But here Joanna's voice once more claimed his attention. It still hissed and whispered, causing him shrinking and repulsion. Yet he detected a change in the spirit of it. Some finer, more wholesome chord had been struck. She no longer cringed.
"I am ready now, Cousin Adrian," she said, "to hear that which you have to tell me about my brother."
And the young man, finding relief to his pent-up feelings in voluminous and rapid speech, told her how, calling late one night upon an old school-fellow, a widely known draftsman and caricaturist, he had seen certain drawings—here Adrian picked his phrases a little—representing a young man of six or seven and twenty—"Who," he said, "bore such a striking resemblance to you, my dear cousin, and to Margaret, that I was transfixed with veritable amazement. I do not disguise from you that I was also pained, that for the moment I was furious. For these pictures were objectionable in character, in many respects odious. It appeared to me my friend had been guilty of an outrage for which it was my duty to administer sharp chastisement. But I could demand no immediate satisfaction, because he and I had already quarreled that evening, and he concealed himself from me, thereby rendering it impracticable that I should question him. This, perhaps, was as well, since I was heated and it gave me space for reflection. I realized the extreme improbability of his ever having seen either you or your sister—the absolute impossibility of his having done so recently, as you had been at home in England for some years. Then I recalled the pathetic history of your brother which you had confided to me. I grasped the situation. I understood. I called upon my friend next day. Still he was rancorous. He flew into a passion and refused to admit me. I restrained my resentment. I wrote to him explaining the gravity and urgency of the case. I appealed to his better nature, entreated him to be reasonable and to give me information. Indeed, I conducted myself with praiseworthy reticence, while he remained obstinate to the point of exasperation. Upon more than one count, I fear, I should have derived the very warmest satisfaction from wringing his neck."
Adrian's handsome eyes danced and glittered. His teeth showed white and wicked under his fly-away mustache.
"Yes, I, on my side, also possibly harbored a trifle of rancor," he said. "But I suppressed my legitimate annoyance. I ignored his provocations. I insisted. At last I elicited this much."
"That was very noble of you; still it distresses me that, indirectly, I should have caused you this trouble. Though I am grateful—some day I may find words in which to tell you how grateful," Joanna whispered, leaning forward and working her hands together nervously in her black alpaca lap.
All of which served to bring Adrian, who had grown quite comparatively at ease and happy in his subjective belaborings of The Unspeakable Tadpole, back to the entanglements and distractions of the immediate present, with a bounce.
"Upon my word, my dear Joanna," he replied almost brusquely, "I am afraid it very much remains to be proved whether I deserve your gratitude or not. I labor under the ungracious necessity of communicating much to you that is painful, that is sad. Yet, having gone thus far it becomes imperative, for many reasons, that I should put you in possession of all the facts. Then it will be for you to decide what further steps are to be taken next."
"You will know best—far best," she murmured.
The young man set his teeth. Never before had he come so near being cruel to a woman. Instinctively he crossed himself.Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, in mercy preserve him from the guilt of so dastardly a sin! He turned to Joanna and spoke, dealing out his words slowly, so that the full meaning of them might reach her beclouded, love-sick brain.
"My friend, René Dax, found this young man, whose likeness to you and your sister is so indisputable, so intimate, in the act of attempting his life."
"Ah! Bibby, Bibby!" Joanna cried harshly, throwing back her head.
"Yes," Adrian continued, pursuing his advantage, "unnerved by the horror of his friendless and destitute condition, the unhappy boy was about to throw himself from one of the bridges into the Seine. At his age one must have suffered very greatly to take refuge in that! But from the drawings of which I have spoken one can form only too forcible a conception of his desperation. They supply a human document of a deplorably convincing order. René, who, notwithstanding his eccentricity, possesses admirable instincts, struggled with him and succeeded in preventing the accomplishment of his fatal design. Then, forcing him into a passing cab—kidnapping him, in short—carried him off with him home."
"Oh, wait, wait!" Joanna broke in. "This is all so very dreadful. It is so remote from my experience, from all I am accustomed to, from all the habits and purposes of my life. I do not wish to be self-indulgent and shirk my duty. I wish to hear the whole, Cousin Adrian; but I must pause. I must recover and collect myself, if I am to follow your narrative intelligently."
Just then Joseph Challoner, having laid aside hat and jacket and put on tennis shoes, came out of the pavilion and joined the group, gathered around Margaret Smyrthwaite, on the terraced grass bank of the court. Challoner had the reputation of being a formidable player, his height, and reach, and sureness of eye more than counterbalancing any lack of agility. It may be added that, along with a losing game, he had the reputation of too often mislaying his manners and losing his temper. But this afternoon no question presented itself of losing either game or temper. He had practised regularly lately. He felt in fine form. He felt in high good humor. While both sense and senses called for strong physical exercise as a wholesome outlet to emotion.
Amid discussion and laughter, Marion Chase tossed for partners. The elder of the Busbridge boys fell to her lot, the younger to Challoner's, and the set began. Margaret returned to her chair, and Amy Woodford lolled on the pavilion step, in the shadow close beside her, fanning a very pink face with a large palm-leaf fan. As the game progressed the two girls commented and applauded, with clapping of hands and derisive or encouraging titterings and cries. Against this gaily explosive feminine duet, the rapid thud of balls, and sharp calling of the score, Joanna's voice asserted itself, with—to her hearer—a consuming dreariness of interminable and fruitless moral effort, a grayness of perpetual non-arrival, perpetual frustration, misconception and mistake.
"I am composed now, Adrian," she said. "My will again controls my feelings. Please tell me the rest."
"I am afraid there is disappointingly little more to tell," he replied. "For two days the unfortunate boy remained with my friend as his guest. René clothed him properly, fed and cared for him, and paid him liberally for his services as a model. But on the third morning, under plea of requiring to obtain some particular drug from a neighboring pharmacy, the young man left my friend's studio. He did not return."
"Where did he go?"
"That is what I have asked myself a thousand times, and made every effort to discover. I have friends at the Prefecture of Police. I consulted them. They were generous in their readiness to put their knowledge at my disposal and aid me in my research. Unluckily I could only give them a verbal description of the missing man, for René refused me all assistance, refused to allow any police agent to view the drawings, refused even to allow photographs of them to be taken. To do so, he declared, would constitute an unpardonable act of treachery, a violation of hospitality and crime against his own good faith. The unhappy fellow had trusted him on the understanding that no inquiry would be made regarding his family or his name. Now the episode was closed. René did not want it reopened. He had other things to think about. Rather than have the drawings employed for purposes of identification, he would destroy them, obliterate them with a coat of paint. When it became evident, however, the young man had disappeared for good René's valet, less scrupulous than his master, carefully examined the wretched clothes he had left behind. Between the lining and stuff of the jacket he found a small photograph. It must have worked through from a rent in the breast-pocket. Though creased and defaced, the subject of it was still in a degree distinguishable. I did not wish to agitate you, my dear cousin, by communicating this matter to you until I had made further efforts to discover the truth. I sent the photograph to Mr. Merriman. He tells me it represents the garden front of your old house, Highdene, near Leeds."
Joanna neither moved nor spoke, though her breath sighed and caught. The sounds from the tennis court, meanwhile, increased both in volume and in animation, causing Adrian to look up.
