Eugénie de Pastourelles was sitting on the terrace at Versailles. Or rather she was established in one of the deep embrasures between the windows, on the western side. The wind was cold, but again a glorious sun bathed the terrace and the château. It was a day of splendour—a day when heaven and earth seemed to have conspired to flatter and to adorn the vast creation of Louis Quatorze, this white, flaming palace, amid the gold and bronze of its autumn trees, and the blue of its waters. Superb clouds, of a royal sweep and amplitude, sailed through the brilliant sky; the woods that girdled the horizon were painted broadly and solidly in the richest colour upon an immense canvas steeped in light. In some of the nearer alleys which branch from the terrace, the eye travelled, through a deep magnificence of shade, to an arched and framed sunlight beyond, embroidered with every radiant or sparkling colour; in others, the trees, almost bare, met lightly arched above a carpet of intensest green—atapis vertstretching toward a vaporous distance, and broken by some god, or nymph, on whose white shoulders the autumn leaves were dropping softly one by one.
Wide horizons, infinitely clear—a blazing intensity of light, beating on the palace, the gardens, the statues, and the distant water of the 'Canal de Versailles'—each tint and outline, sharp and vehement, full-bodied and rich—the greenest greens, the bluest blues, the most dazzling gold:—this was Versailles, as Eugénie saw it, on this autumn day. And through it all, the blowing of a harsh and nipping wind sounded the first approach of winter, still defied, as it were, by these bright woods decked for a last festival.
It was the 5th of October—the very anniversary of the day when Marie Antoinette, sitting alone beside the lake at Trianon, was startled by a page from the château bringing the news of the arrival of the Paris mob, and the urgent summons to return at once;—the day when she passed the Temple of Love, gleaming amid the quiet streams, for the last time, and fled back through the leafy avenues leading to Versailles, under a sky—cloudy and threatening rain—which was remembered by a later generation as blending fitly with the first act of that most eminent tragedy—'The Fall of the House of France.'
Madame de Pastourelles had in her hand a recent book in which a French man of letters, both historian and poet, had told once again the most piteous of stories; a story, however, which seemed then, and still seems, to be not even yet ripe for history—so profound and living are the sympathies and the passions which to this day surround it in France.
Eugénie had closed the book, and her eyes, as they looked out upon the astonishing light and shade of the terrace and its surroundings, had filled unconsciously with tears, not so much for Marie Antoinette, as for all griefs!—for this duped, tortured, struggling life of ours—for the 'mortalia' which grip all hearts, which none escape—pain, and separation, and remorse, hopes deceived, and promise mocked, decadence in one's self, change in others, and that iron gentleness of death which closes all.
For nearly a year she had been trying to recover her forces after an experience which had shaken her being to its depths. Not because, when she went to nurse his last days, she had any love left, in the ordinary sense, for her ruined and debased husband; but because of that vast power of pity, that genius for compassion to which she was born. Not a tremor of body or soul, not a pang of physical or spiritual fear, but she had passed through them, in common with the man she upheld; a man who, like Louis the Well-Beloved, former master of the building beneath whose shadow she was sitting, was ready to grovel for her pardon, when threatened with a priest and the last terrors, and would have recalled his mistress, rejoicing, with the first day of recovered health.
He and she had asked for respite in vain, however; and M. dePastourelles slept with his fathers.
Since his death, her strength had failed her. There had been no definite illness, but a giving way for some six or seven months of nature's resisting powers. Also—significant sign of the strength of all her personal affections!—in addition to the moral and physical strain she had undergone, she had suffered much about this time from the loss of her maid, an old servant and devoted friend, who left her shortly after M. de Pastourelles' death—incited, forced thereto by Eugénie—in order to marry and go out to Canada. Eugénie had missed her sorely; and insensibly, the struggle to get well had been the harder. The doctors ordered travel and change, and she had wandered from place to place; only half-conscious, as it often seemed to her; the most docile of patients; accompanied now by one member of the family, now by another; standing as it were, like the bather who has wandered too far from shore, between the onward current which means destruction, and that backward struggle of the will which leads to life. And little by little the tide of being had turned. After a winter in Egypt, strength had begun to come back; since then Switzerland and high air had quickened recovery; and now, physically, Eugénie was almost herself again.
But morally, she retained a deep and lasting impress of what she had gone through. More than ever was she a creature of tenderness, of the most delicate perceptions, of a sensibility, as our ancestors would have called it, too great for this hurrying world. Her unselfishness, always one of her cradle-gifts, had become almost superhuman; and had she been of another temperament, the men and women about her might have instinctively shrunk from her, as too perfect—now—for human nature's daily food. But from that she was saved by a score of most womanish, most mundane qualities. Nobody knew her, luckily, for the saint she was; she herself least of all. As her strength renewed itself, her soft fun, too, came back, her gentle, inexhaustible delight in the absurdities of men and things, which gave to her talk and her personality a kind of crackling charm, like the crispness of dry leaves upon an autumn path. Naturally, and invincibly, she loved life and living; all the high forces and emotions called to her, but also all the patches, stains, and follies of this queer world; and there is no saint, man or woman, of whom this can be said, that has ever repelled the sinners. It is the difference between St. Francis and St. Dominic!
How very little—all the same—could Eugénie feel herself with the saints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on the threshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place, she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings, entirely concerned with her friends and her affections. It was a re-birth; not of youth—how could that be, she herself would have asked, seeing that she was now thirty-seven?—but of the natural Eugénie, who, 'intellectual' though she were, lived really by the heart, and the heart only. And since it is the heart that makes youth and keeps it—itwasa return of youth—and of beauty—that had come upon her. In her black dress and shady hat, her collar and cuffs of white lawn, she was very discreetly, quietly beautiful; the passer-by did not know what it was that had touched and delighted him, till she had gone, and he found himself, perhaps, looking after the slim yet stately figure; but it was beauty none the less. And the autumn violets, her sister's gift, that were fastened to-day in profusion at her waist, marked in truth the re-awakening of buried things, of feminine instincts long repressed. For months, her maid Fanchette had dressed her, and she had worn obediently all the long crape gowns and veils dictated by the etiquette of French mourning. But to-day she had chosen for herself; and in this more ordinary garb, she was vaguely—sometimes remorsefully—conscious of relief and deliverance.
Two subjects filled her mind. First, a conversation with Fenwick that she had held that morning, strolling through the upper alleys of the Park. Poor friend, poor artist! Often and often, during her wanderings, had her thoughts dwelt anxiously on his discontents and calamities; she had made her sister or her father write to him when she could not write herself—though Lord Findon indeed had been for long much out of patience with him; and during the last few months she herself had written every week. But she had never felt so clearly the inexorable limits of her influence with him. This morning, just as of old, he had thrown himself tempestuously upon her advice, her sympathy; and she had given him counsel as she best could. But a woman knows when her counsel is likely to be followed, or no. Eugénie had no illusions. In his sore, self-tormented state he was, she saw, at the mercy of any passing idea, of anything that seemed to offer him vengeance on his enemies, or the satisfaction of a vanity that writhed under the failure he was all the time inviting and assuring.
