“AND EVERY GENTLE PASSION SICK TO DEATH.”
Although in his leisurely ascent to the third story Mr. Sefton had
time to recover the appearance of serenity, he was by no means master
of himself as he waited for Lisa’s door to be opened. Still less was
he master of himself when the door was opened by Lisa herself, looking
flushed and excited, her eyes brilliant with newly shed tears.
He went through the little vestibule and into the sunlit drawing-room
with the air of a man who had the right to enter unbidden, and flung
himself sullenly into one of Lisa’s basket chairs, which creaked under
his weight.
“It is very late,” said Lisa, evidently fluttered and uneasy. “I ought
to be starting for the theatre.”
“You needn’t hurry,” Sefton answered coolly. “It isn’t six o’clock; and
you don’t come on the stage till half-past eight. You’d better sit down
and take things easily. You don’t look much like going into the street,
with that crying face. You’d better get over your scene with your lover
before you go out of doors.”
“I have no lover,” Lisa answered indignantly, tossing up her head.
In Sefton’s eyes she had never looked lovelier than at that moment;
every feature instinct with passion; red lips and delicate nostrils
faintly quivering; a rich carmine flushing the pale olive of her
cheeks; the great dark eyes brightened by tears; the haughty pose of
the head giving something of aristocracy to that uncultured beauty.
He loved her with a passion which every fresh indication of her cold
indifference had stimulated to increasing warmth. He loved her first
because she was lovely and fascinating in her childish simplicity.
He loved her next and best because she, who by every common rule
of life should have been so easily won, had proved invincible.
The greatest princess in the land--the woman most hedged round by
conventionalities--could not have held herself more aloof than Lisa had
done, even while condescending to accept his friendship. She had held
herself aloof; and she had shown him that she was not afraid of him.
He saw her now under a new aspect, saw her deeply moved, with all the
potentialities of tragedy in those tremulous lips and shining eyes. He
saw now in all its reality the passion which informed her acting, and
gave pathetic reality to all that there was of sentiment in her _rôle_.
He saw the moving spring which had made it so easy for her to represent
in all its touching details the passion of hopeless love.
“You have no lover? You are an audacious woman to make that assertion
to me when I have seen you in his company, after an interval of years,
and when each time I saw you, your face has been a declaration of love.
I met the man on your staircase just now; and I can read the history of
his visit in your eyes. Do you mean to tell me that he is anything less
than your lover?”
“I mean to tell you nothing. Che diavolo! What are you to me that you
should call me to account? Signor Zinco said I was very foolish to let
you come here. It was only because my aunt and the boy liked you that
I let you come. And you took us on the river, which was pleasant. One
must have some one.”
“You will have me no more until we understand each other,” cried
Sefton, furiously. “Voglio finirla. I will not be fooled. I will not
be duped. I will not be your abject slave as I have been, going night
after night to feast upon your beauty, to drink the music of your
voice, giving you my whole mind and heart, and getting nothing for my
pains, not even the assurance that you are growing fonder of me, that
love will come in good time. Do you think I am the man to endure that
sort of torture for ever?”
“I do not think at all about you. Voglio finirla, io! I have made up my
mind that it will be better for you not to come here any more. We shall
miss you and your clever talk, and the days on the river--but we can
live without you--and as for love, that is over and done with. I shall
never love anybody but Paolo and la Zia. I have cared for two people
in this world--and my love ended badly with both. The one who loved
me died. The one I loved the most never loved me. There, you have my
confession without questioning. Are you satisfied now?”
“Not quite. The man you love is the man who left you just now--Paolo’s
father?”
He came nearer to her as he asked this daring question; the question
he had been longing to ask from the beginning of things. He took hold
of her arm almost roughly, and drew her towards him, scrutinizing her
face, and trying to read her secret in her eyes.
She answered him with a mocking laugh.
“You are very clever at guessing riddles,” she said. “I have made
my confession. You will get no more out of me. And now, with your
permission, I will put on my hat. It takes me a long time to get to the
theatre--I always go by the steamboat on fine evenings--and it takes me
a still longer time to dress for the stage.”
She went to the door and opened it for him, waiting with a courteous
air for him to go out; but he took hold of her again, even more roughly
than before, shut the door violently, and drew her back into the room.