Challoner stood as near to the net as is permissible, volleying or smashing down ball after ball, until his opponents began to lose heart and science and grow harried and spent. And Adrian, watching, found himself, though unwillingly, impressed by and admiring the force, not only the great brute strength but determination of the man, which bestowed a certain dignity upon the game, raising it from the level of a mere amusement to that of a serious duel. And across the intervening space Challoner became sensible of that unwilling admiration—the admiration of a quasi-enemy, curiously supplementing another admiration of which he was also conscious—namely, that of Margaret Smyrthwaite, of the woman who craves to be justified, by public exhibition of his skill and prowess, of the man to whom she meditates intrusting her person and her fate. This excited Challoner, flattering his pride, stimulating his ambition and belief in himself.—Yes, he would show them all what he was made of, show them all what he could do, what he was worth! So that now he no longer played simply to win a set at tennis from a harmless, lanky Busbridge boy and amazon-like Marion Chase; but to revenge himself for Adrian Savage's past distrust of him, detection and prevention of his shady little business tricks, played to revenge himself for the younger man's superiority in breeding, knowledge of the world, culture, talents, charm of manner and of looks. He gave himself to the paying off of old scores in that game of tennis, all his bullying instinct, his necessity to beat down and trample Opposition under foot, actively militant. Yet since Margaret Smyrthwaite's approval, not to mention her goodly fortune, came into reckoning, the bullying instinct made him deadly cool and cunning rather than headlong or reckless in his play.
Presently Joanna silently motioned Adrian once again to take up his sordid story. And with a feeling of rather hopeless weariness he obeyed, recounting his scouring of Paris, accompanied by a private detective. Told her of clues found, or apparently found, only again to be lost. Told her, incidentally, a little about the haunts of vagabondage and crime and vice, of the seething, foul-smelling, festering under-world which there, as in every great city, lies below the genial surface of things, ready to drag down and absorb the friendless and the weak. So doing—while he still watched Challoner, and divined much of the human drama—finding expression in his masterful manipulation of racket and ball—Adrian's imagination took fire. He forgot his companion, gave reign to his natural eloquence and described certain scenes, certain episodes, with only too telling effect.
"But you must have been exposed to great danger," she broke in breathlessly at last.
"Ah! like that!" he cried, shrugging his shoulders and laughing a little fiercely. "Danger is, after all, an excellent sauce to meat. I had entire confidence in the loyalty and discretion of my companion, and we were armed."
Joanna got up, pushing away her chair, which scrooped upon the quarries.
"And you did all this for me—for my sake, because Bibby is my brother!" she exclaimed. "You risked contracting some illness, receiving some injury! For me, because of Bibby's relation to me, you endangered your life!"
"But in point of fact, I didn't suffer in the least, my dear Joanna," he replied, rising also. "I enlarged my acquaintance with a city of which I am quite incorrigibly fond; which, even at her dirtiest and naughtiest, I very heartily love. And here I am, as you see, in excellent health, perfectly intact, ready to start on my voyage of discovery again to-morrow, if there should seem any reasonable hope of its being crowned with success. Common humanity demands that much of me. One cannot let a fellow-creature, especially one who has the claim of kinship, perish in degradation and misery without making every rational effort to rescue and rehabilitate him."
Joanna hardly appeared to listen. She moved to and fro, her arms hanging straight at her sides, her hands opening and closing in nervous, purposeless clutchings.
"No," she declared violently, "no! When I think of the risks which you have exposed yourself, and the shocking and cruel things which might have happened to you, I cannot control my indignation. When I think that Bibby might have been the cause of your death no vestige of affection for him is left in me. None—none—I cast him out of my heart. Yes, it is dreadful. Looking back, all the anguish of which my brother has been the cause is present to me—the constant anxiety which his conduct gave rise to, the concealments mamma and I had to practise to shield him from papa's anger, the atmosphere of nervousness and unrest which, owing to him, embittered my girlhood. He was the cause of estrangement between my parents; between papa and myself. He was the cause of the break-up of our home at Leeds, of the severing of old friendships and associations, of the sense of disgrace which for so many years lay upon our whole establishment. It destroyed my mother's health. It emphasized the unsympathetic tendencies of my father's character. And now, now, when so much has happened to redress the unhappiness of the past, to glorify and enlarge my life, when my future is so inexpressibly full of hope and promise, it is too much, too much, that my brother should reappear, that he should intervene between us, Adrian, between you and me—endangering your actual existence. And he will come back—I know it, I feel it," she added wildly. "I believed him dead because I wished him dead. I still wish it. But that is useless—useless."
And, as though in ironic applause of Joanna's passionate denunciation, the two young ladies watching the game of tennis broke into enthusiastic hand-clapping.
"Well played—good—good—splendid—played indeed!" they cried, their voices ringing out through the still, hot air.
Marion Chase flung herself down on the terraced grass-bank.
"You're out of sight too strong for us," she gasped, laughingly. "We didn't have the ghost of a chance."
Challoner stood wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief. He was puffed up with pride, almost boisterously exultant. Ah! yes, let the hen-bird display her fine plumage and trail her wings ever so prettily, when it came to a fight the cock-bird had his innings, and could show he wasn't lacking in virility or spunk! He'd given them all a taste of his metal this afternoon, he flattered himself; taught them Joseph Challoner was something more than a common low-caste, office-bred, country attorney, half sharper, half lick-spittle sneak!
"The gray mare isn't the better horse yet awhile, eh, Miss Marion, your friends the suffragettes notwithstanding?" he said, jocosely. "All the same, I congratulate you. You and your partner made a plucky stand."
The elder Busbridge boy lay on his back, panting and tightening the supporting silk handkerchief about his lean young waist.
"My hat! that last rally was a breather though," he grunted. "I got regularly fed up with the way you kept me bargeing from side to side of that back court, Challoner. Double-demon, all-round champion terrifier—that's about the name to suit you, my good chap."
Joanna had come close to Adrian. Her prominent eyes were strained and clouded. Seam-like lines showed in her forehead and cheeks. Her poor mouth looked bruised, the outline of her lips frayed and discolored. Her likeness to the drawings upon the wall was phenomenal just then. It shocked Adrian, and it caused him to think.
"They have finished playing," she said. "They will come in to tea directly. I cannot remain and meet them. I must show some respect for my own dignity. They are all Margaret's friends. I do not care for them. I cannot expose myself to their observation. She must entertain them herself. I will go to my room. I must be alone until I have had time to regain my composure, until I know my own thought about this cruel, cruel event; until I have recovered in some degree from the shock I have suffered, and begin to see what my duty is."
"This is the last of the documents, Mr. Challoner?"
"Yes, that is the last of the lot. You noted the contents of Schedule D, covering the period from the end of the December quarter to the date of Mr. Smyrthwaite's death, among the Priestly Mills statement of accounts? The typed one—quite right. Yes, that's the lot."
"We may consider the whole of our business concluded?"
"That is so," Challoner said.
He stood in an easy attitude resting his elbow on the shelf of the red porphyry-mantelpiece of the smoking-room at Heatherleigh—a heavily furnished apartment, the walls hung with chocolate-colored imitation leather, in a raised self-colored pattern of lozenge-shaped medallions, each centered with a Tudor rose. The successes of the afternoon still inflated him. In addition to his triumphs in sports and pastimes, he had managed to say five words to Margaret Smyrthwaite. And, though the crucial question had neither been asked nor answered, he felt sure of her at last. His humor was hilarious and expansive—of the sort which chucks young women under the chin, digs old gentlemen in the ribs or slaps them familiarly upon the back. There was a covert sneer in the tail of Challoner's eye and a braggart tang in his talk. He swaggered, every inch of his big body pleased with living, almost brutally self-congratulatory and content.
