Strange Scenes in Curzon Street.
It happened, however, that just when all the bays and creeks of Dr
Lefevre's attention were occupied, as by a springtide, with the
excellent, the divine fortune that had come to him,--when he seemed thus
most completely divorced from anxious speculation about Julius Courtney
and "M. Dolaro," his attention was suddenly and in unexpected fashion
hurried again to the mystery. The doctor had not seen Julius since the
day he had received him in his bedroom--it must be admitted he had not
sought to see him--but he had heard now and then from his mother, in
casual notes and postscripts, that Courtney continued to call in Curzon
Street.
On a certain evening Lady Lefevre gave a dinner and a reception,
designed to introduce Lady Mary to the Lefevre circle. Julius was not at
dinner (at which only members of the two families sat down), but he was
expected to appear later. It is probable, under the circumstances, that
Lefevre would not have remarked the absence of Julius from the
dinner-table, had it not been for Nora. He was painfully struck with her
appearance and demeanour. She seemed to have lost much of her beautiful
vigour and bloom of health, like a flower that has been for some time
cut from its stem; and she, who had been wont to be ready and gay of
speech, was now completely silent, yet without constraint, and as if
wrapt in a dream.
"What has come over Nora?" asked Lefevre of his mother when they had
gone to the drawing-room.
"Ah," said Lady Lefevre, "you have noticed something, have you? Do you
find her very changed, then?"
"Very much changed."
"It's this attachment of hers to Julius. I want to have a talk with you
about it presently. She seems scarcely to live when he is not with her.
She sits like that always when he is gone, and appears only to dream and
wait,--wait with her life as if suspended till he comes back."
"Has it, indeed, got so far as that?" said her son with concern. "I had
better have a word or two with Julius about it."
Just then Mr Courtney was announced, and there were introductions on
this side and on that. He turned to be introduced to Lady Mary, and for
the time Lefevre forgot his sister, so engrossed was he with the altered
aspect of his friend. He looked worn and weary, like a student when the
dawn finds him still at his books. Lady Lefevre expressed that in her
question--
"Why, Julius, have you taken to hard work? You're not looking well, and
we have not seen you for days."
A flush rose to tinge his cheek, but it sank as soon as it appeared.
"I have been out of sorts," said he; "that is all. And you have not seen
me because I have bought a yacht and have been trying it on the river."
"A yacht!" exclaimed Lefevre. "I did not know you cared for the water."
"_You_ know me," laughed Julius in his own manner, "and not know that I
care for everything!" So saying, he laid his hand on Lefevre's arm. The
act was not remarkable, but its result was, for Lefevre felt it as if it
were a blow, and stood astonished at it.
During this interchange of words Lefevre (with Lady Mary) had been
moving with Julius, as he drew off across the room to greet Nora, and
the doctor could not help observing how the attention of all the company
was bent on his friend. Before his entrance all had been chatting or
laughing easily with their neighbours; now they seemed as constrained
and belittled as is a crowd of courtiers when a royal personage appears
in their midst. In truth, Julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and
a distinction of manner not unworthy of a prince; but on this occasion
he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely
held the attention. Lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though,
perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note
that Lady Mary was regarding Julius with a silent, wide-eyed
fascination. They convoyed Julius to Nora, and then withdrew, leaving
them together.
There were several fresh arrivals and new introductions to Lady Mary.
These, Lefevre observed, she went through half-absently, still turning
her eyes on Julius in the intervals with open and intense interest.
"Well," said Lefevre at length, smiling in spite of a twinge of
jealousy, "what do you think, now you have seen him, of the fascinating
Julius?"
She gave him no answering smile, but replied as if she painfully
withdrew herself from abstraction,--"I--I don't know. He is very
interesting and very strange. I--I can't make him out. I don't know."
Then Lefevre turned his eyes on Julius, and became aware of something
strained in the relations of his sister and his friend. He could not
forbear to look, and as he continued looking he instinctively felt that
a passionate scene was being silently enacted between them. They sat
markedly apart. Nora's bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and her
look, when raised to Julius, plied him with appeal or reproach--Lefevre
could not determine which. The doctor's interest almost drew him over to
them, when Lady Lefevre appeared and said to Julius--
"Do go to the piano, Julius, and wake us up."
Nora put out her hand with a gesture which plainly meant, "Don't!...
Don't leave me!"
But Julius rose, and as he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an
inscrutable look of pain on Nora. He sat down at the piano and struck a
wild, sad chord. Instantly it became as if the people in the room were
the instrument upon which he played,--as if the throbbing human hearts
around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory
keys that pulsed beneath his fingers. What was the music he played no
one knew, no one cared, no one inquired: each individual person was held
and played upon, and was allowed no pause for reflection or criticism.