“There is time enough for you to talk to me,” he said. “I will answer
for your being at the theatre--but you must hear me out. We must have
an explanation. I never knew how fond I was of you till just now, when
I met that man leaving your house. I was satisfied to go dangling
on--playing with fire--so long as I was the only one. But now that he
is hanging about you, there must be no more uncertainty. I must know
my fate. Lisa, you know how I love you. There is no use in talking of
that. If I were to talk for an hour I could say no more than every word
I have spoken for the last year and a half--ever since we sat together
in the tent that Sunday night at Hawberk’s--has been telling you. I
love you. I love you, Lisa: with a love that fuses my life into yours,
which makes life useless, purposeless, hopeless without you.”
He had not loosened his hold. That strong, sinewy hand of his was
grasping her firm, round arm, his other hand and arm drawing her
against his heart. She could feel how furiously that heart was beating;
she could see his finely cut face whitening as it looked into hers; his
eyes with a wild light in them. He stood silent, holding her thus, like
a bird caught in a springe, while she struggled to release herself from
him. He stood thinking out his fate, with the woman he loved in his
arms.
In those few moments he was asking himself the crucial question,
Could he live without this woman? Passion--a passion of slow and
silent growth--answered no. Then came another question, Would she be
his mistress? Was it any use to sing the old song, to offer her the
market price for her charms--a house at the West End, a carriage, a
settlement; all except his name and the world’s esteem? Common sense
answered him sternly no. This woman, struggling to escape from an
unwelcome caress, was not the woman to accept dishonourable proposals.
She had been showing him for the last year and a half, in the plainest
manner, that he was positively indifferent to her. She was no fonder
of him now than at the beginning of their acquaintance. Love could
not tempt her. Wealth could hardly tempt her, since she could earn an
income which was more than sufficient for her needs. To such a woman as
this, peasant born as she was, uncultivated, friendless, he must offer
the highest price--that price which he had told himself he would offer
to no woman living. He must offer his name, and he must enter upon that
solemn contract between man and woman which had always seemed to him an
anomaly in the legislature of a civilized people--a contract which only
death or dishonour could break.
“Lisa,” he said, “I am not the enemy you think me. There is no
sacrifice I would not make for you. You know so little of the world
that perhaps you hardly know how much a man of good birth sacrifices
when he takes a wife who can bring him nothing but his heart’s desire.
Try and understand that, Lisa. I love you too well to count the
cost--too well to care that marriage with you cuts me off from all
chance of marrying a woman whose money would quadruple my fortune and
buy me a peerage. I could make such a marriage as that to-morrow if
I choose, Lisa. It has been made very plain to me that I should be
accepted by a lady who will carry a million sterling to the husband of
her choice. Don’t think me a snob for telling you this. I want you to
understand that I am worth something in the world’s market. Be my wife,
Lisa. I am a rich man. I can take you to a fine old country house, as
large as one of the palaces on the Canal Grande. I can give you all
things women value--horses and carriages, fine rooms, pictures, silver,
jewels--and I give you with them the devotion of a man who has loved
many women with a light and passing love, but who never knew what the
reality of love meant till he knew you, who never until now has asked a
woman to be his wife.”
He released her with those last words, and they stood looking at each
other, she breathless with surprise.
“Do you really mean that?” she asked.
“Really, really, really. Say yes, Lisa. Kiss me, my beloved, kiss me
the kiss of betrothal”--holding out his arms to her pleadingly. “We
can be married two or three days hence, before the registrar, and
afterwards in any church you like. You will throw up your engagement
at once. We will go to the Tyrol, bury ourselves in the hills and the
woods, and in November I will take you home, and let all the county
envy me my lovely wife.”
“You would marry me--me, the lace-girl of Burano; common, oh, so
common! And so poor; brought up among ragged children, earning seven
soldi a day, living on polenta. You would marry Paolo’s mother?”
“Yes, I would marry Paolo’s mother, without even knowing the secret of
Paolo’s parentage. I would marry you because I love you, Lisa--madly,
foolishly, obstinately, with a love that does not count the cost.”
“And I should be a great lady? I should drive about in a grand
carriage, and have footmen--powdered footmen like Lady Hartley’s--to
wait upon me?”
“Yes, child, yes--frivolous, foolish child. Come! Come to my heart,
Lisa! Non posso stare senza te!”
He would have taken her to his heart triumphantly, believing himself
accepted; but she stretched out her two hands with a repelling gesture
as he approached her, and held him at arm’s length.
“Not if you could make me a queen,” she said. “You do not know
Fiordelisa, when you try to tempt her with house and land. Your English
ladies marry like that, I have heard, for houses and jewels and horses,
to be called Principessa or Contessa--but I will never belong to a man
I don’t love. I have belonged to one man, and he was a hard master,
and I felt like a slave with a chain. My life was not my own. I know
what it is to belong to a man. It doesn’t mean paradise. But I loved
him dearly at the first, when he was kind to me, and took me away from
work and poverty. I loved him a little to the last even, though he was
a hard master.”
