"He is. I think the folly of risking his liberty in St. Petersburg is apparent. But he hopes to cajole the Czar into granting his pardon. M'm!" Leah packed away the letter in her dressing-bag. "I daresay we shall hear of him next in Siberia."
Joan opened a pair of horrified eyes. "Lady James!"
"Oh, it's a charming place, they say, and not at all so disagreeable as people make out. The climate is much more delightful than our own, dear, and the society really intellectual. The Russians send all their clever people there, you know. I am sure Dr. Demetrius will be very comfortable."
"Exile to Siberia! It sounds horrible."
"Yes--sounds, but isn't. You have been reading Tolstoy and seeing melodramas, my dear."
"I thought Dr. Demetrius loved you," said Joan, suddenly.
"Oh, he did; the man was a perfect nuisance. But, you see, I did not love him."
"No, no! Of course you would not. I never meant that. As poor dear Lord James's wife you could not."
"And as poor dear Lord James's widow, I can, only I don't."
Miss Tallentire was still confused. "You must think me dreadfully rude--oh, dreadfully," she murmured, regretting an unintentional insinuation.
"I think you dreadfully innocent, and dreadfully sweet," said Leah, kissing the flushed face. "I'm talking like that horrid Mulrady girl. Where do these Americans pick up their adjectives?"
Even while chatting, and while the train tore through a bleak landscape almost blotted out with rain, Leah wondered who had written the letter. Not Demetrius, certainly, although the calligraphy would have caused an expert to commit perjury. Aksakoff was more clever with tongue than pen, so Leah fell back on Helfmann as a possible forger. Assuredly she did not believe that he was a medical man, and his fortunate presence at the needed hour argued a carefully laid plot. The fiacre probably drove to St. Lazare, and thence Helfmann had no doubt personally conducted his patient to Havre to be shipped on board the Petrovitch yacht. Now the boat was kicking her way through the grey northern seas, and Demetrius, in possession of his senses, was looking forward to a forced passage across the Urals. An unpleasant journey at this time of the year, but needful for men who wanted more than was good for them. And, thank God, this particular man was out of her life for ever. While offering up the hasty prayer Lady Jim touched the peacock's feather, tucked away in her pocket, and felt that life really was worth living, when one knew how to dispose of disagreeable people.
Perhaps the prayer addressed to a Deity other than the fetish made the domestic god sulky, but he, or it, certainly did not expedite Leah's journey to Curzon Street. For two weary days wind and rain, stormy waves and over-cautious officials, detained the travellers in Calais. A hurricane that would have done credit to the South Seas made the Channel impassible, and the waves that Britannia is supposed to rule rebelled furiously against her white cliffs. Leah, inconceivably bored, watched the gusty hours through streaming panes, and wondered if the gale extended to the Mediterranean. If so, the ducal yacht with Frith and his father on board must be having a pitch-and-toss time of the worst. The Duke was no hardened mariner, and uncomfortable motions prolonged to excess might make a man of his age so ill that he would---- Here Leah's vivid imagination produced a shudder. She did not wish the kindly old Duke to die of exhaustion; not that she cared overmuch for him, but Frith succeeding to unlimited money-bags would be less easy to manage in the important matter of occasional cheques. The insurance money would not last for ever with one of her tastes, and after all--since this greedy Captain Strange would insist upon his dues--she had only twenty-nine thousand pounds. Then Jim would want ready money, and his demands--she knew him of old--would probably be shameless. Of course, seeing that, on the face of it, he was involved deeper than she was in a shady conspiracy, he could be told to mind his own business and marry Señorita Fajardo, if desirous of being kept like a gentleman. But to avoid unnecessary trouble it was probable that she would have to send him a trifle. How dreadful it was to think that a single shilling of that hardly-earned money should slip through her fingers; but the harpies had to be appeased or driven away. She could not achieve the last, therefore her purse-strings would have to be unloosened. Already the pockets of Strange gaped hungrily, and it was her hard fate to fill them.
"So absurd!" grumbled Lady Jim, as the wind whimpered and the rain lashed the glass, "in the middle ages one could have hired a nice bravo to put him out of the way, and there would not have been even funeral expenses. I must pay, I suppose, but I'll see if the beast will not take the money by instalments. There is always the chance that he might be drowned between payments--and I hope he will be," she ended devoutly.