Yet as she thought of him, she liked him better than ever. He might be perverse, yet he appealed to her profoundly! The years of his success had refined and civilised him no doubt, but they had tended to make him like anybody else. Whereas this passionate accent of revolt—as of some fierce, helpless creature, struggling blindly in bonds of its own making—had perhaps restored to him that more dramatic element which his personality had possessed in his sulky, gifted youth. He had expressed himself with a bitter force on the decline of his inspiration and the weakening of his will. He was going to the dogs, he declared; had lost all his hold on the public; and had nothing more to say or to paint. And she had been very, very sorry for him, but conscious all the time that he had never been so eloquent, and never in such good looks, what with the angry energy of the eyes, and the sweep of grizzled hair across the powerful brow, and the lines cut by life and thought round the vigorous, impatient mouth. How could he be at once so able and so childish! Her woman's wit pondered it; while at the same time she remembered with emotion the joy with which he had greeted her, his eager, stammering sympathy, his rough grasp of her hand, his frowning scrutiny of her pale face.
Yes, he was a great, great friend—and, somehow, shemusthelp him! Her lips parted in a sigh of aspiration. If only this unlucky thing had not happened!—this meeting of Arthur and of Fenwick, before the time, before she had prepared and engineered it.
And so she came to her second topic of meditation. Gradually as her mind pursued it, her aspect seemed to lose its new and tremulous brightness; the face became once more a little grey and pinched. They had somehow missed all the letters which should have warned them. To find Arthur established here, with his poor invalid wife—nothing had been more unexpected, and, alack, more unwelcome, considering the relations between them and John Fenwick—Fenwick who was practically her father's guest and hers.
Did Arthur think it strange, unkind? Wouldn't he really believe that it was pure accident! If so, it would be only because Elsie was there, influencing him against his old friends—poor, bitter, stricken Elsie. Eugénie's lips quivered. There flitted before her the image of the girl of eighteen—muse of laughter and delight. And she recalled the taciturn woman whom she had seen on her sofa the night before, speaking coldly, in dry, sharp sentences, to her husband, her cousin, her maid—evidently unhappy and in pain.
Eugénie shaded her eyes from the light of the terrace. Her heart seemed to be sinking, contracting. Mrs. Welby had been already ill, and therewith jealous and tyrannical, for some little time before Madame de Pastourelles had been summoned to the death-bed of her husband! But now!—Eugénie shrank aghast before what she saw and what she guessed.
And it was, too, as if the present state of things—as if the new hardness in Elsie's eyes, and the strange hostility of her manner, especially towards the Findons, and her cousin Eugénie—threw light on earlier years, on many a puzzling trait and incident of the past.
There had been a terrible confinement, at the end of years of childlessness—a still-born child—and then, after a short apparent recovery, a rapid loss of strength and power. Poor, poor Elsie! But why—why should this trouble have awakened in her this dumb tyranny towards Arthur, this alienation from Arthur's friends?
Eugénie sharply drew herself together. She banished her thoughts. Elsie was young, and would get well. And when she recovered, she would know who were her friends, and Arthur's.
A figure came towards her, crossing theparterre d'eau. She perceived her father—just released, no doubt, from two English acquaintances with whom he had been exploring the 'Bosquet d'Apollon.'
He hurried towards her—a tall Don Quixote of a man, gaunt, active, grey-haired, with a stride like a youth of eighteen, and the very minimum of flesh on his well-hung frame. Lord Findon had gone through many agitations during the last ten or twelve years. In his own opinion, he had upset a Ministry, he had recreated the army, and saved the Colonies to the Empire. That history was not as well aware of these feats as it should be, he knew; but in the memoirs, of which there were now ten volumes privately printed in his drawer, he had provided for that. Meanwhile, in the rush of his opinions and partisanships, two things at least had persisted unchanged—his adoration for Eugénie—and his belief that if only man—and much more woman—would but exchange 'gulping' for 'chewing'—would only, that is to say, reform their whole system of mastication, and thereby of digestion, the world would be another and a happier place.
He came up now, frowning, and out of temper.
'Upon my word, Eugénie, the blindness of some people is too amazing!'
'Is it? Sit down, papa, and look at that!'
She pushed a chair towards him, smiling, and pointed to the terrace, the woods, the sky.
'It's all very well, my dear,' said Lord Findon, seating himself—'but this place tries me a good deal.'
'Because the ladies in the restaurant are so stout?' said Eugénie.'Dear papa—somebody must keep these cooks in practice!'
'Never did I see such spectacles!' said Lord Findon, fuming. 'And when one knows that the very smallest attention to their diet—and they might be sylphs again—as young as their grandchildren!—it's really disheartening.'
'It is,' said Eugénie. 'Shall we announce a little conference in the salon? I'm sure the ladies would flock.'
'The amount the French eat is appalling!' exclaimed Lord Findon—without noticing. 'And they have such ridiculous ideas about us! I said something about their gluttony to M. de Villeton this morning—and he fired up!—declared he had spent this summer in English country-houses, and we had seven meals a day—all told—and there wasn't a Frenchman in the world had more than three—counting his coffee in the morning.'
'He had us there,' said Eugénie.
'Not at all! It doesn't matterwhenyou eat—it's what and how much you eat. Wecan'tproduce such women as one sees here. I tell you, Eugénie, wecan't. It takes all the poetry out of the sex.'
Eugénie smiled.
'Haven't you been walking with Lady Marney, papa?'
Lord Findon looked a little annoyed.
'She's an exception, my dear—a hideous exception.'
'I wouldn't mind her size,' said Eugénie, softly—'if only the complexion were better done.'
Lord Findon laughed.
'Paint is on the increase,' he declared—'and gambling too. Villeton tells me there was baccarat in the Marney's' apartment last night, and Lady Marney lost enormously. Age seems to have no effect on these people. She must be nearly seventy-five.'
'You may be sure she'll play till the last trump,' said Eugénie.'Papa!'—her tone changed—'is that Elsie's chair?'
The group to which she pointed was still distant, but Lord Findon, even at seventy, had the eyes of an eagle, and could read anaffichea mile off.
'It is.' Lord Findon looked a little disturbed, and, turning, he scanned the terrace up and down before he bent towards Eugénie.
'You know, darling, it's an awkward business about these two men. I don't believe Arthur's patience will hold out.'
'Oh yes, it will, papa. For our sakes, Arthur would keep the peace.'