“I would never be hard with you, Lisa. I could never be your master.
Love has made me your slave. Carissima mia, be not so foolish as to
deny me. Think how gay, how luxurious, how happy your life may be.”
He was pleading to her in her own dulcet language, the soft Italian,
softened to even more liquid utterance by those elisions he had caught
from her Venetian tongue.
She stood a few paces from him, her arms folded tightly across her
breast, defying him. Marco, the cat, had awakened from his long
afternoon sleep in a luxurious basket--Sefton’s offering--and was
arching his back and rubbing his soft white fur against his mistress’s
black gown. She looked like a witch, Sefton thought, standing there in
her defiant beauty, shabbily clad in rusty black, and with the white
cat protecting her, glaring and spitting at him in unreasoning anger.
“My life could never be happy with a man I did not love,” she said
resolutely. “Even if I believed in your promises I would not marry you.
I would not accept your generous sacrifice. But I don’t believe in your
grand offers. I have been warned. I know your character better than you
think. You are trying to deceive me with promises that you don’t mean
to keep, as you deceived the farmer’s daughter, who drowned herself
because of your lies.”
“Ah!” he cried furiously. “You have heard that village slander. It
could only reach you from one source--the lips of the man who left you
just now. Don’t you know that when a poor man’s daughter goes wrong
it is always the richest man in the neighbourhood who is accused of
seducing her? I dare say that rule holds good in Italy as well as in
England. I am in earnest, Lisa. I mean no less than I say. Meet me next
Monday at the registrar’s office, with your aunt, and with Signor Zinco
if you like, to see that the marriage is a good marriage, and we will
leave that office as man and wife.”
“No,” she answered doggedly. “Even if you are in earnest it can make no
difference to me. I don’t want to be a great lady. People would laugh
at me, and I should be miserable. You wouldn’t like la Zia to live in
your fine house, would you now?”
“We could make her happy in a house of her own, or send her back to
Venice with a comfortable income.”
“Just so. You would want to get rid of la Zia. That would not do for
me. She and I have never been parted. And Paolo; you would marry
Paolo’s mother; but you would want to send him back to Venice with la
Zia, I dare say.”
“It would be the simplest way of solving a difficulty; but if he were
necessary to your happiness he should stay with us, Lisa. I would do
anything to make you happy.”
She looked at him with a touch of sadness, and shook her head.
“You are a generous lover,” she said, “if you mean what you say; but
it is all useless. You could not make me happy; and I could not make
you happy. You would very soon be sorry for your sacrifice. You would
regret the English lady and her million. I am content as I am--content
if not happy. I have as much money as I want, and this room is fine
enough for me. If you saw the hovel in which I was reared you would
think me a lucky woman to have such a beautiful home. In ten years I
shall have saved a fortune, and la Zia and I can go back to Venice and
live like ladies on the Canal Grande; or I can go on singing if I’m not
tired, and then I shall grow richer every day.”
“Lisa, Lisa, how cold and how cruel you are--cruel to a poor wretch who
adores you. To me you are ice, but to Vansittart you are fire. Your
face lighted, your whole being awoke to new life, at sight of him.”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders, irritated by his persistency, and provoked
into candour.
“Suppose I like him and don’t like you, can I help it? God has made me
so,” she said carelessly. “Ah, here is la Zia--la Zia whom you would
banish,” she cried, clapping her hands as a key turned in the vestibule
door.
“It looked like rain,” said la Zia, as she came in, “so Paolo and I
made haste home.”
Lisa caught the boy up in her arms, and kissed him passionately. Never
had she felt so glad to see him. Her active imagination had pictured
herself separated for ever from her son, living in an atmosphere of
pomp and powdered footmen, learning to forget her fatherless boy.
He had thriven on English fare, and the mild breezes of Battersea
Park, and frequent airings upon the Citizen steamers. He was a great
lump of a boy, with large black eyes, and long brown hair, and his
mother’s Murillo colouring. The only traces of the other parentage were
in the square Saxon brow and the firm aquiline of the nose. He was
a magnificent outcome of a mixed race, and a fine example of what a
boy of four years old ought to be. Lisa dropped into a chair with her
burden, still hugging him, but borne down by his weight.
“Santo e santissimo!” exclaimed la Zia. “You will be late at the
theatre. You must take a cab, quanto che costa.”
The Venetians had a horror of cabs, which were not alone costly, but
fraught with the hazard of vituperation from fiery-faced cabmen.