"I am really under considerable obligation to you for giving up your evening to me, and letting me finish our business after office-hours thus. It will enable me to catch the night cross-Channel boat from Dover to-morrow. I shall be particularly glad to do so."
As he spoke, Adrian swung round the revolving chair, in which he sat before the large writing-table—loaded with bundles of folded papers, and legal documents engrossed on vellum tied round with pink tape. In turning, the light from the shaded incandescent gas-lamp, hanging directly above the table, brought his black hair and beard and white face into the high relief of some Rembrandt portrait.
"What's up with young Master Highty Tighty?" Challoner asked himself. "Looks off color, somehow, as if he'd had an uncommon nasty blow below the belt."
The windows and glass door stood open on to the garden, and the pungent scents of the great fir woods drawn forth by the day's sunshine mingled with that of Challoner's cigar and Adrian's cigarette.
"Oh! so you're off at once then, are you?" the former said. "That's something new, isn't it? I understood from the ladies you thought of stopping on here a bit. And when may we hope for the pleasure of seeing you again on this side of the silver strip?"
Adrian leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and crossing his feet.
"At the present time I really have no idea," he replied.
Challoner could hardly conceal his glee. For an instant he debated. Concluded he would venture on a reconnaissance. Flicked the end off his cigar into the fireplace.
"Miss Joanna will be sorry," he said.
"Both my cousins have been perfect in their amiability, in their hospitality, in their generous appreciation of any small services it has been in my power to render them," Adrian declared, rolling his r's and speaking with the hint of a foreign accent common to him when tired or vexed. "My cousins know that they can command my co-operation at a moment's notice should they require counsel or advice. But my own affairs, as they kindly and readily comprehend, cannot be too long neglected. My interests and my work are necessarily abroad—in France. It becomes imperative that I should return to my work."
"Not a doubt about it," Challoner said. "Work stands first. Though I own I'm glad my work doesn't oblige me to expatriate myself. I shouldn't relish that. Not a bit. Poor old England's good enough for me."
"Precisely—your interests and your work are here."
Challoner fitted the toe of his boot into the pattern of the hearth-rug, looking down and permitting himself a quiet laugh.
"Oh! Lord, yes," he said, "to be sure. My work and my interests are here right enough—very much here. I'm not ashamed of the word 'local,' or of the word 'provincial' either, Mr. Savage. My father invented Stourmouth, as you may say, and I've patented his invention. Stourmouth owes a good deal to the two Joseph Challoners, father and son; and I propose it should owe a long sight more, one way and another, before I join my poor old daddy 'under the churchyard sod.'"
"It is an act of piety to devote one's talents and energies to the welfare of one's native place," Adrian returned.
And therewith, judging he had made sufficient concession to the exigencies of the position in the matter of general conversation, he rose to depart. But Challoner stopped him.
"Just half a minute, will you please, Mr. Savage," he said. "It occurs to me if we're not likely to meet for some time there's one matter I ought to mention to you. I don't exactly care to take the whole onus of the thing upon my own shoulders. Of course, if you're cognizant of it, there's the beginning and end of the story as far as my responsibility goes. I may have my own opinion as to the wisdom, and—not to mince matters—the honesty of the arrangement. But, if you are aware of it and approve, my mouth, of course, is shut. Has Miss Smyrthwaite told you of the alteration she proposes making in her will?"
"Yes, she spoke of it to-day; and I dissuaded her from making it."
Challoner sucked in his breath with a soft whistle.
"Indeed?" he said. "That's a self-denying ordinance."
Adrian held himself extremely erect. His eyebrows were raised and the tip of his pugnacious nose was very much in the air.
"Pardon me, but I do not quite follow you," he said.
"Miss Smyrthwaite didn't explain the nature of the alterations very fully then, I take it?"
"My cousin informed me that she proposed to revoke certain gifts and bequests she had made to her brother, William Smyrthwaite—supposing him still to be living. Of this I disapproved. I told her so, giving her the reasons for my disapproval."
Challoner looked down and fitted the toe of his boot into the hearth-rug pattern once more.
"You hold the property should remain in the family—go to the direct heirs, the next of kin? A very sound principle; but one, if you'll excuse my saying so, few persons stick to where their personal advantage is involved."
"I repeat, I fail to follow you," Adrian returned, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands with an impatient movement.
"Perhaps Miss Smyrthwaite omitted to explain that this redistribution of her property was exclusively in your favor; all she mulcted her precious specimen of a brother of was to go not to her direct heir—her sister—but to yourself."
Whereupon, it must be conceded, the younger man's bearing became not a little insolent.
"Preposterous, my dear Challoner, utterly preposterous!" he cried. "For once your professional acumen must have quite scandalously deserted you, or you could not have so misunderstood my cousin's instructions."
It was not Challoner's cue to lose his temper. He had too many causes for self-congratulation to-night. And then, whether Adrian was bluffing or not, he believed—though it was annoying to find the young man so unmercenary—this repudiation of the proffered inheritance to be sincere.
"Joanna—Miss Smyrthwaite, I mean, I beg her pardon—is too good a woman of business to trust to verbal instructions. I have got the whole thing on paper, in black and white, there"—he pointed to the table. "I can lay my hand on it in half a minute. Possibly you'd like to look at it yourself, as you appear to doubt my word."
But for the moment Adrian was incapable of reply. This was what Joanna had meant! It was even worse than he had feared. He felt humiliated, hot with shame. And then, in spirit, he clasped those infamous drawings upon the wall and the subject of them, Bibby, the miserable wastrel Bibby, to his breast.
"Do you wish to look at Miss Smyrthwaite's instructions as to the transfer of her property, Mr. Savage?" Challoner repeated, a sneer in his voice.
But the young man had recovered his native adroitness.
"Clearly it would be superfluous for me to do so; because, as I have already informed you, Miss Smyrthwaite, recognizing the validity of my arguments, decides to cancel those instructions, to make no alteration in the disposition of her property. Happily I was in a position to convince her that it is premature to assume the fact of her brother's death. I have comparatively recent news of him."
Challoner's jaw dropped.
"The devil you have," he said, under his breath.
"Yes—'the devil,' quite possibly—as you so delicately put it," Adrian returned, lightly. "I have been tempted, at moments, to put it myself so, my dear Mr. Challoner. At others I have seemed to trace a really providential element in this strange affair. Directly the facts of William Smyrthwaite's reappearance came to my knowledge I placed Mr. Andrew Merriman in full possession of them."
"Oh, you did, did you?" Challoner commented.
"Yes. I considered this the correct course to pursue. Mr. Merriman was formerly employed by Mr. Smyrthwaite as the channel of communication between himself and his son."
"Graceless young hound!" Challoner snarled, caution swamped by anger and chagrin. It made him mad to think Adrian Savage had had this eminently disconcerting piece of information up his sleeve all along! Once more he'd been checkmated.
"Mr. Merriman generously accepts all responsibility in the conduct of this matter," Adrian went on. "And, I am sure you will feel with me, that his long and intimate connection with my cousins' family renders him quite the most suitable person to deal with it. Therefore, until further developments declare themselves—I beg your pardon? You express a pious hope further developments never will declare themselves? Possibly that might save trouble; but I fear the saving of trouble is hardly the main point in the present case. Therefore, until they do declare themselves, you will, I feel sure, agree that it is most undesirable this subject should be spoken about. Discussion of it can only cause my cousins agitation and heighten their suspense. This I am naturally most anxious they should be spared. Nothing, meanwhile, will be neglected. I shall do my part. Mr. Merriman will do his. I will ask you therefore to consider this conversation as strictly confidential."