'If the other will let him! I used to think, Eugénie, you had tamed the bear—but, upon my soul!'—Lord Findon threw up his hands in protest.
'He's in low spirits, papa. It will be better soon,' said Eugénie, softly, and as she spoke she rose and went down the steps to meet the Welbys.
Lord Findon followed her, tormented by a queer, unwelcome thought. Was it possible that Eugénie was now—with her widowhood—beginning to take a more than friendly interest in that strange fellow, Fenwick? If so,hewould be tolerably punished for his meddling of long ago! To have snatched her from Arthur, in order to hand her to John Fenwick!—Lord Findon crimsoned hotly at the notion, all his pride of race and caste up in arms.
Of course she ought now to marry. He wished to see her before he died the wife of some good fellow, and the mistress of a great house. Why not? Eugénie's distinctions of person and family—leaving her fortune, which was considerable, out of count—were equal to any fate. 'It's all very well to despise such things—but we have to keep up the traditions,' he said to himself, testily.
And in spite of her thirty-seven years a suitable bridegroom would not be at all hard to find. Lord Findon had perceived that in Egypt, where they had spent the winter and early spring. Several of the most distinguished men then in Cairo had been her devoted slaves—ill as she was and at half-power. Alderney—almost certain to be the next Viceroy of India—one of the most charming of widowers, with an only daughter—it had been plain both to Lord Findon and his stupid wife that Eugénie had made a deep impression upon a man no less romantic than fastidious. Eugénie had but to lift her hand, and he would have followed them to Syria. On the contrary, she had taken special pains to prevent it. And General F,—and that clever fellow X,—who was now reorganising Egyptian finance—and several more—they were all under the spell.
But Eugénie had this quixotic liking for the 'intellectuals' of a particular sort, for artists and poets, and people in difficulties generally. Well, he had it himself, he reflected, frowning, as he strolled after her; but there were limits. Marriage was a thing apart; in that quarter, at any rate, it was no good supposing you could escape from the rules of the game.
Not that the rules always led you right—witness De Pastourelles and his villainies. But matrimonial anarchy was not to be justified, any more than social anarchy, by the failures and drawbacks of arrangements which were on the whole for people's good.Passe encore!—if Fenwick had only fulfilled the promise of his youth!—were at least a successful artist, instead of promising to become a quarrelsome failure!
Now if Arthur himself were free! Supposing this poor girl were to succumb?—what then?
At this point Lord Findon checked himself roughly, and a minute afterwards was shaking Welby by the hand and stooping with an old man's courtesy over the invalid carriage in which Mrs. Welby lay reclined.
Euphrosyne, indeed, had shed her laughter! A face with sunken eyes and drawn lips, and with that perpetual suspicious furrow in the brow, which meant a terror lest any movement or jar should let loose the enemy, pain; an emaciated body, from which all the soft mouldings of youth had departed; a frail hand, lying in mute appeal on the shawl with which she was covered:—this was now Elsie Welby, whose beauty in the first years of her marriage had been one of the adornments of London.
Eugénie was bending over her, and Mrs. Welby was pettishly answering.
'It's so stiff and formal. I don't admire this kind of thing. And there isn't a bit of shade on this terrace.Ithink it's ugly!'
Welby laid a hand on hers, smiling.
'But to-day, Bébé, you like the sun?—in October?'
Mrs. Welby was very decidedly of opinion that even in October there was a glare—and in August—she shuddered to think of it! It was so tiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux. So like French red tape, to insist on stopping them on a particular date. Why should they be stopped? As to expense, that was nonsense. How could water cost anything! It was because the French were sodoctrinaire, so tyrannical—so fond of managing for managing's sake.
So the pettish voice rambled on, the others tenderly and sadly listening, till presently Lord Findon shook his gaunt shoulders.
'Upon my word, it begins to get cold. With your leave, Elsie, I could do with a little more sun! Arthur, shall we take a brisk walk round the canal before tea?'
Welby looked anxiously at his wife. She had closed her eyes, and her pale lips, tightly shut, made no movement.
'I think I promised Elsie to stay with her,' he said, uncertainly.
'Letmestay with Elsie, please,' said Eugénie.
The blue eyes unclosed.
'Don't be more than an hour, Arthur,' said the young wife, ungraciously. 'You know I asked Mrs. Westmacott to tea.'
The gentlemen walked off, and a sharp sensation impressed upon Madame de Pastourelles that Arthur was only allowed to go with Lord Findon, becauseshewas not of the party.
A sudden colour rose into her cheeks. For the hour that followed, she devoted herself to her cousin. But Mrs. Welby was difficult and querulous. Amongst other complaints she expressed herself bitterly as to the appearance of Mr. Fenwick at Versailles. Arthur had been so taken aback—Mr. Fenwick was always so atrociously rude to him! Arthur would have never come to Versailles had he known; but of course, as Uncle Findon and Eugénie liked Mr. Fenwick, as he was their friend, Arthur couldn't now avoid meeting him. It was extremely disagreeable.
'I think they needn't meet very much,' said Eugénie, soothingly—'and papa and I will do our best to keep Mr. Fenwick in order.'
'I wonder why he came,' said Elsie, fretfully.
'He has some work to do for the production of this play on Marie Antoinette. And I suppose he wanted to meet us. You see, we didn't know about Arthur.'
'I can't think why you like him so much.'
'He is an old friend, my dear!—and just now very unhappy, and out of spirits.'
'All his own fault, Arthur says. He had the ball at his feet.'
'I know,' said Eugénie, smiling sadly. 'That's the tragedy of it!'
There was silence. Mrs. Welby still observed her companion. A variety of expressions, all irritable or hostile, passed through the large, languid eyes.
* * * * *
The afternoon faded—on the blue surface of the distant 'canal,' the great poplars that stand sentinel at the western edge of the Park, one to right, and one to left—lastgardes du corpsof the House of France!—threw long shadows on the water; and across the opening which they marked, drifted the smoke of burning weeds, the only but sufficient symbol, amid the splendid scene, of that peasant France which destroyed Versailles. It was four o'clock, and to their left, as they sat sheltered on the southern side of the château, the visitors of the day were pouring out into the gardens. The shutters of the lower rooms, in the apartments of the Dauphin and of Mesdames, were being closed one by one, by thegardienswithin. Eugénie peered through the window beside her. She saw before her a long vista of darkened and solitary rooms, dim portraits of the marshals of France just visible on their walls. Suddenly—under a gleam of light from a shutter not yet fastened—there shone out amid the shadows a bust of Louis Seize! The Bourbon face, with its receding brow, its heavy, good-natured lips, its smiling incapacity, held—dominated—the palace.
Eugénie watched, holding her breath. Slowly the light died; the marble withdrew into the dark; and Louis Seize was once more with the ghosts.