They delighted in the penny distances of road cars and other public
conveyances. To exceed the limit of a penny ride was to la Zia’s mind
culpable extravagance. A cab was only to be thought of in emergencies.
“Pardon, Signor,” she said, “the pleasure of your most desired company
has made my niece forget her duties.”
She bustled into the adjoining room, and returned with Lisa’s black
lace hat and little merino cape. There was no chorus girl at the Apollo
who dressed as shabbily as the Venetian prima donna. La Zia bundled on
the hat and tied on the cape, and dismissed her niece with a kiss.
“Zinco will bring you home, as always,” she said.
The ’cello lived in a shabby old street hard by, and was Lisa’s nightly
escort from the Apollo to Chelsea. On fine nights they walked all
the way, hugging the river, and praising the Embankment, which Zinco
declared to be as much finer than the Lung ’Arno, as London was in his
opinion superior to Florence.
Lisa and Sefton went downstairs together, both silent. He hailed a
crawling hansom a few paces from the house-door, and put her into
it, without a word. When she was seated he lifted his hat, and bade
her good night; and it seemed to her that there was deadly hatred in
the face which had looked at her a little while ago transfigured by
passionate love.
Hatred of some one; herself, perhaps; or it might be of a fancied
rival. Her heart grew cold as she thought of Vansittart. Unreasoning
jealousy on her account had cost one man his life, and had burdened
the life of another man with inextinguishable remorse. Would Sefton,
whose love expressed itself with appalling vehemence, try to injure the
one man she cared for, the man for whose sake she would give her life?
It would be well to warn him, perhaps. To warn him? But how? She did
not even know where he lived; but she knew his sister’s house, and his
sister’s servants would be able to tell her his address. She knew his
real name now--Vansittart, a grandly sounding name. She repeated it
to herself with a kind of rapture as the cab rattled along the King’s
Road, taking her to the Apollo.
She wrote to Vansittart next day, telling him that Sefton had offered
to marry her, and that she had refused him.
“He is jealous and angry about you,” she told him, in conclusion. “He
fancies because I was so pleased to see you that day on the river
that it is my love for you that made me refuse him, and I think he
would like to kill you. His face looked like murder as he bade me
good-bye--and I’m afraid it is you he wants to murder, not me. Pray
be on your guard about him. He may hire some one to stab you in the
street, after dark. Please don’t go out at night except in your
carriage. Forgive me for writing to you; but when I think that your
life may be in danger, I cannot refrain from sending you this warning.
You warned me of my danger, which was no danger, because I never cared
for the man. I warn you of yours.”
With this letter in her pocket, Lisa put herself into one of her
favourite omnibuses, which took her to Albert Gate, and from Albert
Gate she found her way across the Park to Hill Street. She remembered
the number, though she would hardly have known the house in its morning
brightness of yellow marguerites and pale blue silk blinds.
The haughtiest of footmen opened the door, and looked at her from head
to foot with the deliberate eye of scorn. Her beauty made not the
faintest impression upon his rhinoceros hide. She was on foot, and
shabbily clad, and he took her for a work-girl.
“I have a letter for Mr. Vansittart,” she began timidly.
The footman interrupted her with stern decisiveness. “This is not Mr.
Vansittart’s ’ouse. This is Lady ’Artley’s.”
“I want to know where Mr. Vansittart lives.”
“Charles Street. Number 99a.”
“Please tell me the way.”
The magnificent creature stalked slowly to the doorstep, moving
with the languid hauteur which befitted one whose noble height and
well-grown legs gave him first rank in the army of London footmen.
He was not ill-natured, but he took what he called a proper pride
in himself, conscious that his livery was made by one of the most
expensive tailors in the West End, and that his shoes came from Bond
Street.
Lifting his arm with a haughty grace, he indicated the turning which
would be Lisa’s nearest way to Charles Street.
She thanked him and tripped lightly away, he watching her with a
languid gaze, too obtuse to recognize the brilliant Venetian prima
donna--whose eyes, and shoulders, and diamonds he had approved the
other night, when he hung over her with peaches and champagne--in the
young person in rusty black.
Lisa found 99a, again a house with flowers in all the windows, and
dainty silken blinds--a house of brighter and fresher aspect than the
houses of Venice, where the effects of form and colour are broader,
bolder, and more paintable, but lack that finish and neatness which
distinguish a well-kept house at the West End of London: a house where
no expenditure is spared in the struggle between the love of beauty and
colour, and the curse of coal fires and gloomy skies. Another footman
looked at Lisa with the cold eye of indifference, less haughty than
Lady Hartley’s superb menial only because Vansittart’s smaller means
did not afford prize specimens of the footman genus.
