"LADY HENRY GASPED. SHE FELL BACK INTO HER CHAIR"
"I am so sorry. The Duchess's maid was going there," said Julie, hurriedly, "and she went for me. I thought I had given her your message most carefully."
"Hm," said Lady Henry, slowly. "So you didn't go to Winton's. May I ask whether you went to Shaw's, or to Beatson's, or the Stores, or any of the other places for which I gave you commissions?" Her voice cut like a knife.
Julie hesitated. She had grown very white. Suddenly her face settled and steadied.
"No," she said, calmly. "I meant to have done all your commissions. But I was persuaded by Evelyn to spend a couple of hours with her, and her maid undertook them."
Lady Henry flushed deeply.
"So, mademoiselle, unknown to me, you spent two hours of my time amusing yourself at Crowborough House. May I ask what you were doing there?"
"I was trying to help the Duchess in her plans for the bazaar."
"Indeed? Was any one else there? Answer me, mademoiselle."
Julie hesitated again, and again spoke with a kind of passionate composure.
"Yes. Mr. Delafield was there."
"So I supposed. Allow me to assure you, mademoiselle"--Lady Henry rose from her seat, leaning on her stick; surely no old face was ever more formidable, more withering--"that whatever ambitions you may cherish, Jacob Delafield is not altogether the simpleton you imagine. I know him better than you. He will take some time before he really makes up his mind to marry a woman of your disposition--and your history."
Julie Le Breton also rose.
"I am afraid, Lady Henry, that here, too, you are in the dark," she said, quietly, though her thin arm shook against her dress. "I shall not marry Mr. Delafield. But it is because--I have refused him twice."
Lady Henry gasped. She fell back into her chair, staring at her companion.
"You have--refused him?"
"A month ago, and last year. It is horrid of me to say a word. But you forced me."
Julie was now leaning, to support herself, on the back of an old French chair. Feeling and excitement had blanched her no less than Lady Henry, but her fine head and delicate form breathed a will so proud, a dignity so passionate, that Lady Henry shrank before her.
"Why did you refuse him?"
Julie shrugged her shoulders.
"That, I think, is my affair. But if--I had loved him--I should not have consulted your scruples, Lady Henry."
"That's frank," said Lady Henry. "I like that better than anything you've said yet. You are aware that hemayinherit the dukedom of Chudleigh?"
"I have several times heard you say so," said the other, coldly.
Lady Henry looked at her long and keenly. Various things that Wilfrid Bury had said recurred to her. She thought of Captain Warkworth. She wondered.
Suddenly she held out her hand.
"I dare say you won't take it, mademoiselle. I suppose I've been insulting you. But--you have been playing tricks with me. In a good many ways, we're quits. Still, I confess, I admire you a good deal. Anyway, I offer you my hand. I apologize for my recent remarks. Shall we bury the hatchet, and try and go on as before?"
Julie Le Breton turned slowly and took the hand--without unction.
"I make you angry," she said, and her voice trembled, "without knowing how or why."
Lady Henry gulped.
"Oh, it mayn't answer," she said, as their hands dropped. "But we may as well have one more trial. And, mademoiselle, I shall be delighted that you should assist the Duchess with herbazaar."
Julie shook her head.
"I don't think I have any heart for it," she said, sadly; and then, as Lady Henry sat silent, she approached.
"You look very tired. Shall I send your maid?"
That melancholy and beautiful voice laid a strange spell on Lady Henry. Her companion appeared to her, for a moment, in a new light--as a personage of drama or romance. But she shook off the spell.
"At once, please. Another day like this would put an end to me."
Julie le Breton was sitting alone in her own small sitting-room. It was the morning of the Tuesday following her Sunday scene with Lady Henry, and she was busy with various household affairs. A small hamper of flowers, newly arrived from Lady Henry's Surrey garden, and not yet unpacked, was standing open on the table, with various empty flower-glasses beside it. Julie was, at the moment, occupied with the "Stores order" for the month, and Lady Henry's cook-housekeeper had but just left the room after delivering an urgent statement on the need for "relining" a large number of Lady Henry's copper saucepans.