Eugénie's fancy pursued him. She thought of the night of the 20th of January, 1793, when Madame Royale, in the darkness of the Temple, heard her mother turning miserably on her bed, sleepless with grief and cold, waiting for that last rendezvous of seven o'clock which the King had promised her—waiting—waiting—till the great bell of Notre Dame told her that Louis had passed to another meeting, more urgent, more peremptory still.
'Oh, poor soul!—poor soul!' she said, aloud, pressing her hands on her eyes.
'What on earth do you mean!' said Mrs. Welby's voice beside her—startled—stiff—a little suspicious.
Eugénie looked up and blushed.
'I beg your pardon!—I was thinking of Marie Antoinette.'
'I'm so tired of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly memorials of her they sell here!—and the sentimental talk about her! Arthur, of course, now—with his picture—thinks of nothing else.'
'Naturally!'
'I don't know. People are bored with Marie Antoinette. I wish he'd taken another subject. And as to her beauty—how could she have been beautiful, with those staring eyes, and that lower lip! I say so to Arthur—and he raves—and quotes Horace Walpole—and all sorts of people. But one can see for one's self. People are much prettier now than they ever were then! We should think nothing of their beauties.'
And the delicate lips of this once lovely child, this flower withered before its time, made a cold gesture of contempt.
In Eugénie's eyes, as they rested upon her companion, there was a flash—was it of horror?
Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?—no less than of his living friends?
Eugénie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tucked the shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chatting and caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame de Pastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the château, to see if the gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welby called her back.
'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is reallytoocold!'
'She won't let me go to meet them,' thought Eugénie, involuntarily; sharply reproaching herself, a moment afterwards, for the mere thought.
But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugénie slipped back through the darkening streets, taking good care that her path should not lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.
She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran down the vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lake beyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of space and light enwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory, with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance the voices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upper terrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bent forward—eager—her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, the arrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour; and beside her, a nymph, daughter of gods, turned to the palace with a free, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the more intently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of 'Le Roi Soleil.'
* * * * *
'Oh, poor Arthur—poor Arthur! And I did it!—I did it!'
It was the cry of Eugénie's inmost life.
And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories that rolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been before she would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage she had herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness that things dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp and piteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications, waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since the physical collapse, the inner motives and passions had stood up bare and black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And as Eugénie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had worked upon her own mind as a silent, yet ever-growing accusation, against which she defended herself in vain.
Surely, surely she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go on binding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been a crime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed? Home, wifely love, and children—it was to these dear enwrapping powers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared for herself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?—the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?
On her part she could proudly answer for herself. Never since Welby's marriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife the smallest just cause of offence. Eugénie's was often an anxious and a troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect. She knew herself true.
But from Elsie's point of view? Had she in truth sacrificed an ignorant child to her impetuous wish for Arthur's happiness, a too scrupulous care for her own peace? How 'sacrifice'? She had given the child her heart's desire. Arthur was not in love; but Elsie Bligh would have accepted him as a husband on any terms. Tenderly, in good faith, trusting to the girl's beauty, and Arthur's rich and loving nature, Eugénie had joined their hands.
Was that in reality her offence? In spite of all the delicacy with which it had been done, had the girl's passion guessed the truth? And having guessed it, had she then failed—and failed consciously—to make the gift her own?
Eugénie had watched—often with a sinking spirit—the development of a nature, masked by youth and happiness, but essentially narrow and poor, full of mean ambitions and small antipathies. Arthur had played his part bravely, with all the chivalry and the conscience that might have been expected of him. And there had been moments—intervals—of apparent happiness, when Eugénie's own conscience had been laid to sleep.
Was there anything she might have done for those two people, that she had not done? And Elsie had seemed—she sadly remembered—to love her, to trust her—till this tragic breakdown. Indeed, so long as she could dress, dance, dine, and chatter as much as she pleased, with her husband in constant attendance, Mrs. Welby had shown no open discontent with her lot; and if her caresses often hurt Eugénie more than they pleased, there had been no outward dearth of them.
Alack!—Eugénie's heart was wrung with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugénie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed to a long and fluctuating case—to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur, and complaining misery for his wife.
Years! Eugénie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men—such a man as John Fenwick, for instance—of a reputation and a success they thought overdone and undeserved. But Arthur himself! She seemed to be looking into his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragically silent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious of ideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellows will ever know—of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to 'speak out,' blighted, and in pain.
'Arthur—Arthur!' She leaned her head against the pedestal of a marble vase—wrestling with herself.
Then, quick as fire, there flew through her veins the alternate possibility—Elsie's death—freedom for herself and Arthur—the power to retrace her own quixotic, fatal step….
Madame de Pastourelles rose to her feet, rigid and straight in her black dress, wrestling as though with an attacking Apollyon. She seemed to herself a murderess in thought—the lowest and vilest of human beings.
In an anguish she looked through the darkness, in a wild appeal to Heaven to save her from herself—this new self, unknown to her!—to shut down and trample on this mutiny of a sinful and selfish heart—to make it impossible—impossible!—that ever again, even without her will, against her will, a thought so hideous, so incredible, should enter and defile her mind.
She walked on blindly towards the water and the woods. Her eyes were full of tears, which she could not stop. Unconsciously, to hide them, she threw round her head a black lace scarf she had brought out with her against the evening chill, and drew it close round her face.
'How late you are!' said a joyous voice beside her.
She looked up. Fenwick emerging from the wood, towards the shelter of which she was hurrying, stood before her, bareheaded, as he often walked, his eyes unable to hide the pleasure with which he beheld her.
She gave a little gasp.
'You startled me!'
In the dim light he could only see her slight, fluttering smile; and it seemed to him that she was or had been in agitation. But at least it was nothing hostile to himself; nay, it was borne in upon him as he turned his steps, and she walked beside him with a quick yet gradually subsiding breath, that his appearance had been a relief to her, that she was glad of his companionship.
And he—miserable fellow!—to him it was peace after struggle, balm after torment. For his thoughts, as he wandered through the Satory woods alone, had been the thoughts of a hypochondriac. He hastened to leave them, now that she was near.
They wandered along the eastern edge of the 'Swiss Water,' towards the woods amid which the railway runs. Through the gold-and-purple air the thin autumn trees rose lightly into the evening sky, marching in ordered ranks beside the water. Young men were fishing in the lake; boys and children were playing near it, and sweethearts walking in the dank grass. The evening peace, with its note of decay and death, seemed to stir feeling rather than soothe it. It set the nerves trembling.
He began to talk of some pictures he had been studying in the Palace that day—Nattiers, Rigauds, Drouais—examples of that happy, sensuous, confident art, produced by a society that knew no doubts of itself, which not to have enjoyed—so the survivors of it thought—was to be for ever ignorant of what the charm of life might be.
