It was the end of February, and the Roman villa was soon to be left
to cobwebs and custodians. The Piazza d'Ispagnia and the broad steps
of the Trinità were alive with spring flowers, and the air had the
soft sweetness of an English April on the verge of May. White lilac
and Maréchal Niel roses were in all the shops; bright yellow jonquils,
and red and blue anemones, filled the baskets of rustic hawkers at the
street corners. Rome's innumerable fountains plashed and sparkled in
the sun; and Rome's delicious atmosphere, at once soft, caressing, and
inspiriting, made the heart glad.
The carnival was over, and the season was waning. Lady Susan Amphlett
was never tired of telling people that she had had the best time she
had ever had in her life--excursions to Naples, Florence, and all the
cities of Tuscany; motor drives to every place worth seeing within
fifty miles of Rome; a midnight party with fireworks in the Baths
of Caracalla; a dance by torchlight, and a champagne supper, in the
Colosseum. In this latter festivity the strangeness of the scene had
been too exciting, and the revel had almost degenerated into an orgy.
"My cousin is simply wonderful at inventing things," Susie, playing her
accustomed part of chorus, told people, "and he gets permissions and
privileges that no one else would dare ask for."
The end had come. To-morrow's meet at the tomb of Cecilia Metella was
the last of the season; and Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford were to start for
London on the following day--a long journey in a _lit-salon_, with the
monotony of dinner-wagon meals to make the journey odious.
"If one could only take a box of bath buns and _foie-gras_ sandwiches!"
sighed Susie. "With those and my tea basket I should be utterly happy;
but the same insipid omelette, and the same tough chicken and endive
salad, for eight and forty hours! _Quelle corvée!_"
It was the last morning, a lovely morning. Sunshine was flooding the
great rooms, and making even the tapestried walls look gay. Susan, for
once in her life, came down to breakfast, in a black satin _négligé_,
with a valenciennes cap that made her look enchanting.
"I wanted to see Claude in pink--Roman pink," she said, looking at the
slim, tall figure in Leicestershire clothes. "You ought always to wear
those clothes," said Susie, clapping her hands, as at the reception of
a favourite actor. "They make you bewilderingly beautiful. Now I know
why you are so keen on hunting."
"Do you think any man cares how his coat is cut, or who made his boots,
when he may be dead at the bottom of a ditch before the end of the
run?" Claude said, laughing. "Some of the best days I have had have
been in rat-catcher clothes."
He was radiant with pleasant expectations. He could do without
Leicestershire hedges, and hundred-acre fields, and all the perfection
of English fox-hunting. To-day the Campagna would be good enough--with
its rough ground and yawning chasms, wider and deeper than the worst of
the Somersetshire rhines. The Campagna would be good enough. He was in
high spirits, and he was singing a wicked little French song as his man
buckled on his spurs, a little song that Gavroche and his companions of
the Paris gutters had been singing all the winter.
* * * * *
Lady Susan drove to the meet in one of the Provana carriages, picking
up a couple of lively American friends on her way. Vera excused herself
from going with her friend, and went off for a ramble with the Irish
terrier, much to Susie's disgust.
"You like that rough-haired beast's company better than mine," she
complained.
"Only when I want to be alone with memories and dreams."
"You are growing too horridly morbid, Vera. I am afraid you have taken
up religion. It's very sweet of you, darling, but it's the way to lose
your husband. Religion is the one thing a husband won't put up with. He
hates it worse than a bad cook."
"No, I have not taken up religion."
"Then it's spiritualism, which is just as bad. It is all Mr. Symeon's
doing. You live in a world of ghosts."
"There are ghosts that one loves. But there will be no ghosts where I
shall be walking to-day. Only wild flowers and spring sunshine."
She watched Susan take her seat in the carriage--a vision of coquettish
prettiness and expensive clothes. Susan's husband had gone back to
London and Newmarket some time since, not being able to "stick" Rome
after the Craven meeting. He had enjoyed some good runs with the Roman
pack, and he had been shown St. Peter's and the Colosseum, and had
played bridge with famous American players at Claude Rutherford's club;
so what more was there for him to do?
