"I am not leaving you any money, my dear."
"Please don't. Your grandson is finding that opera-dancer expensive. Give Canvey your savings, and his lady-love will dance professionally on your grave."
"I am glad cats don't talk," said the old woman, addressing no one in particular. "One is quite enough."
"Ah, they do talk then," laughed Leah, and having got the last word slipped away before Lady Canvey could rally her forces.
The Duchess, well wrapped up in expensive furs, stepped into the crisp air, thinking of Askew and his triple dip into the matrimonial lucky-bag. Lola Fajardo, Marjory the fixture, and Mamie Mulrady, not to speak of herself, whom he would have married had she cared to call herself by his unpretentious name. Certainly he was a man unfettered by prejudices in love affairs. Dark or fair, tall or short, and of any nationality, he adored them all in an entirely respectable fashion which included a ring and a parson.
"Though I don't believe the silly boy knows what love is," thought Leah, passing into Piccadilly--she was walking for exercise towards the Park; "but people of that ignorant sort always seem to land on their feet, like the cats Lady Canvey spoke of. I have landed very comfortably myself. I wonder why I can't love any one. How is it that no man can stir me into experience of the grand passion?"
Lately Leah had taken to analysing herself with fatal results. It seemed to her that she was shallow, since nothing in the world made any difference to her, or could make her feel. If Jim had dropped dead of the apoplectic fit which was waiting for him, she would merely have shrugged her shoulders; had the old Duke come back to claim the title, she would have had small regret in surrendering it. Everything seemed trivial and dull and vulgar. A remark made by Lionel occurred vividly to her at this moment. "You will never be truly happy," he had said, "until you are truly sorrowful." It was an unintentional epigram on the vicar's part, as he was dense, like all the Kaimes family; but it was clever enough to be true. Only--and here was the hopelessness of her life--she saw no chance of becoming sorrowful in any degree, since her indifference nullified deep feelings of any sort.
"I suppose I shall have to run in this society circus till I die," she thought drearily. "What a clown's destiny!"
The mention of one lover naturally recalled the name of another, and by the time she passed Apsley House thoughts of Demetrius were running in her head. Not a word had she heard of him since his enforced journey to Siberia, via Paris, Havre, and Kronstadt. Katinka Aksakoff might have supplied information, only that Katinka, for reasons which Leah guessed rather than knew, had disappeared some nine months ago. According to M. Aksakoff, she was ruralising on his Volga estates, and her health forbade an exciting life. The Duchess did not quite believe this smooth explanation; and yet, at times, she fancied that the diplomatist might have taken her advice regarding the shepherding of an infatuated child.
It was, then, by one of those curious coincidences perfectly explicable to the psychological mind, that the man himself glided to her side. He looked as tall and lean as ever, but his eyes were less direct in their gaze, and he did not seem to exercise his former self-control. Leah and he had met but rarely during the past year, owing to her retirement consequent on mourning observances, and when they did meet each had avoided mention of that memorable afternoon in Paris. But when he crossed Leah's path thus unexpectedly, and when her head was filled with Demetrius and with the woman Demetrius didnotlove, she resolved to learn the worst or the best. After greeting, she began to speak with unconventional abruptness.
"Where is your daughter, M. Aksakoff?"
"On my Volga estate," he replied nervously; and from his averted eyes she made sure he was lying badly.
"In Siberia, you mean."
He turned with a start. "How do you know that?"
"I am right, then?"
Aksakoff clasped and unclasped two restless hands over the knob of his cane. "I really cannot say. I do not know why you should make that observation, after I have informed you of my daughter's whereabouts."
"I make it because I am a woman, and being such, I know that Katinka's love for that waxed-moustache creature will lead her--perhaps has led her--even into Siberian wilds."
Aksakoff stopped under the Achilles Statue and probed her mind with his eyes. "Do you really think so?"
"I do. Does my thought confirm facts?"
He resumed his walk with a troubled face. "I will be frank with you, madame, since we both know that Constantine Demetrius left Paris on that afternoonen routeto Siberia."
"I know nothing of the sort," contradicted Leah, sharply.
"Yet you have just admitted that the man is in Siberia."