Fenwick spoke of it with envy and astonishment. Thepleasureof it had penetrated him, its gay, perpetualfesta—as compared with the strain of thought and conscience under which the modern lives.
'It gives me a perfect hunger for fine clothes, and jewels, and masquerades—and "fêtes de nuit"—and every sort of theatricality and expense! Nature has sent us starvelings on the scene a hundred years late. We are like children in the rain, flattening our noses against a ballroom window.'
'There were plenty of them then,' said Eugénie. 'But they broke in and sacked the ballroom.'
'Yes. What folly!' he said, bitterly. 'We are all still groping among the ruins.'
'No, no! Build a new Palace of Beauty—and bring everybody in—out of the rain.'
'Ridiculous!' he declared, with sparkling eyes. Art and pleasure were only for the few. Try and spread them, make current coin of them, and they vanished like fairy gold.
'So only the artist may be happy?'
'The artist is never happy!' he said, roughly. 'But the few people who appreciate him and rob him, enjoy themselves. By the way, I took one of your ideas this morning, and made a sketch of it. I haven't noted a composition of any sort for weeks—except for this beastly play. It came to me while we talked.'
'Ah!' Her face, turned to him, received the news with a shrinking pleasure.
He developed his idea before her, drawing it on the air with his stick, or on the sand of the alleys where the arching trees overhead seemed still to hold a golden twilight captive. The picture was to represent that fine metal-worker of theancien régimewho, when the Revolution came, took his ragged children with him and went to the palace which contained his work—work for which he had never been paid—and hammered it to pieces.
Fenwick talked himself at last into something like enthusiasm; and Eugénie listened to him with a pitiful eagerness, only anxious to lead him on, to put this friendship, and the pure sympathy and compassion of her feeling for him, between her and the ugly memory which hovered round her like a demon thing. These dreams of the intellect and of art, as they gradually rose and took shape between them, were so infinitely welcome! Clean, blameless, strengthening—they put the ghosts to flight, they gave her back herself.
'Oh, you must paint it!' she said—'you must.'
He stopped, and walked on abruptly. Then she pressed him to promise her a time and date. It must be ready for a new gallery, and a distinguished exhibition, just about to open.
He shook his head.
'I probably shan't care about it to-morrow.'
She protested.
'Just now you were so keen!'
He hesitated—then blurted out—'Because I was talking to you! When you're not there—I know very well—I shall fall back to where I was before.'
She tried to laugh at him for a too dependent friend, who must always be fed on sugar-plums of praise; but the silence with which he met her, checked her. It was too full of emotion; and she ran away from it.
She ran, however, in vain. They reached the end of the lake, and went to look at the mouldering statue of Louis Quatorze at its further end—fantastic work of the great Bernini—Louis on a vast, curly-maned beast, with flames bursting round him—flung out into the wilderness and the woods, because Louis, after adding the flames to Bernini's composition, finally pronounced the statue unworthy of himself and of the sacred enclosure of the Park. So here, on the outer edge of Versailles, the crumbling failure rises, in exile to this day, without so much as a railing to protect it from the scribbling tourist who writes his name all over it. In the realm of Art, it seemed, the King's writ still ran, and the King's doom stood.
Fenwick's rhetorical sense was touched by the statue and its history. He examined it, talking fast and well, Eugénie meanwhile winning from him all he had to give, by the simplest words and looks—he the reed, and she the player. His mind, his fancy, worked easily once more, under the stimulus of her presence. His despondency began to give way. He believed in himself—felt himself an artist—again. The relief, physical and mental, was too tempting. He flung himself upon it with reckless desire, incapable of denying himself, or of counting the cost. And meanwhile, the effect of her black scarf, loosened, and eddying round her head and face in the soft night wind, defining their small oval, and the beauty of the brow, enchanted his painter's eye. There was a moment, just as they reentered the Park, when, as she stood looking at a moon-touched vista before them, the floating scarf suddenly recalled to him the outline of that lovely hood in which Romney framed the radiant head of Lady Hamilton as 'The Sempstress.'
The recollection startled him. Romney! Involuntarily there flashed across him Phoebe's use of the Romney story—her fierce comments on the deserted wife—the lovely mistress. Perhaps, while she stood looking at the portrait in his studio, she was thinking of Lady Hamilton, and all sorts of other ludicrous and shameful things!
Andthis, all the while, was the reality—this pure, ethereal being, in whose presence he was already a better and a more hopeful man!—who seemed to bring a fellow comfort, and moral renewal, in the mere touch of her kind hand.
The shock of inner debate still further weakened his self-control. He slipped, hardly knowing how or why, into a far more intimate confession of himself than he had yet made to her. In the morning he had given her theouterhistory of his life, during the year of her absence. But this was the inner history of a man's weakness and failure—of his quarrels and hatreds, his baffled ambitions and ideals. She put it together as best she could from his hurried, excited talk—from stories half told, fierce charges against 'charlatans' and 'intriguers,' mingled with half-serious, half-comic returns upon himself, attacks on all the world, alternating with a ruthless self-analysis—the talk of a man who challenges society one moment with an angry 'J'accuse!'—and sees himself the next—sardonically—as the chief obstacle in his own way.
Then suddenly a note of intense loneliness—anguish—inexplicable despair. Eugénie could not stop it, could not withdraw herself. There was a strange feeling that it brought her the answer to her prayer.—They hurried on through the lower walks of the Park—plunging now through tunnelled depths of shade, and now emerging into spaces where sunset and moonrise rained a mingled influence on glimmering water, on the dim upturned faces of Ceres or Flora, or the limbs of flower-crowned nymphs and mermaids. It seemed impossible to turn homeward, to break off their conversation. When they reached the 'Bassin de Neptune' they left the Park, turning down the Trianon Avenue, in the growing dark, till they saw to their right, behind its iron gates, the gleaming façade of the Petit Trianon; woods all about them, and to their left, again, the shimmer of wide water. Meanwhile the dying leaves, driven by the evening wind, descended on them in a soft and ceaseless shower; the woods, so significant and human in their planned and formal beauty, brought their 'visionary majesties' of moonlight and of gloom to bear on nerve and sense, turned all that was said and all that was felt, beneath their spell, to poetry.
Suddenly, at the Trianon gate, Eugénie stopped.
'I'm very tired,' she said, faintly. 'I am afraid we must go back.'
Fenwick denounced himself for a selfish brute; and they turned homeward. But it was not physical fatigue she felt. It was rather the burden of a soul thrown headlong upon hers—the sudden appeal of a task which seemed to be given her by God—for the bridling of her own heart, and the comforting and restoring of John Fenwick. From all the conflicting emotion of an evening which changed her life, what remained—or seemed to remain—was a missionary call of duty and affection. 'Save him!—and master thyself!'