Vera and her dog went to the Campagna by a roundabout way that avoided
that noble road between the tombs of the mighty, by which the hunting
men and their followers would go. She roamed in rural lanes, where
violets and wild hyacinths were scenting the warm air, and sat in a
solitary nook, musing over a volume of Carducci, while Boroo hunted the
hedge and scratched the bank, in a wild quest of the rats that haunted
his dreams as he sprawled on the Persian prayer-rug before the fire.
It was late afternoon when Vera left the quiet lane and turned into the
dusty road that led to the tomb of Cecilia Metella; lingering on her
way to admire a team of those magnificent fawn-coloured and cream-white
oxen, whose beauty always went to her heart. She recalled Carducci's
lovely sonnet, "Il Bove," those exquisite lines which Giulia Provana
had repeated to her as they drove along the rural roads near San Marco,
and which she learned from her friend's lips before she had ever seen a
printed page of the Italian's verse.
All signs of horse and hound had disappeared before she came to
Cecilia's tomb; there were no people in carriages, no loitering
peasants or British bicyclists, waiting about on the chance of a
ringing run, which would bring pack and field sweeping round the wide
plain in sight of the starting-point. There was no one--only the vast
expanse of greyish-green herbage, with here and there a heap of ruins
that had been a palace or a tomb, and here and there a red-capped
shepherd and his flock. Vera strolled along the grass, taking no heed
of vehicles or foot-passengers on the higher level of the Appian Way.
She had her time chiefly engaged in keeping Boroo to heel, where only
duty could keep him, instinct and a passionate inclination urging him
to make a raid on the sheep. Distance would have been as nothing. He
would have crossed the expanse of rugged ground in a flash, if Vera's
frown and Vera's threatening voice had not subjugated that which, next
to fighting, was a master passion.
She was absorbed in her endeavour to keep the faithful beast under
control, when the sound of laughter on the road above made her come to
a sudden stop, and look, and listen.
She knew the laugh. It had once been music in her ears. That frank,
joyous laugh, the ripple of gladness that defied the Fates, had once
been an element in the glamour that cast its spell over her life. But
now the laugh jarred: there was a false note in the music.
A woman was riding at Claude's bridle-hand; their horses walking
slowly, close together; and he was leaning over her to listen and to
talk; his hand was on her saddle, and their heads were very near, as he
bent to speak and to listen. Vera could hear their voices in the clear
air of a Roman sundown; but not the words that they were speaking. One
thing only was plain, that after each scrap of talk there came that
ripple of joyous laughter from the man; and then, after a little more
talk, with heads still closer, the boisterous mirth of a reckless woman.
The woman was Mrs. Bellenden. What other rider after those Roman hounds
had a figure like hers, the exquisite lines, the curves of bust and
throat that the sculptors were talking about?
The woman was Mrs. Bellenden, in one of her amusing moods. That was her
charm, as Susan Amphlett had explained it to Vera. She made men laugh.
"That is her secret," said Susan; "she remembers all the stories her
madcap husband told her when she was young and they shocked her. She
dishes them up with a spice of her own, and she makes men laugh. She
can keep them dangling for a year and hold them at arm's length; while
a mere beauty would bore them after a month, unless she came to terms.
That's her secret. But, of course, it comes to the same in the end.
Such a woman's affairs must have the inevitable conclusion. Her pigeons
last longer in the plucking, and she gets more feathers out of them.
You had better look after your husband before he goes too far!"
Nothing had moved Vera from her placid acceptance of fate. "I suppose
my husband must amuse himself with a flirtation now and then, when his
racing stable begins to pall," she said.
"Vera, you and Claude are drifting apart," exclaimed Susie, with a
horrified air.
It was a gruesome discovery for Chorus, who had gone about the world
singing the praises of this ideal couple--these exquisite married
lovers--and talking about Eden and Arcadia.
Vera smiled an enigmatic smile.
Drifting apart! No, it was not drifting apart. It was a cleft as wide
and deep as one of those yawning chasms on the Campagna, that the
sportsmen boasted of jumping with their Northamptonshire hunters.
This was Vera's last day in Rome. They started on the homeward journey
next morning, but instead of travelling with her husband by the Paris
express, she took it into her head to linger on the way. She stopped at
Pisa, she stopped at Porto Fino, she stopped at Genoa; and last of all,
she stopped at San Marco to look at Mario Provana's grave.
"I may never see Italy again," she said, when Susan tried to dissuade
her. "I have a presentiment that I shall never see this dear land any
more."
