XI

On one of the last days of June Mrs. Berrington showed her sister a note

she had received from 'your dear friend,' as she called him, Mr.

Wendover. This was the manner in which she usually designated him, but

she had naturally, in the present phase of her relations with Laura,

never indulged in any renewal of the eminently perverse insinuations by

means of which she had attempted, after the incident at the Soane

Museum, to throw dust in her eyes. Mr. Wendover proposed to Mrs.

Berrington that she and her sister should honour with their presence a

box he had obtained for the opera three nights later--an occasion of

high curiosity, the first appearance of a young American singer of whom

considerable things were expected. Laura left it to Selina to decide

whether they should accept this invitation, and Selina proved to be of

two or three differing minds. First she said it wouldn't be convenient

to her to go, and she wrote to the young man to this effect. Then, on

second thoughts, she considered she might very well go, and telegraphed

an acceptance. Later she saw reason to regret her acceptance and

communicated this circumstance to her sister, who remarked that it was

still not too late to change. Selina left her in ignorance till the

next day as to whether she had retracted; then she told her that she had

let the matter stand--they would go. To this Laura replied that she was

glad--for Mr. Wendover. 'And for yourself,' Selina said, leaving the

girl to wonder why every one (this universality was represented by Mrs.

Lionel Berrington and Lady Davenant) had taken up the idea that she

entertained a passion for her compatriot. She was clearly conscious that

this was not the case; though she was glad her esteem for him had not

yet suffered the disturbance of her seeing reason to believe that Lady

Davenant had already meddled, according to her terrible threat. Laura

was surprised to learn afterwards that Selina had, in London parlance,

'thrown over' a dinner in order to make the evening at the opera fit in.

The dinner would have made her too late, and she didn't care about it:

she wanted to hear the whole opera.

The sisters dined together alone, without any question of Lionel, and on

alighting at Covent Garden found Mr. Wendover awaiting them in the

portico. His box proved commodious and comfortable, and Selina was

gracious to him: she thanked him for his consideration in not stuffing

it full of people. He assured her that he expected but one other

inmate--a gentleman of a shrinking disposition, who would take up no

room. The gentleman came in after the first act; he was introduced to

the ladies as Mr. Booker, of Baltimore. He knew a great deal about the

young lady they had come to listen to, and he was not so shrinking but

that he attempted to impart a portion of his knowledge even while she

was singing. Before the second act was over Laura perceived Lady

Ringrose in a box on the other side of the house, accompanied by a lady

unknown to her. There was apparently another person in the box, behind

the two ladies, whom they turned round from time to time to talk with.

Laura made no observation about Lady Ringrose to her sister, and she

noticed that Selina never resorted to the glass to look at her. That

Mrs. Berrington had not failed to see her, however, was proved by the

fact that at the end of the second act (the opera was Meyerbeer's

_Huguenots_) she suddenly said, turning to Mr. Wendover: 'I hope you

won't mind very much if I go for a short time to sit with a friend on

the other side of the house.' She smiled with all her sweetness as she

announced this intention, and had the benefit of the fact that an

apologetic expression is highly becoming to a pretty woman. But she

abstained from looking at her sister, and the latter, after a wondering

glance at her, looked at Mr. Wendover. She saw that he was

disappointed--even slightly wounded: he had taken some trouble to get

his box and it had been no small pleasure to him to see it graced by the

presence of a celebrated beauty. Now his situation collapsed if the

celebrated beauty were going to transfer her light to another quarter.

Laura was unable to imagine what had come into her sister's head--to

make her so inconsiderate, so rude. Selina tried to perform her act of

defection in a soothing, conciliating way, so far as appealing eyebeams

went; but she gave no particular reason for her escapade, withheld the

name of the friends in question and betrayed no consciousness that it

was not usual for ladies to roam about the lobbies. Laura asked her no

question, but she said to her, after an hesitation: 'You won't be long,

surely. You know you oughtn't to leave me here.' Selina took no notice

of this--excused herself in no way to the girl. Mr. Wendover only

exclaimed, smiling in reference to Laura's last remark: 'Oh, so far as

leaving you here goes----!' In spite of his great defect (and it was his

only one, that she could see) of having only an ascending scale of

seriousness, she judged him interestedly enough to feel a real pleasure

in noticing that though he was annoyed at Selina's going away and not

saying that she would come back soon, he conducted himself as a

gentleman should, submitted respectfully, gallantly, to her wish. He

suggested that her friends might perhaps, instead, be induced to come to

his box, but when she had objected, 'Oh, you see, there are too many,'

he put her shawl on her shoulders, opened the box, offered her his arm.