The Duchess laughed carelessly. "All Russians go as naturally to Siberia as cockneys to Margate. It's a kind of Bank Holiday with them, I suppose. Why not be frank with me?"
"Madame, I rather think that I should ask you that question." "I never answer questions," said Leah, coolly; "it saves a lot of trouble. But I make statements, and one is that Demetrius and the woman who loves him are in Siberia."
"Do you really think so?" said the diplomatist, repeating himself.
"Idothink so; but surely you know?"
Aksakoff shook his head. "Katinka refused to marry her cousin Petrovitch, after the disappearance of Demetrius. She questioned me continually about him, and showed me the letter and enclosure which you had sent. A very diplomatic letter, if I may say so. I, of course, denied that I knew anything. She appeared to be satisfied; yet nine months ago she left my house--left this country----"
"To rusticate on your Volga estates."
"That was my excuse for her disappearance, and I beg of you, madame, to accept that excuse in society, for the sake of her good name and mine." She nodded, and he went on gravely: "I confess to you, madame, that I do not know where she is. You suggest Siberia; it is possible."
"I fancy so, seeing she is infatuated with the man. But how could she possibly learn that he was there?" Leah asked this question a trifle nervously, for there seemed to be something menacing in this strange behaviour of Katinka.
"Very easily. You sent her the letter supposed to have been written by Constantine Demetrius in Paris."
"What letter is that?" she asked obstinately.
The Russian's eyes flashed. "You must know, madame, and you do know, that the letter was forged for your safety."
The Duchess stopped abruptly, and became as ice in manner and speech. "You talk very strangely M. Aksakoff. My safety was never in danger, so far as I know. Your anxiety makes you indiscreet, and thinking so, I pardon the indiscretion."
Aksakoff, knowing that she would continue to feign ignorance, even in the face of aggressive facts, apologised with a bow, since it mattered very little. "In that forged letter"--he was determined to stick to the word--"was the name of Helfmann."
"Dr. Helfmann," she corrected.
"I gave him that degree, madame," said Aksakoff, dryly. "Helfmann is one of our secret police."
"Then you had no business to introduce such a creature into my rooms," said Leah, angrily.
"Pardon, the crime is twelve months old. To proceed. Katinka knew the real business of this man, and may have learned the truth, or enough of it, to make her journey to Siberia. Tomsk--yes, Tomsk!" He leaned his stick on the ground, his hands on the stick, and stared vaguely at the leafless trees. "Assuredly Tomsk."
"Is Dr. Demetrius there?"
Aksakoff nodded vaguely. "I wish you a good day, madame," said he, and turned away abruptly without raising his hat. The omission of a usual courtesy either betrayed his absence of mind, or showed what he truly thought of the Duchess of Pentland.
Leah, having a tender conscience, chose to assign the latter reason, and resolved to cut the man if he should dare to speak to her again. "But what can you expect from the Russian bear?" she said, resuming her walk.
It ended in Curzon Street. She and Jim rented the ducal residence to a wealthy American, and retained the smaller mansion, on the plea that their happiest days had been spent there. This excuse was, of course, a lie, but every one believed it, and said how touching it was to see that a Duke and a Duchess could be so human. And, after all, Leah really did like the cot of her humble days. It was pleasant to think that she had been "Lady Jim of Curzon Street," and had taken her title in that way, just like a peer in his own right. Sometimes she regretted that she was simply a Duchess, and not Lady Jim as of old. Then she had enjoyed life; now she found it excruciatingly dull. And it was all the fault of Demetrius, who had taught her more exciting methods of passing time than by killing it.
When in the drawing-room she recalled the conversation with Aksakoff, and began to think that there were troublesome days ahead. If Katinka had learned the truth through Helfmann, she was assuredly hovering round Tomsk in the hope of aiding Demetrius to escape. Should she be successful, as so determined girl might easily be, the man would return to this Island of Refuge breathing out vengeance of the direst. Leah had often contemplated a possible escape, followed by a certain return, and the contemplation invariably produced a shudder. Now that there seemed to be some ground that the man who knew all and would tell all might come to England, she was conscious of rising spirits. The feeling puzzled her.
