"I give you my word, if the treaty is made, and Katinka is disabused of her infatuation."
"Which forms part of the treaty," said Leah, lightly. "In the interests of Jim, I'll do my best; but should he go to Paris----"
"He will assuredly leave it for Siberia, which is much colder and not so amusing."
"Then I must advise him to be naturalised in England."
"It will be the act of a friend, madame. And also, you might advise him to beware of this actress."
"Oh, I can't intrude my advice into his strictly private affairs."
"If you wish your husband to be cured, it will be as well to do so," Aksakoff recommended. "Mademoiselle Ninette is not to be trusted."
"Ninette? I have seen her--a very charming artiste."
"But unscrupulous."
"Not so much so, I hope, as to betray the man she loves."
"A woman, madam, will do much for money."
"How well you know the sex, monsieur!" said Lady Jim, ironically.
"I have had some experience, madame."
"And have benefited so little that you cannot manage your daughter without my intervention."
"I confess it. Let me amend my statement by saying that I have had many experiences and little experience."
"That is a more correct way of putting it," said Leah, gravely; "for I assure you, M. Aksakoff, that if a woman loves a man, she certainly will not betray him for money."
"We join issue, madame. The Uranian Aphrodite is not the divinity in this case, and Aphrodite Pandemos can be bought."
"How classical and confusing! And the price?"
"Two thousand pounds," said Aksakoff, carelessly.
"You should reckon it in francs, seeing that Mademoiselle Ninette is French. Otherwise she will not understand."
"The jingle of gold is a universal language, madame."
"An agreeable one, at all events. I wish we had more opportunity of studying it. Well, M. Aksakoff, for Jim's sake, I shall see that M. Demetrius affords this harpy no opportunity of earning the money."
"And you will pardon my mentioning the harpy's name?"
"We are a man and woman of the world, M. Aksakoff: there is no need to call spades shovels. I thank you for considering my husband. To lose the skill of M. Demetrius might result in his death."
"I am happy to have been of service to you, madame, and of course, you can understand my paternal feelings."
"Assuredly; I shall do my best to make your daughter see reason. A woman can talk to a woman of such things, you know."
"When she is such a woman as you, madame," said Aksakoff, again bending over her hand; "and now----"
"Just one hour to catch the train," remarked Leah, with a glance at the tiny watch set in her bracelet.
In this way Leah solved her problem, and Aksakoff gained his point; yet, on the face of it, their conversation dealt entirely with the saving of Demetrius from a Siberian prison, and Katinka and Katinka's matrimonial salvation. But Lady Jim knew that, if she could lure the doctor to Paris, she would not longer need to fear a Sabine alliance; while the diplomatist was satisfied that, for two thousand pounds, Demetrius would be safely transported to Siberia. Leah, guessing this, let him think that the money tempted her, though she wondered how he came to know that she needed cash, and was secretly angered that he should dare to offer a bribe. But she could not confess her true reason for wishing the exile of Demetrius without letting Aksakoff know about the plot; therefore, of the two evils she chose the less. But she resolved to take no Russian gold. This cynical foreigner should learn that a strictly virtuous Englishwoman cannot be bought. It was commendable in these augurs that they did not wink at one another.
Their reappearance at the tea-table was greeted with shrieks of joy from Lady Richardson, whose emotions were invariably noisy. "Leah! Leah!" she cried, overcome by maternal love and pride, "Billy has won you twelve thousand francs."
"Twelve thousand five hundred," corrected Sir Billy, who was disposing of tea and cake and sandwiches in a way which argued long abstinence.
"Five hundred pounds," translated Captain Lake.
"Oh, you dear, clever boy!" said Lady Jim, coming rapidly to the table to kiss her catspaw. "Halves, of course."
Sir Billy shook his head and tried to keep cool, for the kiss rather upset his dignity. "I am more than repaid," said he gallantly.
"So I should think," murmured Askew, who would have doubled the amount for a similar attention.
Mamie overheard, and recalled a phrase she had never used before, but which suited her impersonation of the American girl as--she is not. "Don't put the banana-peel under your own foot, sonny!"
"Whatdoyou mean?" asked the mystified islander.