While this was going on Laura saw Lady Ringrose studying them with her

glass. Selina refused Mr. Wendover's arm; she said, 'Oh no, you stay

with _her_--I daresay _he'll_ take me:' and she gazed inspiringly at Mr.

Booker. Selina never mentioned a name when the pronoun would do. Mr.

Booker of course sprang to the service required and led her away, with

an injunction from his friend to bring her back promptly. As they went

off Laura heard Selina say to her companion--and she knew Mr. Wendover

could also hear it--'Nothing would have induced me to leave her alone

with _you_!' She thought this a very extraordinary speech--she thought

it even vulgar; especially considering that she had never seen the

young man till half an hour before and since then had not exchanged

twenty words with him. It came to their ears so distinctly that Laura

was moved to notice it by exclaiming, with a laugh: 'Poor Mr. Booker,

what does she suppose I would do to him?'

'Oh, it's for you she's afraid,' said Mr. Wendover.

Laura went on, after a moment: 'She oughtn't to have left me alone with

you, either.'

'Oh yes, she ought--after all!' the young man returned.

The girl had uttered these words from no desire to say something

flirtatious, but because they simply expressed a part of the judgment

she passed, mentally, on Selina's behaviour. She had a sense of

wrong--of being made light of; for Mrs. Berrington certainly knew that

honourable women didn't (for the appearance of the thing) arrange to

leave their unmarried sister sitting alone, publicly, at the playhouse,

with a couple of young men--the couple that there would be as soon as

Mr. Booker should come back. It displeased her that the people in the

opposite box, the people Selina had joined, should see her exhibited in

this light. She drew the curtain of the box a little, she moved a little

more behind it, and she heard her companion utter a vague appealing,

protecting sigh, which seemed to express his sense (her own corresponded

with it) that the glory of the occasion had somehow suddenly departed.

At the end of some minutes she perceived among Lady Ringrose and her

companions a movement which appeared to denote that Selina had come in.

The two ladies in front turned round--something went on at the back of

the box. 'She's there,' Laura said, indicating the place; but Mrs.

Berrington did not show herself--she remained masked by the others.

Neither was Mr. Booker visible; he had not, seemingly, been persuaded to

remain, and indeed Laura could see that there would not have been room

for him. Mr. Wendover observed, ruefully, that as Mrs. Berrington

evidently could see nothing at all from where she had gone she had

exchanged a very good place for a very bad one. 'I can't imagine--I

can't imagine----' said the girl; but she paused, losing herself in

reflections and wonderments, in conjectures that soon became anxieties.

Suspicion of Selina was now so rooted in her heart that it could make

her unhappy even when it pointed nowhere, and by the end of half an hour

she felt how little her fears had really been lulled since that scene of

dishevelment and contrition in the early dawn.

The opera resumed its course, but Mr. Booker did not come back. The

American singer trilled and warbled, executed remarkable flights, and

there was much applause, every symptom of success; but Laura became more

and more unaware of the music--she had no eyes but for Lady Ringrose and

her friend. She watched them earnestly--she tried to sound with her

glass the curtained dimness behind them. Their attention was all for the

stage and they gave no present sign of having any fellow-listeners.

These others had either gone away or were leaving them very much to

themselves. Laura was unable to guess any particular motive on her

sister's part, but the conviction grew within her that she had not put

such an affront on Mr. Wendover simply in order to have a little chat

with Lady Ringrose. There was something else, there was some one else,

in the affair; and when once the girl's idea had become as definite as

that it took but little longer to associate itself with the image of

Captain Crispin. This image made her draw back further behind her

curtain, because it brought the blood to her face; and if she coloured

for shame she coloured also for anger. Captain Crispin was there, in the

opposite box; those horrible women concealed him (she forgot how

harmless and well-read Lady Ringrose had appeared to her that time at

Mellows); they had lent themselves to this abominable proceeding. Selina

was nestling there in safety with him, by their favour, and she had had

the baseness to lay an honest girl, the most loyal, the most unselfish

of sisters, under contribution to the same end. Laura crimsoned with the

sense that she had been, unsuspectingly, part of a scheme, that she was

being used as the two women opposite were used, but that she had been

outraged into the bargain, inasmuch as she was not, like them, a

conscious accomplice and not a person to be given away in that manner

before hundreds of people. It came back to her how bad Selina had been

the day of the business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and how in spite of