"For my part I should not be sorry if I knew I was never coming back to
the villa," her husband answered. "It is too big for a house to live
in. It must soon fall to the fate of other Roman palaces, and become
one of the sights of the city; to be shown for two lire a head to Dr.
Lunn and his fellow-travellers."
Vera had her way. In this respect she and her husband were essentially
modern. They never interfered with each other's caprices. He travelled
by the Paris express, and stayed at the Ritz just long enough to see
the latest impropriety at the Palais Royal, and it happened curiously
that Mrs. Bellenden was travelling by the same train on the same day,
stopping at the same hotel, attended by a young lady who would have
been faultless as a _dame de compagnie_ except for a chronic neuralgia,
which often compelled her to isolate herself in her hotel bedroom. Vera
went along the lovely coast with Susie, who declared herself delighted
to escape the monotony of the dinner-wagon, and to see some of the most
delicious spots in Italy with her dearest Vee, to which monosyllable
friendship had reduced Vera's name. In an age that has substituted the
telegraph and the telephone for the art of letter-writing, it is well
that names should be reduced to the minimum, and that our favourite
politician should be "Joe," our greatest general "Bobs," and our
dearest friend M. or N. rather than Margherita or Naomi.
Vera showed Lady Susan all the things that were best worth seeing in
Genoa and the neighbourhood, and they lingered at Porto Fino, and other
lovely nooks along that undulating coastline; garden villages dipping
their edges into the blue water, and flushed with the pink glory of
blossoming peach trees, raining light petals upon the young grass. It
was the loveliest season of the Italian spring; and all along their way
the world was glad with flowers. They missed nothing but the birds that
were making grey old England glad before the flowers, but which here
had been sacrificed to the young Italian's idea of sport.
There was only one spot to which Vera went alone, and that was Mario
Provana's grave. Happily, Susan had forgotten that he was buried at San
Marco; and she wondered that Vera should have arranged to break the
journey and stop a night at a place where there was absolutely nothing
to see.
Certainly it was not very far from Genoa; but a slow train and a
headache made the journey seem an eternity to the impatient Susan,
and when San Marco came she was very glad of her dinner and bed, and
to have her hair taken down, after it had been hurting her all the
way, and to no end, as she was utterly indifferent to the opinion of a
couple of natives, the provincial Italian being no more to her than a
red-skinned son of the Five Nations or a New Zealander.
Vera was able to spend an hour in the yew tree enclosure in the morning
freshness, between six and seven. She had telegraphed her order for a
hundred white roses to the San Marco florist the day before, and the
flowers were ready for her in a light, spacious basket, in the hall of
the hotel, when she came downstairs in the dim sunrise.
"It is the last time," she said to herself, as she covered the great
marble slab with her roses, and stooped to lay cold lips on the cold
stone. "Giulia--Mario," she murmured tenderly, with lingering lips.
"I am not afraid," she said to herself. "I know that he has forgiven
me."
Maid and footman and luggage went by the morning train; and half an
hour after Vera and her friend left San Marco, in a carriage that was
to take them to Ventimiglia. By this means they had the drive in the
morning sunshine, and escaped the long wait at the frontier, only
entering the dismal station five minutes before their train left Italy.
They spent that night in Marseilles, where Susan Amphlett insisted
upon seeing the Cannebière by lamplight; and they were in Paris on the
following evening, and in London the next day.
"And now you are going to begin a splendid season," said Susie, "in
this dear old house. The rooms look mere pigeon-holes after your Roman
villa; but there's no place like London. And I really think Claude is
right. The Villa Provana is much too big, and just a wee bit eerie. It
suggests ghosts, if one does not see them. One of those sweet young
Bersaglieri told me that your husband's father made a man fight a duel
to the death with him in one of those weird upper rooms; and that the
stamping of their feet and the rattle of their rapiers is heard at a
quarter past two on every fifteenth of November. When I heard the story
I felt rather glad I did not come to you till December. Aren't you
pleased to be home, Vera, in these cosy drawing-rooms?"
Everything in life is a question of contrast, and after the Villa
Provana the drawing-room in Portland Place, with its five long windows
and perspective of other drawing-rooms through a curtained archway,
looked as snug as a suburban parlour.
"Aren't you glad to be home?" persisted Susan.
