“THOU MAYST BE FALSE AND YET I KNOW IT NOT.”
Before addressing his confidences to Sophy Marchant, Mr. Sefton had
assured himself that she did not belong to that exceptional order of
womankind who, in honour and discretion, are on a level with wise and
honourable men. He had known the young lady quite long enough to know
that, although sharp and clever, she was shallow-brained, impulsive,
and emotional. He was very sure that with every desire to spare her
sister pain she would end by telling Eve of her husband’s infidelity.
The secret would be kept for some days, perhaps, or even for some
weeks; but it would be as a consuming fire, and would ultimately burst
into flame--a flame that would devastate his rival’s home.
The more scathing that whirlwind which was to come from the wind of
his sowing, the happier the result for Sefton. It was in vain that
Lisa had denied her son’s paternity. In Sefton’s mind there was
no shadow of doubt that Vansittart had been, and even now was her
lover--and it was for love of Vansittart that his, Sefton’s, honourable
attachment had been scorned by her. King Cophetua had offered himself
to the beggar-maid, and the beggar-maid had refused him. Was that a
humiliation for a man to forgive? Was that a disappointment to go
unavenged? All the latent malignity of Sefton’s nature was aroused into
active life by that fierce passion of jealousy.
He had not misinterpreted Sophy’s character. She was very silent during
the homeward drive with her sister, lolling back in the victoria,
looking vacantly at the carriages and the people as they passed.
“How tired you look, Sophy!” Eve said, as they crossed the path, where
the carriages and riders and loungers had dwindled considerably within
the past week. “I fancy even you begin to feel you have had enough of
gadding about?”
“Yes, I have had enough, more than enough,” Sophy answered, with a
little choking sob.
She could no more suppress her own feelings, bear her own troubles, and
be dumb, than a child can. It was quite as much as she could do to keep
herself from crying, in the broad light of summer evening and Hyde Park.
“My poor Sophy, what has happened to distress you?” Eve asked
affectionately. “You and Mr. Sefton had such a long confabulation in
that inner room. I really thought the crisis had come.”
“There was no crisis; there never will be. You were right. He was only
fooling me. All his fine speeches, his sentimental talk--his way of
holding one’s hand as if he would like to squeeze it, and was only
prevented by his deep respect for one--he _did_ squeeze it at the
carriage door that night when we stayed so late at Mrs. Macpherson’s
dance--it all meant nothing--less than nothing.”
“But how do you know, Sophy?” Eve asked earnestly. “He can’t have told
you that he doesn’t care for you?”
“No; but he can have told me that he is in love with another woman--a
low-born, ignorant creature, who can do nothing but sing and strut
about the stage in the boldest, horridest way, showing her lace
petticoats and her legs,” said Sophy, disgustedly, forgetting how she
had admired Signora Vivanti.
“Do you mean the singer at the Apollo?” asked Eve.
“Yes, Signora Vivanti. He is in love with her, if you please, and she
has refused him.”
Eve remembered her husband’s explanation of Lisa’s letter.
“He told you this--chose you for his confidante. How odd!”
“Rather bad form, wasn’t it? I fear I had been too--what young Theobald
calls--coming on. I thought he liked me, and I encouraged him, and he
rewards me by confiding his attachment to that creature.”
“And she has refused to marry him. Why?” asked Eve, very pale.
“Who knows? Mere airs and graces, I dare say. She thinks she has all
London at her feet, and that she can pick and choose. How I wish I were
on the stage! I can sing pretty well, can’t I, Eve? And I have often
been told that I am like Ellen Terry.”
In her angry excitement, Sophy saw a vision of herself as the queen of
a theatre, all the town rushing to see her act, as they went to see
this Venetian peasant. Surely a young lady with good blood in her veins
must be better than a girl bred in a hovel. Sophy did not pause to
consider that it was the rough freshness, the primitive vigour of the
peasant which constituted Signora Vivanti’s chief claim to notice.
