and tragic circumstances--"
Lord Lackington looked at him and nodded gayly, as much as to say, "You
distrust me with the sex? Me, who have had the whip-hand of them since
my cradle!"
Suddenly the Duchess interrupted. "Sir Wilfrid, you have seen Lady
Henry; which did she mind most--the coming-in or the coffee?"
Bury returned, smiling, to the tea-table.
"The coming-in would have been nothing if it had led quickly to the
going-out. It was the coffee that ruined you."
"I see," said the Duchess, pouting--"it meant that it was possible for
us to enjoy ourselves without Lady Henry. That was the offence."
"Precisely. It showed that you _were_ enjoying yourselves. Otherwise
there would have been no lingering, and no coffee."
"I never knew coffee so fatal before," sighed the Duchess. "And now"--it
was evident that she shrank from the answer to her own question--"she is
really irreconcilable?"
"Absolutely. Let me beg you to take it for granted."
"She won't see any of us--not me?"
Sir Wilfrid hesitated.
"Make the Duke your ambassador."
The Duchess laughed, and flushed a little.
"And Mr. Montresor?"
"Ah," said Sir Wilfrid in another tone, "that's not to be lightly spoken
of."
"You don't mean--"
"How many years has that lasted?" said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively.
"Thirty, I think--if not more. It was Lady Henry who told him of his
son's death, when his wife daren't do it."
There was a silence. Montresor had lost his only son, a subaltern in the
Lancers, in the action of Alumbagh, on the way to the relief of Lucknow.
Then the Duchess broke out:
"I know that you think in your heart of hearts that Julie has been in
fault, and that we have all behaved abominably!"
"My dear lady," said Sir Wilfrid, after a moment, "in Persia we believe
in fate; I have brought the trick home."
"Yes, yes, that's it!" exclaimed Lord Lackington--it! When Lady Henry
wanted a companion--and fate brought her Miss Le Breton--"
"Last night's coffee was already drunk," put in Sir Wilfrid.
Meredith's voice, raised and a trifle harsh, made itself heard.
"Why you should dignify an ugly jealousy by fine words I don't know. For
some women--women like our old friend--gratitude is hard. That is the
moral of this tale."
"The only one?" said Sir Wilfrid, not without a mocking twist of the
lip.
"The only one that matters. Lady Henry had found, or might have found, a
daughter--"
"I understand she bargained for a companion."
"Very well. Then she stands upon her foolish rights, and loses both
daughter and companion. At seventy, life doesn't forgive you a blunder
of that kind."
Sir Wilfrid silently shook his head. Meredith threw back his blanched
mane of hair, his deep eyes kindling under the implied contradiction.
"I am an old comrade of Lady Henry's," he said, quickly. "My record,
you'll find, comes next to yours, Bury. But if Lady Henry is determined
to make a quarrel of this, she must make it. I regret nothing."
"What madness has seized upon all these people?" thought Bury, as he
withdrew from the discussion. The fire, the unwonted fire, in Meredith's
speech and aspect, amazed him. From the corner to which he had retreated
he studied the face of the journalist. It was a face subtly and strongly
lined by much living--of the intellectual, however, rather than the
physical sort; breathing now a studious dignity, the effect of the broad
sweep of brow under the high-peaked lines of grizzled hair, and now
broken, tempestuous, scornful, changing with the pliancy of an actor.
The head was sunk a little in the shoulders, as though dragged back by
its own weight. The form which it commanded had the movements of a man
no less accustomed to rule in his own sphere than Montresor himself.
To Sir Wilfrid the famous editor was still personally mysterious, after
many years of intermittent acquaintance. He was apparently unmarried; or
was there perhaps a wife, picked up in a previous state of existence,
and hidden away with her offspring at Clapham or Hornsey or Peckham?
Bury could remember, years before, a dowdy old sister, to whom Lady
Henry had been on occasion formally polite. Otherwise, nothing. What
were the great man's origins and antecedents--his family, school,
university? Sir Wilfrid did not know; he did not believe that any one
knew. An amazing mastery of the German, and, it was said, the Russian
tongues, suggested a foreign education; but neither on this ground nor
any other connected with his personal history did Meredith encourage the
inquirer. It was often reported that he was of Jewish descent, and there
were certain traits, both of feature and character, that lent support to
the notion. If so, the strain was that of Heine or Disraeli, not the
strain of Commerce.
At any rate, he was one of the most powerful men of his day--the owner,
through _The New Rambler_, of an influence which now for some fifteen
years had ranked among the forces to be reckoned with. A man in whom
politics assumed a tinge of sombre poetry; a man of hatreds, ideals,
indignations, yet of habitually sober speech. As to passions, Sir
Wilfrid could have sworn that, wife or no wife, the man who could show
that significance of mouth and eye had not gone through life without
knowing the stress and shock of them.