The room was plain and threadbare. It had been the school-room of various generations of Delafields in the past. But for an observant eye it contained a good many objects which threw light upon its present occupant's character and history. In a small bookcase beside the fire were a number of volumes in French bindings. They represented either the French classics--Racine, Bossuet, Châteaubriand, Lamartine--which had formed the study of Julie's convent days, or those other books--George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Mazzini, Leopardi, together with the poets and novelists of revolutionary Russia or Polish nationalism or Irish rebellion--which had been the favorite reading of both Lady Rose and her lover. They were but a hundred in all; but for Julie Le Breton they stood for the bridge by which, at will, memory and dreamful pity might carry her back into that vanished life she had once shared with her parents--those strange beings, so calm and yet so passionate in their beliefs, so wilful and yet so patient in their deeds, by whose acts her own experience was still wholly conditioned. In her little room there were no portraits of them visible. But on a side-table stood a small carved triptych. The oblong wings, which were open, contained photographs of figures from one of the great Bruges Memlings. The centre was covered by two wooden leaves delicately carved, and the leaves were locked. The inquisitive housemaid who dusted the room had once tried to open them.--in vain.
On a stand near the fire lay two or three yellow volumes--some recent French essays, a volume of memoirs, a tale of Bourget's, and so forth. These were flanked by Sir Henry Maine'sPopular Government, and a recent brilliant study of English policy in Egypt--both of them with the name "Richard J. Montresor" on the title-page. The last number of Dr. Meredith's paper,The New Rambler, was there also; and, with the paper-knife still in its leaves, the journal of the latest French traveller in Mokembe, a small "H.W." inscribed in the top right-hand corner of its gray cover.
Julie finished her Stores order with a sigh of relief. Then she wrote half a dozen business notes, and prepared a few checks for Lady Henry's signature. When this was done the two dachshunds, who had been lying on the rug spying out her every movement, began to jump upon her.
But Julie laughed in their faces. "It's raining," she said, pointing to the window--"raining!So there! Either you won't go out at all, or you'll go with John."
John was the second footman, whom the dogs hated. They returned crestfallen to the rug and to a hungry waiting on Providence. Julie took up a letter on foreign paper which had reached her that morning, glanced at the door, and began to reread its closely written sheets. It was from an English diplomat on a visit to Egypt, a man on whom the eyes of Europe were at that moment fixed. That he should write to a woman at all, on the subjects of the letter, involved a complimenthors ligne; that he should write with this ease, this abandonment, was indeed remarkable. Julie flushed a little as she read. But when she came to the end she put it aside with a look of worry. "Iwishhe'd write to Lady Henry," was her thought. "She hasn't had a line from him for weeks. I shouldn't wonder if she suspects already. When any one talks of Egypt, I daren't open my lips."
For fear of betraying the very minute and first-hand information that was possessed by Lady Henry's companion? With a smile and a shrug she locked the letter away in one of the drawers of her writing-table, and took up an envelope which had lain beneath it. From this--again with a look round her--she half drew out a photograph. The grizzled head and spectacled eyes of Dr. Meredith emerged. Julie's expression softened; her eyebrows went up a little; then she slightly shook her head, like one who protests that if something has gone wrong, it isn't--isn't--their fault. Unwillingly she looked at the last words of the letter:
/# "So, remember, I can give you work if you want it, and paying work. I would rather give you my life and my all. But these, it seems, are commodities for which you have no use. So be it. But if you refuse to let me serve you, when the time comes, in such ways as I have suggested in this letter, then, indeed, you would be unkind--I would almost dare to say ungrateful! Yours always "F. M."#/
This letter also she locked away. But her hand lingered on the last of all. She had read it three times already, and knew it practically by heart. So she left the sheets undisturbed in their envelope. But she raised the whole to her lips, and pressed it there, while her eyes, as they slowly filled with tears, travelled--unseeing--to the wintry street beyond the window. Eyes and face wore the same expression as Wilfrid Bury had surprised there--the dumb utterance of a woman hard pressed, not so much by the world without as by some wild force within.
In that still moment the postman's knock was heard in the street outside. Julie Le Breton started, for no one whose life is dependent on a daily letter can hear that common sound without a thrill. Then she smiled sadly at herself. "Myjoy is over for to-day!" And she turned away with the letter in her hand.