"No, Susie. I would rather have spent the rest of my life in Italy."
"Oh, I suppose you prefer the climate. You are one of those people who
care about the state of the sky. I don't. I like people, and shops,
and theatres, and the opera at Covent Garden. Milan or Naples may be
the proper place for music; but we get all the best singers. Don't
think me ungrateful, Vera. I revelled in Rome. A place where one can
go, from buying gloves and fans in the Corso, to gloating over the
circus where the Christian martyrs fought with lions, must be full of
charm for anybody with a mind. Rome made a student of me. I read two
historical primers, and a novel of Marion Crawford's; besides dipping
into Augustus Hare's delightful books. I haven't been so studious
since I attended the Cambridge extension lectures, with my poor old
governess, who used to amuse us by going to sleep, and giving herself
away by nodding. Her poor old bonnet used to waggle till it made even
the lecturer laugh."
Susie went off to join Mr. Amphlett in Northamptonshire; but she was
to establish herself at the little house in Green Street directly
after Easter, and then she and her dearest Vee must spend their lives
together.
Vera was not sorry to speed the parting guest. She had had rather too
much of Susie in that month of Rome; for though she had lived her own
life, in a great measure, there was always the sense that Susie was
there, and that she ought to give more of her time to her friend.
She had suffered one grief in coming to London, for on landing at Dover
she had to part with the Irish terrier, who was led off by a famous
dog-doctor's subordinate, to spend six months in isolation, which
was to be made as pleasant to him as such imprisonment could be made
to an intelligent dog, warmly attached to a mistress who had raised
him from the canine to the human by her companionship. Boroo was to
pass six months in quarantine before he could stretch himself on the
prayer-rug at his mistress's feet, and roll upon his back in an ecstasy
of contentment. Boroo might be made comfortable in the retreat, as one
of the favourites of fortune; but Boroo would not be happy without
his mistress, and the first telephonic communication from the canine
hotel informed Mrs. Rutherford that her faithful friend had refused
food and was very restless. The functionary who gave this information
assured her that this was only a passing phase in dog-life, and that
the terrier would be happier next day. And the account next day was
comparatively cheerful; the terrier had eaten a little sheep's head and
was livelier. Vera hated the law which deprived her of the only friend
who had comforted her in hours of deepest dejection. The dog's welcome
after every parting, the dog's abounding love, had given a new zest to
life. Was there any other love left her now quite as real as this? Her
husband, her enthusiastic friend Susan, all the train of affectionate
aunts and cousins--the girl cousins who came to her to relate their
love affairs; the baby cousins who kissed her when their nurses told
them, holding up cherry lips, and smiling with sweet blue eyes--three
generations of Disbrowes! Was there one among them all whose love she
could believe in as she could in her Irish terrier?
Six months without Boroo! It was a dreary time to think of. Boroo was
the only creature who could take her mind away from herself and her
life's history. He had given her the beatitude of loving and being
loved, without romance--without passion--without looking before or
after: and, realising the difference this dumb creature made, she could
but think with melancholy longing of what a child would have meant in
her life.
* * * * *
And now began the familiar round in the familiar house, with the
Disbrowes gathering strong as of old to help and to suggest--to bring
to Vera's parties the few great people who had not yet discovered that
a Mrs. Rutherford whose wealth had come out of the City could be so
particularly attractive, or could give parties that had always a touch
of originality that made them worth one's while. These mighty ones told
each other that it was the absence of conventionality that made Vera's
house so agreeable; while Lady Susan, still playing her part of Chorus,
told the mighty ones that it was because her cousin was a poet's
daughter, and made an atmosphere of poetry round her.
"Vera lives in a world of dreams," she said, "and we are all dreamers,
though the horrid everyday world comes between us and our fairest
visions. I think that's why we love her."
A Princess of the blood royal happened to meet Vera at this time, and
became one of her most ardent admirers, lunching or dining in Portland
Place at least once a week, and visiting Mrs. Rutherford in her opera
box. She had heard of the Roman villa and the Roman parties.
"I shall spend next January in Rome on purpose to see more of you,"
she said, upon which Claude, who was present, begged that her Royal
Highness would make the Villa Provana her home whenever she came to
the Eternal City; an invitation which her Royal Highness graciously
promised to remember.