The music carried all away as on the flood of time, showing them, on one
hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the
other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance, and death. It might
have been, on the one hand, the music with which Orpheus tamed the
beasts; and on the other, that which Æschylus arranged to accompany the
last act of his tragedy of "Prometheus Bound." There was, however, no
clear distinction between the joyous airs and the sombre: all were
wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of
melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. But as the
music continued, its joyous strains died out; the instrument cried aloud
in horror and pain, as if the vulture of Prometheus were tearing at its
vitals; darkness seemed to descend upon the room--a darkness alive with
the sighs and groans, the disillusions and tears, of lost souls. The men
sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild
clutches of hysteria, and Courtney himself was as if possessed with a
frenzy: his features were rigid, his eyes dilated, and his hair rose and
clung in wavy locks, so that he seemed a very Gorgon's head. The only
person apparently unmoved was old Dr Rippon, whose pale, gaunt form rose
in the background, sinister and calm as Death!
The situation was at its height, when a black cat (a pet of Miss
Lefevre's) suddenly leaped on the top of the piano with a canary in its
mouth, and in the presence of them all, laid its captive before Julius
Courtney. The music ceased with a dissonant crash. With a cry Julius
rose and laid his hand on the cat's neck: to the general amazement the
cat lay down limp and senseless, and the little golden bird fluttered
away. Then the sobs of the women, hitherto controlled, broke out, and
the murmurs of the men.
"O Julius! Julius! what have you done?" cried Nora, sweeping up to him
in an ecstasy of emotion.
He caught her in his arms, when with a strange cry--a strained kind of
laugh with a hysterical catch in it--she sank fainting on his breast.
With a sharp exclamation of pain and fear he bore her swiftly from the
room (he was near the door) and into a little conservatory that opened
upon the staircase, casting his eyes upon Lefevre as he went, and
saying, "Come! come quick!" Lefevre then woke to the fact that he had
been fixedly regarding this last strange scene, while Lady Mary clung
trembling to his arm. He hurried out after Julius, followed by Lady Mary
and his mother.
"Take her!" cried Julius, standing away from Nora, and looking white and
terror-stricken. "Restore her! Oh, I must not!--I dare not touch her!"
With nimble accustomed fingers Lady Mary undid Nora's dress, while the
doctor applied the remedies usual in hysterical fainting. Nora opened
her eyes and fixed them upon Julius.
"O Julius, Julius!" she cried. "Do not leave me! Come near me! Oh!... I
think I am going to die!"
"My love! my life! my soul!" said Julius, stretching out his hands to
her, but approaching no nearer. "I cannot--I must not touch you! No, no!
I dare not!"
"O Julius!" said she. "Are you afraid of me? How can I harm you?"
"Nora, my life! I am afraid of myself! You would not harm me, but I
would harm you! Ah, I know it now only too well!"
Then, as she closed her eyes again, she said, "I had better die!"
"No, you must not die!" he exclaimed. "Your time is not yet! Yes, you will
live!--live! But I must be cut off--though not for ever--from the sweetest
and dearest, the noblest and purest of all God's creatures!"
In the meantime Lefevre had been examining his sister with closer
scrutiny. He raised her eyelid and looked at her eye; he pricked her on
the arm and wrist; and then he turned to Julius.
"Julius," said he, "what does this mean?"
"It means," answered Julius, covering his face with his hands, "that I
am of all living things the most accurst!" Then with a cry of horror and
anguish he fled from the room and down the stairs.
Lady Lefevre followed him in a flutter of fear. Presently she returned,
and said, in answer to a look from her son, "He snatched his hat and
coat, and was gone before I came up with him."
Without a word Lefevre set himself to recover his sister, and in half an
hour she was well enough to walk with Lady Mary's assistance to bed.
The guests, meanwhile, had departed, all but two or three intimates; and
in less than an hour Dr Lefevre was returning home in the Fane carriage.
Lord Rivercourt and he talked of the strange events of the evening,
while Lady Mary leaned back and half-absently listened. They were
proceeding thus along Piccadilly, when she suddenly caught the doctor's
arm and exclaimed--
"Oh! Look! The very man I met in the Park! I am sure of it! I can never
forget the face!"
Lefevre, alert on the instant, looked to recognise Hernando Courtney,
the Man of the Crowd: he saw only the back of a person in a loose cape
and a slouch hat turning in at the gateway of the Albany courtyard. In
flashes of reflection these questions arose: Who could he be but
Hernando Courtney?--and where could he be going but to Julius's
chambers? Julius, therefore (whose own conduct had been that night so
extraordinary), must be familiar with his whole mysterious course, and
consequently with the peril he was in. Before Lefevre could out of his
perplexity snatch a resolution, Lord Rivercourt had pulled the cord to
stop the coachman. The coachman, however, having received orders to
drive home, was driving at a goodly pace, and it was only on a second
summons through the cord that he slackened speed, and obeyed his
master's direction to "draw up by the kerb."
