DISCOVERIES.
This interview had an agitating and painful effect upon Lucy, though she
could not tell why. It was not what she expected or feared--neither in
one sense nor the other. He had neither distressed her by opposing her
proceedings, nor accepted her beneficence towards the Contessa with
levity and satisfaction, both of which dangers she had been prepared
for. Instead, however, of agitating her by the reception he gave to her
proposal, it was he who was agitated by something which in entire
unconsciousness she had said. But what that could be Lucy could not
divine. She had said nothing that could affect him personally so far as
she knew. She went over every word of the conversation without being
able to discover what could have had this effect. But she could find
nothing, there was no clue anywhere that her unconscious mind could
discover. She concluded finally with much compunction that it was the
implied reproach that he had taken away all pleasure in what she did by
opposing her, that had so disturbed her husband. He was so kind. He had
not been able to bear even the possibility that his opposition had been
a source of pain. "I think I will never oppose you any more." In an
answering burst of generosity Lucy said to herself that she did not
desire this; that she preferred that he should find fault and object
when he disapproved, not consent to everything. But the reflection of
the disturbance she had seen in her husband's countenance was in her
mind all day; she could not shake it off; and he was so grave that every
look she cast at him strengthened the impression. He did not approach
the circle in which the Contessa sat all the evening, but stood apart,
silent, taking little notice of anybody until Mr. Derwentwater secured
his ear, when Sir Tom, instead of his usual genial laugh at MTutor's
solemnities, discharged little caustic criticisms which astonished his
companion. Mr. Derwentwater was going away next day, and he, too, was
preoccupied. After that conversation with Sir Tom, he betook himself to
Lucy, who was very silent too, and doing little for the entertainment of
her guests. He made her sundry pretty speeches, such as are appropriate
from a departing guest.
"Jock has made up his mind to stay behind," he said. "I am sorry, but I
am not surprised. I shall lose a most agreeable travelling companion;
but, perhaps, home influences are best for the young."
"I don't know why Jock has changed his mind, Mr. Derwentwater. He wanted
very much to go."
"He would say that here's metal more attractive," said the tutor with an
offended smile; and then he paused, and, clearing his throat, asked in a
still more evident tone of offence--"Does not your young friend the
Signorina appear again? I thought from her appearance last night that
she was making her _debut_."
"Yes, it was like it," said Lucy. "The Contessa is not like one of us,"
she added after a moment. "She has her own ways--and, perhaps, I don't
know--that may be the Italian fashion."
"Not at all," Mr. Derwentwater said promptly. He was an authority upon
national usages. "But I am afraid it was very transparent what the
Contessa meant," he said, after a pause.
To this Lucy made no reply, and the tutor, who was sensitive, especially
as to bad taste, reddened at his inappropriate observation. He went on
hastily; "The Signorina--or should I say Mademoiselle di
Forno-Populo?--has a great deal of charm. I do not know if she is so
beautiful as her mother----"
"Oh, not her mother," cried Lucy quickly, with a smile at the mistake.
"Is she not her mother? The young lady's face indeed is different. It is
of a higher order--it is full of thought. It is noble in repose. She
does not seem made for these scenes of festivity, if you will pardon me,
Lady Randolph, but for the higher retirements----"
"Oh, she is very fond of seeing people," said Lucy. "You must not
suppose she is too serious for her age. She enjoyed herself last night."
"There is no age," said Mr. Derwentwater, "at which one can be too
serious--and especially in youth, when all the world is before one, when
one cannot tell what effect a careless step may have one way or another.
It is just that sweet gravity that charms me. I think she was quite out
of her element, excuse me for saying so, Lady Randolph, last night."
"Do you think so? Oh, I am afraid not. I am afraid she liked it," said
Lucy. "Jock, don't you think Bice liked it. I should much rather think
not, but I am afraid--I am afraid----"
"She couldn't like that little cad," said Jock, who had drawn near with
an instinctive sense that something was going on which concerned him.
"But she's never solemn either," added the boy.
"Is that for me, Jock?" said MTutor, with a pensive gentleness of
reproach. "Well, never mind. We must all put up with little
misunderstandings from the younger generation. Some time or other you
will judge differently. I should like to have had an opportunity again
of such music as we heard last night; but I suppose I must not hope for
it."