But she did not place it in the same drawer with the others. She moved across to the little carved triptych, and, after listening a moment to the sounds in the house, she opened its closed doors with a gold key that hung on her watch-chain and had been hidden in the bosom of her dress.
The doors fell open. Inside, on a background of dark velvet, hung two miniatures, lightly framed in gold and linked together by a graceful scroll-work in gold. They were of fine French work, and they represented a man and woman, both handsome, young, and of a remarkable distinction of aspect. The faces, nevertheless, hardly gave pleasure. There was in each of them a look at once absent and eager--the look of those who have cared much and ardently for "man," and very little, comparatively, for men.
The miniatures had not been meant for the triptych, nor the triptych for them. It had been adapted to them by loving hands; but there was room for other things in the velvet-lined hollow, and a packet of letters was already reposing there. Julie slipped the letter of the morning inside the elastic band which held the packet; then she closed and locked the doors, returning the key to its place in her dress. Both the lock and hinges of this little hiding-place were well and strongly made, and when the wings also were shut and locked one saw nothing but a massively framed photograph of the Bruges belfry resting on a wooden support.
She had hardly completed her little task when there was a sudden noise of footsteps in the passage outside.
"Julie!" said a light voice, subdued to a laughing whisper. "May I come in?"
The Duchess stood on the threshold, her small, shell-pink face emerging from a masterly study in gray, presented by a most engaging costume.
Julie, in surprise, advanced to meet her visitor, and the old butler, who was Miss Le Breton's very good friend, quickly and discreetly shut the door upon the two ladies.
"Oh, my dear!" said the Duchess, throwing herself into Julie's arms. "I came up so quietly! I told Hutton not to disturb Lady Henry, and I just crept up-stairs, holding my skirts. Wasn't it heroic of me to put my poor little head into the lion's den like this? But when I got your letter this morning saying you couldn't come to me, I vowed I would just see for myself how you were, and whether there was anything left of you. Oh, you poor, pale thing!"
And drawing Julie to a chair, the little Duchess sat down beside her, holding her friend's hands and studying her face.
"Tell me what's been happening--I believe you've been crying! Oh, the old wretch!"
"You're quite mistaken," said Julie, smiling. "Lady Henry says I may help you with the bazaar."
"No!" The Duchess threw up her hands in amazement. "How have you managed that?"
"By giving in. But, Evelyn, I'm not coming."
"Oh, Julie!" The Duchess threw herself back in her chair and fixed a pair of very blue and very reproachful eyes on Miss Le Breton.
"No, I'm not coming. If I'm to stay here, even for a time, I mustn't provoke her any more. She says I may come, but she doesn't mean it."
"She couldn't mean anything civil or agreeable. How has she been behaving--since Sunday?"
Julie looked uncertain.
"Oh, there is an armed truce. I was made to have a fire in my bedroom last night. And Hutton took the dogs out yesterday."
The Duchess laughed.
"And there was quite a scene on Sunday? You don't tell me much about it in your letter. But, Julie"--her voice dropped to a whisper--"was anything said about Jacob?"
Julie looked down. A bitterness crept into her face.
"Yes. I can't forgive myself. I was provoked into telling the truth."
"You did! Well? I suppose Aunt Flora thought it was all your fault that he proposed, and an impertinence that you refused?"
"She was complimentary at the time," said Julie, half smiling. "But since--No, I don't feel that she is appeased."
"Of course not. Affronted, more likely."
There was a silence. The Duchess was looking at Julie, but her thoughts were far away. And presently she broke out, with theétourderiethat became her:
"I wish I understood it myself, Julie. I know you like him."
"Immensely. But--we should fight!"
Miss Le Breton looked up with animation.
"Oh, that's not a reason," said the Duchess, rather annoyed.
"It'sthereason. I don't know--there is something ofironin Mr. Delafield;" and Julie emphasized the words with a shrug which was almost a shiver. "And as I'm not in love with him, I'm afraid of him."