Miss Mulrady glanced at Lady Jim's back, then winked at Askew to intimate that she had remarkably good eyesight; also, that kissing married women led to D.C. cross-examinations; also,--but there was no end to the many meanings of that wink. Lord Burleigh's head-shake, inThe Critic, Act II., scene 1, could not have been more eloquent.
Meanwhile applausive adjectives buzzed round Billy's head. He fought his trente et quarante battle o'er again, between hasty mouthfuls, while his mother, thanking Providence for having bestowed on her such a son, murmured ecstatic asides to Katinka Aksakoff. It was the apotheosis of the modern child.
Leah counted her gains, placed them safely in one of those wonderful feminine pockets unknown to man, then gave a passing thought to the virtuous Hengists.
"We must get back, dear," she warned Lady Richardson. "Katinka, darling"--this was for Aksakoff's benefit--"do come over and see me. We have so much to talk about."
"I shall be delighted," replied the girl, flushing with joy, and really was so. The prospect of unlimited conversations on the subject of demi-gods, and their ways with a sympathetic friend, allured her towards an hour of happiness. What was left of Lady Jim's conscience smote her; she felt almost sorry for her dupe. But, with the premeditated self-deception of people who rearrange biblical texts for the palliation of pet sins, she reflected that a fool's paradise for Katinka was better than no paradise whatsoever.
Monsieur Aksakoff said no more. He and Lady Jim understood one another perfectly, and it was useless to add touches to a finished picture. With cordial stiffness he sped his guests on their way through the town and the glare of the electrics down to the station-lift Mamie and her supple vicomte shook hands midway; but Askew and Captain Lake insisted upon seeing the ladies safely into a comfortable compartment.
Billy was disgusted. "One man's enough to run this show," protested Billy.
"Don't talk American slang," rebuked his mother, and pelted the men with breathless adieux. "Goodnight, Reggy, so very charming, our day! Mr. Askew, goodnight--so very amusing! We've had a ripping time."
"And the mother-kettle calls my pot black," Billy breathed to Leah.
She paid no attention. Askew was trying to extort an invitation to San Remo, with eloquent eyes and persuasive lips. But a recollection of his four-and-twenty hours in the vicinity without calling, added to a resentment that he should have experimented with his system in the unauthorised company of a much too attractive girl, made her ignore his hints. Moreover, being an ex-sailor and undiplomatic, he would probably prove so affectionately honest, that the Hengists might--and if the Hengists did, then "adieu grapes, the vintage is over." Julia and her serious spouse would never understand the need of a grass-widow for amusements of this sort. While her Ulysses wandered they expected her to be a replica of Penelope, that dull woman who was so fond of speeches and sewing.
"Come to Curzon Street in a fortnight," she advised, and the train departed, leaving him to muse on the "ars amatoria," as understood in the navy.
"I hope you have enjoyed yourself, dear," said Lady Richardson, arranging Billy's tie and kissing Billy's nose, but addressing Leah; "I'm sure you ought to have. This darling has won you pots."
Lady Jim nodded, rather wearily. The cackle of the hen over her chick worried her, and she retreated to the most distant corner, bored by maternal fussiness. This visit had taken her a step farther, but it was most annoying that success should make her feel uncomfortable. Aksakoff, misapprehending her reasons as he did, would certainly assist her materially. But Katinka,--bur-r-r-r! Why couldn't conscience quit worrying?
Even the skilful find it no easy matter to drive a kicking, squealing team. The off-horse must be flicked into decorum, the near leader soothed, the wheelers, bearing the heat and burden of the day, encouraged into pulling with a will. Then, a deft hand on tugging reins, a quick eye for the deviations of the road, some knowledge of mouths, tender and hard, and manifestations of that will which makes of vehicle and quadrupeds a coherent whole--these things must be attributes of the god in the car. Likewise of the "Dea ex machina," although Lady Jim was in and not out of the vehicle. Enthroned with whip and ribbons, she drove a team of five. And in the odd number lay the difficulty of bringing the car of Destiny to the selected stables.