"I ought to be shaking in my shoes," she reflected, "but I feel rather pleased than otherwise. I am spoilt for a life of cotton-wool and policemen at every corner. Danger is the sole thing which amuses me. That must be the explanation of my feeling jolly. I expect the heroes and heroines of cheap novels feel the same when they settle to a dull marriage after pages of hair-breadth escapes."
She was perfectly right. Leah Pentland was a bad woman mainly because she had been looked after too carefully. It required upheavals to bring the possible best out of her. She had behaved unscrupulously and basely in dealing with the insurance fraud, because that was the sole adventure which had come her way. But had the adventure been heroic and noble, she would have enjoyed it quite as much and would have struggled quite as bravely. The reckless way in which she pulled the whiskers of Death, when throned on her motor-car, was characteristic of the woman. Given danger, and she blossomed into a heroine, good or bad as circumstances served. At heart she was no vapid society woman, and her fiery pursuit of aimless pleasures merely showed her restless and masculine temperament. Danger braced her. At times, during her first taste of it, she had certainly given way from overstrained nerves; but now she was steeled to the worst that could happen, blooded to the open trail, baptised in unholy fire. If Katinka and Demetrius returned to London to give battle she was certain, absolutely certain, that she could beat them single-handed. Katinka she felt was the more dangerous of the two. Well, let her come, let him come, and victory be to the self-confident. Leah was so sure of her triumph that she did not even cast a thought to her hard-worked fetish. All the same, she kept the peacock's feather constantly in her pocket.
"Jim," said the Duchess that night, after atête-à-têtedinner, when the pair reached the coffee stage, "let us sell up, drop our rank, and go to Canada."
The Duke stared, as well he might. "Good Lord!"
"Pooh! Why do you not say damn, as I feel inclined to do?"
Jim still stared with infantile blue eyes. "You say such queer things," he objected, fishing for a cigar.
"I should like to do them. Oh, why wasn't I born a real live man. I should have lived--lived--lived."
"Well," said Jim, stolidly clipping his weed, "you live now, don't you?"
"In a satin-lined, rose-wood jewel-box, if you call that living."
"I see what you mean," confessed the Duke, lighting up. "Same here. I was ever so much jollier aboard that dirty tramp. I slugged one of the crew--a Finn, he was--a hulking Finn, who thought I was a world-crawler, an' no man. They carried him away in bits," finished Jim, with the battle-light in his blue eyes.
Leah looked at him curiously. "Jim, I really believe that we might understand one another. You and I are meant to be pals, and not a conventional man and wife. If you were only a backwoodsman I should adore you."
"An' do the washin', an' the scrubbing and the cookin'? I fancy I see you puttin' your back into that sort of work, Leah. Honey-pots are more in your line."
"I am as sick of honey-pots as you are. All this dressing and undressing, and court functions, and paltry pigeon-shooting, and skating at Prince's on sham ice, and yachting at Cowes in a floating hotel--oh, Lord, how it bores me!"
"You're always bored," grunted her husband, unsympathetically. "Can you wonder at it, when I have to go round and round and round in a decorated ring like a trick-pony? If I were a woman it would be satisfactory, no doubt."
"Well," said Jim, obtusely, "ain't you a woman?"
Leah sprang from her chair and flung out her arms with a deep chest breath. "I am a man," she announced, in resonant contralto tones. "I feel like one, anyhow. Didn't some one say there was no sense in this grown-up business. Well, I am like that. Up to the time you went after Lola Fajardo I did enjoy things all round, but somehow I feel as though the bottom had dropped out of creation."
"Drop Lola Fajardo also, then," growled the Duke, colouring. "I never went near her."
"Because you couldn't. The serpent in the bamboo--eh, Jim?"
"I don't care anything for her now."
Leah looked at him steadily. "I am glad of that, because you belong to me--to me."
"And much you think of me!"
"I think you are extremely selfish, and desperately weak with even ugly women, and quite a brute when you don't get your own pretty way, and--in short, you are a man, a glorious lord of creation." "Oh, drop rottin'."
"I am not rotting, as you delicately put it. Like myself, this sugary civilisation has spoiled you. If you had to earn your bread I should respect you, Jim. I might even love you. Yes"--she considered for a moment--"I daresay it might come to that."
Jim was growing bewildered. "What does all this mean?" was his very natural interrogation.