"Oh! you needn't be afraid I shall blab," Challoner said. "Poor girl," he went on presently, pronouncing that dangerous catch-word as though it rhymed withcurl—"poor girl, poor Miss Margaret! It'll be an awful blow to her. She is so sensitive. She's given me to understand—indirectly, of course—when we've been talking over business, what an out-and-out rotter this precious brother of hers was. To my mind, you know, Mr. Savage, it's not a nice thing to turn such vermin as young Smyrthwaite loose on two defenseless women. I don't like it. Honestly I don't. So you needn't be afraid of my blabbing. My whole object, out of respect for the ladies and for poor old Smyrthwaite's memory, will be to keep matters dark. At the same time I note what you say about Merriman; which, I take it, is equivalent to telling me to keep my hands off. Very good, Mr. Savage. What I have just said proves I think that I am more than willing to keep my hands very much off this very dirty job. Still, there is one question which, even so, I imagine I am at liberty to ask. Are you sure of your facts?"
To Adrian Savage it appeared only two alternatives were open to him—namely, to treat his host with studied politeness or call him out. And England, perhaps unfortunately, is no longer a dueling country. Adrian's manner became elaborately sweet.
"As far as they go," he said, "I am, dear Mr. Challoner, absolutely sure of my facts."
"As far as they go? Well, there's room for hope they mayn't go very far, then—may be something of the nature of a scare, in short. And, if I may be allowed one question more, has this very edifying piece of family news been communicated to Margaret?"
"To—to whom?" Adrian said, with a civil interrogatory face, raised eyebrows, and a slightly elongated neck.
"Sorry I didn't speak plainly enough," Challoner snarled back. "Communicated to your cousin, Mr. Savage, Miss Margaret Smyrthwaite?"
"Not by me," the other returned, smiling affably. "And now, my dear Mr. Challoner," he went on, "since these labors in which we have been associated are at an end, let me thank you warmly for your able concurrence and for the priceless assistance you have given me in the administration of Mr. Smyrthwaite's estate. Accept, also, my thanks for your courtesy in permitting me to come here to your charming house to-night."
Adrian glanced around the forbidding apartment.
"I carry away with me so many interesting and instructive impressions," he said. "But now I really must trespass upon your time and indulgence no longer. Again thanks—and, since I leave at a comparatively early hour to-morrow, good-by, Mr. Challoner—good-by, good-night."
Some half-hour later Adrian turned into the garden of the Tower House by the wicket gate opening off the carriage-drive. And so doing, the tranquil beauty of the night made itself felt. During his walk from Heatherleigh his preoccupation had been too great to admit of the bestowal of intelligent attention upon outward things, however poetic their aspect. He possessed the comfortable assurance, it is true, of having worsted the animal Challoner in the only way possible, swords and pistols being forbidden. He also possessed the comfortable assurance of having scrupulously and successfully regulated theaffaireSmyrthwaite, in as far as business was concerned, and taken his discharge in respect of it. But the events of the afternoon had proved to him, beyond all shadow of doubt and denial, the existence of a secondaffaireSmyrthwaite, compared with which regulation of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property was, from his personal standpoint, but the veriest bagatelle! Now the question of how to deal with this secondaffaire, alike scrupulously and successfully, racked his brain, usually so direct in decision, so prompt in honorable instinct and thought. And it was to the young man's credit that, while fully measuring the abominable nature of the hole in which the unhappy Joanna had put him, he remained just and temperate in his judgment of Joanna herself. The more to his credit, because, as a native of a country where certain subjects are treated in a spirit of merry common-sense—which, if it makes in some degree for license, also makes for absence of hypocrisy and much wholesome delight in life—Joanna's attitude offered an obscure problem. Were she a vicious woman his position would be a comparatively simple one. But Joanna and vice were, he felt, far as the poles asunder. Even that ugly matter of "trying to buy him"—as in his first overwhelming disgust he had defined it—proved, on calmer inspection, innocent of any intention of offense. She didn't know, poor, dear woman, she didn't know. In her virtuous ignorance of certain fundamental tendencies of human nature, of the correlative action of body and spirit, she had not a conception of the atrocities she was in process of committing! For she was essentially high-minded, deep-hearted, sincere; a positive slave to the demands of her own overdeveloped moral sense. But, heavens and earth, if only those responsible for her education had taught her a little more about the nature of thegenus homo—male and female—and the physiology of her own emotions, and a little less about quite supererogatory theoretic ethics! The burning, though veiled, passion from which he recoiled was, he believed, in great measure the result of the narrow intellectualism on which she had been nurtured working upon a naturally ardent temperament. What she must have suffered! What she would suffer in the coming days!
For it was that last which hit Adrian hardest, in all this distracting imbroglio, giving him that "uncommon nasty blow below the belt" the effects of which Joseph Challoner had noted. The more he analyzed, and, analyzing, excused, Joanna's attitude the more odiously distasteful did his own position become. In how far was he to blame? What had he done, by word, act, or look, to provoke or to foster Joanna's most lamentable infatuation? He explored his memory, and, to his rather bitter amusement, found it an absolute blank. He had not flirted with her, even within the most restrained of the limits sanctioned by ordinary social intercourse. For this he did not commend himself. On the contrary, he felt almost penitent; since—there hadn't been any temptation to flirt. Positively not any—though Adrian knew himself to be by no means insensible to feminine influence. He loved Madame St. Leger. She constituted, so to speak, the religion of his heart. But he found dozens of other women charming, and did not scruple to—as good as—tell them so.—Why not? Are not such tellings the delightful and perfectly legitimate small change of a gallant man's affections? And out of the farthings and half-farthings, the very fractions of half-farthings, indeed—of such small change, Joanna had constructed a great and serious romance terminating in matrimony! The young man could have beat his breast, torn his hair, poured ashes upon his thus forcibly denuded scalp, and rent his up-to-date and particularly well-tailored garments. He, Adrian Savage, the husband of Joanna!—From this his lively Gallic imagination galloped away, blushing in humorous horror, utterly refusing to contemplate the picture. At the same time his pity for her was immense. And how, oh! how, without gross and really sickening cruelty, to dispel her disastrous delusion?
With the above question upon his lips, Adrian turned by the wicket gate into the garden, where the tranquil beauty surrounding him compelled his observation.
High above the dark-feathered crests of the firs, the moon, two days short of the full, rode in the south-eastern sky, obliterating all stars in the vicinity of her pathway. She showed to-night not as a flat disk plastered against the solid vault, but as a mammoth, delicately tarnished silver ball, traveling in stateliest fashion the steel-blue fields of space. The roofs and façade of the house, its multiplicity of glinting window-panes, the lawns and shrubberies, and all-encircling woodland, were alike overlaid with the searching whiteness of her light. The air was dry and very mellow, rich with a blending of forest and garden scents. Faintly to northward Adrian's ear could detect the rattle and grind of a belated tram on the Barryport Road, and, southward, the continuous wistful murmur of the mile-distant sea!