"My sweet girl, you are on the crest of the wave," Lady Okehampton told
her niece. "You were never so much the fashion as this year. You ought
to be proud of your social success."
"I wish I had my dog out of quarantine," was all Vera said.
"Get another dog--a Pekinese lion; ever so much smarter than your rough
brute."
* * * * *
The season wore through somehow in perpetual gaieties which the wife
hated, but which were essential to the husband's well-being. He had all
the racing world, and never missed an important meeting; but when there
was no racing he wanted dinner-parties, or crowded evenings, abroad or
at home. Later there would be Cowes, where he had a new yacht just out
of the builder's yard, waiting to beat every boat in the Channel.
He did not often look at his wife's visiting list, being content to
give her the names of the men who were to be asked to her dinners,
taking it for granted that they would be asked. Every evening party
was more or less an _omnium gatherum_; and about these he asked no
questions--but more than once, between March and June, he had suggested
that Mrs. Bellenden should be invited to dinner--to some smallish
semi-literary and artistic dinner--and this suggestion being ignored,
he had advised her being included in one of the big dinner-parties,
where the mighty ones had been bidden to meet the royal Princess.
"I don't think that would do," Vera answered coldly.
"You forget that Mrs. Bellenden is one of the handsomest women in
London," Claude answered with some touch of temper, "and that people
like to meet a well-known beauty."
"I'm afraid Mrs. Bellenden is rather too well known. You had better
give a dinner at 'Claridge's' or the 'Ritz,' Claude, and let Susan do
hostess for you. Susie would enjoy it."
"I suppose it will come to that," said Claude. "I'll take one of your
Wagner nights--when I know you'll be happy."
* * * * *
Lady Susan having warned her friend against the siren, was not so
disloyal as to play hostess at a Bohemian dinner.
"No, Claude," she said when the idea was mooted. "I have never been
prudish, but I draw the line at Mrs. Bellenden."
Her cousin shrugged his shoulders, and left the room with a snatch of a
French _chanson_, which was his most forcible expression of temper. The
light tenor voice, the gay French verse, harmonised with the nature in
which there were no depths.
Goodwood was once more imminent, and Cowes was in the near future, when
Vera sent out cards for her last evening party, which would be one
of the last of the season, on the eve of the exodus of smart London.
The Princess Hermione was to be at the party--and this royal lady
was like that more famous heroine of the nursery, who rode her white
horse to Banbury Cross in a musical ride; for, like that famous lady,
the Princess expected to have music wherever she went, music, and of
the best, for the royal Hermione was a connoisseur, and herself no
mean performer on the violoncello. A famous baritone and an equally
famous mezzo-soprano were to sing during the evening, in the inner
drawing-room, not in a formal way with programmes and rout seats, for
people to be packed in rows, to sit there from start to finish till,
in our elegant twentieth-century English, they were "fed up" with
squalling.
Everything was to be informal; and the people who did not want music
would have space enough in the larger rooms and on the staircase to
babble and to flirt as they chose; while that inner drawing-room would
be, as it were, a sanctuary for the elect, a temple of the god of
harmony.
Vera stood at the door of the larger drawing-room receiving her
guests, from ten to half-past, when the Princess Hermione, who had just
arrived, put her arm through her hostess's and asked eagerly:
"Did you get him?" Signor Pergolesi, the baritone, understood.
"Yes, ma'am, he is in the little drawing-room with Madame Rondolana,
waiting to sing to you!"
"Take me there this moment, Vera!" and hooked by the royal arm in a
crumpled glove, Vera led the Princess and her lady-in-waiting through
the babbling crowd to the sanctuary where the elect were beginning to
bore each other while they waited for the first song.
Herr Mainz was at the piano ready to accompany the two singers
whose engagement he had negotiated. At all concerts of this clever
gentleman's arranging it seemed to some people as if the artists were
puppets, and that he pulled the string that set them going all through
the performance. To-night, however, there was to be less string-pulling
and more _sans façon_, or rather it was Princess Hermione who was to
pull the string.
She certainly lost no time in telling Madame Rondolana what she wanted
her to sing, and she kept that brilliant vocalist rolling out song
after song in the rich abundance of a mezzo-soprano that nothing could
tire. She sang song after song, at the Princess's nod; Italian, German,
Swedish, nay, even English, with an ease that testified to power
without limit. The baritone looked and listened with languid interest,
not offended, for he knew that his turn would come, and that when once
the Princess started him she would never let him leave off. He sat
near the piano in an easy attitude; not listening, but turning his
thoughts inward, and making up his mind as to what songs he would sing.