"That's the best way of being in love," cried the Duchess. "And then, Julie"--she paused, and at last added, naïvely, as she laid her little hands on her friend's knee--"haven't you gotanyambitions?"
"Plenty. Oh, I should like very well to play the duchess, with you to instruct me," said Julie, caressing the hands. "But I must choose my duke. And till the right one appears, I prefer my own wild ways."
"Afraid of Jacob Delafield? How odd!" said the Duchess, with her chin on her hands.
"It may be odd to you," said Julie, with vivacity. "In reality, it's not in the least odd. There's the same quality in him that there is in Lady Henry--something that beats you down," she added, under her breath. "There, that's enough about Mr. Delafield--quite enough."
And, rising, Julie threw up her arms and clasped her hands above her head. The gesture was all strength and will, like the stretching of a sea-bird's wings.
The Duchess looked at her with eyes that had begun to waver.
"Julie, I heard such an odd piece of news last night."
Julie turned.
"You remember the questions you asked me about Aileen Moffatt?"
"Perfectly."
"Well, I saw a man last night who had just come home from Simla. He saw a great deal of her, and he says that she and her mother were adored in India. They were thought so quaint and sweet--unlike other people--and the girl so lovely, in a sort of gossamer way. And who do you think was always about with them--at Peshawar first, and then at Simla--so that everybody talked? Captain Warkworth! My man believed there was an understanding between them."
Julie had begun to fill the flower-glasses with water and unpack the flower-basket. Her back was towards the Duchess. After a moment she replied, her hands full of forced narcissuses:
"Well, that would be acoupfor him."
"I should think so. She is supposed to have half a million in coal-mines alone, besides land. Has Captain Warkworth ever said anything to you about them?"
"No. He has never mentioned them."
The Duchess reflected, her eyes still on Julie's back.
"Everybody wants money nowadays. And the soldiers are just as bad as anybody else. They don'tlookmoney, as the City men do--that's why we women fall in love with them--but theythinkit, all the same."
Julie made no reply. The Duchess could see nothing of her. But the little lady's face showed the flutter of one determined to venture yet a little farther on thin ice.
"Julie, I've done everything you've asked me. I sent a card for the 20th to thatratherdreadful woman, Lady Froswick. I was very clever with Freddie about that living; and I've talked to Mr. Montresor. But, Julie, if you don't mind, I really should like to know why you're so keen about it?"
The Duchess's cheeks were by now one flush. She had a romantic affection for Julie, and would not have offended her for the world.
Julie turned round. She was always pale, and the Duchess saw nothing unusual.
"Am I so keen?"
"Julie, you have done everything in the world for this man since he came home."
"Well, he interested me," said Julie, stepping back to look at the effect of one of the vases. "The first evening he was here, he saved me from Lady Henry--twice. He's alone in the world, too, which attracts me. You see, I happen to know what it's like. An only son, and an orphan, and no family interest to push him--"
"So you thought you'd push him? Oh, Julie, you're a darling--but you're rather a wire-puller, aren't you?"
Julie smiled faintly.
"Well, perhaps I like to feel, sometimes, that I have a little power. I haven't much else."
The Duchess seized one of her hands and pressed it to her cheek.
"You have power, because every one loves and admires you. As for me, I would cut myself in little bits to please you.... Well, I only hope, when he's married his heiress, if he does marry her, they'll remember what they owe to you."
Did she feel the hand lying in her own shake? At any rate, it was brusquely withdrawn, and Julie walked to the end of the table to fetch some more flowers.
"I don't want any gratitude," she said, abruptly, "from any one. Well, now, Evelyn, you understand about the bazaar? I wish I could, but I can't."
"Yes, I understand. Julie!" The Duchess rose impulsively, and threw herself into a chair beside the table where she could watch the face and movements of Mademoiselle Le Breton. "Julie, I want so much to talk to you--aboutbusiness. You're not to be offended. Julie,ifyou leave Lady Henry, how will you manage?"
"How shall I live, you mean?" said Julie, smiling at the euphemism in which this little person, for whom existence had rained gold and flowers since her cradle, had enwrapped the hard facts of bread-and-butter--facts with which she was so little acquainted that she approached them with a certain delicate mystery.