For by this time, rejecting an overruling Providence other than the fetish, who was a domestic god and biased, Leah looked upon herself as her own omnipotent and triumphing Destiny. She would, so she decided, expunge Jim, utilise Askew and Katinka, obliterate Demetrius, and assist Muscovite politics through Aksakoff. This team, in harness, and rendered obedient by blinkers, she controlled with considerable judgment, and made, single-hearted, for her goal. That the actual Destiny, whose rôle she affected to play, might upset her smoothly-running chariot by a judiciously placed and unlooked-for stone, she never paused to consider. So far as she could see, the course was clear to the prize--a money-bag, which she would seize as a victorious widow of the wrong sort.
Askew was the odd animal of the team, the fifth wheel on her chariot, though he was less like a horse than a troublesome and over-faithful dog. Notwithstanding her prohibition, he invaded San Remo, played a most exasperating Patience on a monument along the promenade, and dodged her angry eyes round convenient street-corners. She could not go abroad but what he turned up in unexpected quarters, nor could she remain at home without his appearing, to excuse, on frivolous pretexts, a wholly unnecessary visit. Luckily, the Hengists approved of his frank looks and modest manners, else she might have been compromised. Even in easy-going Italy such cicisbeism was annoying.
Later, Lady Jim returned to London, for that season invented by man, and left him to kick his heels in cross isolation. But, even before the Curzon Street house could be warmed, he rang the bell, and presented himself in the character of a martyr. For the sake of the future Leah kept him in the team, but she gave him more of the whip than he liked, and also--ironically--a marked almanack, limiting his visits. But that she had some liking for him, and much use, she would have bundled him into the arms of the fixture, with strict orders to give those same arms a legal right to embrace him for ever. But Askew himself put an end to that chance of being safely bestowed.
"What will Marjory say if you make my house your hotel?" she asked, when he appeared on the fifth day of the week for the eighth time, and at afternoon tea, too, when she, with a hard day's pleasure behind her, was recruiting for the night's fatigue.
"Nothing," he asserted, sulkily and guiltily; "she has no right to control my actions."
"That depends upon your feelings towards your future wife."
"She is not my--I mean, we have broken it off."
"What!" Lady Jim was frankly exasperated. She as a married woman, and he as an engaged man, could platonise to any extent; but he free, and she shortly to be a widow--what then? She would no more make him her husband than she would allow Demetrius to lead her to the altar. And here he was, selfishly placing himself in an eligible position for the very matrimony she declined to contemplate.
"Marjory and I decided we were not suited," he explained, but timidly, because her eyes flashed. "She takes half the income, and marries that fox-hunting ass. I am free with the rest of the money;" he waited for congratulations which never came. "I thought you would be pleased," he blundered.
"And pray why should I be pleased?"
"I believed--I fancied--you--you liked me," he stuttered, growing red.
"Tolerably--as an engaged man."
"Then you've been playing with me?" he cried; "you don't love me?"
"Did I ever tell you so?"
"No; but I thought----"
"Your vanity thought! Go on."
"Oh, Leah----"
"Kaimes--which is my married name."
Askew gasped. Her amazing impudence reduced him to staring silence. She had lured him to her feet with sweet looks and significant smiles and cooing words, till he had been deceived into thinking that her passion was as strong and as true as his own. Now she reminded him that she was--married. "Oh!" he gasped again, and Lady Jim laughed shortly. Her cat-nature was enjoying this mouse-play.
Visitors had come and gone, and they were alone in the dainty drawing-room, with an untidy tea-table. Askew, having escorted her home from Ranelagh, had waited for an hour with stubborn patience for this solitude of two. His end had been gained, and now--he looked helplessly round, as though seeking for some third person to explain if his charmer were a demon or a woman. "Oh!" he said, once more.
"Nearly six," said Leah, consulting her bracelet. "How long do you intend to stand there saying 'Oh!'?" and she mimicked him.
"Leah!"
"Lady James Kaimes!"
"Not even Lady Jim," he said, clenching his brown hands. "Oh, you--you----" His voice became inarticulate with sheer anger.
"Pray consider that you are in my house," she reminded him coldly.
"I'll never come here again."
"That is as you choose."
"But I can't live without you."
"How flattering!"
"And I won't;" he came a step nearer the low chair in which she sat, but her derisive laugh made him pause. "Leah--I--I--love you!" His voice broke, and he stretched out his arms.
