CHAPTER XIIITWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-TWO
Miss Strangforth’s butler threw open the door of an exquisite little upstairs sitting-room, and announced Otho and Eleanor. The latter, whose whole mind had been dwelling in anticipation on the meeting with this woman whom she disliked in advance, got a sort of jar through her nerves as, on walking into the room, she confronted, not only Magdalen luxuriously stretched in a low easy-chair by the fire, but, much more conspicuous at the moment, the figure of a man, standing on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fire. A slight shock went through her as she encountered the pair of grave and searching eyes which had been present in her mind more than once during the last twenty-four hours. It was Michael Langstroth who looked at her. Eleanor’s first feeling was an unreasoning one of disappointment. ‘He comes to see her too, then.’ The next was one of satisfaction. ‘At any rate, I shall now learn who he is.’
Then her attention was drawn to Magdalen, as the latter rose, with a slight ‘Ah!’ and advanced, saying, ‘Well, Otho, how do you do?’
Eleanor looked at her. She had a rapid general impression of a tall woman, beautiful both in face and form, and arrayed in a mouse-coloured velvet gown—awoman whose exceedingly white and finely-shaped hands held some brilliant scarlet wool and ivory knitting-needles; who had eyes which for darkness and coldness could not be surpassed, and a sweet and frigid smile.
‘Well,’ Otho retorted, not very gaily; ‘I’ve smashed through all etiquette and ceremony, I suppose, in doing this, and brought my sister to see you, instead of waiting for you to come and see her. Eleanor, this is my friend, Miss Wynter.’
He led his sister a little forward as he spoke, so that she was fully displayed to Magdalen’s view; and Miss Wynter’s eyes encountered a sight she did not often see—a woman as beautiful as herself, and possessing, too, the powerful advantage of being six years younger than she was. Her plain dark riding dress suited to admiration the frank and hardy youthfulness of the wearer; for with all her softness of voice and outline, and for all the rounded grace of her form, there was a hardiness about Eleanor Askam which gave piquancy to her whole aspect.
‘It was very good of you, Otho, and exceedingly good of you, Miss Askam. I was absolutely unable to go out this afternoon, and I wanted so much to make your acquaintance.’ She extended her hand to Eleanor, and smiled her usual smile; one without any flavour of insincerity, or of sincerity either—a smile which repelled and displeased Eleanor, she knew not why.
‘Otho seemed extremely anxious about it,’ she said, coolly and gravely, ‘and I did what he wished me to do.’
Her voice rang out, clear and distinct—no muffled notes, and no hesitation or pretence of being delighted to pay the visit. Magdalen noted it all, and replied sweetly—
‘Yes; I am so glad you came. Take this easy-chair, and——Oh, Michael, I beg your pardon.’ She slurred over an almost inaudible introduction.
‘Miss Askam and I have met already,’ said Michael with composure. ‘I think I may safely claim the honour of having been before you in having made her acquaintance.’
‘No—how?’ exclaimed Magdalen, arrested.
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor, looking at Michael as she seated herself. ‘I did not know who Mr.——’
‘Langstroth,’ said Michael, speaking for himself.
‘Langstroth,’ repeated Eleanor, with a little bow, ‘was; nor he who I was.’
‘I beg your pardon. I read your name on the label that was on your bag,’ he remarked; but he neither bowed nor smiled, though it would have been impossible to say that his manner was not polite. It was very much so, but not at all cordial.
‘Mr. Langstroth saved me from getting out a station too soon,’ she said, turning to Otho, in explanation. She could not help seeing that his moody countenance wore anything but one of its lighter expressions. He stood stiffly, his hat and whip in his hand, and a fleeting side-glance had shown her that he and the stranger (was he any relation, she wondered, to Otho’s great friend, Gilbert Langstroth, who was coming down for Christmas?) had exchanged a very slight and indifferent acknowledgment of each other’s presence.
Michael Langstroth, now standing upright, looking on, betrayed no feeling of any kind as he heard her remark. It was five years now since he had had a letter from Magdalen, which had gone near to turning his brain. Such episodes have the effect upon those whoreceive them of, to use a vulgarism, killing or curing. Michael had been cured; hence his presence in Magdalen’s boudoir now; hence his ability to stand by and take in the comedy of the situation, and to feel decidedly, if a little sardonically, amused at what was taking place.
He did not sit down again. He wished Magdalen good afternoon; and Eleanor noticed that, although polite—she had a strong conviction that under no possible combination of circumstances could he be impolite—he was not what could be called genial. He was grave and distant, and however slight this gravity and distance, they were present, and Eleanor, keenly sensitive to manner and expression, noticed them instantly. Michael said he would call again in a few days, bowed to them all, and took his departure.
‘Now, Otho,’ said Miss Wynter, almost before Michael had left the room, ‘I have something to tell you. I had better do it now, before I forget. Briggs has got a very wonderful colt to show you, and has been expressing the most ardent longing——’
‘Briggs—a colt!’ exclaimed Otho, with unaffected interest and animation; ‘I’ll go to him this minute. I suppose he is at the stables?’
‘I suppose so—somewhere there,’ replied Magdalen nonchalantly; and Otho disappeared instantly, while Eleanor sat still, feeling intensely displeased, less at what was actually said and done than at the tone and the manner of it. Fine-tempered and incapable of behaving with insolence or impertinence to any inferior, it yet seemed to her that Magdalen was scarcely in a position to order Otho to the stables, so that she might be left alone with his sister; or, indeed, to call him by his Christian name, and almost openly to hint that shewanted him out of the way—unless, indeed, she were engaged to be married to him, which Eleanor, with a sudden sense of apprehension, hoped she was not; and recalling Otho’s dissertations on their ride hither, she felt it was scarcely possible that he could be.
While she was thinking these thoughts, and while the shadow of them was on her too expressive countenance, Magdalen sank back in her chair, watching her visitor keenly, if unobtrusively. When she addressed her, she spoke with a smile, but her eyes, Eleanor noticed, did not in the least partake of the smile upon her lips. She smiled, not because she felt pleased, or genial, or mirthful, but mechanically—because it is the custom to smile when you receive your guests.
Eleanor, on her part, was conscious of liking less and less the aroma, as it were, of Miss Wynter and her surroundings; but she was aware that this was blind prejudice, and was determined to overcome it if she could. She was very young, and Otho had not been wrong when he had described her as enthusiastic; but she felt a kind of mental and moral chill, or ever she had really entered into conversation with this woman, who had, as it were, been so suddenly flung across her path, and who, she began to realise, must be a powerful influence in Otho’s life. It must be so, she reflected, or he would not thus have been eager to bring them together, and then as eager to leave them alone. Alone, for what?—to discover the innate and latent points of sympathy between them, and to rejoice in them, or to fight out their radical differences to the bitter end?