intervening comedies the woman who had then found such words of injury

would be sure to break out in a new spot with a new weapon. Accordingly,

while the pure music filled the place and the rich picture of the stage

glowed beneath it, Laura found herself face to face with the strange

inference that the evil of Selina's nature made her wish--since she had

given herself to it--to bring her sister to her own colour by putting an

appearance of 'fastness' upon her. The girl said to herself that she

would have succeeded, in the cynical view of London; and to her troubled

spirit the immense theatre had a myriad eyes, eyes that she knew, eyes

that would know her, that would see her sitting there with a strange

young man. She had recognised many faces already and her imagination

quickly multiplied them. However, after she had burned a while with this

particular revolt she ceased to think of herself and of what, as

regarded herself, Selina had intended: all her thought went to the mere

calculation of Mrs. Berrington's return. As she did not return, and

still did not, Laura felt a sharp constriction of the heart. She knew

not what she feared--she knew not what she supposed. She was so nervous

(as she had been the night she waited, till morning, for her sister to

re-enter the house in Grosvenor Place) that when Mr. Wendover

occasionally made a remark to her she failed to understand him, was

unable to answer him. Fortunately he made very few; he was

preoccupied--either wondering also what Selina was 'up to' or, more

probably, simply absorbed in the music. What she _had_ comprehended,

however, was that when at three different moments she had said,

restlessly, 'Why doesn't Mr. Booker come back?' he replied, 'Oh, there's

plenty of time--we are very comfortable.' These words she was conscious

of; she particularly noted them and they interwove themselves with her

restlessness. She also noted, in her tension, that after her third

inquiry Mr. Wendover said something about looking up his friend, if she

didn't mind being left alone a moment. He quitted the box and during

this interval Laura tried more than ever to see with her glass what had

become of her sister. But it was as if the ladies opposite had arranged

themselves, had arranged their curtains, on purpose to frustrate such an

attempt: it was impossible to her even to assure herself of what she had

begun to suspect, that Selina was now not with them. If she was not with

them where in the world had she gone? As the moments elapsed, before Mr.

Wendover's return, she went to the door of the box and stood watching

the lobby, for the chance that he would bring back the absentee.

Presently she saw him coming alone, and something in the expression of

his face made her step out into the lobby to meet him. He was smiling,

but he looked embarrassed and strange, especially when he saw her

standing there as if she wished to leave the place.

'I hope you don't want to go,' he said, holding the door for her to pass

back into the box.

'Where are they--where are they?' she demanded, remaining in the

corridor.

'I saw our friend--he has found a place in the stalls, near the door by

which you go into them--just here under us.'

'And does he like that better?'

Mr. Wendover's smile became perfunctory as he looked down at her. 'Mrs.

Berrington has made such an amusing request of him.'

'An amusing request?'

'She made him promise not to come back.'

'Made him promise----?' Laura stared.

'She asked him--as a particular favour to her--not to join us again. And

he said he wouldn't.'

'Ah, the monster!' Laura exclaimed, blushing crimson.

'Do you mean poor Mr. Booker?' Mr. Wendover asked. 'Of course he had to

assure her that the wish of so lovely a lady was law. But he doesn't

understand!' laughed the young man.

'No more do I. And where is the lovely lady?' said Laura, trying to

recover herself.

'He hasn't the least idea.'

'Isn't she with Lady Ringrose?'

'If you like I will go and see.'

Laura hesitated, looking down the curved lobby, where there was nothing

to see but the little numbered doors of the boxes. They were alone in

the lamplit bareness; the _finale_ of the act was ringing and booming

behind them. In a moment she said: 'I'm afraid I must trouble you to put

me into a cab.'

'Ah, you won't see the rest? _Do_ stay--what difference does it make?'