Sophy had exercised no small amount of self-control in restraining
her tears during the homeward drive; but once safe in the sanctuary
of her bedroom she let loose the flood of her emotions, with its
cross-currents of anger and sorrow, disappointed ambition, and
disappointed love. Yes, love. Considering Mr. Sefton, in the first
instance, only from the social point of view, with the mercenary
feelings engendered by a youth of poverty, she had allowed herself to
be beguiled by his attentions, and had entered at the golden gate of
that fool’s paradise which first love creates for its victim--a world
of fevered dreams, where nothing is but what is not. Walking in the
enchanted groves of that paradise, she had seen Wilfred Sefton in the
light that never was on land or sea--the light that beautifies all
waking dreams--and she had interpreted every speech of his after her
own fashion. Words lightly spoken took the deepest meaning--not his
meaning, but hers. She told herself again and again that, if he had not
actually asked her to be his wife, he had spoken words which a man only
speaks to the woman whose life is to be interwoven with his own.
Eve came to her sister’s door and insisted upon being admitted.
“Oh, what streaming eyes! Sophy, dearest, I am so sorry you have
allowed yourself to care for him. I warned you, dear; I warned you.”
“Yes,” retorted Sophy, irritated beyond measure at a form of speech
which is always irritating, “but you didn’t warn me of anything like
the truth. You didn’t tell me that he was passionately, ridiculously,
degradingly in love with that Venetian girl.”
“My dearest, how could I warn you of what I did not know?”
“Don’t dearest me. I am almost out of my mind--indeed, I should not be
surprised if I were to have brain fever, or something. When I remember
how I have lowered myself--letting him see that I cared for him; for I
have no doubt he did see, and that was why he made me his confidante
this afternoon, and told me about that creature--a woman with a
nameless son. Do you think I can ever get over the degradation of being
talked to about such a subject?”
Eve did not answer. She sank down upon the sofa, while her sister stood
before the looking-glass, frowning at her tear-stained face as she
unbuttoned the bodice of her gown, that gown which she made a point of
calling her “frock.”
Her nameless son. Eve remembered the boy in the boat, the Murillo-faced
boy, looking up with big wondering eyes as his mother and Vansittart
clasped hands. Her nameless son. She remembered that curious speech of
Vansittart’s a week ago--“Yes, it was at Venice we met. That is the
first half of the riddle.” What was the second half? The parentage of
that boy, perhaps. His son--his son--another woman’s and his. And she,
his adoring wife, had no son to place in his arms, no child to gratify
the well-born man’s desire to see his race prolonged.
“If I live to be an old woman he may die without an heir,” she thought.
“There may be no more Vansittarts of Merewood. Hannah’s husband did not
hate her because she was childless--but then he had other wives.”
She pictured her husband loving that alien’s son, making him his heir
perhaps by-and-by, desiring to bring him into his home, asking her to
receive Hagar’s child, to let him call her mother. She had heard of
such things being done.
“No, no, no, not for worlds,” she protested to herself. “I could not do
it.”
She got up and walked about the room, while Sophy bathed her eyes, and
tried to undo the damages her emotions had inflicted on her delicate
prettiness.
“I can’t go to the party looking like this,” exclaimed Sophy, ruefully
contemplating her swollen eyelids in the glass.
“We need not go till half-past ten. Eleven o’clock would be early
enough. There is time for you to get back your good looks. Benson shall
bring you a light little dinner, and then you had better lie down and
take a long nap.”
“Do you think I can eat or sleep in my state of mind?” protested Sophy;
but a quarter of an hour later, when Benson appeared with an appetizing
meal, the victim of misplaced affection found that violent emotions are
not incompatible with hunger.
She eat her dinner, cried a little now and then between whiles, and
at half-past ten went down to the drawing-room in her most attractive
frock, and with her light fluffy hair piled as high as she could pile
it, and sparkling with those dainty paste stars which Eve had sported
at the memorable hunt ball.