“Any answer?” asked the youth, as Lisa delivered her letter.
No, there was no answer required--but would he be sure to give the
letter to Mr. Vansittart?
There was a rustle of silken skirts on the stairs as she spoke, and two
ladies came tripping down, talking as they came.
“The carriage is not there yet,” cried Sophy, glancing at the open
doorway. “I’m afraid we shall be late for luncheon.”
Eve followed her, and was in the hall in time to see Lisa as she turned
from the door--to see her and to recognize her as the woman who had
brought perplexity and apprehension into the clear heaven of her life.
The victoria came to the door. The footman stood ready to hand his
mistress to her carriage and to take his place beside the coachman.
“What did that person want?” asked Eve, sharply.
“She brought a letter for my master, ma’am.”
“Where is it? Give it to me.”
She took the letter, and looked at it frowningly.
“Mr. Vansetart!” The woman could not even spell his name, and yet was
able to darken his wife’s existence.
“What a shabby letter!” cried Sophy, struggling with the top button of
a tight glove. “It must be a begging letter, I should think. But what a
pretty dark-eyed woman that was. I seem to remember her face. Really,
really, Eve, we shall be late! Mrs. Montford told us her luncheons are
always punctual. She wouldn’t wait for a Bishop.”
Eve was staring at the letter. Vansittart was out, or she would have
gone to him with it. She wanted to put it into his hands, and to see
how he took its contents; but she did not even venture to keep the
letter in her possession till they met. She ran into her husband’s
study, and put the odious letter on the mantelpiece, in a spot where he
might overlook it. If it were overlooked until the afternoon she might
be with him when he opened it.
She went into society with her heart aching. Whatever her husband’s
feelings might be, this shameless Italian was running after him.
What insolence! What consummate audacity! To come to his house, to
pursue him with letters, even in his wife’s presence! And Sefton had
introduced this brazen creature to her; and she--Vansittart’s wife--had
been weak enough to be civil.
Sophy’s perpetual prattle agonized her all the way to Grosvenor
Gardens; nor was the smart luncheon which awaited them there less
agonizing. She had to brace herself for the ordeal, to smile and
talk, and laugh at good stories, pretending to see the point of them;
laughing when other people laughed; pretending to enjoy that happy
mixture of society to be met at some hospitable tables--a dash of
literature and art, a fashionable priest and a fashionable actor, an
archæological Dean from a grave old Midland city, a young married
beauty, a Primrose League enthusiast, a foreign diplomatist, and a
sporting peer owning a handsome slice of the shires.
Mr. Sefton came in after they were seated, and dropped into the one
vacant chair beside Sophy.
“You are always late,” Mrs. Montford said reproachfully. “I suppose
that is because you are the idlest man I know.”
He was a favourite of Mrs. Montford’s--_l’ami de la maison_--and
allowed to come and go as he pleased. When he gave a tea-party it was
generally Mrs. Montford who invited half the company, helped him to
choose the flowers and to receive the guests.
“You have hit the mark,” he said. “A man who has no specific occupation
never has time to be punctual. Nobody respects him. He can’t look at
his watch in the middle of a friend’s prosing and pretend important
business. I think I shall article myself to a civil engineer; and then
when people are boring I can say I am waited for about the caissons for
the new bridge. What bridge? My dear fellow, no time to explain! One
springs into a hansom, and is gone. Your idler can’t extricate himself
from the Arachne web of boredom. His time is everybody’s property.”
“Elaborate, but not convincing,” said Mrs. Montford, smiling at him,
as he helped himself with a leisurely air to a cutlet en papillote. “I
would wager all the gloves that I shall wear at Etretat that you were
lying in your easiest chair, with your feet on that high fender of
yours, reading Maupassant’s new story.”
“For once in your life you have succeeded as a reader of character--or
no character. I was reading ‘Le Pas Perdu.’ Don’t you see how red my
eyelids are?”
“Exactly. You are the kind of man who can weep over a book and refuse a
sovereign to a poor relation.”
“That,” said Sefton, “was almost unkind.”
Sophy now claimed her right of being talked to.
“Why were you not at Lady Dalborough’s last night?” she asked.
“My dear Miss Marchant, you can’t expect to see me at all the stupidest
parties in London.”
“The party was rather dull,” assented Sophy, who until this moment had
thought it brilliant, “but there was some good music.”
“One can have that for filthy lucre at the St. James’s Hall. I adore
Oscar de Lampion’s love ditties, but not at the price of perspiring in
a mob of second-best people.”