"I'll get out," said Lefevre, "and look after him. You'd better get Mary
home; she's not very strong yet, and she has been upset to-night."
He put himself thus forward for another reason besides,--on the impulse
of his friendship for Julius, without considering whether in the event
of an arrest and an exposure, he could do anything to shield Julius from
shame and pain.
He got out, saying his adieus, and the carriage drove on. He found
himself well past the Albany. He hurried back, nerved by the desire to
encounter Julius's visitor, and at the same time by the hope that he
would not. In his heart was a turmoil of feeling, to the surface of
which continued to rise pity for Julius. The events of the evening had
forced him to the conclusion that Julius possessed the same singular,
magnetic, baleful influence on men and women as his putative father
Hernando; but Julius's burst of agony, when Nora lay overcome, had
declared to him that till then he had scarcely been aware of the
destructive side of his power. All resentment, therefore, all sense of
offence and suspicion which had lately begun to arise in his mind, was
swallowed up in pity for his afflicted friend. His chief desire, now
that he seemed reduced to the level of suffering humanity, was to give
him help and counsel.
Thus he entered the Albany, and passed the porter. The lamps in the
flagged passage were little better than luminous shadows in the
darkness, and the hollow silence re-echoed the sound of his hurried
steps. No one was to be seen or heard in front of him. He came to the
letter which marked Julius's abode. He looked into the gloomy doorway,
and resolved he would see and speak to Julius in any case. He passed
into the gloom and knocked at Julius's door. After a pause the door was
opened by Jenkins. Lefevre could not well make out the expression of the
serving-man's face, but he was satisfied that his voice was shaken as by
a recent shock.
"I wish to see Mr Courtney," said Lefevre, in the half hope that Jenkins
would say, "Which Mr Courtney?"
"Not at home, sir," said Jenkins in his flurried voice, and prepared to
shut the door.
"Not at home, Jenkins? You don't mean that!"
"Oh, it's you, Dr Lefevre, sir. Mr Courtney is not at home, but perhaps
he will see you, sir! I hope he will; for he don't seem to me at all
well."
"But if he is engaged, Jenkins--?"
"Oh, sir, you know what 'not-at-home' means," answered Jenkins. "It
means anything or nothing. Will you step into the drawing-room, sir,
while I inquire? Mr Courtney is in his study."
"Thank you, Jenkins," said the doctor; "I'll wait where I am."
Jenkins returned with deep concern on his face. "Mr Courtney's
compliments, sir," said he, "and he is very sorry he cannot see you
to-night. It is a pity, sir," he added, in a burst of confidence, "for
he don't seem well. He's a-settin' there with the lamp turned down, and
his face in his hands."
"Is he alone, then?" asked the doctor.
"Oh yes, sir," answered Jenkins, in manifest surprise.
"Has nobody been to see him since he came in?"
"No, sir, nobody," said Jenkins, in wider surprise than before.
It appeared to Lefevre that his friend must be sitting alone with the
terrible discovery he had that night made of himself. His heart,
therefore, urged him to go in and take him by the hand, and give what
help and comfort he could.
"I think," said he to Jenkins, "I'll try and have a word with him."
"Yes, sir," said Jenkins, and led the way to the study. He tapped at the
door, and then turned the handle; but the door remained closed.
"Who is there?" asked a weary voice within, which scarce sounded like
the voice of Julius.
"I--Lefevre," said the doctor, putting Jenkins aside. "May not I come
in? I want a friendly word with you."
"Forgive me, Lefevre," said the voice, "that I do not let you in. I am
very busy at present."
"You are alone," said Lefevre, "are you not?"
"Alone," said Julius; "yes, all alone!" There was a melting note of
sadness in the words which went to the doctor's heart.
"My dear Julius," said he, "I think I know what's troubling you. Don't
you think a talk with me might help you?"
"You are very good, Lefevre." (That was an unusual form of speech to
come from Julius.) "I shall come to your house in a few minutes, if you
will allow me."
"Do," answered Lefevre, for the moment completely satisfied. "Do!" And
he turned away.
But when Jenkins had closed the outer door upon him, doubts arose. Ought
he not to have insisted on seeing whether Julius was in truth alone in
the study? And why could they not have had their talk there as well as
in Savile Row? These doubts, however, he thrust down with the promise to
himself that, if Julius did not come to him within half an hour, he
would return to him. Yet he had not gone many steps before an unworthy
suspicion shot up and arrested him: Suppose Julius had got rid of him to
have the opportunity of sending a mysterious companion away unseen? But
Jenkins had said he had let no one in, and it was shameful to suspect
both master and man of lying. Yet Lady Mary Fane had distinctly
recognised the man who passed into the Albany courtyard: had he merely
passed through on his unceasing pursuit of something unknown? or were
father and son somehow aware of each other? Between this and that his
mind became a jumble of the wildest conjectures. He imagined many
things, but never conceived that which soon showed itself to be the
fact.