And her companion still held open the door of the box. Her eyes met his,

in which it seemed to her that as well as in his voice there was

conscious sympathy, entreaty, vindication, tenderness. Then she gazed

into the vulgar corridor again; something said to her that if she should

return she would be taking the most important step of her life. She

considered this, and while she did so a great burst of applause filled

the place as the curtain fell. 'See what we are losing! And the last act

is so fine,' said Mr. Wendover. She returned to her seat and he closed

the door of the box behind them.

Then, in this little upholstered receptacle which was so public and yet

so private, Laura Wing passed through the strangest moments she had

known. An indication of their strangeness is that when she presently

perceived that while she was in the lobby Lady Ringrose and her

companion had quite disappeared, she observed the circumstance without

an exclamation, holding herself silent. Their box was empty, but Laura

looked at it without in the least feeling this to be a sign that Selina

would now come round. She would never come round again, nor would she

have gone home from the opera. That was by this time absolutely definite

to the girl, who had first been hot and now was cold with the sense of

what Selina's injunction to poor Mr. Booker exactly meant. It was worthy

of her, for it was simply a vicious little kick as she took her flight.

Grosvenor Place would not shelter her that night and would never shelter

her more: that was the reason she tried to spatter her sister with the

mud into which she herself had jumped. She would not have dared to treat

her in such a fashion if they had had a prospect of meeting again. The

strangest part of this remarkable juncture was that what ministered most

to our young lady's suppressed emotion was not the tremendous reflection

that this time Selina had really 'bolted' and that on the morrow all

London would know it: all that had taken the glare of certainty (and a

very hideous hue it was), whereas the chill that had fallen upon the

girl now was that of a mystery which waited to be cleared up. Her heart

was full of suspense--suspense of which she returned the pressure,

trying to twist it into expectation. There was a certain chance in life

that sat there beside her, but it would go for ever if it should not

move nearer that night; and she listened, she watched, for it to move. I

need not inform the reader that this chance presented itself in the

person of Mr. Wendover, who more than any one she knew had it in his

hand to transmute her detestable position. To-morrow he would know, and

would think sufficiently little of a young person of _that_ breed:

therefore it could only be a question of his speaking on the spot. That

was what she had come back into the box for--to give him his

opportunity. It was open to her to think he had asked for it--adding

everything together.

The poor girl added, added, deep in her heart, while she said nothing.

The music was not there now, to keep them silent; yet he remained quiet,

even as she did, and that for some minutes was a part of her addition.

She felt as if she were running a race with failure and shame; she would

get in first if she should get in before the degradation of the morrow.

But this was not very far off, and every minute brought it nearer. It

would be there in fact, virtually, that night, if Mr. Wendover should

begin to realise the brutality of Selina's not turning up at all. The

comfort had been, hitherto, that he didn't realise brutalities. There

were certain violins that emitted tentative sounds in the orchestra;

they shortened the time and made her uneasier--fixed her idea that he

could lift her out of her mire if he would. It didn't appear to prove

that he would, his also observing Lady Ringrose's empty box without

making an encouraging comment upon it. Laura waited for him to remark

that her sister obviously would turn up now; but no such words fell from

his lips. He must either like Selina's being away or judge it damningly,

and in either case why didn't he speak? If he had nothing to say, why

_had_ he said, why had he done, what did he mean----? But the girl's

inward challenge to him lost itself in a mist of faintness; she was

screwing herself up to a purpose of her own, and it hurt almost to

anguish, and the whole place, around her, was a blur and swim, through

which she heard the tuning of fiddles. Before she knew it she had said

to him, 'Why have you come so often?'

'So often? To see you, do you mean?'

'To see _me_--it was for that? Why have you come?' she went on. He was

evidently surprised, and his surprise gave her a point of anger, a

desire almost that her words should hurt him, lash him. She spoke low,

but she heard herself, and she thought that if what she said sounded to

_him_ in the same way----! 'You have come very often--too often, too

often!'

He coloured, he looked frightened, he was, clearly, extremely startled.

'Why, you have been so kind, so delightful,' he stammered.

'Yes, of course, and so have you! Did you come for Selina? She is

married, you know, and devoted to her husband.' A single minute had

sufficed to show the girl that her companion was quite unprepared for

her question, that he was distinctly not in love with her and was face

to face with a situation entirely new. The effect of this perception was

to make her say wilder things.