"I saw that ages ago."
"Then why did you----did you?" He stopped, and looked at her with imploring eyes. "I thought you loved me," he murmured, choking.
"Oh, you thought!" said she, ironically.
"Is it not true? Have I been deceived? No!" he flung out a beseeching hand; "don't speak--I cannot bear to hear the truth. Let me go--let me go," he stumbled towards the door, blindly. "You have broken my heart; but I'll go away--far away--to South America, and--and--oh, my God!" he leaned against the wall and covered his face with his hands.
Lady Jim might have been in the stalls of a theatre for all the personal feeling she had hitherto shown. But his last words brought self uppermost. If he went to South America, he would certainly see Lola Fajardo, and, possibly, might come face to face with Jim. Recognition of an admitted corpse would spoil Jim's game and her own. Askew, for she put herself in his place, would certainly make things unpleasant, and she did not wish to provide a scandal in high life for circulating extra editions of newspapers during the silly season. Besides, he was really a nice boy, and she would miss his good looks and canine attentions. Both circumstances and inclinations demanded that she should keep him under her eye. An explanation came to her while he sobbed at the door--looking very ridiculous, she thought--and she made use of it, to soothe his sorrow and save herself.
"You silly boy," she began, and the beginning produced an effect she was far from foreseeing.
"Silly! Yes, I am silly," he admitted between his teeth, and flinging back his head to regard her with fierce, wet eyes. "I am silly to have believed in you and in your false affection;" before she could protest against this language--she had risen to do so--he hurled himself across the room, and gripped her wrists so tightly that she could have screamed with pain. "You shan't treat me in this way--do you hear, you shan't. I'm not going to be whistled to your feet like a dog and then kicked aside. Married! Yes, you are married, as you were when you whistled. But hang your husband and damn your husband--he has no claim on you, other than a legal one. Mine you are, and mine you shall be. I tell you, Leah"--he shook her in his anger--"that you must leave this man, and come with me. You must--you must!"--he dragged her hands to his breast--"you shall!"
"Harry!" She gasped his name in sheer surprise.
"Yes. Harry--the fool, if you will; the man, as you shall find."
"How--how dare you?"
"Because I do dare, and I shall dare more, if you play football with my heart. Why couldn't you leave me alone? Why couldn't you stick to the man whose name you bear? Don't struggle, for you shan't be free till I have had my say out. You made me love you--now I shall make you love me. You and your society rubbish, and gimcrack rules, and polite lies, and make-believe of truth! You with--ah-r-r-r!" he shook her again--"you over-civilised coquette, you Circe-of-many-wiles, you ruin of honest men! Do you think that I, who am flesh and blood, care for your lady and gentleman humbug? No, no! I am a man, you a woman, and we are one; you hear--one. If not, I'll put a bullet in your head and another through my own. You have fooled many, you shan't fool me. There!" ha flung her roughly from him; "now you can ring for your servants, to put me to the door."
With bruised wrists and wide-open eyes Leah stood dumfoundered. Jim, at his worst, had never been like this. If he had been she would have truly loved him. At the moment she very nearly loved Askew, recognising in his outburst that masterful nature which every woman adores and succumbs to. In spite of her dexterity in playing with amorous fire, it really seemed as though she was burning her fingers on this occasion. Naturally, she enjoyed the experience. This reversion to cave-life thrilled her pulses. Had Leah been capable of loving anything with a beard she would have then and there fallen at Askew's feet and implored him to trample on her. But her absolute ignorance of the strongest of passions, save self-love, snatched the victory in--what would have been to an ordinary woman--the hour of defeat.
"Well," she said, admiration struggling with anger, "you are a brute!"
The man, still panting from conflicting passions, acted strangely and foolishly, as men do at crucial moments. He smoothed his hair, arranged his tie, and pulled down his waistcoat, not looking at her but into a near mirror. Yet he saw her astonished face at second hand, and smiled grimly.
"I can be a brute," said he, ominously quiet; "but you haven't seen me at my worst yet."
