"We met, hand to hand,
We clasped hands close and fast,
As close as oak and ivy stand;
But it is past."
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
"Half false, half fair, all feeble."
SWINBURNE.
When John roused himself from the long stupor into which he had fallen
after Lord Hemsworth's departure, he put his finished letter to Colonel
Tempest into an envelope, and then remembered with annoyance that he did
not know how to address it. When the landlady in Brook Street had told
him that Colonel and Captain Tempest had gone to Brighton that morning,
he had been too much taken aback at the moment to think of asking for
their address. He was too much exhausted in mind and body to go back to
the lodgings for it immediately. He wrote a second letter, this time to
his lawyer, and then, conscious of the state of his body by the shaking
hand and clumsy, tardy brain which made of a short and explicit
statement so lengthy an affair, he mechanically changed his clothes,
dined, and sat watching the smoke of his cigar.
Presently, with food and rest, the apathy into which exhaustion had
plunged him lifted, and the restlessness of a tortured mind returned. He
had only as yet seen one of the three men whom he had come to London to
interview, namely, Lord Frederick. Colonel Tempest, the second, was out
of town; but probably the third, Lord ----, the minister, was not. It
was close on ten o'clock. He should probably find him in his private
room in the House.
John flung away his cigar, and was in a few minutes spinning towards the
Houses of Parliament in a hansom. He had not thought much about it till
now, but as he turned in at the gates the lines of the great buildings
suddenly brought back to him the remembrance of his own ambition, and of
the splendid career that had seemed to be opening before him when last
he had passed those gates; which had fallen at a single touch like a
house of cards--a house built with Fortune's cards.
There was a _queue_ of carriages at the Speaker's entrance. A party was
evidently going on there. John went to the House and inquired for
Lord ----. He was not there. Perhaps he was at the Speaker's reception.
John remembered, or thought he remembered, that he had a card for it,
and went on there. His mind was set on finding Lord ----.
* * * * *
History repeats itself, and so does our little private history. Only
when the same thing happens it finds us changed, and we look back at
what we were last time, and remember our old young self with wonder. Was
that indeed I?
Possibly to some an evening party may appear a small event, but to Di,
as she stood in the same crowd as last year, in the same pictured rooms,
it seemed to her that her whole life had turned on the pivot of that one
evening a year ago.
The lights glared too much now. The babel dazed her. Noises had become
sharp swords of late. Every one talked too loud. She chatted and smiled,
and vaguely wondered that her friends recognized her. "I am not the same
person," she said to herself, "but no one seems to see any difference."
Presently she found herself near the same arched window where she had
stood with John last year. She moved for a moment to it and looked out.
There was a mist across the river. The lights struggled through blurred
and feeble. It had been clear last year. She turned and went on talking,
of she knew not what, to a very young man at her elbow, who was making
laborious efforts to get on with her.
Her eyes looked back from the recess across the sea of faces and
fringes, and bald and close-cropped heads. The men who were not John,
but yet had a momentary resemblance to him, were the only people she
distinctly saw. Tall fair men were beginning to complain of her
unrecognizing manner.
Yes, history repeats itself.
Among the crowd in the distance she suddenly saw him. John's rugged
profile and square head were easy to recognize. _He had said there was
nothing between them._ Their last meeting rushed back upon her with a
scathing recollection of how she had held him in her arms and pressed
her face to his. Shame scorched her inmost soul.
She turned towards her companion with fuller attention than what she had
previously accorded him.
* * * * *
As John walked through the rooms scanning the crowd, the possibility of
meeting Di did not strike him. With a frightful clutch of the heart he
caught sight of her. A man who instantly aroused his animosity was
talking eagerly to her. Something in her appearance startled him. Was it
the colour of her gown that made her look so pale, the intense light
that gave her calm dignified face that peculiar worn expression? She
had a faint fixed smile as she talked that John did not recognize, and
that, why he knew not, cut him to the quick.
Was this Di? Could this be Di?
He knew she had seen him. He hesitated a moment and then went towards
her. She received him without any change of countenance. The fixed smile
was still on her lips as he spoke to her, but the lips had whitened.
Their eyes met for a moment. Oh! what had happened to Di's lovely eyes
that used to be so grave and gay?
He stammered something--said he was looking for some one--and passed on.
She turned to speak to some one else as he did so. He strangled the
nameless emotion which was choking him, and made his way into the next
room. He had a vague consciousness of being spoken to, and of making
herculean efforts to grind out answers, and then of pouncing on the
secretary of the man he was looking for, who told him his chief had
suddenly and unexpectedly started for Paris that afternoon on affairs of
importance.
John mechanically noted down his address in Paris and left the house.
The necessity of remembering where his feet were taking him recalled him
somewhat to himself. He pulled himself together, and slackened his pace.
"I will go to Paris by the night express," he said to himself, the
feverish longing for action increasing upon him as this new obstacle met
him. He dared not remain in London. He knew for a certainty that if he
did he should go and see Di. Neither could he write to Lord ---- all
that he must tell him, or put into black and white the favour he had to
ask of him--the first favour John had ever needed to ask, namely, to be
helped by means of Lord ----'s interest to some post in which he could
for the moment support himself and Mitty.