"You must have some money, you know, Julie," said the Duchess, timidly, her upraised face and Paris hat well matched by the gay poinsettias, the delicate eucharis and arums with which the table was now covered.
"I shall earn some," said Julie, quietly.
"Oh, but, Julie, you can't be bothered with any other tiresome old lady!"
"No. I should keep my freedom. But Dr. Meredith has offered me work, and got me a promise of more."
The Duchess opened her eyes.
"Writing! Well, of course, we all know you can do anything you want to do. And you won't let anybody help you at all?"
"I won't let anybody give me money, if that's what you mean," said Julie, smiling. But it was a smile without accent, without gayety.
The Duchess, watching her, said to herself, "Since I came in she is changed--quite changed."
"Julie, you're horribly proud!"
Julie's face contracted a little.
"How much 'power' should I have left, do you think--how much self-respect--if I took money from my friends?"
"Well, not money, perhaps. But, Julie, you know all about Freddie's London property. It's abominable how much he has. There are always a few houses he keeps in his own hands. If Lady Henrydoesquarrel with you, and we could lend you a little house--for a time--wouldn'tyou take it, Julie?"
Her voice had the coaxing inflections of a child. Julie hesitated.
"Only if the Duke himself offered it," she said, finally, with a brusque stiffening of her whole attitude.
The Duchess flushed and stood up.
"Oh, well, that's all right," she said, but no longer in the same voice. "Remember, I have your promise. Good-bye, Julie, you darling!... Oh, by-the-way, what an idiot I am! Here am I forgetting the chief thing I came about. Will you come with me to Lady Hubert to-night? Do! Freddie's away, and I hate going by myself."
"To Lady Hubert's?" said Julie, starting a little. "I wonder what Lady Henry would say?"
"Tell her Jacob won't be there," said the Duchess, laughing. "Then she won't make any difficulties."
"Shall I go and ask her?"
"Gracious! let me get out of the house first. Give her a message from me that I will come and see her to-morrow morning. We've got to make it up, Freddie says; so the sooner it's over, the better. Say all the civil things you can to her about to-night, and wire me this afternoon. If all's well, I come for you at eleven."
The Duchess rustled away. Julie was left standing by the table, alone. Her face was very still, but her eyes shone, her teeth pressed her lip. Unconsciously her hand closed upon a delicate blossom of eucharis and crushed it.
"I'll go," she said, to herself. "Yes, I'll go."
Her letter of the morning, as it happened, had included the following sentences:
"I think to-night I must put in an appearance at the Hubert Delafields', though I own that neither the house nor the son of the house is very much to my liking. But I hear that he has gone back to the country. And there are a few people who frequent Lady Hubert, who might just now be of use."
Lady Henry gave her consent that Mademoiselle Le Breton should accompany the Duchess to Lady Hubert's party almost with effusion. "It will be very dull," she said. "My sister-in-law makes a desert and calls it society. But if you want to go, go. As to Evelyn Crowborough, I am engaged to my dentist to-morrow morning."
When at night this message was reported to the Duchess, as she and Julie were on their way to Rutland Gate, she laughed.
"How much leek shall I have to swallow? What's to-morrow? Wednesday. Hm--cards in the afternoon; in the evening I appear, sit on a stool at Lady Henry's feet, and look at you through my glasses as though I had never seen you before. On Thursday I leave a French book; on Friday I send the baby to see her. Goodness, what a time it takes!" said the Duchess, raising her very white and very small shoulders. "Well, for my life, I mustn't fail to-morrow night."
At Lady Hubert's they found a very tolerable, not to say lively, gathering, which quite belied Lady Henry's slanders. There was not the same conscious brilliance, the same thrill in the air, as pertained to the gatherings in Bruton Street. But there was a more solid social comfort, such as befits people untroubled by the certainty that the world is looking on. The guests of Bruton Street laughed, as well-bred people should, at the estimation in which Lady Henry's salon was held, by those especially who did not belong to it. Still, the mere knowledge of this outside estimate kept up a certain tension. At Lady Hubert's there was no tension, and the agreeable nobodies who found their way in were not made to blush for the agreeable nothings of their conversation.