His wife bewildered him still more by acting in a way which made him gasp. She walked round the table, and, standing at his back, placed her arms round his neck. "I'll tell you, Jim. I have just found out by my very own self that you and I are cave-people pitchforked into the wrong century. We live ten thousand years too late--just think of it--ten thousand years of life and death. Let us go back to the mud, Jim, and take up the life where we left it when you were killed, spearing that mammoth."
"Leah!" His head was thrown back, and his eyes stared upward in alarm.
"I know what you think, but I am as sane as you are, and ten times cleverer. No;" she loosened her arms from his neck and locked them behind her. "Look at me, Jim. Am I a doll?"
The startled Duke wheeled his chair and stared at her brilliant eyes, no longer hard and cold, at her stately figure, her splendid red hair, her clearly cut face flushed and animated. "You're a rippin' fine woman," said he, his sluggish pulses stirred.
"So you think--so the world thinks. Yet I have to live in a wadded box like a wax doll. I want to get out of that box--it stifles me, chokes me. I am sick of the tents of Shem, and wish to house under those of Esau. You and I will take the privilege of rank and be eccentric. As pals we'll get on much better than as a Mayfair man and wife of the wrong sort, beyond the borders of this horrid civilisation that is. Buy a yacht, Jim--a tramp hulk with those triple expansion engines you told me about, and let us make for the South Seas. There's a clear path down Channel. Let us explore, let us venture into the Naked Lands and exploit the fringes of the empire. I want to live--to live, you understand. Oh," she cried almost fiercely, "can't you understand?"
"No," said Jim, truthfully, and as stolid as ever; "you have your rank to think of, and my name."
The fire died out of Leah's eyes, the colour from her face, the ring from her voice; even her figure seemed to dwindle from that of a tragedy queen into a conventional Belgravian wife. Then she laughed shortly, and in a way which Jim did not approve of in his Duchess.
"I beg your pardon, Pentland," said Leah, using his title to mark the far recoil. "I took you for a man: you are nothing but a society gramophone."
Jim would have resented this contemptuous description, but that she gave him no time to formulate an idea in his slow-thinking brain. With swift steps she left the room and ascended to her boudoir; there, after locking the door, with a strength which disordered the lock, she flung herself face downward on the sofa, and cried quietly, passionately, with that suppressed anger and grief and rage which rends the body and brain so terribly. Jim could not, would not understand. He was what he always had been--the sole Gadarene pig into which a devilkin had not entered.
"Can I never put fire into that clay?" sobbed Leah, savagely.
Only God could have done that, and she did not believe in God. But the fetish was in her pocket.
Leah made no farther attempt to decivilise Jim. He was too engrossed in Egyptian flesh-pots to set out for the Promised Land of splendid adventure and Elizabethan enterprise. In his clay there did lurk a spark of that Promethean fire which, melting meaner aims into one passionate purpose to explore the world and exploit the world, has made England great. Unfortunately, it could not be fanned into anything resembling a flame. The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, and the garlic of civilisation appealed to him insistently, and even if he did betake himself to roaming unfenced wastes, he certainly would not number a wife amongst his luggage. Moreover--and this she knew by instinct--his basic qualities were markedly those of the homing kind. This being so, a few months of tent and road would be used by him as a relish to increased appreciation of the cedar chambers and painted halls wherein his cradle had been rocked. It was clearly impossible to make a silken purse out of this particular sow's ear, so Jim drowsed very contentedly beside the fire, while his wife, out of sheer ennui, chased Piccadilly butterflies, or sat in her ducal niche to be bored with social adoration.