“It was my fault that we went to Lady Dalborough’s,” said Sophy,
remorsefully.
“Oh, I forgive anybody for going there--once. You will be wiser next
year.”
His eyes were watching Eve across the table, while he talked with
Sophy. She was very pale, and instead of the delicate blush rose of her
complexion there were hectic spots under the eyes, which accentuated
her pallor. He who once cared for her almost to the point of passion,
felt a thrill of pain at seeing in a face a hint of the consumptive
tendency which he had heard of about Peggy. “Those girls are all
consumptive,” some village gossip had said to him, with the morbid
relish of gloomy possibilities which is an outcome of village monotony.
He was shocked to think that she, too, perhaps, was doomed; but the
thought suggested no pity for her husband--not even that pity which
would have prevented him striking at his enemy through her. The rage
that consumed him knew no restraining power. If he had lived in the
Middle Ages that rage would have meant murder--but bloodshed in the
nineteenth century involves too many inconvenient possibilities to be
thought of lightly by a man of landed estate. It means throwing up
everything for the rapture of gratified revenge--melting all the pearls
of life into one fiery draught.
“Why is not Vansittart with you?” he asked Sophy, still looking at Eve.
“He had business in the City this morning.”
“Business--in the City? What could take Vansittart to the City? That
seems quite out of his line.”
“Yes, it does, don’t it,” said Sophy, impressed by the significance
of his tone, which seemed to veil a deeper meaning. “What should a
Hampshire squire have to do in the City?”
Sefton did not dwell upon the question. He saw that he had awakened
vague suspicions in Sophy’s mind, the first faint hint of a domestic
mystery. He talked of other things--of people--lightly, delightfully,
Sophy thought. He told her of two marriages which had just occurred, on
the summit of the fashionable mountain--took her behind the scenes, as
it were, and introduced her to the inner life of the chief actors in
those elegant ceremonials--the impecunious father of one bride selling
his daughter to a man she hated, the angry mother of the bridegroom in
the other marriage raging against the girl her son had chosen.
“You don’t know the bad blood which was hidden among the champagne
bottles on the buffet,” he said.
Sophy was charmed to hear about these smart people--charmed most of all
at the idea that they were miserable--that the women whose toilettes
her soul sickened for often wore the hair-shirt of the penitent under a
gown which Society papers extolled.
Sefton was very attentive to Sophy, albeit his furtive glances were
always returning to the lovely face on the other side of the table.
Poor Sophy thrilled at startling possibilities. He had admired Eve
in the past, had seemed devoted almost to the point of proposing.
And she, Sophy, had been told she was growing daily more like Eve.
More wonderful things had happened than that he should fall in love
with her--the old fancy for Eve reviving for Eve’s younger sister.
Now that the detrimental father had taken up his abode permanently on
the Continent, his domestic responsibilities much lightened by Eve’s
liberality to her sisters, there could be less objection to an alliance
with the house of Marchant. Mr. Sefton was his own master. He had lost
Eve by his hesitancy and hanging back. Might he not act more nobly
in his dealings with Eve’s sister? That low, thrilling note which he
knew how to put into his voice, which was a mere mechanism of the man,
touched Sophy’s senses like exquisite music. Her eyelids sank, her
cheek kindled, though he talked only of common things.
He had seen enough of Eve, while thus entertaining Sophy, to be assured
that she had lately suffered some painful experience--a quarrel with
Vansittart, perhaps. Or it might be that silent jealousy had been
gnawing at her heart since that day on the river. No woman could see
Lisa’s behaviour and not be jealous. The husband would explain, no
doubt, but explanations go for very little in such a case. They are
accepted for the moment; wife and husband “kiss again with tears;”
and the next morning at the breakfast-table the husband sees brooding
brows, and knows that there is a scorpion coiled in his wife’s heart.
Her faith in him has been shaken. He may scotch the snake, but he
cannot kill it.
* * * * *
Eve was glad when Mrs. Montford gave the signal for a move to the
drawing-room. The men stayed behind to smoke, all but Sefton, who
followed the ladies, a proceeding which Sophy ascribed to his interest
in her conversation. At the luncheon-table Eve had been all talk and
gaiety, deceiving every one except the man who watched her face in its
occasional moments of repose. In the drawing-room she abandoned all
effort, sank into a chair near the window, evidently sick at heart,
glancing first at the clock on the chimney-piece and then at the street
to see if her carriage were approaching. She had ordered it for a
quarter past three. She started up the instant it was announced, and
went over to Mrs. Montford to make her adieux, that lady being deep in
a murmured discussion of the latest Mayfair scandal with a brace of
matrons, while Sophy was being taken round the rooms by Sefton, to look
at the pictures and curios.