Wagner? Yes. Bizet? Yes, but in any case "Die beiden Grenadiere" as a
finish--and then those massive folding doors, that were shutting out
the babblers, should be flung wide open, and he would sing to the whole
of the company. _He_ could stop their talking--those two grenadiers
were infallible.
"Viz dat song I alvays knock zaim in ze Ole Ken' Road," he used to tell
his friends.
At eleven o'clock there came a kind of subtle sense of something
wanting, even beyond that exquisite music; and Lady Okehampton
whispered to her niece that it was time the Princess went to supper,
and that Claude must take her downstairs. Vera went in search of him.
The crowd in the biggest drawing-room had thinned, and she was able to
look for her husband--but without success; and she went through the
other rooms to the spacious landing, in which direction most people
were drifting, and there she met a perturbed spirit in the form of
Susan Amphlett.
"What's the matter, Susie? Is there anything wrong?"
"Wrong!" cried Susie. "I call it simply disgusting. How could you be
such a fool?"
"What have I done?"
"To ask that horrid woman, and with your Princess for the guest of the
evening! She ain't prudish; but I fancy she'll think it a bit steep to
find herself rubbing shoulders with Mrs. Bellenden."
"I have not invited Mrs. Bellenden."
"Someone else has, then. Or else she has come like the lady at Cannes,
_invitée ou non_."
"Is Mrs. Bellenden here?"
"Yes, in the supper-room, in a mob of admirers. Claude took her down to
supper."
"That's rather tiresome," Vera answered quietly, "for he ought to take
the Princess, and I can't keep her waiting. Do be kind, Susie, and go
and tell him he must come to the music-room this minute. The Princess
ought to have gone down before anybody, and now you say there's a mob."
"A perfect bear-garden of greedy beasts. I don't believe there'll be
an ortolan left by the time she comes. Anyhow, I'll make it hot for
Claude!" and Susie hurried off, elbowing a desperate way through the
crowd on the stairs. "Mon dieu, quel four!" she muttered.
Vera went back to the sanctuary, impounding her uncle Okehampton on the
way, in case she found the friendly Hermione indisposed to wait for her
host.
She found her Princess with a dark and angry brow, standing near the
door, whispering to her attendant lady. She had the look of a Princess
who had been "almost waiting," and who did not like the sensation.
She heard that Mr. Rutherford was making his way through the crowd to
attend upon her, with an air of supreme indifference.
"Lord Okehampton is one of my old friends," she said, and took his
offered arm without looking at Vera. "Mr. Rutherford can bring
Pauline," she said, as they moved away.
Pauline was the lady-in-waiting, a colourless spinster of
seven-and-thirty, who loved everything the Princess loved, and hated
everything she hated, and who dressed like the Princess, only much
worse.
Lord Okehampton made himself vastly agreeable, and the mob, seeing the
royal brow under the tiara, made way for the couple, and there was a
table found for the royal lady in an agreeable position, and there were
ortolans and peaches without stint; but when Claude came presently with
the Honourable Pauline he received a snub so unmistakable that he was
glad to carry his Honourable companion to the remotest corner of the
room, where he gave her a sumptuous supper, and had the consolation of
her sympathy.
"The Princess has a heart of gold," she told him, "but her temper is
dreadful sometimes, and life is rather difficult with her."
"Not quite a bed of roses," said Claude.
"It would be ungrateful of me to call it a bed of stinging-nettles,"
said Pauline, "because as there are five of us at home, all unmarried,
I have to do something; and the Princess is wonderfully kind, and then
she is so clever and accomplished. She does everything well; but music
is her passion."
"That's how I made my mistake," said Claude. "I thought her enjoyment
of her own particular baritone would have lasted longer, and that I
should have been in attendance before she was inclined to move."
"The Princess has a good appetite," said Pauline, discussing her fourth
ortolan, "and one really does get very hungry at an evening party.
Music is so exhausting. I hope that dear Pergolesi and Madame Rondolana
are having something."
"Our good friend Mainz will take care of that."