Now, as often before, he was sensible of the subtle charm produced by this conjunction of a highly finished, material civilization with gently savage and unsubjugated Nature. England is, in so great measure, a sylvan country even yet; a country of close-coming, abounding, and invading trees. And when, as now, just upon midnight, its transitory human populations—which in silly pride suppose themselves proprietors of the soil and all that grows upon it—are herded safe indoors, abed and asleep, the trees resume their primitive sovereignty, making their presence proudly evident. They had no voice to-night, it is true. They stood becalmed and silent. Yet the genius of them, both in their woodland unity and endless individual diversity of form and growth, declared itself nevertheless. For this last the infiltration of moonlight was partly accountable, since it lent each stem, branch, and twig, each differing species of foliage—the large leaves of laurel and rhododendron, the semi-transparent, fringed and fluted leaves of the beech, the finely spiked tufts of fir-needles—a definiteness and separateness such as hoar-frost might. Each tree and bush stood apart from its fellows in charming completeness and relief, challenging the eye by a certain sprightly independence of mien and aspect. Had they moved from their fixed places, the big trees mingling in some stately procession or dance, while the shrubs and bushes frisked upon the greensward, Adrian would hardly have been surprised. A spirit of phantasy was abroad—here in the Baughurst Park Ward, local municipal government notwithstanding—entrancing to his poetic sense.
Therefore he lingered, walking slowly along the path leading to the garden entrance of the house, here shaded by a broken line of tall Scotch firs, their smooth stems rising like pillars, bare of branches for some twenty or thirty feet. Now and again he stopped, held captive by the tranquil yet disquieting beauty of the scene. It reminded him strangely of Gabrielle St. Leger's beauty, and the something elusive, delicately malicious and ironic, in the character of it. Her smiling, unclosed lips, the dimple in her left cheek; those mysterious oblique glances from beneath her long-shaped, half-closed eyelids, full at once of invitation and reserve; the untamed, deliciously tricksy spirit he apprehended in her; and a something majestic, too, as of those vast, calm, steel-blue fields of space,—these, all and severally, he, lover-like, found mirrored in the loveliness of this May night.
On his left the lawns, flooded by moonlight, stretched away to the tennis court and the terrace walk in front of the pavilion. On his right, backed by the line of Scotch firs aforesaid, a thick wall of deciduous shrubs—allspice, lilac, syringa, hydrangea, sweetbrier, and laburnum—shut out the carriage-drive. The quaint leathery flowers of the allspice gave off a powerful and luscious sweetness as of sun-ripened fruit. Adrian paused, inhaling it, gazing meanwhile in fond imagination intola belle Gabrielle'sgolden-brown eyes, refreshingly forgetful of the distracting perplexities of theaffaireSmyrthwaite No. 2.
It was a good moment, at once chaste and voluptuous, wherein the very finest flame of ideal love burned upon his heart's altar. But it was broken up by an arresting apparition. For a white owl swept, phantom-like, out of the plantation behind the pavilion and beat over the moonlit turf in swift and absolutely noiseless flight. A soft thistle-down could hardly have passed more lightly or silently than the great wide-winged bird. Beneath it, its shadow, skimming the close-cut surface of the grass, seemed as much alive and more substantial than itself. Twice, while Adrian watched, moved and a little startled, it quartered the lawn in search of prey; then flung itself up, high in air, vanishing among the tree-tops, with a long-drawn hoo-hoo-hooing of hollow laughter. And in the space of a few seconds, from the recesses of the woodland, its mate answered with a far-off elfin echo of its sinister note. Then Adrian heard a window open. And, on to the far end of the red-balustraded balcony—extending along the first floor of the house, in the recess above the veranda—a woman came.
She was dressed in a whitenégligéof some soft, woolen material, which hung straight in knife-edge pleatings from her shoulders to her feet, covering them—as the young man could see between the wide-spaced balusters—and lying outspread for some inches around her upon the floor. Over this she wore a black cloak, straight-hanging too, made of some fine and supple fur. The fronts of it, which were thrown open, leaving her arms free, appeared to be lined with ermine. Her peculiar garb and the perceptible angularity of her form and action suggested some crabbed medieval figure of church wood-carving or memorial brass.
The woman looked so tall standing there as in a mural pulpit, high against the house-front, that at first sight Adrian, took her to be Marion Chase. But medieval and ecclesiastical associations were a little too glaringly out of place in connection with that remarkably healthy young amazon and athlete. Adrian dismissed them, with a sensible sinking of the heart. Instinctively he moved aside, seeking the deepest of the shadows cast by the fir-trees, pressing himself back among the bushes of sweet-flowered allspice. Of two evils one must choose the least. Concealment was repugnant to him; but, to go forward meant to be recognized and compelled to speak. And, to play the part of hero in some grim travesty of the Garden Scene from "Romeo and Juliet," was of the two vastly the more repugnant.
Becoming aware of a movement in the garden below, the woman leaned forward and gazed fixedly in his direction, showing in the bleaching moonlight Joanna Smyrthwaite's heavy, upturned hair, strained, prominent eyes and almost terrible face, so ravaged was it by emotion.
The night traffics in exaggerations; and Adrian's senses and sensibilities were already somewhat over-stimulated. Perhaps, therefore, it followed that, looking up at Joanna, she appeared to him clothed in hieratic garments as the elect exponent and high-priestess of all lovelorn, unmated, childless womanhood throughout the world. To him, just then, her aspect gathered up and embodied the fiercely disguised sufferings of all the barren, the ugly, the ungifted, the undesired and unsought; of that disfranchised multitude of women whose ears have never listened to recitation of a certain Song of Songs. Her youth—she was as young as he—her wealth, the ease, leisure, solid luxury which surrounded her, her possession of those material advantages which make for gaiety and security, for pleasant vanities, for participation in all the light-hearted activities of modern life, only deepened the tragedy. Denied by man and—since she was without religion—denying God, she did indeed offer a piteous spectacle. The more so, that he apprehended a toughness of fiber in her, arguing a power of protracted and obstinate resistance. Happier for her, surely, had she been made of weaker stuff, like her wretched brother of the vile drawings upon René Dax's studio wall!
Adrian's own personal share in this second and tragicaffaireSmyrthwaite came home to him with added poignancy as he stood thus, in hiding, amid the luscious sweetness of the flowering allspice. For one intolerable moment he questioned whether he could, whether he should, sacrifice himself, transmuting Joanna's besotted delusion into fact and truth. But reason, honor, love, the demands of his own rich vitality, his keen value of life and of the delights of living, his poetic and his artistic sense, the splendid call of all the coming years, his shrewdness, his caution, his English humor and his Gallic wit, arose in hot and clamorous rebellion, shouting refusal final and absolute. He couldn't do it. Death itself would be preferable. It came very simply to this—he could not.
Just then he saw Joanna draw her costly cloak about her neck and shoulders, as though struck by sudden and sharp cold. Again the sinister note of the owls in greeting and in answer came from the recesses of the great woodland. And again Joanna, leaning forward, scrutinized the shadows of the garden path with pale, strained eyes. Then raising both hands and pressing them against her forehead as though in physical pain, she turned and went indoors, closing the window behind her.
Both pity and policy kept the young man for another, far from agreeable, five minutes in the shelter of the allspice bushes before venturing into the open. Upon the veranda he waited again, conscious of intense reluctance to enter the house. He knew his decision to be sane and right, the only one possible, in respect of Joanna; yet he felt like a criminal, a betrayer, a profligate trader in women's affections. He called himself hard names, knowing them all the while to be inapplicable and unjust; but his sympathies were excited, his imagination horror-struck by that lately witnessed vision of feminine disfranchisement and distress.