In this amiable frame of mind she arrived at Curzon Street, after sending Joan, brimful of Continental experiences, to the less fashionable district of Lambeth. The house looked cosy, the servants were attentive, the insurance money swelled her bank account, and, best of all, Demetrius was posting towards Siberia. On the whole things were tolerable--it was not Leah's custom to indulge in superlatives--so she decided to remain for a week or two in London, prior to being bored at Firmingham, where the Marchioness awaited the home-coming of the yachting party. After her late efforts in the cause of politics Lady Jim felt that she really could not stand Hilda's artificial childishness without an intermezzo of amusement.
But fun of any sort was hard to find, since her widowhood and the emptiness of town precluded indulgence. Piccadilly and the Park, St. James's Street and Pall Mall, were as barren of pleasure and a fashionable population as that Siberia towards which Demetrius unwillingly journeyed. Even Lady Canvey had moved out of the Early Victorian room into more modern surroundings at Nice. Askew certainly paid his promised visit, but he proved to be dull, thinking more of the yacht than the woman. The technical terms he employed in describing his purchase made Lady Jim yawn, and she decided that, like all men, he was unutterably selfish. However, she was sufficiently kind-hearted--and diplomatic--to show him the pseudo letter, and translate it for his benefit.
"Told you so," said he, when in possession of misleading facts: "the beggar's all right--be on his legs in a jiffy."
"Thanks to your care."
"Don't rub it into a fellow, Lady Jim!"
"Lady James!"
"Lady James it is, though it seems to me that we are to be merely acquaintances."
"Most of my friends are acquaintances."
"But I want this acquaintance to be a friend."
"What an exacting nature! Well"--with a sigh--"I suppose as you have loved and I have lost, we can be friends till you marry."
"Why not after?"
"Dear Mr. Askew, a bachelor selects his own friends, a wife chooses those of her husband. Meantime, you are a nice boy, if somewhat fickle, and I like you sufficiently to let you go. When does this ship of yours go south?"
"Schooner, Lady Jim--schooner-yacht; two hundred tons Lloyd's measurement and----"
"You explained that before."
"Did I? Yes, of course. Well, she is a beauty."
"Ah! The same term was applied to me once and by a man who said that he would love me for ever."
"I don't believe I was ever so crude," retorted Askew, bluntly; "you don't tell a lady that she is a beauty, though you might say it to a shopgirl."
"Really! I don't know any people of that class. You do, apparently."
The young man grew red and wriggled like a speared eel, thinking how very like a woman she was. She did not want him, and she did want him; she told him to go, and wished him to stop; she pardoned his fickleness, yet kept it in mind. "Ah, you bundle of contradictions!"
"Why not say a woman? One word explains your three."
"I like to be verbose," said Askew, sulkily.
"You always are--first about me, and then about this ship thing. I suppose the Fajardo woman will be the next."
"Don't speak of her like that."
"Why not? She is my rival. I should be more than mortal if I forgave her, and less than a woman if I did not say nasty things about her."
"Say them about me, then."
"I have been doing my best, and really, you take a ragging very well. There, poor boy"--she patted his cheek--"I shan't tease you any more. When do you sail?"
"In three weeks."
"For Buenos Ayres?"
"Of course."
"Oh true and eager lover! Dine with me next Thursday, and we can talk about her."
"You'll be nasty."
"About the ship? Oh, no!"
"I thought you meant Lola."
"Perhaps I did; both ship and woman are 'hers,' you know. Next Thursday?"
"I shall be delighted."
"You look it. Do try and conceal your emotions better."
Askew laughed, and took up his hat. She was more like a mosquito than a human being, and he made for the door, weary of being stung. "I would rather be your friend than your husband, Lady Jim," he said coolly.
"What a compliment, seeing what husbands are! I ought to know."
"Oh, pardon me--I forgot," he stuttered, much confused.
She shook her head at him gravely. "What a child in arms you are!"
To this last piece of impertinence Askew would have replied rather sharply, thereby proving the truth of her remark, but that the door was blocked by a tall lean man.
"M. Aksakoff!" announced the footman, behind the newcomer.
"Good-day, Lady James. Good-day, M. Aksakoff, and good-bye."