“You needn’t have been in such an absurd hurry to come away,”
remonstrated this young lady in a lugubrious tone, as they drove
homeward. “Nobody else was moving.”
“They will be gone in a quarter of an hour. Only the bores ever linger
after a London luncheon. Everybody has something to do.”
“We have nothing to do till five o’clock; unless you go to Lady
Thornton’s at home before five. The card says four till seven.”
“Then we can go at six. That will be quite early enough.”
“And what are we to do in the interval? It isn’t half-past three yet.”
“Rest, Sophy; sleep if you can. We are going to a theatre to-night, and
a dance afterwards.”
“It is so near the end of the season,” sighed Sophy. “People are all
rushing off to Germany for their cures. One feels quite out of it when
one has no complaint to talk about.”
* * * * *
Vansittart was at home. Eve went straight to his den, sure to find him
there, smoking over a book or a newspaper.
He looked up at her smilingly, but she thought he looked weary and worn
out, and when the smile was gone there was a troubled expression.
“Was it a lively luncheon, Eve?” he asked, giving her his hand as she
took up her favourite position behind his high-backed chair.
It was a colossal chair, with cushioned arms, upon one of which she
sometimes seated herself, liking to nestle against him, yet not so
loquacious as to interrupt his reading; sometimes reading with him;
dipping into some French novel which he read from sheer idleness, not
because he had any taste for the thinly beaten gold-leaf of Maupassant
or Bourget.
To-day she stood behind his chair, silent, meditative, while he read
and smoked.
“Was it pleasant--your party?” he asked presently, repeating the
question she had left unanswered.
“Oh, it was pleasant enough. Sophy will tell you that it was
delightful. I leave her to expatiate upon the people and the dishes and
the talk. I was not in a very pleasant mood. There is a letter for you
on the mantelpiece. You have not seen it, perhaps?”
“No,” he said, startled by the angry agitation in her tone. “Is there
anything particular about the letter?”
He put down his pipe and stood up, looking at her inquiringly. She was
very pale, always with the exception of that hectic spot which Sefton
had noticed, and which burned more fiercely now.
He stretched out his hand to take the letter, half hidden by a little
bronze Buddha with malevolent onyx eyes.
He recognized Lisa’s unformed scrawl at the first glance.
“What is the matter with the letter?” he asked coldly.
“She brought it here herself, Jack,--that Italian woman--Signora
Vivanti. I was coming downstairs while she was at the door. I saw her
give the letter to James. What can she have to write to you about?
Why should she bring the letter with her own hand? How could she dare
come to the house where your wife lives?” She flamed up at the last
question, and her voice trembled at the word wife.
“I don’t see why my wife’s presence should alarm her, if she had need
of immediate help from me.”
“What should she want? Why should she come to you for help? Because you
helped her once, in Italy, when she was poor and friendless? Is that a
reason why she should pester you now?”
“If you will let me read her letter I may be able to tell you,” he
answered gravely.
It was a long letter, for in writing to the man she adored, Lisa let
her pen run away with her. Nothing would ever induce her to marry
Sefton, she told him; her heart was given to another; he knew who that
other was, and that she could never change. Then came the warning of
his danger. Sefton’s savage hatred. It was a letter he could under no
circumstances show to his wife. And there she stood waiting for the
letter to be shown her, raging with jealousy, the love which had made
her so angelic in her self-abnegation now transformed into a fire that
made her almost diabolical.
“Well! May I see her letter?”
“No, Eve. The letter is confidential. She asks nothing from me--except
perhaps approval of the course she has taken. She has had an offer of
marriage--an offer that most young women in her position would accept
without a second thought.”
“And she has refused?” cried Eve, breathlessly.
“She has refused.”
“Because she loves some one else--some one who can’t marry her--but
who can carry on an intrigue with her--an old intrigue--begun years
ago. Some one whom she is trying to get into her net again. The net is
spread--before my very eyes. That letter is to make an appointment.”
He tore the letter across and across, and dropped the pieces into his
waste-paper basket.
“Your thought is as far from the truth as it is unworthy of you, Eve,”
he said, with grave displeasure. “This young woman has never been more
to me than I have told you. A woman in whom I was interested, chiefly
because she was friendless.”
“Chiefly,” she cried, catching at the qualifying word; “and the other
reason?”
“If there was another reason, it had nothing to do with love. Does that
satisfy you?”
“No,” she answered gloomily. “Nothing you can say will prevent my being
miserable. That woman has come into my life and spoilt it.”