"Apropos," said Pauline. "There is a lady here I am rather curious
about. We passed her on the stairs. Mrs. Bellenden. Gloriously
handsome, and all that; but frankly, Mr. Rutherford, I was just a wee,
wee bit surprised to see her in your wife's house, especially to meet
the Princess. I hardly like to speak of such things; but has she not
been just a little talked about lately? Of course, I know she went
everywhere two years ago; but just lately people have said things; and
one has not run against her at the best houses."
"Of course she has been talked about," answered Claude, with his frank
laugh. "Meteors are talked about. A woman so exceptionally beautiful
is like Halley's Comet. People are sure to talk about her; and the
ill-natured talkers will make scandal about her. Poor Mrs. Bellenden!
Quite a harmless person, I assure you; open-hearted, generous,
impulsive--a trifle imprudent, perhaps, as these impulsive women always
are."
The lady-in-waiting had supped too well to be ill-natured.
"I am so glad you have told me. I shall tell the Princess that there
is no foundation for any of the stories we have heard about poor Mrs.
Bellenden," she said, as they left the supper-room.
The sanctuary was full of people when Lord Okehampton took the Princess
back, after a leisurely supper, during which they had talked over old
friends and things that had happened a dozen years ago, when Okehampton
was Master of the Horse. The Princess had recovered her temper, and was
ready to enjoy her favourite Pergolesi; but Vera, who had not left the
music-room, looked white and weary; and the kindly Hermione chid her
for not having followed her to the supper-room. All the best people
were now gathered in the inner drawing-room; some for the Princess,
and some for the baritone; and only the royal chair was vacant when
the royal lady reappeared. Pergolesi chuckled at the thought that
Rondolana had lavished her octave and a half of perfection on the
chosen few; while he had all the finest tiaras, and the largest display
of shoulders and diamonds for his audience.
Hermione beckoned him to her side, and they discussed what songs he
should sing; she ordering, but he making her order what he wanted and
had made up his mind about.
"I should like to finish viz 'Die beiden Grenadiere,'" he said in his
broken English. "I think it is one of your favourites, ma'am?"
"Je l'adore."
Song after song was received with enthusiasm. Herr Mainz played a
brilliant "Mazourka de Salon," while the baritone rested and whispered
with the Princess, and when the silvery chimes of an Italian eight-day
clock announced midnight, the great doors were thrown open and
Pergolesi hurled his splendid voice upon the crowd in the outer room.
A phrase or two, and the babble of three hundred voices had become
silence; and when the song was done the crowd melted away, still in
comparative stillness, while Vera stood on the landing to see them
pass, as if she were holding a review. No one wanted to begin talking
after that stupendous song. People had stayed later than they intended,
till it was too late to go on to other, and perhaps better, houses.
The Princess had gone out by a second staircase, which had been kept
clear for her, with Pergolesi and Okehampton to escort her downstairs,
and Claude Rutherford to put her into her carriage. She went off in a
charming mood, but could not refrain from a stab at the last.
"Your wife's party has been perfect," she said, "but the company just a
little mixed. I suspect you of having introduced the Bohemian element,
in the shape of that handsome lady whom everybody has been talking
about."
There were lingerers after that, and the party was not over till one
o'clock. The last guest strolled into the pale grey night as Big Ben
tolled the first hour of day. Claude followed his wife up the broad
staircase, where the heated atmosphere was heavy with the scent of arum
lilies, and the daturas that hung their white bells in all the corners.
She was moving slowly, tired and languid after the long evening, and
she never looked back. He followed her to the door of her room; but
she stopped upon the threshold, turned and faced him, ashy pale in her
white gown, like a ghost.
"Good-bye," she said, with a face of stone.
"Vera, for God's sake! What's the matter?"
"Good-bye," she repeated, and, as he moved towards her, she drew back
suddenly, so quickly that he was unprepared for the movement, and shut
the door in his face.
He heard the key turning in the lock, shrugged his shoulders, and
walked slowly along the gallery to his own room, not the room that had
been Mario Provana's dressing-room.
"Some ass has been telling her things," he muttered to himself.
And then he thought of Mrs. Bellenden's appearance that night, in a
gown of gold tissue, and a diamond tiara. She had been too insolently
splendid in her overweening beauty, too tremendous, too suggestive of
Cleopatra at Actium, a woman who lived upon the ruin of men.