Was he, too, beguiled by this woman?--_he, too?_ For a little behind
him, beside the Duchess, sat Jacob Delafield; and, during his painful
interview that day with Lady Henry, Sir Wilfrid had been informed of
several things with regard to Jacob Delafield he had not known before.
So she had refused him--this lady who was now the heart of this
whirlwind? Permanently? Lady Henry had poured scorn on the notion. She
was merely sure of him; could keep him in a string to play with as she
chose. Meanwhile the handsome soldier was metal more attractive. Sir
Wilfrid reflected, with an inward shrug, that, once let a woman give
herself to such a fury as possessed Lady Henry, and there did not seem
to be much to choose between her imaginings and those of the most vulgar
of her sex.
So Jacob could be played with--whistled on and whistled off as Miss Le
Breton chose? Yet his was not a face that suggested it, any more than
the face of Dr. Meredith. The young man's countenance was gradually
changing its aspect for Sir Wilfrid, in a somewhat singular way, as old
impressions of his character died away and new ones emerged. The face,
now, often recalled to Bury a portrait by some Holbeinesque master,
which he had seen once in the Basle Museum and never forgotten. A large,
thin-lipped mouth that, without weakness, suggested patience; the long
chin of a man of will; nose, bluntly cut at the tip, yet in the nostril
and bridge most delicate; grayish eyes, with a veil of reverie drawn, as
it were, momentarily across them, and showing behind the veil a kind of
stern sweetness; fair hair low on the brow, which was heavy, and made a
massive shelter for the eyes. So looked the young German who had perhaps
heard Melanchthon; so, in this middle nineteenth century, looked Jacob
Delafield. No, anger makes obtuse; that, no doubt, was Lady Henry's
case. At any rate, in Delafield's presence her theory did not
commend itself.
But if Delafield had not echoed them, the little Duchess had received
Meredith's remarks with enthusiasm.
"Regret! No, indeed! Why should we regret anything, except that Julie
has been miserable so long? She _has_ had a bad time. Every day and all
day. Ah, you don't know--none of you. You haven't seen all the little
things as I have."
"The errands, and the dogs," said Sir William, slyly.
The Duchess threw him a glance half conscious, half resentful, and went
on:
"It has been one small torture after another. Even when a person's old
you can't bear more than a certain amount, can you? You oughtn't to. No,
let's be thankful it's all over, and Julie--our dear, delightful
Julie--who has done everybody in this room all sorts of kindnesses,
hasn't she?"
An assenting murmur ran round the circle.
"Julie's _free_! Only she's _very_ lonely. We must see to that, mustn't
we? Lady Henry can buy another companion to-morrow--she will. She has
heaps of money and heaps of friends, and she'll tell her own story to
them all. But Julie has only us. If we desert her--"
"Desert her!" said a voice in the distance, half amused, half
electrical. Bury thought it was Jacob's.
"Of course we sha'n't desert her!" cried the Duchess. "We shall rally
round her and carry her through. If Lady Henry makes herself
disagreeable, then we'll fight. If not, we'll let her cool down. Oh,
Julie, darling--here you are!"
The Duchess sprang up and caught her entering friend by the hand.
"And here are we," with a wave round the circle. "This is your
court--your St. Germain."
"So you mean me to die in exile," said Julie, with a quavering smile, as
she drew off her gloves. Then she looked at her friends. "Oh, how good
of you all to come! Lord Lackington!" She went up to him impetuously,
and he, taken by surprise, yielded his hands, which she took in both
hers. "It was foolish, I know, but you don't think it was so _bad_,
do you?"
She gazed up at him wistfully. Her lithe form seemed almost to cling to
the old man. Instinctively, Jacob, Meredith, Sir Wilfrid Bury withdrew
their eyes. The room held its breath. As for Lord Lackington, he colored
like a girl.
"No, no; a mistake, perhaps, for all of us; but more ours than yours,
mademoiselle--much more! Don't fret. Indeed, you look as if you hadn't
slept, and that mustn't be. You must think that, sooner or later, it was
bound to come. Lady Henry will soften in time, and you will know so well
how to meet her. But now we have your future to think of. Only sit down.
You mustn't look so tired. Where have you been wandering?"
And with a stately courtesy, her hand still in his, he took her to a
chair and helped her to remove her heavy cloak.
"My future!" She shivered as she dropped into her seat.