At his request the men-servants had left the door opening from the veranda unlocked. Passing along the corridor into the hall, he became very sensible of the silence and suspended animation of the sleeping house. The curtains of the five-light, twenty-foot staircase window were drawn back. Through the leaded panes of thickened clouded glass moonlight filtered, stamping misty diaper-work upon walls and floor, painting polished edges and surfaces of woodwork with lines and patches of shining white. On a small table at the foot of the stairs decanters and glasses, a cut-glass jug of iced water, a box of cigars, silver candlestick and matchbox had been placed against his return. But the young man was in no humor just now for superfluous drinks or superfluous lights. He felt apprehensive, childishly distrustful of the quiet reigning in the house, as though, behind it, some evil lay in wait to leap upon and capture him He felt nervous. This at once annoyed him and made him keenly observant and alert. He stood a moment listening, then ran up the wide, shallow tread of the stairs lightly, three steps at a time. On the level of the half-flight, under the great window, he paused. The air was hot and heavy. His heart beat. A door opened from the right on to the gallery above. Some one came forward, with a soft dragging of draperies over the thick carpet, through the dim checkerings of the moonlight.
"Adrian," Joanna called, whisperingly, "Adrian, is that you?"
The young man took a long breath. His nerves grew steady. He came calmly up the remaining half-flight, his head carried high, his face serious, his eyes a little hard and very bright. Childish fears, exaggerations of self-condemnation, left him at the sound of Joanna's voice; but he was sorry, very sorry, both for her and—for himself.
"Yes, Cousin Joanna," he answered, and his speech, to his own hearing, had a somewhat metallic ring in it.
If there must be an interview at this highly indiscreet hour of the night it should at least be open and above-board, conducted in tones which the entire household could, if it chose, hear plainly enough. Both for his own honor and Joanna's this was best.
"I have just come back from Heatherleigh," he continued. "You will be glad to know that Mr. Challoner and I have finished the business connected with your father's property. All outstanding accounts and all duties upon the estate are now paid. All documents are signed, receipted, and in order."
Joanna made an impatient gesture as though thrusting aside some foolish obstruction.
"Yes," she said, "no doubt; but it is not about the property I need to speak to you, Adrian. My mind is quite at ease about that. It is about something else. It is about myself."
"Ah, yes?" the young man inquired, gravely.
"I did not come down to dinner to-night. I felt sure you would understand and excuse me. I could not. I could not have borne to be with Margaret and Marion Chase and to listen to their trivial talk in your presence, after our conversation of this afternoon. I had to be alone that I might think, that I might bring my temper into subjection to my will. Isherwood told me you had gone out after dinner. But I felt I could not rest without seeing you again to-night. I felt I must speak to you, must ask your forgiveness, must try to explain. So I waited up. The owls startled me, and I went on to the balcony. I fancied you were in the garden. But I could not see you. Later I heard your footsteps"—Joanna paused breathlessly—"your footsteps," she repeated, "upon the pavement of the veranda. My courage failed. I felt ashamed to meet you. But it would be so very dreadful to have you think harshly of me—so, so I came."
Owing to the vague quality of the light Adrian failed to see her face distinctly, and for this he was thankful. But he knew that her arms hung straight at her sides, and that, under cover of her costly cloak, her poor hands clutched and clutched against the white knife-pleatings of her dress.
"Dear cousin," he said, "I have no cause to think harshly of you. Indeed, my thought has been occupied with sympathy for the trials that you have already undergone, and with regret that I should be instrumental in recalling distressing events to your mind."
"Ah! I deserve no sympathy," she declared, vehemently, turning aside and moving restlessly to and fro. "I do not deserve that excuses should be made for me. This afternoon I showed my character in a shocking light. Perhaps it was the true light. Perhaps my character is objectionable. I both felt and said what was cruel and intemperate. I was selfish. I only considered my own happiness. I repudiated my duty toward my brother. I wished him dead, because his return, and all the anxiety and thought the probability of that return necessarily occasions, interfered with my own plans, with my own beautiful prospects and hopes."
She came close, standing before the young man, her hands clasped, her body visibly shuddering beneath her hieratic garments.
"Now I have come to myself, Adrian. I realize—indeed I realize—the enormity of my own callousness, my own selfishness. I realize, too, the dreadful impression of my nature which you must have received. If you repudiated me I should have no valid cause for complaint. My reason forces me to acknowledge that I deserve your censure; that if you turn from me—dreadful, dreadful as it would be—I shall have brought that misery upon myself. Dreadful, dreadful," she moaned, "too dreadful to contemplate—yet deserved, invited by the exhibition of my own ungovernable temper—deserved—there is the sting of it."
"But—but, my dear Joanna," Adrian broke forth, carried out of himself by the spectacle of her grief, "you are fighting with shadows. You are torturing yourself with non-existent iniquities. Calm yourself, dear cousin. Look at things quietly and in a reasonable spirit. Your brother is, unfortunately, unsatisfactory and troublesome, a difficult person to deal with. His errors of conduct have caused his family grave inconvenience and sorrow. Let us be honest. Let us freely admit all that. He is not a young man to be proud of. What more natural then than that you should recoil from the idea of his return? That, in the first shock of the idea being presented to you, you should strongly express your alarm, your distaste? It is only human. Who but a hypocrite or pedant would condemn you for that! Calm yourself, dear cousin. Be just to yourself. I could not permit you to revoke your gifts to your brother. My own honor was a little involved there perhaps—"
Adrian smiled at her reassuringly, putting some force upon himself.
"Let us be sensible," he continued. "Let us be moderate. At the present time we have no reliable information as to where your brother is. We may not discover him. He may never come back. Meanwhile, I implore you, dismiss this painful subject from your mind. Be merciful to your own nerves, dear Joanna. Remember Andrew Merriman and I engage to do our best, to exercise all care, all delicacy, in the prosecution of our inquiries. When necessary we will consult with you"—he spread out his hands, his head a little on one side, consolatory, debonair, charming.—"Ah! dear cousin, be advised—do not agitate yourself further. Leave it all at that."
Joanna sighed once or twice. Put up her hands, pressing them against her forehead. Her body swayed slightly as she stood. Her hands dropped at her side again. She looked fixedly, intently, at Adrian Savage. Her mouth was a little open. The ecstatic expression, so nearly touching upon idiocy, had come back.
"Then nothing is changed—nothing is altered between us?" she whispered.
The young man took her hand, and bowing low over it, kissed it. As he raised himself he looked her full in the face.
"No, nothing, my dear cousin," he said.
There were tears in his eyes, and his voice shook. He was filled with apology, with immeasurable concern and regret, with an immeasurable craving for her forgiveness, in that he spoke actual and literal truth. For nothing was changed—no, nothing.—He never had loved, he did not love, he never could love Joanna Smyrthwaite.
He stayed for no further word or look. Practically he ran away. But there is just one thing, on the face of the earth, from which a brave man may run without smallest accusation of cowardice—namely, a woman who loves him and whom he does not love! Once in his room Adrian bolted the door on the inside as well as locking it, and began to pack. He would take the mid-day rather than the night cross-Channel boat to-morrow. Then, with relief, he remembered that it was already to-morrow. In a few hours the servants would be about.
Twice before dawn he fancied he heard footsteps and a soft dragging of draperies over the carpet of the corridor. He opened the windows wide, and let in the singing of birds greeting the morning from the woodland. For the sound of those footsteps and softly dragging draperies cut him to the heart with sorrow for womanhood unfulfilled—womanhood denied by man, and, not having religion, denying God.
The last of Miss Beauchamp's receptions for the season drew to a vivacious close. Sunday would witness the running of theGrand Prix. Then the world would begin to scatter, leaving Paris to the inquiring foreigner, the staggering sunshine, some few millions of the governing classes—new style—the smells, the sparrows, and the dust.