"Good heavens!" This was undoubtedly a man--theman--the dominating male, the genuine lord of creation, whose animal honesty can rend the cobweb entanglements of the female sex, and does rend them, when the bandage of love inopportunely slips. Defiance would not lure him again to his proper position at her feet; and she was half afraid of the might her trickiness had evoked. But in woman's weakness lies woman's strength, and Delilah pulled down the corners of her mouth to subjugate Samson.
"My poor wrists!" she murmured.
Askew wheeled from the mirror, shied, and winced; but his mouth and eyebrows were still three straight lines.
"My poor wrists!" reiterated the temptress, moving towards her pre-historic man; "see--you have bruised them."
He could see that he had; they were under his eyes, under his very nose, but he threw aside his head, with the modern equivalent of a word which a cave-man might have used in some such plight. Adam was weakened into aggressive firmness.
Eve offered a more tempting apple. "If you really loved me"--tears emphasised the murmur.
"Leah--darling!"
He was again in the toils, and kissing the bruised skin madly, with feverish lips. "How could I be so cruel?" he mumbled, and slipped to her victorious feet. "Oh! oh! oh!" in three distinct keys. "Forgive."
"If you will promise not to leave me," she whispered tenderly.
"Never! never! never! never!" a kiss on alternate hands for each word.
Circe's magic having evoked the brute, she knew thoroughly the sort of animal she had to deal with. Considering that she had no feeling of love, or even pity, to create fervour, Leah acted admirably. Cooing like a mother over her babe, and with a seraphic look, she bent above the tame animal, less to caress him than to make sure that the halter was round his neck.
"You foolish, hot-headed boy! Do get up and talk sensibly!"
The subjugated obeyed meekly, all the fire out of his veins, and sat like a whipped schoolboy in a distant chair, which she indicated with regal indignation. "For," said Leah, as if she were announcing an entirely new fact, "I am a married woman;" and she slipped behind the tea-table to prevent further demonstrations.
"As if I didn't know," sighed Askew, disconsolately.
"Then why did you behave so badly, you wicked boy?"
"Because jewellers' windows are tempting."
"Jewellers' windows?"
"You look into them, and see pretty things you can't buy. Naturally, a fellow wants to smash the glass and----"
"I understand the parable. But a thief has to reckon with the law, and so has a married woman. You would not like to see me divorced, Harry?"
"I would like to see you my wife," he retorted, evasively and stubbornly.
"Impossible! I am already a wife. If I eloped with you, what respect could you have for me?
"I should have whatever you liked, including you."
"Which I don't like, and won't give," said Leah, indignantly. "In you I looked to find a friend, and I find nothing but ungoverned passion, that would drag the object of his adoration in the mud. Oh! oh!"--out came the inevitable handkerchief--"how I have been deceived!"
By this time, the brute, with a penitent tail between its legs, was beginning to believe itself entirely in the wrong. Lady Jim, seeing this, became more than ever a tender woman. "I forgive you," she declared, plaintively, from behind a handkerchief mopping dry eyes; "this scene will be as though it had never been."
"But my feelings," rebelled the cave-man, sulkily.
"Will always be those of sacred friendship for a much-tried woman."
"How can they be, when----?"
"When you have made such a fool of yourself? Ah, my poor Harry, forget your folly. Remember only that I forgive you."
"I don't exactly mean that," grumbled poor Harry, scenting sophistry, but unable to prevent the war being carried into his camp. "You--well----you see Oh, hang it, Leah, you know that I love you."
"Not with that true love which is at once tender and respectful."
These sentiments were really noble, but somehow the bewildered man was not in the mood for copy-book philosophy. "You offer me a stone and call it a beautiful loaf," said he, bitterly, and with heat.
"Another parable! How biblical you are becoming!" said Lady Jim, desperately weary and with her eye on the clock. "I do not understand, nor do you, my poor boy."
"I understand that you have made a fool of me," he snapped brusquely.
"Oh no! Nature has been beforehand there," she retorted, beginning to lose her temper with a man who would explain. "Don't be silly, Harry! Go home, and think of our future."
"Ourfuture!" He leaped to his feet with a shining face.
Leah regretted the misused pronoun, and began to anticipate renewed melodrama. But her little tin god, pitying a votary whose nerves were jangled by stupid honesty, sent a seasonable visitor.