How weary and beaten-down she looked--the heroine of such a turmoil! Her
eyes travelled from face to face, shrinking--unconsciously appealing. In
the dim, soft color of the room, her white face and hands, striking
against her black dress, were strangely living and significant. They
spoke command--through weakness, through sex. For that, in spite of
intellectual distinction, was, after all, her secret. She breathed
femininity--the old common spell upon the blood.
"I don't know why you're all so kind to me," she murmured. "Let me
disappear. I can go into the country and earn my living there. Then I
shall be no more trouble."
Unseen himself, Sir Wilfrid surveyed her. He thought her a consummate
actress, and revelled in each new phase.
The Duchess, half laughing, half crying, began to scold her friend.
Delafield bent over Julie Le Breton's chair.
"Have you had some tea?"
The smile in his eyes provoked a faint answer in hers. While she was
declaring that she was in no need whatever of physical sustenance,
Meredith advanced with his portfolio. He looked the editor merely, and
spoke with a business-like brevity.
"I have brought the sheets of the new Shelley book, Miss Le Breton. It
is due for publication on the 22d. Kindly let me have your review within
a week. It may run to two columns--possibly even two and a half. You
will find here also the particulars of one or two other things--let me
know, please, what you will undertake."
Julie put out a languid hand for the portfolio.
"I don't think you ought to trust me."
"What do you want of her?" said Lord Lackington, briskly. "'Chatter
about Harriet?' I could write you reams of that myself. I once saw
Harriet."
"Ah!"
Meredith, with whom the Shelley cult was a deep-rooted passion, started
and looked round; then sharply repressed the eagerness on his tongue and
sat down by Miss Le Breton, with whom, in a lowered voice, he began to
discuss the points to be noticed in the sheets handed over to her. No
stronger proof could he have given of his devotion to her. Julie knew
it, and, rousing herself, she met him with a soft attention and
docility; thus tacitly relinquishing, as Bury noticed with amusement,
all talk of "disappearance."
Only with himself, he suspected, was the fair lady ill at ease. And,
indeed, it was so. Julie, by her pallor, her humility, had thrown
herself, as it were, into the arms of her friends, and each was now
vying with the other as to how best to cheer and console her. Meanwhile
her attention was really bent upon her critic--her only critic in this
assembly; and he discovered various attempts to draw him into
conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited by Meredith, had
finished discharging his literary recollections upon him, Sir Wilfrid
became complaisant; Julie slipped in and held him.
Leaning her chin on both hands, she bent towards him, fixing him with
her eyes. And in spite of his antagonism he no longer felt himself
strong enough to deny that the eyes were beautiful, especially with this
tragic note in them of fatigue and pain.
"Sir Wilfrid"--she spoke in low entreaty--"you _must_ help me to prevent
any breach between Lady Henry and Mr. Montresor."
He looked at her gayly.
"I fear," he said, "you are too late. That point is settled, as I
understand from herself."
"Surely not--so soon!"
"There was an exchange of letters this morning."
"Oh, but you can prevent it--you must!" She clasped her hands.
"No," he said, slowly, "I fear you must accept it. Their relation was a
matter of old habit. Like other things old and frail, it bears shock and
disturbance badly."
She sank back in her chair, raising her hands and letting them fall with
a gesture of despair.
One little stroke of punishment--just one! Surely there was no cruelty
in that. Sir Wilfrid caught the Horatian lines dancing through his head:
"Just oblige me and touch
With your wand that minx Chloe--
But don't hurt her much!"
Yet here was Jacob interposing!--Jacob, who had evidently been watching
his mild attempt at castigation, no doubt with disapproval. Lover or no
lover--what did the man expect? Under his placid exterior, Sir Wilfrid's
mind was, in truth, hot with sympathy for the old and helpless.
Delafield bent over Miss Le Breton.
"You will go and rest? Evelyn advises it."
She rose to her feet, and most of the party rose, too.
"Good-bye--good-bye," said Lord Lackington, offering her a cordial hand.
"Rest and forget. Everything blows over. And at Easter you must come to
me in the country. Blanche will be with me, and my granddaughter
Aileen, if I can tempt them away from Italy. Aileen's a little fairy;
you'd be charmed with her. Now mind, that's a promise. You must
certainly come."
The Duchess had paused in her farewell nothings with Sir Wilfrid to
observe her friend. Julie, with her eyes on the ground, murmured thanks;
and Lord Lackington, straight as a dart to-night, carrying his
seventy-five years as though they were the merest trifle, made a stately
and smiling exit. Julie looked round upon the faces left. In her own
heart she read the same judgment as in their eyes: "_The old man
must know!_"
The Duke came into the drawing-room half an hour later in quest of his
wife. He was about to leave town by a night train for the north, and his
temper was, apparently, far from good.