Lady Hubert herself made for ease--partly, no doubt, for stupidity. She was fair, sleepy, and substantial. Her husband had spent her fortune, and ruffled all the temper she had. The Hubert Delafields were now, however, better off than they had been--investments had recovered--and Lady Hubert's temper was once more placid, as Providence had meant it to be. During the coming season it was her firm intention to marry her daughter, who now stood beside her as she received her guests--a blonde, sweet-featured girl, given, however, so it was said, to good works, and not at all inclined to trouble herself overmuch about a husband.
The rooms were fairly full; and the entry of the Duchess and Mademoiselle Le Breton was one of the incidents of the evening, and visibly quickened the pulses of the assembly. The little Dresden-china Duchess, with her clothes, her jewels, and her smiles, had been, since her marriage, one of the chief favorites of fashion. She had been brought up in the depths of the country, and married at eighteen. After six years she was not in the least tired of her popularity or its penalties. All the life in her dainty person, her glancing eyes, and small, smiling lips rose, as it were, to meet the stir that she evoked. She vaguely saw herself as Titania, and played the part with childish glee. And like Titania, as she had more than once ruefully reflected, she was liable to be chidden by her lord.
But the Duke was on this particular evening debating high subjects in the House of Lords, and the Duchess was amusing herself. Sir Wilfrid Bury, who arrived not long after his goddaughter, found her the centre first of a body-guard of cousins, including among them apparently a great many handsome young men, and then of a small crowd, whose vaguely smiling faces reflected the pleasure that was to be got, even at a distance, out of her young and merry beauty.
Julie Le Breton was not with her. But in the next room Sir Wilfrid soon perceived the form and face which, in their own way, exacted quite as much attention from the world as those of the Duchess. She was talking with many people, and, as usual, he could not help watching her. Never yet had he seen her wide, black eyes more vivid than they were to-night. Now, as on his first sight of her, he could not bring himself to call them beautiful. Yet beautiful they were, by every canon of form and color. No doubt it was something in their expression that offended his own well-drilled instincts.
He found himself thinking suspicious thoughts about most of the conversations in which he saw her engaged. Why was she bestowing those careful smiles on that intolerable woman, Lady Froswick? And what an acquaintance she seemed to have among these elderly soldiers, who might at all times be reckoned on at Lady Hubert's parties! One gray-haired veteran after another recalled himself to her attention, got his few minutes with her, and passed on smiling. Certain high officials, too, were no less friendly. Her court, it seemed to him, was mainly composed of the middle-aged; to-night, at any rate, she left the young to the Duchess. And it was on the whole a court of men. The women, as he now perceived, were a trifle more reserved. There was not, indeed, a trace of exclusion. They were glad to see her; glad, he thought, to be noticed by her. But they did not yield themselves--or so he fancied--with the same wholeness as their husbands.
"How old is she?" he asked himself. "About nine-and-twenty?... Jacob's age--or a trifle older."
After a time he lost sight of her, and in the amusement of his own evening forgot her. But as the rooms were beginning to thin he walked through them, looking for a famous collection of miniatures that belonged to Lady Hubert. English family history was one of his hobbies, and he was far better acquainted with the Delafield statesmen, and the Delafield beauties of the past, than were any of their modern descendants. Lady Hubert's Cosways and Plimers had made a lively impression upon him in days gone by, and he meant to renew acquaintance with them.
But they had been moved from the room in which he remembered them, and he was led on through a series of drawing-rooms, now nearly empty, till on the threshold of the last he paused suddenly.
A lady and gentleman rose from a sofa on which they had been sitting. Captain Warkworth stood still. Mademoiselle Le Breton advanced to the new-comer.
"Is it very late?" she said, gathering up her fan and gloves. "We have been looking at Lady Hubert's miniatures. That lady with the muff"--she pointed to the case which occupied a conspicuous position in the room--"is really wonderful. Can you tell me, Sir Wilfrid, where the Duchess is?"
"No, but I can help you find her," said that gentleman, forgetting the miniatures and endeavoring to look at neither of his companions.
"And I must rush," said Captain Warkworth, looking at his watch. "I told a man to come to my rooms at twelve. Heavens!"