'Why, what is more natural, when one likes people, than to come often?

Perhaps I have bored you--with our American way,' said Mr. Wendover.

'And is it because you like me that you have kept me here?' Laura asked.

She got up, leaning against the side of the box; she had pulled the

curtain far forward and was out of sight of the house.

He rose, but more slowly; he had got over his first confusion. He

smiled at her, but his smile was dreadful. 'Can you have any doubt as to

what I have come for? It's a pleasure to me that you have liked me well

enough to ask.'

For an instant she thought he was coming nearer to her, but he didn't:

he stood there twirling his gloves. Then an unspeakable shame and

horror--horror of herself, of him, of everything--came over her, and she

sank into a chair at the back of the box, with averted eyes, trying to

get further into her corner. 'Leave me, leave me, go away!' she said, in

the lowest tone that he could hear. The whole house seemed to her to be

listening to her, pressing into the box.

'Leave you alone--in this place--when I love you? I can't do

that--indeed I can't.'

'You don't love me--and you torture me by staying!' Laura went on, in a

convulsed voice. 'For God's sake go away and don't speak to me, don't

let me see you or hear of you again!'

Mr. Wendover still stood there, exceedingly agitated, as well he might

be, by this inconceivable scene. Unaccustomed feelings possessed him and

they moved him in different directions. Her command that he should take

himself off was passionate, yet he attempted to resist, to speak. How

would she get home--would she see him to-morrow--would she let him wait

for her outside? To this Laura only replied: 'Oh dear, oh dear, if you

would only go!' and at the same instant she sprang up, gathering her

cloak around her as if to escape from him, to rush away herself. He

checked this movement, however, clapping on his hat and holding the

door. One moment more he looked at her--her own eyes were closed; then

he exclaimed, pitifully, 'Oh Miss Wing, oh Miss Wing!' and stepped out

of the box.

When he had gone she collapsed into one of the chairs again and sat

there with her face buried in a fold of her mantle. For many minutes she

was perfectly still--she was ashamed even to move. The one thing that

could have justified her, blown away the dishonour of her monstrous

overture, would have been, on his side, the quick response of

unmistakable passion. It had not come, and she had nothing left but to

loathe herself. She did so, violently, for a long time, in the dark

corner of the box, and she felt that he loathed her too. 'I love

you!'--how pitifully the poor little make-believe words had quavered out

and how much disgust they must have represented! 'Poor man--poor man!'

Laura Wing suddenly found herself murmuring: compassion filled her mind

at the sense of the way she had used him. At the same moment a flare of

music broke out: the last act of the opera had begun and she had sprung

up and quitted the box.

The passages were empty and she made her way without trouble. She

descended to the vestibule; there was no one to stare at her and her

only fear was that Mr. Wendover would be there. But he was not,

apparently, and she saw that she should be able to go away quickly.

Selina would have taken the carriage--she could be sure of that; or if

she hadn't it wouldn't have come back yet; besides, she couldn't

possibly wait there so long as while it was called. She was in the act

of asking one of the attendants, in the portico, to get her a cab, when

some one hurried up to her from behind, overtaking her--a gentleman in

whom, turning round, she recognised Mr. Booker. He looked almost as

bewildered as Mr. Wendover, and his appearance disconcerted her almost

as much as that of his friend would have done. 'Oh, are you going away,

alone? What must you think of me?' this young man exclaimed; and he

began to tell her something about her sister and to ask her at the same

time if he might not go with her--help her in some way. He made no

inquiry about Mr. Wendover, and she afterwards judged that that

distracted gentleman had sought him out and sent him to her assistance;

also that he himself was at that moment watching them from behind some

column. He would have been hateful if he had shown himself; yet (in this

later meditation) there was a voice in her heart which commended his

delicacy. He effaced himself to look after her--he provided for her

departure by proxy.

'A cab, a cab--that's all I want!' she said to Mr. Booker; and she

almost pushed him out of the place with the wave of the hand with which

she indicated her need. He rushed off to call one, and a minute

afterwards the messenger whom she had already despatched rattled up in a

hansom. She quickly got into it, and as she rolled away she saw Mr.

Booker returning in all haste with another. She gave a passionate

moan--this common confusion seemed to add a grotesqueness to her

predicament.