TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-TWO
Miss Strangforth’s butler threw open the door of an exquisite little
upstairs sitting-room, and announced Otho and Eleanor. The latter,
whose whole mind had been dwelling in anticipation on the meeting
with this woman whom she disliked in advance, got a sort of jar
through her nerves as, on walking into the room, she confronted, not
only Magdalen luxuriously stretched in a low easy-chair by the fire,
but, much more conspicuous at the moment, the figure of a man,
standing on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire. A slight
shock went through her as she encountered the pair of grave and
searching eyes which had been present in her mind more than once
during the last twenty-four hours. It was Michael Langstroth who
looked at her. Eleanor’s first feeling was an unreasoning one of
disappointment. ‘He comes to see her too, then.’ The next was one of
satisfaction. ‘At any rate, I shall now learn who he is.’
Then her attention was drawn to Magdalen, as the latter rose, with a
slight ‘Ah!’ and advanced, saying, ‘Well, Otho, how do you do?’
Eleanor looked at her. She had a rapid general impression of a tall
woman, beautiful both in face and form, and arrayed in a
mouse-coloured velvet gown—a woman whose exceedingly white and
finely-shaped hands held some brilliant scarlet wool and ivory
knitting-needles; who had eyes which for darkness and coldness could
not be surpassed, and a sweet and frigid smile.
‘Well,’ Otho retorted, not very gaily; ‘I’ve smashed through all
etiquette and ceremony, I suppose, in doing this, and brought my
sister to see you, instead of waiting for you to come and see her.
Eleanor, this is my friend, Miss Wynter.’
He led his sister a little forward as he spoke, so that she was
fully displayed to Magdalen’s view; and Miss Wynter’s eyes
encountered a sight she did not often see—a woman as beautiful as
herself, and possessing, too, the powerful advantage of being six
years younger than she was. Her plain dark riding dress suited to
admiration the frank and hardy youthfulness of the wearer; for with
all her softness of voice and outline, and for all the rounded grace
of her form, there was a hardiness about Eleanor Askam which gave
piquancy to her whole aspect.
‘It was very good of you, Otho, and exceedingly good of you, Miss
Askam. I was absolutely unable to go out this afternoon, and I
wanted so much to make your acquaintance.’ She extended her hand to
Eleanor, and smiled her usual smile; one without any flavour of
insincerity, or of sincerity either—a smile which repelled and
displeased Eleanor, she knew not why.
‘Otho seemed extremely anxious about it,’ she said, coolly and
gravely, ‘and I did what he wished me to do.’
Her voice rang out, clear and distinct—no muffled notes, and no
hesitation or pretence of being delighted to pay the visit. Magdalen
noted it all, and replied sweetly—
‘Yes; I am so glad you came. Take this easy-chair, and——Oh, Michael,
I beg your pardon.’ She slurred over an almost inaudible
introduction.
‘Miss Askam and I have met already,’ said Michael with composure. ‘I
think I may safely claim the honour of having been before you in
having made her acquaintance.’
‘No—how?’ exclaimed Magdalen, arrested.
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, looking at Michael as she seated herself. ‘I
did not know who Mr.——’
‘Langstroth,’ said Michael, speaking for himself.
‘Langstroth,’ repeated Eleanor, with a little bow, ‘was; nor he who
I was.’
‘I beg your pardon. I read your name on the label that was on your
bag,’ he remarked; but he neither bowed nor smiled, though it would
have been impossible to say that his manner was not polite. It was
very much so, but not at all cordial.
‘Mr. Langstroth saved me from getting out a station too soon,’ she
said, turning to Otho, in explanation. She could not help seeing
that his moody countenance wore anything but one of its lighter
expressions. He stood stiffly, his hat and whip in his hand, and a
fleeting side-glance had shown her that he and the stranger (was he
any relation, she wondered, to Otho’s great friend, Gilbert
Langstroth, who was coming down for Christmas?) had exchanged a very
slight and indifferent acknowledgment of each other’s presence.
Michael Langstroth, now standing upright, looking on, betrayed no
feeling of any kind as he heard her remark. It was five years now
since he had had a letter from Magdalen, which had gone near to
turning his brain. Such episodes have the effect upon those who
receive them of, to use a vulgarism, killing or curing. Michael had
been cured; hence his presence in Magdalen’s boudoir now; hence his
ability to stand by and take in the comedy of the situation, and to
feel decidedly, if a little sardonically, amused at what was taking
place.
He did not sit down again. He wished Magdalen good afternoon; and
Eleanor noticed that, although polite—she had a strong conviction
that under no possible combination of circumstances could he be
impolite—he was not what could be called genial. He was grave and
distant, and however slight this gravity and distance, they were
present, and Eleanor, keenly sensitive to manner and expression,
noticed them instantly. Michael said he would call again in a few
days, bowed to them all, and took his departure.
‘Now, Otho,’ said Miss Wynter, almost before Michael had left the
room, ‘I have something to tell you. I had better do it now, before
I forget. Briggs has got a very wonderful colt to show you, and has
been expressing the most ardent longing——’
‘Briggs—a colt!’ exclaimed Otho, with unaffected interest and
animation; ‘I’ll go to him this minute. I suppose he is at the
stables?’
‘I suppose so—somewhere there,’ replied Magdalen nonchalantly; and
Otho disappeared instantly, while Eleanor sat still, feeling
intensely displeased, less at what was actually said and done than
at the tone and the manner of it. Fine-tempered and incapable of
behaving with insolence or impertinence to any inferior, it yet
seemed to her that Magdalen was scarcely in a position to order Otho
to the stables, so that she might be left alone with his sister; or,
indeed, to call him by his Christian name, and almost openly to hint
that she wanted him out of the way—unless, indeed, she were engaged
to be married to him, which Eleanor, with a sudden sense of
apprehension, hoped she was not; and recalling Otho’s dissertations
on their ride hither, she felt it was scarcely possible that he
could be.
While she was thinking these thoughts, and while the shadow of them
was on her too expressive countenance, Magdalen sank back in her
chair, watching her visitor keenly, if unobtrusively. When she
addressed her, she spoke with a smile, but her eyes, Eleanor
noticed, did not in the least partake of the smile upon her lips.
She smiled, not because she felt pleased, or genial, or mirthful,
but mechanically—because it is the custom to smile when you receive
your guests.
Eleanor, on her part, was conscious of liking less and less the
aroma, as it were, of Miss Wynter and her surroundings; but she was
aware that this was blind prejudice, and was determined to overcome
it if she could. She was very young, and Otho had not been wrong
when he had described her as enthusiastic; but she felt a kind of
mental and moral chill, or ever she had really entered into
conversation with this woman, who had, as it were, been so suddenly
flung across her path, and who, she began to realise, must be a
powerful influence in Otho’s life. It must be so, she reflected, or
he would not thus have been eager to bring them together, and then
as eager to leave them alone. Alone, for what?—to discover the
innate and latent points of sympathy between them, and to rejoice in
them, or to fight out their radical differences to the bitter end?