So, yet again, poor Eugénie slipped into the snare which Fate had set for one who was only too much a woman.
The Rue des Réservoirs was very empty as Fenwick and Madame de Pastourelles mounted the paved slope leading towards the hotel. The street-lamps were neither many nor bright—but from the glazed gallery of the restaurant, a broad, cheerful illumination streamed upon the passers-by. They stepped within its bounds. And at the moment, a woman who had just crossed to the opposite side of the street stopped abruptly to look at them. They paused a few minutes in the entrance, still chatting; the woman opposite made a movement as though to re-cross the street, then shook her head, laughed, and walked away. Fenwick went into the restaurant and Eugénie hurried through the courtyard to the door of the Findon's apartment.
But in her reflexions of the night, Eugénie came to the conclusion that the situation, as it then stood at Versailles, was not one to be prolonged.
Next day she proposed to her father and sister a change of plan. On the whole, she said, she was anxious to get back to London; the holiday was overspreading its due limits; and she urged pressing on and home. Lord Findon was puzzled, but submissive; the bookish sister Theresa, now a woman of thirty, welcomed anything that would bring her back to the London Library and the British Museum. But suddenly, just as the maids had been warned, and Lord Findon's man had been sent to look out trains, his master caught a chill, going obstinately, and in a mocking spirit, to see what 'Faust' might be like, as given at the Municipal Theatre of Versailles. There was fever, and a touch of bronchitis; nothing serious; but the doctor who had been summoned from Paris would not hear of travelling. Lord Findon hoarsely preached 'chewing' to him, through the greater part of his visits; he revenged himself by keeping a tight hold on his patient, in all that was not his tongue. Eugénie yielded, with what appeared to Theresa a strange amount of reluctance; and they settled down for a week or two.
In the middle of the convalescence, the elder son, Marmaduke, came over to see his father. He was a talkative Evangelical, like his mother; a partner in the brewery owned by his mother's kindred; and recently married to a Lady Louisa.
After spending three days at the hotel, he suddenly said to Lord Findon, as he was mounting guard one night, while Eugénie wrote some letters:
'I say, pater, do you want Eugénie to marry that fellow Fenwick?'
Lord Findon turned uneasily in his bed.
'What makes you say that?'
'Well, he's dreadfully gone on her—never happy except when she's there—and she—well, she encourages him a good bit, father.'
'You don't understand, Marmie. You see, you don't care for books and pictures; Eugénie does.'
'I suppose she does,' said Marmaduke, doubtfully—'but she wouldn't care so much if Fenwick wasn't there to talk about them.'
'His talk is admirable!' said Lord Findon.
'I dare say it is, but he isn't my sister's equal,' replied the son, with stolidity.
'A good artist is anybodyies equal,' cried Lord Findon, much heated.
'You don't really think it, papa,' said Marmaduke, firmly. 'Shall I give Eugénie a talking to?—as you're not in a condition.'
Lord Findon laughed, though not gaily.
'You'd better try! Or rather, I don't advise you to try!'
Marmaduke, however, did try; with the only result that Eugénie soon grew a little vexed and tremulous, and begged him to go home. He might be a master of brewing finance, and a dear, kind, well-meaning brother, but he really did not understand his sister's affairs.
Marmaduke went home, much puzzled, urgently commanding Theresa to write to him, and announcing to Arthur Welby, who listened silently, as he talked, that if Fenwick did propose, he should think it a damned impertinence.
Lord Findon meanwhile held his peace. Every day Eugénie came in from her walk with Fenwick, to sit with or read to her father. She always spoke of what she had been doing, quite naturally and simply, describing their walk and their conversation, giving the news of Fenwick's work—bringing his sketches to show. Lord Findon would lie and listen—a little suspicious and ill at ease—sometimes a little sulky. But he let his illness and his voicelessness excuse him from grappling with her. She must, of course, please herself. If she chose, as she seemed about to choose—why, they must all make the best of it!—Marmaduke might talk as he liked. Naturally, Arthur kept away from them. Poor Arthur! But what a darling she looked in her black, with this fresh touch of colour in her pale cheeks!
The Welbys certainly had but little to do with the party at the Réservoirs. Welby seemed to be absorbed in his new picture, and Mrs. Welby let it be plainly understood that at home Arthur was too busy, and she too ill, to receive visitors; while out-of-doors they neither of them wished to be thrown across Mr. Fenwick.
Every evening, after taking his wife home, Welby went out by himself for a solitary walk. He avoided the Park and the woods; chose rather the St. Cyr road, or the Avenue de Paris. He walked, wrapt, a little too picturesquely perhaps, in an old Campagna cloak, relic of his years in Rome—with a fine collie for his companion. Once or twice in the distance he caught sight of Eugénie and Fenwick—only to turn down a side street, out of their way.
His thoughts meanwhile, day by day, his silent, thronging thoughts, dealt with his own life—and theirs. Would she venture it? He discussed it calmly with himself. It presented itself to him as an act altogether unworthy of her. What hurt him most, however, at these times, was the occasional sudden memory of Eugénie's face, trembling with pain, under some slight or unkindness shown her by his wife.
One day Welby was sitting beside his wife on the sheltered side of the Terrace, when Eugénie and Fenwick came in sight, emerging from the Hundred Steps. Suddenly Welby bent over his wife.
'Elsie!—haveyounoticed anything?'
'Noticed what?'
He motioned towards the distant figures. His gesture was a little dry and hostile.
Elsie in amazement raised herself painfully on her elbow to look.
'Eugénie!' she said, breathlessly—'Eugénie—and Mr. Fenwick!'
Arthur Welby watched the transformation in her face. It was the first time he had seen her look happy for months.
'What anexcellentthing!' she cried; all flushed and vehement.'Arthur, you know you said how lonely she must be!'
'Is he worthy of her?' he said, slowly, finding his words with difficulty.
'Well, of course,wedon't like him!—but then Uncle Findon does. And if he didn't, it's Eugénie that matters—isn't it?—only Eugénie! At her age, you can't be choosing her husband for her! Well, I never, never thought—Eugénie's so close!—she'd make up her mind to marry anybody!'
And she rattled on, in so much excitement that Welby hastily and urgently impressed discretion upon her.
But when she and Eugénie next met, Eugénie was astonished by her gaiety and good temper—her air of smiling mystery. Madame de Pastourelles hoped it meant real physical improvement, and would have liked to talk of it to Arthur; but all talk between them grew rarer and more difficult. Thus Eugénie's walks with Fenwick through the enchanted lands that surround Versailles became daily more significant, more watched. Lord Findon groaned in his sick-room, but still restrained himself.