As a woman consciously looking threescore and ten in the face Anastasia felt very tired. Her throat was husky and her back ached. But, as a hostess, she felt elate, gratified, even touched. For everybody had come. Had worn their smartest new summer clothes. Had been animated, complimentary, appreciative. Had drunk China tea or iced coffee; eaten strawberries and cream, sweetmeats, ices, and wonderful little cakes, and declared "Mademoiselle Beauchamp's ravishing 'five-o'clock'" to be entirely different from and superior to any other "five-o'clock" of the whole of their united and separate experience.
Art and letters were, of course, fully represented; but politics and diplomacy made a fair show as well. Anastasia greeted three members of the Chamber, two of the Senate, a Cabinet Minister, and a contingent from the personnel of both the English and the Italian embassies. The coveted red ribbon was conspicuous by its presence. And all these delightful people had the good sense to arrive in relays; so that the rooms—the furniture of them disposed against the walls—had never throughout the afternoon been too crowded for circulation, had never been too hot.
Delicious Nanny Legrenzi, of theOpéra Comique, sang—and looked—like an impudent angel. Ludovico Müller played like a whirlwind, a zephyr, a lost soul, a quite rampantly saved soul—what you will! And every one talked. Heavenly powers, how they had talked!—their voices rising from a gentle adagio, through a tripping capriccioso, to the magnificently sustained fortissimo so welcome, so indescribably satisfying, to the ear of the practised hostess. Yes, all had gone well, excellently well, and now they were in act of departing.
Anastasia, weary, but genial and amused, on capital terms with her fellow-creatures and with herself, stood in the embrasure of one of the windows in the second room of the suite. Behind her red and pink rambler roses and ferns, in pots, formed a living screen against the glass, pleasantly tempering the light. Ludovico Müller had just made his bow and exit, leaving the music-room empty; while in the first and largest room Madame St. Leger, who helped her to receive to-day, bade farewell to the guests as they passed on into the cool, lofty hall.
"I have entertained him the best I know, Miss Beauchamp," Lewis Byewater said. "But he did not appear keen to converse on general topics. Seemed to need to specialize. Wanted to have me tell him just who every one present was."
"His talent always lay in the direction of biographical research—modern biography, well understood. And so, like a dear, kind young man, you told him who everybody was?"
"Within the limits of my own acquaintance, I did so. But, you see, in this crowd quite a number of persons were unknown to me," Byewater—a clean, fair, ingenuous and slightly unfinished-looking youth, with a candid, shining forehead, carefully tooled and gilded teeth, a meager allowance of hair, a permanent pince-nez, and a pronounced transatlantic accent—explained conscientiously. "I did my best, and when I got through with my facts I started out to invent. I believe I thickened up the ranks of the French aristocracy to a perfectly scandalous extent. But the Colonel appeared thirsty on titles."
"A form of thirst entirely unknown to your side of the Atlantic!" Anastasia retorted. "Never mind. If you have done violence to the purity of your republican principles by a promiscuous ennobling of my guests you have sinned in the cause of friendship, my dear Byewater, and I am infinitely obliged to you. But where is Colonel Haig now?"
"In the outer parlor, I believe, watching Madame St. Leger wish the rear-guard good-day. He proposes to remain to the bitter end of this reception, Miss Beauchamp. He confided as much to me. He is sensible of having the time of his lifereParisian society people, so he proposes to stick. But you must be pretty well through with any wish for entertaining by this," the kindly fellow went on—"so you just tell me truly if you would prefer to have me go off right now, or have me wait awhile till the Colonel shows signs of getting more satiated and take him along too? I intended proposing to dine him somewhere, anyway, to-night."
"You are the very nicest of all nice young men, and unquestionably I shall meet you in heaven," Anastasia asserted, heartily. "And as I shall arrive there so long before you, you may count on my saying all manner of handsome things to St. Peter about you. Oh yes, stay, my dear boy, and carry the title-thirsty Colonel away with you. By all manner of means, stay."
Byewater flushed up to the top of his shining forehead. He looked at her shyly out of his clear, guileless eyes.
"I do not feel to worry any wearing amount over the Apostle, Miss Beauchamp," he said, slowly. "I believe it is more Mr. Adrian Savage at the present who stands to break up my rest. If you could say some favorable things about me to him, I own it would be a let up. He accepted my articles upon the Eighteenth-Century Stage; but I do not seem any forwarder with getting them positively published. I suppose he is holding them over for the dead season. Well, I presume there is appropriateness in that; for, seeing the time it has lain in his office, the manuscript must be very fairly moth-eaten by this."
"Oh, trust me!" Anastasia cried, genially. "I'll jog his memory directly I see him—which I shall do as soon as he returns from England. Never fear, I'll hustle him to some purpose if you'll stay now and deliver me from this military genealogical incubus. Look—how precious a contrast!—here they come."
Madame St. Leger entered the room, talking, smiling, while Rentoul Haig, short, but valiantly making the most of his inches, his chest well forward, neat as a new pin, his countenance rosy, furiously pleased and furiously busy, with something between a marching and a dancing step, paraded proudly beside her.
La belle Gabriellehad discarded black garments, and blossomed delicately into oyster-gray chiffon and a silk netted tunic to match, finished with self-colored silk embroideries and deep, sweeping knotted fringe. The crown of her wide-brimmed gray hat was massed with soft, drooping ostrich plumes of the same reposeful tint, which lifted a little, waving slightly as she advanced. A scarlet tinge showed in the round of her charming cheeks. Mischief looked out of her eyes and tipped the corners of her smiling mouth. She was, indeed, much diverted by the small and pompous British warrior strutting at her side. He offered example of a type hitherto unknown to her. She relished him greatly. She also relished the afternoon's experiences. They were exhilarating. She felt deliciously mistress of herself and deliciously light-hearted. It is comparatively easy to despise the world when you are out of it. But now, the seclusion of her mourning being over, returning to the world, she could not but admit it a vastly pleasant place. This afternoon it had broadly smiled upon her; and she found herself smiling back without any mental reservation in respect of ideas and causes. At seven and twenty, though you may hesitate to circumscribe your personal liberty by marriage with one man, the homage of many men—if respectfully offered—is by no manner of means a thing to be sneezed at. Gabrielle St. Leger did not sneeze at it. On the contrary she gathered admiring looks, nicely turned compliments, emulous attentions, veiled ardors of manner and of speech, into a bouquet, so to speak, to tuck gaily into her waistband. The sense of her own beauty, and of the power conferred by that beauty, was joyful to her. Under the stimulus of success her tongue waxed merry, so that she came off with flying colors from more than one battle of wit. And, for some reason, all this went to make her think with unusual kindliness of her absent lover. In this vivacious, mundane atmosphere, Adrian Savage would be so eminently at home and in place! His presence, moreover, would give just that touch of romance, that touch of sentiment, to the sparkling present which—and there Gabrielle thought it safest to stop.
"Ah! it has been so very, very agreeable, your party, most dear friend," she said in her pretty careful English, taking her hostess's hand in both hers. "I find myself quite sorrowful that it should be at an end. I could say 'and please how soon may we begin all over again' like my little Bette when she too is happy."
"Dear child, dear child," Anastasia returned affectionately, almost wistfully, for nostalgia of youth is great in those who, though bravely acquiescent, are no longer young.