“Sophy,” cried Vansittart, “I vow you look almost as pretty as Eve
looked that night in the snow. And what do I see? Surely I know those
quivering starlets! You are wearing the family diamonds.”
Sophy rewarded him with a most ungracious scowl, and moved to the other
side of the room. Vansittart was looking at an evening paper, and was
serenely unconscious of the change in his sister-in-law’s manner; but
Eve saw that angry glance and movement of avoidance, and wondered what
could have caused such rudeness. Temper, perhaps; only poor Sophy’s
petulant temper, which had never been discriminating in its outbursts.
This was Sophy’s way of keeping a secret. Her visit to Charles Street
ended two days later. She was studiously uncivil to her host up to
the hour of her departure; and in her farewell talk with her sister,
being closely questioned by Eve as to the reason of this change in her
manner, she prevaricated, hesitated, said things and unsaid them; and
finally, in a flood of compassionate tears, she protested that it was
only on Eve’s account she was angry with Eve’s husband. Mr. Sefton had
told her that Vansittart still visited that odious woman. Mr. Sefton
had met him leaving her house only a few days previously; and Mr.
Sefton had assured her that it was he, Eve’s husband, who had brought
Signora Vivanti to London, and paid for her musical education.
“Can you wonder that I am angry with him, Eve, loving you as I do?
You have been so good to me, so generous. It would be wicked of me
to go away without warning you. I hated the idea of telling you. I
have thought over it again and again. I promised Mr. Sefton that I
would tell you nothing; but I could not bear the idea of your being
hoodwinked by an unfaithful husband. It was right to tell you, wasn’t
it, dear? It is better for you to know the truth, is it not?”
“Yes, yes, it is better for me to know,” Eve answered, in a hard, cold
voice.
“How quietly she takes it!” thought Sophy, as the footman announced the
carriage.
Benson had gone on with Sophy’s luggage in a four-wheel cab; twice as
much luggage as Sophy had brought from Fernhurst.
“I shall never forget your kindness to me,” said Sophy, with her
parting kiss.
“And I shall never forget your visit,” answered Eve.
* * * * *
Eve was not at home at luncheon time, so Vansittart went off to his
club, and only returned to Charles Street at Eve’s usual hour for
afternoon tea, when he was told that Mrs. Vansittart had gone out at
three o’clock, and had left a note for him in the study.
The note was a letter.
“I am taking a step which will no doubt make you angry,” Eve began,
“but I cannot help myself. I cannot go on living as we are living now.
Every hour of my life increases my misery. I have been told that you
visit that woman--that woman who is the cause of all my unhappiness. I
have been told that it is you who brought her to London, and had her
educated for the stage; that her child is your child. I ought to have
known all this without being told; but I shut my eyes to the truth. I
wanted so to believe in you. I clung so desperately to that which makes
the happiness of my life. You accuse me of unreasoning jealousy; but
could any wife help being jealous, seeing what I have seen, hearing
what I hear? That woman’s face and manner spoke volumes. I tried to
accept your explanation--tried to believe you. I had even begun to
feel happy again, when I learnt this hateful fact of your visit to her
house. I cannot believe that you would have gone there, knowing my
feelings on the subject, if this love of the past had not been more to
you than your love for me, your wife. There is but one thing for me to
do, only one thing which can set my mind at rest, or make me wretched
for ever; and that is to see this woman, and hear her story from her
own lips. I have no fear that I shall fail in getting at the truth when
she and I are face to face. Woman against woman, wife against mistress,
I know who will be the stronger.
“If I have wronged you, my beloved, your wife in penitent love. If you
have wronged me, your wife no longer--EVE.”
A pleasant letter to greet a husband on his home-coming.
“Woman against woman, face to face, those two!” thought Vansittart.
“She will discover--not that which she fears to discover, but a darker
secret--and then it will be as she has said, my wife no longer.”
He stood with his finger on the button of the bell till a servant came.
“A hansom instantly, but be sure you get a good horse,” he said, and
went into the hall to wait for the man’s return.