Leah, when alone with the diplomatist, felt her heart leap at the solemnity of his looks. She fancied that he might have come to tell her of the doctor's escape. In reality, Aksakoff was wondering how he could pay her two thousand pounds without turning the arranged comedy into a drama. Feeling his way, he allowed her the first word.
"You will stop to luncheon," said Lady Jim, amiably.
"I trespass too much on your hospitality, dear madame. You must have had enough of me at our last luncheon in Paris."
"Oh, I have forgotten all about Paris;" and she gave him a look which intimated that he also should feign forgetfulness.
"Ah, no; but pardon me, I came to inquire about M. Demetrius."
"Why from me? I know nothing. Wait--I do know something. He wrote me a letter saying he was better and intended to go to Russia."
"Probably to see Petrovitch about his pardon. I wish I had seen him before he left Paris;" and the diplomatist smiled when the letter was mentioned.
"Did you not see him?"
Aksakoff raised his eyebrows. "But it was impossible, madame," he explained, without even a wink. "Dr. Helfmann took him away in the fiacre and I departed for Havre. I did not return to Paris."
"I see; your business at Havre detained you."
"Longer than I expected," said the diplomatist, taking his cue. "You see, madame, I was forced to repeat my conversation with M. Demetrius to my cousin the Count. I expect that he wrote to Paris, and told M. Demetrius to come to Havre for a conversation."
"Without knowing his address? How clever!"
Aksakoff laughed. "You have me there, madame."
"I really don't know what you mean. How is Katinka?"
"She is at Brussels. In good health, I believe."
"Does she know that M. Demetrius has gone to St. Petersburg?"
"Possibly. He had to write announcing his engagement to you."
If he expected Lady Jim to be taken aback by this abrupt speech, he was mistaken in the woman, whose aplomb he should have known. She merely laughed and dropped out a ready lie with slow amusement. "Ah, my dear M. Aksakoff, clever linguists as you Russians are, your comprehension of the English language is limited--very, very limited. M. Demetrius should have known, that in our tongue, one word may have several meanings. See--a diocese. See--to perceive by the eye."
"Your illustration is felicitous, madame. I understand, then, that M. Demetrius translated 'No' as 'Yes'!"
"Oh, he was by no means so stupid as that. The man bothered me with attentions for months, and was quite a nuisance. I nearly spoke to poor dear Jim about his smirking, grinning compliments. He talked of me in clubs and followed everywhere, sighing like a furnace--if a furnace ever does sigh. I speak on Shakespeare's authority. To keep the creature quiet I said something which he apparently misconstrued--a sop to Cerberus, a cake to a child. You understand."
"I think so. There was no engagement."
"None at all. How impertinent of him to suggest such a thing, when my husband is scarcely cold in his grave! But I pardon him on account of his ignorance of our language, which undoubtedly led him into error. When I see him again I shall explain myself in a way which he will probably find disagreeable."
Aksakoff smiled imperceptibly. "M. Demetrius is much to blame, madame, for not having given more attention to your English grammar. I go to St. Petersburg myself in a week. Perhaps you will give me some message to him."
"No! The man is a fool, and I never wish to hear about him again."
"Your command shall be obeyed. From this moment his name shall never be mentioned by me;" and he mentally admired the clever way in which she had wriggled out of an untenable situation. But the object of his visit had still to be approached, and at this moment an inspiration how to approach it came opportunely. The mention of poor dear Jim suggested lines upon which he might proceed with safety. "I come on a serious errand, madame," said he, softly.
"Yes!" she did not know what he meant, and under the circumstances did not intend to inquire. To advance under the guns of masked batteries was never Leah's mode of campaigning.
"Your husband--pardon, your late husband--played bridge," said the diplomatist, so crudely as to render himself unworthy of the name.
"I believe he did."
"Assuredly; and with me on occasions. Twelve months ago we were a party of five at Torquay."
"I believe Jim did go there sometimes. Go on."
"It is hard to go on, madame," said Aksakoff, with feigned nervousness, "as I have a confession to make."
"I grant you absolution beforehand."
"You are too good. Then I can repay you by handing over the money."
"What money?"
"My losses at bridge. Yes; with your husband and others I played a great deal--unfortunately for my pockets."