Gray hair happened to be the fashion in Paris this season. About a week previously Miss Beauchamp had mysteriously closed her door to all comers. To-day she emerged gray-headed. This transformation at once perplexed and pleased her many friends. If it admitted her age, and by lessening the eccentricity of her appearance made her less conspicuous, it gave her an added dignity, strangely softening and refining the expression of her large-featured, slightly masculine face. Just now, in a highly ornate black lace and white silk gown, and suite of ruby ornaments set in diamonds—whereby hung a tale not unknown to a certain hidden garden—Anastasia Beauchamp, in the younger woman's opinion, showed not only as an impressive but as a noble figure.
"Ah yes, and you should know, Colonel 'Aig," the latter continued, the aspirate going under badly in her eagerness, "since you have not for so long a time seen her, that it is always thus with Mademoiselle Beauchamp at her parties. She produces a mutual sympathy between her guests so that, while in her presence, they adore one another. It is her secret. She makes all of us at our happiest, at our best. We laugh, but we are also gentle-hearted. We desire to do good."
"That is so," Byewater put in nasally. "I indorse your sentiments, Madame St. Leger. When I came over I believed I should find I had left the finest specimens of modern woman behind in America. But I was mistaken. Miss Beauchamp is positively great."
"And—and me, Mr. Byewater?" Gabrielle asked with a naughty mouth.
"Oh! well, you—Madame St. Leger," the poor youth faltered, turning away modestly, his countenance flaming very bright red.
"I require no assurances regarding our hostess's brilliant social gifts," Rentoul Haig declared, mouthing his words so as to make himself intelligible to this foreign, or semi-foreign, audience. "My memory carries me back to—"
"The year one, my dear Colonel, the year one," Anastasia interrupted—"the old days at Beauchamp Sulgrave. Great changes there, alas, since my poor brother's death. Between Death Duties and Land Taxes, my cousin can't afford to keep the place up, or thinks he can't, which amounts to much the same thing. He is trying to sell a lot of the farms at Beauchamp St. Anne's hear.
"England is being ruined by those iniquitous Land Taxes, I give you my word, Miss Beauchamp, simply ruined. Take Beauchamp Sulgrave, for instance. Perfect example of an English country-house, amply large enough yet not too large for comfort, and really lovely grounds. Just the type of place that always has appealed to me. I remember every stick and stone of it. I give you my word, I find it difficult to speak with moderation of these Radical nobodies, whose thieving propensities endanger the preservation of such places on the old hospitable and stately basis. I remember my regiment was in camp at Beauchamp St. Anne's—I am afraid it was in the seventies—and your party from Sulgrave used kindly to drive over to tea, regimental sports, and impromptu gymkhanas. Charming summer! How it all comes back to me, Miss Beauchamp!"
He cleared his throat, pursing up his lips and nodding his head quite sentimentally.
"Really, I cannot say what a resuscitation of pleasant memories it gave me, when our mutual friend Savage mentioned your name one day at my cousin, the Smyrthwaites' house, at Stourmouth, this winter. Directly my doctor ordered me to Aix-les-Bains.—A touch of gout, nothing more serious. My health is, and always has been, excellent, I am thankful to say.—I determined to remain a few days in Paris on my way out, in the hope of renewing our acquaintance. Savage told me—"
Gabrielle had dropped her friend's hand.
"Ah! these climbing roses, are they not ravishing?" she exclaimed, advancing her nose to the pink clusters daintily. "See then, M. Byewater, if you please, can you tell me the name of them? I think I will buy some to decorate my own drawing-room. The colors would sympathize—'armonize—is it that, yes?—so prettily with my carpet.—You recall the tone of my carpet?—And of my curtains. Though whether it is worth while, since I so soon leave Paris!"
"Is that so, Madame St. Leger?" Byewater asked rather blankly.
"Savage is a delightful fellow, a really delightful fellow," Rentoul Haig asserted largely.
"For the summer, oh yes,"la belle Gabriellealmost gabbled. "I take my mother and my little girl to the—how do you say?—to the sea-bathings. On the Norman coast I have rented achalet. The climate is invigorating. It will benefit my mother, whose health causes me anxieties. And my little girl will enjoy the society of some little friends, whose parents rent for this season a neighboring villa."
"Ah! precisely that is what I want to talk to you about. Come and sit down, Colonel Haig."
Anastasia raised her voice slightly.
"Here—yes—on the settee. And now about Adrian Savage. I confess I begin to look upon this executorship as an imposition. It is not quite fair on him, poor dear fellow. It occupies time and thought which would be expended much more profitably elsewhere. He is as good as gold about it all, but I know he feels it a most inconvenient tie. It interferes with his literary work, which is serious, and with his social life here—with his friendships."
"Yes, I do not usually go to the coast. I accompany my mother to her native province—to Savoy"—Madame St. Leger's voice had also risen. "To Chambéry, where we have relations. You are not acquainted with Chambéry, M. Byewater? Ah! but you make a mistake. You should be. It is quite the old France, very original, quite of the past ages. I love it; but this year—"
"In my opinion it is quite time Savage was set free." Anastasia's tone waxed increasingly emphatic. "You must forgive my saying the Smyrthwaite ladies are very exacting, Colonel Haig. They appear to trade upon his chivalry and forbearance to a remarkable extent. Doesn't it occur to them that a young man, in his position, has affairs of his own in plenty to attend to?"
"This year the sea-bathing will certainly be more efficacious. No doubt the mountain air in Savoy is also invigorating; but the changes of climate are so rapid, so injurious—"
"Perhaps there are other attractions, of a not strictly business character. One cannot help hearing rumors, you know. And recently I have been a good deal at the Miss Smyrthwaites' myself. As a connection of their mother's, in their rather unprotected condition, I have felt it incumbent upon me to keep my eye on matters."
Rentoul Haig settled himself comfortably upon the settee beside his hostess, inclining sideways, a little toward her. He spoke low, confidentially, as one communicating state secrets, his nose inquisitive, his mouth puckered, his whole dapper person irradiated by a positive rapture of gossip. He simmered, he bubbled, he only just managed not to boil over, in his luxury of enjoyment. Anastasia listened, now fanning herself, now punctuating his discourse with incredulous ejaculations and gestures descriptive of the liveliest dissent.
"Incredible! my dear Colonel," she cried. "You must be misinformed. Savage is regarded as a most desirablepartihere in Paris. He can marry whom he pleases. Impossible! I know better."
"Then do you tell me it is unhappily quite true that M. René Dax is ill, M. Byewater?" Gabrielle St. Leger inquired in unnecessarily loud, clear accents.
"Well, I would hesitate to make you feel too badly about him, Madame St. Leger," the conscientious youth returned cautiously. "I cannot speak from first-hand knowledge, since I would not presume to give myself out as among M. Dax's intimates. He has been a made man this long time, while I am only now starting out on schemes for arriving at fame myself way off in the far by and by."
"Never in life!" Anastasia cried, in response to further confidential bubblings. "You misread our friend Savage altogether if you suppose his heart could be influenced by the lady's wealth. He is the least mercenary person I know. The modern fortune-hunting madness has not touched him, I am delighted to say. Then, he is really quite comfortably off already. He has every reasonable prospect of being rich eventually. He is very shrewd in money matters; and he has friends whom, I can undertake to say, will not forget him when the final disposition of their worldly goods is in question. He is a man of sensibility, of deep feeling, capable of a profound and lasting attachment."
She paused, glancing atla belle Gabrielle.
"I would not like to have you think I underrate Mr. Dax's talent." This from Byewater. "I recognize he is just as clever as anything. But I am from a country where the standards are different, and much of Mr. Dax's art is way over the curve of the world where my sympathy fails to follow. This being so, I have never made any special effort to get into direct personal contact—"