The Duchess was stretched on the sofa in the firelight, her hands behind
her head, dreaming. Whether it was the sight of so much ease that jarred
on the Duke's ruffled nerves or no, certain it is that he inflicted a
thorny good-bye. He had seen Lady Henry, he said, and the reality was
even worse than he had supposed. There was absolutely nothing to be said
for Miss Le Breton, and he was ashamed of himself to have been so weakly
talked over in the matter of the house. His word once given, of course,
there was an end of it--for six months. After that, Miss Le Breton must
provide for herself. Meanwhile, Lady Henry refused to receive the
Duchess, and would be some time before she forgave himself. It was all
most annoying, and he was thankful to be going away, for, Lady Rose or
no Lady Rose, he really could not have entertained the lady with
civility.
"Oh, well, never mind, Freddie," said the Duchess, springing up. "She'll
be gone before you come back, and I'll look after her."
The Duke offered a rather sulky embrace, walked to the door, and came
back.
"I really very much dislike this kind of gossip," he said, stiffly, "but
perhaps I had better say that Lady Henry believes that the affair with
Delafield was only one of several. She talks of a certain Captain
Warkworth--"
"Yes," said the Duchess, nodding. "I know; but he sha'n't have Julie."
Her smile completed the Duke's annoyance.
"What have you to do with it? I beg, Evelyn--I insist--that you leave
Miss Le Breton's love affairs alone."
"You forget, Freddie, that she is my _friend_."
The little creature fronted him, all wilfulness and breathing hard, her
small hands clasped on her breast.
With an angry exclamation the Duke departed.
* * * * *
At half-past eight a hansom dashed up to Crowborough House. Montresor
emerged.
He found the two ladies and Jacob Delafield just beginning dinner, and
stayed with them an hour; but it was not an hour of pleasure. The great
man was tired with work and debate, depressed also by the quarrel with
his old friend. Julie did not dare to put questions, and guiltily shrank
into herself. She divined that a great price was being paid on her
behalf, and must needs bitterly ask whether anything that she could
offer or plead was worth it--bitterly suspect, also, that the query had
passed through other minds than her own.
After dinner, as Montresor rose with the Duchess to take his leave,
Julie got a word with him in the corridor.
"You will give me ten minutes' talk?" she said, lifting her pale face to
him. "You mustn't, mustn't quarrel with Lady Henry because of me."
He drew himself up, perhaps with a touch of haughtiness.
"Lady Henry could end it in a moment. Don't, I beg of you, trouble your
head about the matter. Even as an old friend, one must be allowed one's
self-respect."
"But mayn't I--"
"Nearly ten o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch. "I must be off
this moment. So you are going to the house in Heribert Street? I
remember Lady Mary Leicester perfectly. As soon as you are settled, tell
me, and I will present myself. Meanwhile "--he smiled and bent his black
head towards her--"look in to-morrow's papers for some interesting
news."
He sprang into his hansom and was gone.
Julie went slowly up-stairs. Of course she understood. The long intrigue
had reached its goal, and within twelve hours the _Times_ would announce
the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., to the command of the
Mokembe military mission. He would have obtained his heart's
desire--through her.
How true were those last words, perhaps only Julie knew. She looked back
upon all the manoeuvres and influences she had brought to bear--flattery
here, interest or reciprocity there, the lures of Crowborough House, the
prestige of Lady Henry's drawing-room. Wheel by wheel she had built up
her cunning machine, and the machine had worked. No doubt the last
completing touch had been given the night before. Her culminating
offence against Lady Henry--the occasion of her disgrace and
banishment--had been to Warkworth the stepping-stone of fortune.
What "gossamer girl" could have done so much? She threw back her head
proudly and heard the beating of her heart.
Lady Henry was fiercely forgotten. She opened the drawing-room door,
absorbed in a counting of the hours till she and Warkworth should meet.
Then, amid the lights and shadows of the Duchess's drawing-room, Jacob
Delafield rose and came towards her. Her exaltation dropped in a moment.
Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe from this man,
which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious restlessness. Did he
guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth? Was he acquainted with
the efforts she had been making for the young soldier? She could not be
sure; he had never given her the smallest sign. Yet she divined that few
things escaped him where the persons who touched his feelings were
concerned. And Evelyn--the dear chatterbox--certainly suspected.
"How tired you are!" he said to her, gently. "What a day it has been for
you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the papers--and please
don't talk."
She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her
knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.