It was a day—or rather a night—of late October—a wet and windy night, when the autumn leaves were coming down in swirling hosts on the lawns and paths of Trianon.
Fenwick was hard at work, in the small apartment which he occupied on the third floor of the Hôtel des Réservoirs. It consisted of a sitting-room and two bedrooms looking on an innercour. One of the bedrooms he had turned into a sort of studio. It was now full of drawings and designs for the sumptuous London 'production' on which he was engaged—rooms at Versailles and Trianon—views in the Trianon gardens—fragments of decoration—designs for stage grouping—for the reproduction of one of the famousfêtes de nuitin the gardens of the 'Hameau'—studies of costume even.
His proud ambition hated the work; he thought it unworthy of him; only his poverty had consented. But he kept it out of sight of his companions as much as he could, and worked as much as possible at night.
And here and there, amongst the rest, were the sketches and fragments, often the grandiose fragments, which represented his 'buried life'—the life which only Eugénie de Pastourelles seemed now to have the power to evoke. When some hours of other work had weakened the impulse received from her, he would look at these things sadly, and put them aside.
To-night, as he drew, he was thinking incessantly of Eugénie; pierced often by intolerable remorse. But whose fault was it? Will you ask a man, perishing of need, to put its satisfaction from him? The tests of life are too hard. The plain, selfish man must always fail under them. Why act and speak as though he were responsible for what Nature and the flesh impose?
But how was it all to end?—that was what tormented him. His conscience shrank from the half-perceived villainies before him; but his will failed him. What was the use of talking? He was the slave of an impulse, which was not passion, which had none of the excuse of passion, but represented rather the blind search of a man who, like a child in the dark, recoils in reckless terror from loneliness and the phantoms of his own mind.
Eleven o'clock struck. He was busying himself with a cardboard model, on which he had been trying the effect of certain arrangements, when he heard a knock at his door.
'Entrez!' he said, in astonishment.
At this season of the year the hotel kept early hours, and there was not a light to be seen in thecour.
The door opened. On the threshold stood Arthur Welby. Fenwick gazed at him open-mouthed.
'You?—you came to see me?'
He advanced, head foremost, hand outstretched.
'I have something important to say to you.' Welby took no notice of the hand. 'Shall we be undisturbed?'
'I imagine so!' said Fenwick, fiercely retreating; 'but, as you see, I am extremely busy!' He pointed to the room and its contents.
'I am sorry to interrupt you'—Welby's voice was carefully controlled—'but I think you will admit that I had good reason to come and find you.' He looked round to see that the door was shut, then advanced a step nearer. 'You are, I think, acquainted with that lady?'
He handed Fenwick a card. Fenwick took it to the light. On it was lithographed 'Miss Isabel Morrison,' and a written address, 'Corso de Madrid, Buenos Ayres,' had been lightly scratched out in one corner.
Fenwick put down the card.
'Well,' he said, sharply—'and if I am—what then?'
Welby began to speak—paused—and cleared his throat. He was standing, with one hand lightly resting on the table, his eyes fixed on Fenwick. There was a moment of shock, of mutual defiance.
'This lady seems to have observed the movements of our party here,' said Welby, commanding himself. 'She followed my wife and me to-day, after we met you in the Park. She spoke to us. She gave us the astonishing news that you were a married man—that your wife—'
Fenwick rushed forward and gripped the speaker's arm.
'My God! Tell me!—is she alive?'
His eyes starting out of his head—his crimson face—his anguish, seemed to affect the other with indescribable repulsion.
Welby wrenched himself free.
'That was what Miss Morrison wished to askyou. She says that when you and she last met you were not on very good terms; she shrank, therefore, from addressing you. But she had a respect for your wife—she wished to know what had become of her—and her curiosity impelled her to speak to us. She seems to have been in Buenos Ayres for many years. This year she returned—as governess—with the family of a French engineer, who have taken an apartment in Versailles. She first saw you in the street nearly a month ago.'
Fenwick had dropped into a chair, his face in his hands. As Welby ceased speaking, he looked up.
'And she said nothing about my wife's where-abouts?'
'Nothing. She knows nothing.'
'Nor of why she left me?'
Welby hesitated.
'Miss Morrison seems to have her own ideas as to that.'
'Where is she?' Fenwick rose hurriedly.
'Rue des Ecuries, 27. Naturally, you can't see her to-night.'
'No'—said Fenwick, sitting down again, like a man in a dream—'no.Did she say anything else?'
'She mentioned something about a debt you owed her,' said Welby, coldly—'some matter that she had only just discovered. I had no concern with that.'
Fenwick's face, which had become deathly pale, was suddenly overspread with a rush of crimson. More almost than by the revelation of his long deception as to his wife was he humiliated and tortured by these words relating to his debt to Morrison on Welby's lips. This successful rival, this fine gentleman!—admitted to his sordid affairs. He rose uncertainly, pulling himself passionately together.
'Now that she has reappeared, I shall pay my debt to Miss Morrison—if it exists,' he said, haughtily; 'she need be in no fear as to that. Well, now then'—he leaned heavily on the mantelpiece, his face still twitching—'you know, Mr. Welby—by this accident—the secret of my life. My wife left me—for the maddest, emptiest reasons—and she took our child with her. I did everything I could to discover them. It was all in vain—and if Miss Morrison cannot enlighten me, I am as much in the dark to-night as I was yesterday, whether my wife is alive—or dead. Is there anything more to be said?'
'By God, yes!' cried Welby, with a sudden gesture of passion, approaching Fenwick. 'There is everything to be said!'
Fenwick was silent. Their eyes met.
'When you first made acquaintance with Lord Findon,' said Welby, controlling himself, 'you made him—you made all of us—believe that you were an unmarried man?'
'I did. It was the mistake—the awkwardness of a moment. I hadn't your easy manners! I was a raw country fellow—and I hadn't the courage, the mere self-possession, to repair it.'
'You let Madame de Pastourelles sit to you,' said Welby, steadily—'week after week, month after month—you accepted her kindness—you became her friend. Later on, you allowed her to advise you—write to you—talk to you about marrying, when your means should be sufficient—without ever allowing her to guess for a moment that you had already a wife and child!'
'That is true,' said Fenwick, nodding. 'The second false step was the consequence of the first.'
'The consequence! You had but to say a word—one honest word! Then, when your conduct, I suppose—I don't dare to judge you—had driven your wife away—for twelve years'—he dragged the words between his teeth—'you masquerade to Madame de Pastourelles—and when her long martyrdom as a wife is at last over—when in the tenderness and compassion of her heart she begins to show you a friendship which—which those who know her'—he laboured for breath and words—'can only—presently—interpret in one way—you who owe her everything—everything!—youdareto play with her innocent, her stainless life—youdareto let her approach—to let those about her approach—the thought of her marrying you—while all the time you knew—what you know! If there ever was a piece of black cruelty in this world, it is you,youthat have been guilty of it!'