What wife, who cared for her husband, could help being angry if she saw
him near such a creature?
And he had been near her all the night. He had whispered with her in
corners, hung over her perfumed shoulders, followed her close as her
shadow, sat with her in a nest of tropical flowers in the balcony,
instead of moving about among his guests.
He had taken her down to the supper-room, first among the first,
neglecting duchesses and a princess of the blood royal for her sake.
No doubt that malicious little wretch Susan Amphlett had been watching
him, and had reported all his misdoings to Vera.
"What does it matter?" he said to himself. "My life was growing
unbearable. The gloom was closing round me like a funeral pall. Kate
was my only refuge. I have never been in love with her; but she stops
me from thinking."
That was the secret. Mrs. Bellenden had been his Nepenthe, when the
common round of pleasures had lost their power to make him forget.
Mrs. Bellenden was like strong drink, like opium or hashish. She
killed thought. She filled the vacant spaces in his life--the Stygian
swamps where black thoughts wandered in space, like angry devils. Her
exactions, her quarrels, their partings and reunions, the agitations
and turmoil of her existence, had filled his life. When he banged the
hall door of the bijou house in Brown Street behind him after one of
their stormy farewells he knew that he would go back to her in a week.
He tramped the adjacent Park across and across, along and along, in a
fury, and thanked God that he had done with "that harpy"; but he knew
that he would have to go back to the harpy, to be reconciled again,
with oaths and kisses and tears, and to quarrel again, and to obey
her orders, and go here or there as she made him. The most degrading
slavery to a wicked woman was better than the great silent house and
the horror that inhabited it.
His wife had her consolations, nay, even her hysterical delights.
She could shut herself in her white temple with the spirits of her
worshipped dead. She heard voices. Death now hardly counted with her,
neither Death nor Time. Saint Francis of Assisi was as near her as
Robert Browning. Shakespeare was no more remote than Henry Irving. She
was mad.
The emptiness, the silence, the gloom, were killing him. If there had
been children, all might have been different. The past would have
been forgotten in those new and forward-looking lives. His sons and
daughters would not have let him remember past things. And Vera would
not have had time for morbid thoughts, for nursing dark memories. Her
children would have made her forget.
He had some kind of explanation with her on the day after the party,
and made some feeble kind of apology. But she was cold and dumb; she
expressed no anger, neither complained nor reproached him; she shed no
tears. She stood before him in her white silence, still beautiful, but
with a pale, unearthly beauty that chilled his heart. All the force of
the old love swept back upon him; and his heart ached with a passion of
pity and regret. He seized her by the shoulders--so frail, so wasted,
since last year--and looked at her with despairing eyes. "Vera, you
are killing yourself by inches. What can I do? What can I do for you?
Shall we go away? Ever so far away? to new worlds--to places where the
stupendous phenomena of Nature, and the things that men have made, will
take us out of ourselves? There are things in this world so tremendous
that they can kill thought. The Zambesi, the Aztec cities of Mexico,
the great Wall of China."
"You are very good," she answered, coldly but not unkindly--rather with
a weary indifference, as of a soul too tired to feel or think. "I am
quite contented here. My life in this house suits me as well as any
life could."
"In this house?" he cried.
"Yes, in this house. I am not alone here. But I don't want to keep you
here if the house makes you unhappy. You had better go away, Claude; go
anywhere you like, as you like. I shall not complain."
"Are you giving me a letter of license?" he asked, with a harsh laugh.
"Is your love quite dead?"
"Everything is dead," she answered.
He could get no more from her, and he left her in anger.
"You had better divorce me and marry Francis Symeon," he said, "and
cultivate spookism together."
The natural sequel to a scene like that was a little dinner at
Claridge's with Mrs. Bellenden, and an evening at the silliest musical
comedy to be seen and heard in London.
His wife had given him a letter of license. She had ceased to love him.
He made himself so disagreeable to Mrs. Bellenden by dinner-time that
the meal was eaten in sullen silence; and the Magnum of Veuve Pommeroy
was hardly enough for two, for when Mrs. Bellenden was in a rage her
glass had to be filled very often, and the waiters at the smart hotels
knew her ways. The waiters worshipped her. "She tips as handsome as she
tipples," had been said of her by one of them.