But one thing rendered life endurable to Leah Pentland at this juncture, and that was her coming opportunity to exhaust the enjoyable. Now that the days of compulsory sorrow were ended she had plenty to do, and ample funds for the doing. At Firmingham the new king and queen celebrated Christmas, new style, with celebrants who were but doubtfully informed as to the why and wherefore of the festival. Certainly, Jim and his Comus-rout invaded church on the holy-day, and yawned impatiently through liturgy and sermon; but this was a concession to county prejudices. Leah would tolerate no Santa Claus tree, no Druidical decorations, and no modernised mumming of the Middle Ages. These out-of-date enjoyments were replaced by political and poetical tableaux, by amateur renderings of smart French and dismal Russian plays, and by the kitchen lancers when riotous cake-walks palled. Imported musicians, in an incorrect foreign uniform, played Greig's melodies, Tschaikowsky's weird sound-poems, and that nerve-exhausting music of the present by Herr Wagner which has now arrived at its future. For the uncouth carol of innocent Victorian days was substituted Sousa's clanging marches, comic songs, clean but inane, and catchy airs from the newest vaudeville, miscalled musical-comedy. Out-of-door sports included skating on artificial ice--since it was a green Christmas--motor-car races, attempts at golf and polo-playing, riding, driving, and sauntering flirtations, while bridge circulated the guests' money at odd moments. It was truly wonderful to see how completely these nominal Christians had substituted a heathen festival of some sort for the orthodox pleasures of tradition. The participants in the orgie were all smart and allblasés, perfectly dressed and triumphantly selfish. With that careful avoidance of spoken appreciation which marks the modern trifler, they took leave of the Duchess with the remark that her notion of what Yule-tide should be was not half bad. A week of dull Sundays, so to speak, had been got through capitally.
"Nothing frumpish about the thing," pronounced Mrs. Penworthy, who had been asked to gratify Jim, and who had been found woefully wanting in snap. "Every one was quite up to scratch. Leah Pentland did simply ripping off her own."
The little woman was not talking an unknown language, for the latest successor to Algy understood her excellently well. She spoke the gibberish of those in a hurry, which she had taken some pains to acquire. The very few words in the dictionary used by the fashionable were dropped into the melting-pot, and came out in ungrammatical lumps of misused adjectives and verbs with a paucity of pronouns and prepositions. Mrs. Penworthy, whose sense of humour was strong, had proposed that Lionel should translate the Bible into this time-saving vernacular, so that its spiritual meaning could be arrived at by those who thought the verse of Milton and the prose of Bacon starchy.
"Wouldn't hear of it," said she, to Algy's latest successor, while munching American sweets in the up-going train. "Told him it would be spiffing to fetch the psalms up to mark, but he didn't catch on somehow. Wonder the Duchess can stand him, with his horrid correctness. She's fond of doing herself well."
"Thought the Duchess had rather a shoppin' face," replied the man, meaning that his hostess had looked worried.
"Don't knew why she should. Got heaps of cake to chew. Might be she missed Demetrius."
"Wheresey hang out?"
"Don't know. Went prancing off on his own. Got a puff?"
The inheritor of Algy's shoes provided the lady with a cigarette. "Fancied she cottoned to th' Askew chap," he remarked, striking a match.
"Sure she did--oh, rather! Aksakoff let on to me 'bout the boy jumping Paris to get fixed--British Embassy fixings, you know. Leah Pentland didn't bring it off somehow. Lucky for her, seeing Jim wasn't a goner. We really could not have received her," ended Mrs. Penworthy; then, aware that she had lapsed into decent English, corrected her mistake: "Mean we couldn't have let her chip into our game."
"Like th' Duchess?" inquired her companion, languidly.
"Don't know, quite. Saucy and swagger and all that. Freezes a bit--what? Talks like a book, you know. Awfully expensive rattle."
The man nodded. "Thought she wasn't up to dick. Daresay she'll spin along on her own freely, when the hump's off."
"Hump? She hasn't got the hump, or the needle either."
"Very saucy hump," insisted the male linguist--"quite birdish. Sorry the old Duke an' Frith hopped, maybe."
"How very unnatural!" sighed Mrs. Penworthy, reverting to English in her disgust. "Quite too awf'l to think how luck hooks on to her. Really makes one wish to be a bad woman, to see how she lands the salmon," she finished more creditably.
Algy's latest successor was right, for once in his life of mistakes. Leah was not entirely her own brilliant self, notwithstanding that successful inauguration of the new era. The early excitement consequent on the conversation with Aksakoff had died away, and again she felt the old haunting fear of the possible. But this absurd mood, she hoped, would pass away when the test came. Facing her enemies, male and female, she would doubtless fight like a cornered rat, and would conquer from sheer determination not to be beaten. Nevertheless, this period of suspense was trying to one who had no listener, and who could not talk herself into heroics by mere monologues. A confidant was necessary only to the weaker part of her character, since her deepest feelings advised her that pure strength must needs be solitary. She was an oak, not an ivy, and unknowingly agreed with Emerson as to the vitiating effects of comfortable circumstances. "Cast the bantling on the rocks," sang the Seer of Concord, and Leah indubitably squirmed thereon, as Jim had informed her in his simple way in a conversation now--apparently--some centuries old.