The form of Arthur Welby, drawn to its utmost height, towered above the man he accused. Fenwick sat, struck dumb. Welby's increasing stoop, which of late had marred his natural dignity of gait; the slight touches of affectation, of thepetit-maître, which were now often perceptible; the occasional note of littleness, or malice, such as his youth had never known:—all these defects, physical and moral, had been burnt out of the man, as he spoke these words, by the flame of his only, his inextinguishable passion. For his dear mistress—in the purest, loftiest sense of that word—he stood champion, denouncing with all his soul the liar who had deceived and endangered her; a stern, unconscious majesty expressed itself in his bearing, his voice; and the man before him—artist and poet like himself—was sensible of it in the highest, the most torturing degree.
Fenwick turned away. He stooped mechanically to the fire, put it together, lifted a log lying in front of it, laid it carefully on the others. Then he looked at Welby, who on his side had walked to the window and opened it, as though the room suffocated him.
'Everything that you say is just'—said Fenwick, slowly—'I have no answer to make—except that—No!—I have no answer to make.'
He paced once or twice up and down the length of the room, slowly, thoughtfully; then he resumed:
'I shall write to Madame de Pastourelles to-night, and by the first train to-morrow, as soon as these things'—he looked round him—'can be gathered together, I shall be gone!'
Welby moved sharply, showing a face still drawn and furrowed with emotion—'No! she will want to see you.'
Fenwick's composure broke down. 'I had better not see her'—he said—'I had better not see her!'
'You will bear that for her,' said Welby, quietly. 'The more completely you can enlighten her, the better for us all.'
Fenwick's lips moved, but without speaking. Welby's ignorance of the whole truth oppressed him; yet he could make no effort to remove it.
Welby came back towards him.
'There is no reason, I think, why we should carry this conversation further. I will let Miss Morrison know that I have communicated with you.'
'No need,' said Fenwick, interrupting him. 'I shall see her first thing in the morning—'
'And'—resumed Welby, lifting a book and letting it fall uncertainly—'if there is anything I can do—with Lord Findon—for instance—'
Fenwick had a movement of impatience. He felt his endurance giving way.
'There is nothing to do!—except to tell the truth—and to as few people as possible!'
Welby winced. Was the reference to his wife?
'I agree with you—of course.'
He paused a moment—irresolute—wondering whether he had said all he had to say. Then, involuntarily, his eyes rested questioningly, piercingly, on the man beside him. They seemed to express the marvel of his whole being that such an offence could ever be—they tried to penetrate a character, a psychology which in truth baffled them altogether.
He moved to the door, and Fenwick opened it.
As his visitor walked away, Fenwick stood motionless, listening to the retreating step, which echoed in the silence of the vast, empty hotel, once the house of Madame de Pompadour.
He looked at his watch. Past midnight. By about three o'clock, in the midst of a wild autumnal storm, he had finished his letter to Madame de Pastourelles; and he fell asleep at his table, worn out, his head on his arms.
Before ten on the following morning Fenwick had seen Bella Morrison. A woman appeared—the caricature of something he had once known, the high cheek-bones of his early picture touched with rouge, little curls of black hair plastered on her temples, with a mincing gait, and a manner now giggling and now rude. She was extremely sorry if she had put him out—really particularly sorry! She wouldn't have done so for the world; but her curiosity got the better of her. Also, she confessed, she had wished to see whether Mr. Fenwick would acknowledge his debt to her. It was only lately that she had come across a statement of it amongst her father's papers. It was funny he should have forgotten it so long; but there—she wasn't going to be nasty. As to poor Mrs. Fenwick, no, of course she knew nothing. She had inquired of some friends in the North, and they also knew nothing. They had only heard that husband and wife couldn't hit it off, and that Mrs. Fenwick had gone abroad. It was a pity—but a body might have expected it, mightn't they?
The crude conceit and violence of her girlhood had given place, under the pressure of a hard life, to something venomous and servile. She never mentioned her visit to Phoebe; but her eyes seemed to mock her visitor all the time. Fenwick cut the interview short as soon as he could, hastily paid her a hundred pounds, though it left him overdrawn and almost penniless, and then rushed back to his hotel to see what might be waiting for him.
An envelope was lying on his table. It cost him a great effort to open it.
'I have received your letter. There is nothing to say, except that I must see you. I wish to keep what you have told me from my father, for the present, at any rate. There would be no possibility of our talking here. We have only one sitting-room, and my sister is there all the time. I will be at the Bosquet d'Apollon, by 11.30.'
Only that! He stared at the delicate, almost invisible writing. The moment he had dreaded for twelve years had arrived; and the world still went on, and quiet notes like that could still be written.
Long before the hour fixed he was in the Bosquet d'Apollon, walking up and down in front of the famous grotto, on whose threshold the white Apollo, just released from the chariot of the Sun, receives the ministrations of the Muses, while his divine horses are being fed and stalled in the hollows of the rock to either side. No stranger fancy than this ever engaged the architects and squandered the finances of the Builder-King. Reared in solid masonry on bare sandy ground now entirely disguised, the artificial rock that holds the grotto towers to a great height, crowned by ancient trees, weathered by wind and rain, overgrown by leaf and grass, and laved at its base by clear water. All round, the trees stand close—the lawns spread their quiet slopes. On this sparkling autumn morning, a glory of russet, amber, and red, begirt the white figures and the gleaming grotto. The Immortals, the champing horses, locked behind theirgrilleslest the tourist should insult them—all the queer crumbling romance of the statuary, all the natural beauty of leaf and water, of the white clouds overhead and their reflexions below—combined to make Fenwick's guilty bewilderment more complete, to turn all life to dream, and all its figures into the puppets of a shadow-play.
A light step on the grass. A shock passed through him. He made a movement, then checked it.
Eugénie paused at some distance from him. In this autumnal moment of the year, and on week-days, scarcely any passing visitor disturbs the quiet of the Bosquet d'Apollon. In its deep dell of trees and grass, they were absolutely alone; the sunlight which dappled the white bodies of the Muses, and shone on the upstretched arm of Apollo, seemed the only thing of life besides themselves.
She threw back her veil as she came near him—her long widow's veil, which to-day she had resumed. Beneath it, framed in it, the face appeared of an ivory rigidity and pallor. The eyes only were wild and living as she came up to him, clasping her hands, evidently shrinking from him—yet composed.
'There is one thing more I want to know. If I have ever been your friend!—if you have ever felt any kindness for me, tell me—tell me frankly—why did your wife leave you?'
Fenwick's face fell. Had she come so soon to this point?—by the sureness of her own instinct?