“Only because you are unreasonably and absurdly jealous. You are
miserable of your own choice. You have me here, your faithful husband,
unchanged in thought, act, or feeling since the day we rowed down the
river; and yet you choose to torture yourself with vile suspicions,
unworthy of a lady, unworthy of a wife.”
“I cannot help it,” she said. “We all have some latent sin, I suppose.
Perhaps jealousy is mine. I never knew what it was to feel wicked
before. Forgive me, Jack, if you can.”
She took up his hand, kissed it, and then sank sighing into her chair,
the chair she had christened Joan, while his, the colossal armchair,
was Darby.
“I forgive you with all my heart, Eve, on condition that this little
storm is the last outbreak. I should be sorry to think our married life
was to be a succession of tempests in teacups.”
“I promise to behave better in future. I hate myself for my folly.”
Vansittart resumed his newspaper, too much disturbed to court
conversation. He felt himself living upon the crust of a volcano. This
ceaseless jealousy was a matter of trivial moment in itself. He could
have laughed it off, as too absurd for serious argument; but this
jealousy brought Eve to the brink of that revelation which might wreck
two lives. The horror in front of him was a horror that meant doom.
Eve bore with the silence for a few minutes, took off her bonnet, and
carefully adjusted the petals of an artificial rose, studied the little
fantasy of lace and flowers as if it were the gravest thing in the
world, then flung it impatiently on a chair, and began to smooth out
her long suède gloves on her soft, silken knee. Her nerves were strung
to torture. She had pretended to be satisfied, while the tempest in her
heart was still raging. She looked at her husband as if she hated him.
Yes; it was hateful to see him sitting there, silent, imperturbable,
reading his newspaper, while she was in the depths of despair. The fact
that he had refused to show her that letter seemed almost an admission
of guilt. If the thing which he had told her was true, the letter would
have borne witness to his truth. He would have been eager to show it to
her. “Here,” he would have said, “under the woman’s own hand, you will
see that she is nothing to me.”
She brooded thus for about ten minutes, and then her irritation could
submit to silence no longer.
“What was the City doing?” she asked. “The City which deprived me of
your company at Mrs. Montford’s luncheon.”
“It was not the City’s fault. I surrendered my place to Sophy.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense. There is always room enough and a welcome at Mrs.
Montford’s luncheons; but no doubt on a warm July morning the City is
more attractive than Mayfair.”
“Certainly, for those who are making or losing money,” he answered,
throwing down his paper and preparing to be sociable, though there
was that in his wife’s tone which told him her heart was not at ease.
“What was the City doing?” he repeated. “Buying and selling, getting
and losing. It is not half a bad place on a summer morning, though you
speak of it with the voice of the scorner. I walked across St. Paul’s
Churchyard. They have turned an old burial-ground into a flower-garden;
and there were nurses and children, and homeless ragamuffins lying
asleep in the sun, and pigeons--tame pigeons--that fed out of the
children’s hands. It might have been Venice.”
He started and turned deadly pale. It was the first time he had ever
pronounced the name of the fatal city, voluntarily, in his wife’s
hearing. His nerves were overstrained--as much as hers, perhaps--and
the mere name took his breath away.
Eve saw the startled look, the sudden pallor.
“I understand!” she cried passionately. “It was at Venice you met that
woman. Venice, not Verona. The very name of the place agitates you! The
very name of the place where you knew her and loved her moves you more
than all I have said to you--than all my pain!”
“You are a fool,” he said roughly, “like Fatima, the type of all
woman-fools.”
“It was Venice.”
“It may have been Venice. Who cares; or what does it matter?”
“It may have been! What hypocrisy! Do you think I am a child, to be
hoodwinked by your feeble prevarications? Every look, every word, tells
me that you have loved that woman better than you ever loved me--that
you are still in her net.”
“It was at Venice, then, if you will have it,” he answered, beside
himself. “At Venice, on a Shrove Tuesday, in Carnival time, five years
ago. Are you satisfied now? That is the first half of the riddle.”
His pale cheek grew whiter, his head fell back upon the velvet cushion,
his whole frame collapsed. He was as near fainting as a strong man
could be.
Eve rushed to a little table, where she was privileged to write her
letters now and then--business letters, she called them, chiefly
relating to spending money. Here, among silver ornaments and fanciful
cutlery, there was a big bottle of eau de Cologne, which she half
emptied over her husband’s temples.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “You meant it kindly; but you’ve almost blinded
me. I’m all right now. It was only a touch of vertigo. I’ve had no
luncheon; and a man can’t live upon tobacco and emotional arguments.”