"Oh, do you mean Lord Montjoie's song?" cried one of the young ladies in
blue, who had drawn near. "Wasn't it fun? Of course I know it wasn't to
be compared to the Contessa; but I've no musical taste. I always confess
it--that's Edith's line. But Lord Montjoie _was_ fun. Don't you think
so, dear Lady Randolph," Miss Minnie said.
Mr. Derwentwater gave her one glance, and retired, Jock following.
"Perhaps that's your opinion too," he said, "that Lord Montjoie's was
fun?"
"He's a scug," said Jock, laconically, "that's all I think about him."
Mr. Derwentwater took the lad's arm. "And yet," he said, "Jock, though
you and I consider ourselves his superiors, that is the fellow that will
carry off the prize. Beauty and genius are for him. He must have the
best that humanity can produce. You ought to be too young to have any
feeling on the subject; but it is a humiliating thought."
"Bice will have nothing to say to him," said Jock, with straightforward
application of the abstract description; but MTutor shook his head.
"How can we tell the persecutions to which Woman is subject?" he said.
"You and I, Jock, are in a very different position. But we should try to
realise, though it is difficult, those dangers to which she is subject.
Kept indoors," said MTutor, with pathos in his voice, "debarred from all
knowledge of the world, with all the authorities about her leading one
way. How can we tell what is said to her? with a host of petty maxims
preaching down a daughter's heart--strange!" cried Mr. Derwentwater,
with a closer pressure of the boy's arm, "that the most lovely existence
should thus continually be led to link itself with the basest. We must
not blame Woman; we must keep her idea sacred, whatever happens in our
own experience."
"It always sets one right to talk to you," cried Jock, full of emotion.
"I was a beast to say that."
"My boy, don't you think I understand the disturbance in your mind?"
with a sigh, MTutor said.
They had left the drawing-room during the course of this conversation,
and were crossing the hall on the way to the library, when some one
suddenly drew back with a startled movement from the passage which led
to Sir Tom's den. Then there followed a laugh, and "Oh, is it only you!"
after which there came forth a slim shadow, as unlike as possible to the
siren of the previous night. "We have met before, and I don't mind. Is
there any one else coming?" Bice said.
"Why do you hide and skulk in corners?" cried Jock. "Why shouldn't you
meet any one? Have you done something wrong?"
This made Bice laugh still more. "You don't understand," she said.
"Signorina," said Mr. Derwentwater (who was somewhat proud of having
remembered this good abstract title to give to the mysterious girl), "I
am going away to-morrow, and perhaps I shall never hear you again. Your
voice seemed to open the heavenly gates. Why, since you are so good as
to consider us different from the others, won't you sing to us once
more?"
"Sing?" said Bice, with a little surprise; "but by myself my voice is
not much----"
"It is like a voice out of heaven," Mr. Derwentwater said fervently.
"Do you really, really think so?" she said with a wondering look. She
was surprised, but pleased too. "I don't think you would care for it
without the Contessa's; but, perhaps----" Then she looked round her with
a reflective look. "What can I do? There is no piano, and then these
people would hear." After this a sudden idea struck her. She laughed
aloud like a child with sudden glee. "I don't suppose it would be any
harm! You belong to the house--and then there is Marietta. Yes! Come!"
she cried suddenly, rushing up the great staircase and waving her hand
impatiently, beckoning them to follow. "Come quick, quick," she cried;
"I hear some one coming," and flew upstairs. They followed her, Mr.
Derwentwater passing Jock, who hung back a little, and did not know
what to think of this adventure. "Come quick," she cried, darting along
the dimly-lighted corridor with a laugh that rang lightly along like the
music to which her steps were set. "Oh, come in, come in. They will
hear, but they will not know where it comes from." The young men
stupefied, hesitating, followed her. They found themselves among all the
curiosities and luxuries of the Contessa's boudoir. And in a moment Bice
had placed herself at the little piano which was placed across one of
the corners, its back covered with a wonderful piece of Eastern
embroidery which would have invited Derwentwater's attention had he been
able to fix that upon anything but Bice. As it was, he gave a half
regard to these treasures. He would have examined them all with the
devotion of a connoisseur but for her presence, which exercised a spell
still more subtle than that of art.