As he turned up St. James's Street, he remembered with irritation that
he had not yet procured Colonel Tempest's and Archie's address. While he
hesitated whether to go on, late as it was, to Brook Street for it, he
remembered that he could probably obtain it much nearer at hand, namely,
at Archie's rooms in Piccadilly. Archie, who was a person of much pink
and monogrammed correspondence, would probably have left his address
behind him, stuck in the glass of the mantelpiece, as his manner was.
The latch-key he had lent John in the autumn, when John had made use of
his rooms, was still on his chain. He had forgotten to return it. He let
himself in, went upstairs to the second floor, and opened the door of
the little sitting-room.
"Here you are at last," said a woman's voice.
He went in quickly and shut the door behind him.
A small woman in shimmering evening dress, with diamonds in her hair,
came towards him, and stopped short with a little scream.
It was Madeleine.
He looked at her in silence, standing with his back to the door. The
smouldering fire in his eyes seemed to burn her, for she shrank away to
the further end of the room. John observed that there was a fire and
lamps, and knit his brows.
Some persons are unable to perceive when explanations are useless.
Madeleine began one--something about Archie's difficulties, money, etc.;
but John cut her short.
"You are not accountable to me for your actions," he said. "Keep your
explanations for your husband."
He looked again with perplexity at the fire and the lamps. He knew
Archie had gone that morning on three days' leave to Brighton with his
father.
"Let me go," she said, whimpering. "I won't stay here to be thought ill
of, to have evil imputed to me."
"You will answer one question first," said John.
"You impute evil to me--I know you do," said Madeleine, beginning to
cry; "but it is your own coarse mind that sees wickedness in
everything."
"Possibly," said John. "When do you expect Archie?"
"Any moment. I wish he was here, that he might tell you----"
"Thank you, that will do. You can go now."
He opened the door. She drew a long cloak over her shoulders and passed
him without speaking, looking like what she was--one of that class whose
very existence she professed to ignore, but whose ranks she had
virtually joined when she announced her engagement to Sir Henry in the
_Morning Post_. Perhaps, inasmuch as that, untempted, she had sold
herself for diamonds and position, instead of, under strong temptation,
for the bare necessities of life like her poorer sisters, she was more
degraded than they; but fortunately for her, and many others in our
midst, society upheld her.
John looked after her and then followed her. There was not a soul on the
common staircase or in the hall. He passed out just behind her, and they
were in the street together.
"Take my arm," he said, and she took it mechanically.
He signalled a four-wheeler and helped her into it.
"Where do you wish to go?" he said.
"I don't know," she said feebly, apparently too much scared to remember
what her arrangements had been.
John considered a moment.
"Where is Sir Henry?"
"Dining at Woolwich."
"Can't you go home?"
"No, no. It is much too early. I'm dressed for--I said I was going
to ----, and I have left there already, and the carriage is waiting there
still."
"You must go back there," said John. "Get your carriage and go home in
it."
He gave the cabman the address and paid him. Then he returned to the cab
door.
"Lady Verelst," he said less sternly, "believe me--Archie is not worth
it."
"You don't understand," she tried to say, with an assumption of injured
dignity. "It was only that I----"
"He is not worth it," said John with emphasis; and he shut to the door
of the cab, and watched it drive away. Then he went back to Archie's
room, and sat down to consider. A faint odour of scent hung about the
room. He got up and flung open the window. Years afterwards, if a woman
used that particular scent, the same loathing disgust returned upon him.
"He took three days' leave to nurse his father at Brighton, with the
intention of coming back here to-night," John said to himself. "He will
be here directly." And he made up his mind what he would do.
And in truth a few minutes later a hansom rattled to the door, and
Archie came in, breathless with haste. He looked eagerly round the room,
and then, as he caught sight of the unexpected occupant, his face
crimsoned, and he grinned nervously.
"She is gone," said John, without moving.
"Gone? Who? I don't know what you mean."
"No, of course not. What made you so late?"
"Train broke down outside London."
"I came here to get your address at Brighton, because I have news for
you. You are there at this moment, aren't you, looking after your
father?"
Archie did not answer. He only grinned and showed his teeth. John was
aware that though he stood quietly enough by the table, turning over
some loose silver in his pocket, he was in a state of blind fury. He
also knew that if he waited a little it would pass. Something in John's
moral and physical strength had always the power to quell Archie's fits
of passion.
"I had no intention of prying on you," said John, after an interval. "I
wanted your address at Brighton, and I could not wait till to-morrow for
it. I am going to Paris to-night on business, and--as it is yours as
much as mine--you will go with me."
Archie never indulged in those flowers of speech with which some adorn
their conversation. But there are exceptions to every rule, and he made
one now. He culled, so to speak, one large bouquet of the choicest
epithets and presented it to John.
"He knew not what to say, and so he swore." That is why men swear often,
and women seldom.
"I shall not leave you in London with that woman," said John, calmly.
"You will go to her if I do."
"I shall do as I think fit," stammered Archie, striking the table with
his slender white hand.
"There you err," said John. "You will start with me in half an hour for
Paris."