She noticed the misused plural and smiled. "Most people made that remark grammatically, when they played with Jim. So you lost?"
"Two thousand pounds."
The exact sum he had mentioned at Monte Carlo. At once she saw that he wished to pay wages on a sufficiently plausible pretext. The money would have been useful to pay Strange and Jim, so that she could keep her thirty thousand pounds intact; but, strangely enough in so unscrupulous a woman, she could not make up her mind to finger such dirty gold.
"Death pays all debts," she said quietly.
"On the part of the corpse, assuredly. But those who live have to reckon with the executors."
"In that case you had better see the Marquis of Frith. He is poor Jim's executor."
"Ah, no, madame; be kind. I should have paid this money before, but my salary did not permit. What would M. le Marquis say if I confessed that I delayed so long to pay a debt of honour?"
"What does it matter, so long as you do pay?"
"It matters much amongst men," said Aksakoff, stiffly. "But you, a woman, and a clever woman," he added with emphasis, "will understand. I pray you, madame, to take my cheque for the full amount, and permit my mind to be at rest."
Lady Jim, priding herself on performing a hard penance for her late rascality, shook her head. "No," said she, seriously; "I am quite sure that Jim, who was often in a hole himself, would not have been hard on you. Had he lived the money would have been a godsend to him--I admit that; but I really cannot take payment of any gambling debts. It would not be right," she finished virtuously.
Aksakoff was less surprised than she anticipated. Her refusal of this money assured him that the story of the engagement was true, and that Leah had rid herself of an undesirable suitor, who had power to compel completion of a forced contract. What power Demetrius had over her Aksakoff could not guess, but the whole circumstances showed that her desire had been for the obliteration of the man, and not to earn two thousand pounds. But nothing of this appeared on his calm face.
"Pray take the cheque, madame," he urged, and held it under her nose.
"No, no!" She pushed back her chair from that too alluring bait. "I cannot take it, and I shall say nothing about it. Stay"--she took the fluttering paper from his hand and rose. "You have paid me on Jim's behalf--is that not so?"
"Yes;" Aksakoff watched her, wondering at this right-about-face.
"Then"--she approached the fire and flung in the cheque--"the debt is paid, and you are free."
"Ah, but no."
"I say, yes." Lady Jim approached him with outstretched hands, and a smile which had won her many things. "You are my friend and not my debtor. Is it not so?"
He kissed those extended hands. "Madame, a hard-working and poor official thanks you. My services now and ever are at your command."
With the thought that Demetrius might return unexpectedly from Siberia, she thanked him. "I may have to remind you of that some day."
"When and where you will, madame!" His pale eyes lighted up with enthusiastic fire. "Were you my wife, I should be an ambassador."
"You may be some day. Madame Aksakoff has talents."
"Madame Aksakoff is--Madame Aksakoff; and you, are----"
"Well, what?" she demanded, smiling.
"An angel."
"How weak!"
"All language is weak, when used to describe such a woman as you, madame. I take my leave. Your servant!"
"And my friend?"
"To the death, madame!"
He went out as stiff and solemn as ever, with the conviction that he had parted from Jezebel's cousin-german. Nevertheless, he admired her prodigiously, especially as he intended to put into his own pockets the two thousand pounds she had so tactfully earned, and so foolishly rejected. The bureaucracy would never hear of her folly, and it would be a pity to return money which a poor official could bank against evil days. Not that Aksakoff expected these. The capture of Demetrius, without publicity, and so cleverly achieved, would gain him infinite credit as an efficient servant of the Czar. "A charming and astute woman," he thought gratefully, when ruminating on certain advancement. "But dangerous," added Prudence.
Leah went about for the next seven days with her head in the air, and with a contempt for those people who found renunciation difficult. She could renounce, with ease: had she not refused a large sum of money because she felt that it was wrong to take it? What self-denial! She felt aggressively virtuous, and but for the circumstances would have liked to trumpet her perfections in the street. That she did not do so was further self-denial and a flattering conscience, with which Providence had nothing to do, assured her that she was a pearl amongst women. Now that Demetrius was out of sight she calmly put him out of mind, and began to think how she could prevent Askew from spoiling Jim's nefarious courting of the Spanish lady. There was no way, so far as she could see, since the sailor's love had grown cold, and she had no bonds in which to bind him. But she trusted to that luck which the fetish always sent her way, and sure enough the luck came, but some weeks later. Beforehand the fetish, still annoyed by her prayer to another god, sent her a reminder that it could be disagreeable. A bolt from the blue came in the shape of a telegram from Firmingham.