She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth's
triumphant looks kept flashing through her. Yet all the while
Delafield's presence haunted her--she could not forget him, and
presently she addressed him.
"Mr. Delafield!"
He heard the low voice and came.
"I have never thanked you for your goodness last night. I do thank you
now--most earnestly."
"You needn't. You know very well what I would do to serve you if I
could."
"Even when you think me in the wrong?" said Julie, with a little,
hysterical laugh.
Her conscience smote her. Why provoke this intimate talk--wantonly--with
the man she had made suffer? Yet her restlessness, which was partly
nervous fatigue, drove her on.
Delafield flushed at her words.
"How have I given you cause to say that?"
"Oh, you are very transparent. One sees that you are always troubling
yourself about the right and wrong of things."
"All very well for one's self," said Delafield, trying to laugh. "I hope
I don't seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other people's right
and wrong?"
"Yes, yes, you do!" she said, passionately. Then, as he winced, "No, I
don't mean that. But you do judge--it is in your nature--and other
people feel it."
"I didn't know I was such a prig," said Delafield, humbly. "It is true I
am always puzzling over things."
Julie was silent. She was indeed secretly convinced that he no more
approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid Bury.
Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a watchful anxiety
and resistance on his part. Yet he had stood by her to the end--so
warmly, so faithfully.
He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse, perhaps
of alarm. Why had she called him to her? What had they to do with each
other? But he soon reassured her. He began to talk of Meredith, and the
work before her--the important and glorious work, as he naïvely termed
it, of the writer.
And presently he turned upon her with sudden feeling.
"You accused me, just now, of judging what I have no business to judge.
If you think that I regret the severance of your relation with Lady
Henry, you are quite, quite mistaken. It has been the dream of my life
this last year to see you free--mistress of your own life. It--it made
me mad that you should be ordered about like a child--dependent upon
another person's will."
She looked at him curiously.
"I know. That revolts you always--any form of command? Evelyn tells me
that you carry it to curious lengths with your servants and laborers."
He drew back, evidently disconcerted.
"Oh, I try some experiments. They generally break down."
"You try to do without servants, Evelyn says, as much as possible."
"Well, if I do try, I don't succeed," he said, laughing. "But"--his eyes
kindled--"isn't it worth while, during a bit of one's life, to escape,
if one can, from some of the paraphernalia in which we are all
smothered? Look there! What right have I to turn my fellow-creatures
into bedizened automata like that?"
And he threw out an accusing hand towards the two powdered footmen, who
were removing the coffee-cups and making up the fire in the next room,
while the magnificent groom of the chambers stood like a statue,
receiving some orders from the Duchess.
Julie, however, showed no sympathy.
"They are only automata in the drawing-room. Down-stairs they are as
much alive as you or I."
"Well, let us put it that I prefer other kinds of luxury," said
Delafield. "However, as I appear to have none of the qualities necessary
to carry out my notions, they don't get very far."
"You would like to shake hands with the butler?" said Julie, musing. "I
knew a case of that kind. But the butler gave warning."
Delafield laughed.
"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the butler."
"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for
instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"
"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an
ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor,
they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-cocks."
"So nobody knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"
Delafield looked impatient.
"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous tales, and
she's been spreading them. I must have it out with her."
"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then, unexpectedly,
she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather strange look. "Why
do you dislike having servants and being waited upon so much, I wonder?
Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have such a strong will, and you do
these things to tame it?"
Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken the
words than she regretted them.
"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical slave-owner?" said
Delafield, after a moment's pause.
Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of
penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to your
slaves as you are to your friends."
His eyes met hers quietly.
"Thank you. That was kind of you. And as to giving orders, and getting
one's way, don't suppose I let Chudleigh's estate go to ruin! It's
only"--he hesitated--"the small personal tyrannies of every day that I'd
like to minimize. They brutalize half the fellows I know."
"You'll come to them," said Julie, absently. Then she colored, suddenly
remembering the possible dukedom that awaited him.
His brow contracted a little, as though he understood. He made no reply.
Julie, with her craving to be approved--to say what pleased--could not
leave it there.
"I wish I understood," she said, softly, after a moment, "what, or who
it was that gave you these opinions."
Getting still no answer, she must perforce meet the gray eyes bent upon
her, more expressively, perhaps, than their owner knew. "That you shall
understand," he said, after a minute, in a voice which was singularly
deep and full, "whenever you choose to ask."
Julie shrank and drew back.
"Very well," she said, trying to speak lightly. "I'll hold you to that.
Alack! I had forgotten a letter I must write."
And she pretended to write it, while Delafield buried himself in the
newspapers.