"Every month's a year now," sighed Leah, wearily.
However, pending a possible fight for her social throne, the Duchess made the very best of the passing hour. After the pagan entertainment of the winter solstice, she endured the gorging Christianity of a few belated country-houses, whose inhabitants were still eating in honour of a Birth which had taken place some two thousand years ago, as a Book they seldom read assured them. She went alone to these Vitellian feasts, as Jim was off the chain until such time as he would be needed to play Duke during the season. The aristocratic prodigal's reformation was but skin-deep, and the late whitewash soon wore off to show the unchanged black fleece, since he began with the zeal of a newly uniformed subaltern to poach on various matrimonial manors. Mrs. Penworthy he had naturally grown tired of, as she preferred syndicates to partnerships, so he placed his tried affections on Lady Sandal, who was horsey and doggy and tremendously expensive on account of her betting craze. She and Jim talked kennels and stables, discussing their very unplatonic loves between times, and found each other kindred guttersnipes of the earthly, sensual kind. Leah, speedily informed by a feminine sidewind of this new amusement of Jim's four-and-twenty leisure hours, did not object, or even hint her knowledge of his backsliding. It kept him out of her way, and Lord Sandal, a Nero with limitations, who dwelt in a superlative glass house, was not likely to submit his wife's latest sin to the fierce light which beats upon the divorce court witness-box. Nothing could be more satisfactory to a woman who wanted complete freedom, and Leah again thanked the agreeable fetish for making straight her very crooked paths.
But all this time the sword dangled over Leah's head, and its menace became so insupportable that she wished the single hair would give way, to decide brusquely for hit or miss. Her desire was gratified on the very night when she made her curtsey to the Sovereigns. Having created an immense impression, the Duchess, with eyes as radiant as the family diamonds crowning her imperial head, returned at midnight to her home in the company of a purring husband. Jim really felt that Leah had upheld the family name with her insolent beauty, and moreover, was quite the grandest-looking woman in London, or out of it. When they arrived in their own drawing-room, and she had emerged a royal court butterfly from the chrysalis of her cloak, he turned abruptly and took her in his arms with the hug of a bear.
"Leah," he murmured hoarsely--"oh, Leah!" and kissed her fair on the mouth with the kiss of Pan.
But only once did he exercise that connubial privilege, for she released herself roughly with a sense of intolerable outrage. "Isn't it rather late in the day?" she asked, scornful and angry.
"'Pon my word, Leah, I'd be a good husband to you if you would only let me."
"Oh, as an over-married Turk I am sure you would be admirable. I know you disapprove of monogamy."
"What the deuce is that?"
"Something that the Church encourages and society shirks. The Sandal woman can explain the objection."
Jim winced at her knowledge of his latest love. "You said that I belonged to you," he reminded her sulkily.
"Officially. May I ask the reason for this sudden devotion?"
"You look so rippin'."
"Thanks for the belated compliment. I am aware that your love is dependent upon the eye."
"An' what else should it be dependent upon?"
"The heart may have something to do with it, you know--or rather, you do not know. Since our conversation when I asked you to buy a yacht I have given up trying to educate you in the affections."
"I'll buy a yacht now--a dozen yachts, to please you."
"Oh," said the Duchess, with a cold smile; "so that Epsom-Newmarket woman has been nasty."
Jim uttered a bad word under his breath, and flung out of the room in a pet. "I'll play at the club till all's blue," he called out while banging the door, and a minute later she heard the butler whistle for a hansom.
The deserted wife was perfectly aware that Jim's sudden admiration arose from pride of proprietorship, and objected to be cajoled into righteous matrimonial principles on such terms. As it was scarcely one o'clock she seated herself to consider if it would be worth while to lift her uxorious pig out of the mire he loved. A footman with a salver interrupted these creditable meditations.
"A lady called twice to see your Grace this evening," said the man, presenting a visiting-card, "and has now called again."