"Come to me at once," wired the Marchioness. "Yacht lost off Brest. Duke and Frith and most of crew drowned. Come."
"She might have spared the last word," said Leah, staring and stunned.
Lady Jim boarded a special train to Firmingham in a royal rage, the more riotous for necessary suppression. After the shock of the unexpected had passed, she gave a flitting thought of pity to her drowned relatives, and reverted hastily to selfish considerations. Solitude permitting the play of temper, she punished the fetish, by flinging its outward and visible sign of a peacock's feather from the compartment which witnessed the unmasking. That her Baal should have played her such a trick was intolerable, and still more intolerable the thought that circumstances muzzled her. For the first time in her victorious life Leah Kaimes dealt with a fixed decree, against which there was no appeal.
What could she do? Nothing! To make chaos of a continent would not have relieved her feelings, and there was nothing to wreck in the limited space of the carriage. Unable to sit still, she threw herself from seat to seat, feeling like a caged tiger, with the added savagery of a trained intellect. Unlike the beast, she had the use of speech to vent her wrath, but this she did not utilise from a conviction that no words would do justice to the situation. A Texan mule-driver's vocabulary would have fallen short of her requirements. Her impotent anger was like that of a dog leaping and slavering against an offending but unreachable moon.
And the facts--the hard ironic facts, which she could not do away with, scheme as she might! Those inflexible actualities buzzed in her brain, until repetition took the rhythm of the droning wheels underfoot. Pentland was dead, along with his son and heir; Hilda, a widow with two girl babies, who did not count in the succession; Jim was wiped out of social existence, and by her own act. Remained Lionel, the curate, the prig, her one honest man--the Duke of Pentland. Leah could have screamed in the face of this crushing truth.
A title at the best, fifty thousand a year, three country seats, a town house, spacious and crammed with beautiful things, and a Scotch moor with an adorable shooting-box. This was the heritage of the new peer! "Of a milk-and-water parson," raged Lady Jim, unjustly, "who will waste everything in charity, and turn the houses into pigsties for the unclean. Oh, Lord, to think that such a clerical ass should get the inside runnings!" This latter phrase she had picked up from Miss Mulrady, and at the moment it seemed expressive.
The position would not bear thinking about; yet she had to think, appealing betweenwhiles to the gods-of-things-as-they-are for reasons to justify such shabby treatment. What had she done, that they should be so disagreeable? It was enough to make a truly virtuous woman, as she assuredly could call herself, dance a can-can in Piccadilly. Then she desisted for a few moments from calling the Unseen bad names to lament over her own short-sightedness. To think that she should have sold Jim's birthright for thirty thousand pounds! It was not even one year's income of the Pentland estates. She would have been a Duchess, too; not that she personally cared for rank, but with a higher position she could have trampled the more easily on her enemies. A thought of these flashing into her mind made her clench her fists and grit her teeth. How they would rejoice, the beasts, to think what she had missed, and by how short a period she had missed it! If they had only one neck, as Caligula desired for his enemies, how she would have enjoyed a chop at it!
"Oh!" cried Leah, banging the cushions and choking in the dust thus raised--"if I could only bring Jim back!"
It was a kindly wish, as she desired him to enjoy the good things that had fallen into his sham grave. But there did not seem much chance of achieving the impossible. Jim was dead and buried, and the interment had been legally sanctified by her tears. If he came to life it would be difficult to explain how a corpse in his name came to occupy a niche in the Kaimes vault. Also, inquiry might lead to the production of a Siberian exile. If Demetrius told the truth--which he assuredly would do in the face of a betrayal he must guess was her work--there would be no place for her in Society, and she would starve, a social Peri at the gates of a forbidden Paradise. No! Think as she would--and think she did till her brain ached--things had to remain as she had foolishly arranged them. It was a galling thought to think that none but she who suffered was responsible. She could not even lay the blame on the stars; but she could and did on the fetish. It was something of a relief to have thrown its peacock manifestation out of the window.