The sound of the singing penetrated vaguely even into the drawing-room,
where the Contessa, startled, rose from her seat much earlier than
usual. Lucy, who attended her dutifully upstairs according to her usual
custom, was dismayed beyond measure by seeing Jock and his tutor issue
from that door. Bice came with them, with an air of excitement and
triumphant satisfaction. She had been singing, and the inspiration and
applause had gone to her head. She met the ladies not with the air of a
culprit, but in all the boldness of innocence. "They like to hear me,
even by myself," she cried; "they have listened, as if I had been an
angel." And she clapped her hands with almost childish pleasure.
"Perhaps they think you are," said the Contessa, who shook her head, yet
smiled with sympathy. "You must not say to these messieurs below that
you have been in my room. Oh, I know the confidences of a smoking-room!
You must not brag, _mes amis_. For Bice does not understand the
_convenances_, nor remember that this is England, where people meet only
in the drawing-room."
"Divine forgetfulness!" murmured Derwentwater. Jock, for his part,
turned his back with a certain sense of shame. He had liked it, but he
had not thought it right. The room altogether, with its draperies and
mysteries, had conveyed to him a certain intoxication as of wrong-doing.
Something that was dangerous was in the air of it. It was seductive, it
was fascinating; he had felt like a man banished when Bice had started
from the piano and bidden them "Go away; go away!" in the same laughing
tone in which she had bidden them come. But the moment he was outside
the threshold his impulse was to escape--to rush out of sight--and
obliterate even from his own mind the sense that he had been there. To
meet the Contessa, and still more his sister, full in the face, was a
shock to all his susceptibilities. He turned his back upon them, and but
that his fellow-culprit made a momentary stand, would have fled away.
Lucy partook of Jock's feeling. It wounded her to see him at that door.
She gave him a glance of mingled reproach and pity; a vague sense that
these were siren-women dangerous to all mankind stole into her heart.
But Lucy was destined to a still greater shock. The party from the
smoking-room was late in breaking up. The sound of their steps and
voices as they came upstairs roused Lady Randolph, not from sleep--for
she had been unable to sleep--but from the confused maze of
recollections and efforts to think which distracted her placid soul. She
was not made for these agitations. The constitution of her mind was
overset altogether. The moment that suspicion and distrust came in there
was no further strength in her. She was lying not thinking so much as
remembering stray words and looks which drifted across her memory as
across a dim mirror, with a meaning in them which she did not grasp. She
was not clever. She could not put this and that together with the
dolorous skill which some women possess. It is a skill which does not
promote the happiness of the possessor, but perhaps it is scarcely more
happy to stand in the midst of a vague mass of suggestions without being
able to make out what they mean, which was Lucy's case. She did not
understand her husband's sudden excitement; what it had to do with Bice,
with the Contessa, with her own resolution and plans she could not tell,
but felt vaguely that many things deeply concerning her were in the air,
and was unhappy in the confusion of her thoughts. For a long time after
the sounds of various persons coming upstairs had died away, Lucy lay
silent waiting for her husband's appearance--but at last unable to bear
the vague wretchedness of her thoughts any longer, got up and put on a
dressing-gown and stole out into the dark gallery to go to the nursery
to look at her boy asleep, which was her best anodyne. The lights were
all extinguished except the faint ray that came from the nursery door,
and Lucy went softly towards that, anxious to disturb little Tom by no
sound. As she did so a door suddenly opened, sending a glare of light
into the dark corridor. It was the door of the Contessa's room, and with
the light came Sir Tom, the Contessa herself appearing after him on the
threshold. She was still in her dinner dress, and her appearance
remained long impressed upon Lucy's imagination like a photograph
without colour, in shadow and light. She gave Sir Tom a little packet
apparently of letters, and then she held out both hands to him, which he
took in his. Something seemed to flash through Lucy's heart like a
knife, quivering like the "pale death" of the poet, in sight and sense.
The sudden surprise and pang of it was such for a moment that she seemed
turned into stone, and stood gazing like a spectre in her white flowing
dress, her face more white, her eyes and mouth open in the misery and
trouble of the moment. Then she stole back softly into her room--her
head throbbing, her heart beating--and buried her face in her pillow and
closed her eyes. Even baby could not soothe her in this unlooked-for
pang. And then she heard his step come slowly along the gallery. How was
she to look at him? how listen to him in the shock of such an
extraordinary discovery? She took refuge in a semblance of sleep.