He shook hands with Miss Le Breton and hurried away.
Sir Wilfrid and Julie moved on together. That he had disturbed a most intimate and critical conversation was somehow borne in upon Sir Wilfrid. But kind and even romantic as was the old man's inmost nature, his feelings were not friendly.
"How does the biography get on?" he asked his companion, with a smile.
A bright flush appeared in Mademoiselle Le Breton's cheek.
"I think Lady Henry has dropped it."
"Ah, well, I don't imagine she will regret it;" he said, dryly.
She made no reply. He mentally accused himself for a brute, and then shook off the charge. Surely a few pin-pricks were her desert! That she should defend her own secrets was, as Delafield had said, legitimate enough. But when a man offers you his services, you should not befool him beyond a certain point.
She must be aware of what he was thinking. He glanced at her curiously; at the stately dress gleaming with jet, which no longer affected anything of the girl; at the fine but old-fashioned necklace of pearls and diamonds--no doubt her mother's--which clasped her singularly slender throat. At any rate, she showed nothing. She began to talk again of the Delafield miniatures, using her fan the while with graceful deliberation; and presently they found the Duchess.
"Is she an adventuress, or is she not?" thought Bury, as his hansom carried him away from Rutland Gate. "If she marries Jacob, it will be a queer business."
Meanwhile the Duchess had dropped Julie Le Breton at Lady Henry's door. Julie groped her way up-stairs through the sleeping house. She found her room in darkness, and she turned on no light. There was still a last glimmer of fire, and she sank down by it, her long arms clasped round her knees, her head thrown back as though she listened still to words in her ears.
"Oh, such a child! Such a dear, simple-minded child! Report engaged her to at least ten different people at Simla. She had a crowd of cavaliers there--I was one of them. The whole place adored her. She is a very rare little creature, but well looked after, I can tell you--a long array of guardians in the background."
How was it possible not to trust that aspect and that smile? Her mind travelled back to the autumn days when she had seen them first; reviewed the steps, so little noticed at first, so rapid lately and full of fate, by which she had come into this bondage wherein she stood. She saw the first appearance of the young soldier in Lady Henry's drawing-room; her first conversation with him; and all the subtle development of that singular relation between them, into which so many elements had entered. The flattering sense of social power implied both in the homage of this young and successful man, and in the very services that she, on her side, was able to render him; impulsive gratitude for that homage, at a time when her very soul was smarting under Lady Henry's contemptuous hostility; and then the sweet advances of a "friendship" that was to unite them in a bond, secret and unique, a bond that took no account of the commonplaces of love and marriage, the link of equal and kindred souls in a common struggle with hard and sordid circumstance.
"I have neither family nor powerful friends," he had written to her a few weeks after their first meeting; "all that I have won, I have won for myself. Nobody ever made 'interest' for me but you. You, too, are alone in the world. You, too, have to struggle for yourself. Let us unite our forces--cheer each other, care for each other--and keep our friendship a sacred secret from the world that would misunderstand it. I will not fail you, I will give you all my confidence; and I will try and understand that noble, wounded heart of yours, with its memories, and all those singular prides and isolations that have been imposed on it by circumstance. I will not say, let me be your brother; there is somethingbanalin that; 'friend' is good enough for us both; and there is between us a community of intellectual and spiritual interest which will enable us to add new meaning even to that sacred word. I will write to you every day; you shall know all that happens to me; and whatever grateful devotion can do to make your life smoother shall be done."
Five months ago was it, that that letter was written?
Its remembered phrases already rang bitterly in an aching heart. Since it reached her, she had put out all her powers as a woman, all her influence as an intelligence, in the service of the writer.
And now, here she sat in the dark, tortured by a passion of which she was ashamed, before which she was beginning to stand helpless in a kind of terror. The situation was developing, and she found herself wondering how much longer she would be able to control herself or it. Very miserably conscious, too, was she all the time that she was now playing for a reward that was secretly, tacitly, humiliatingly denied her. How could a poor man, with Harry Warkworth's ambitions, think for a moment of marriage with a woman in her ambiguous and dependent position? Her common-sense told her that the very notion was absurd. And yet, since the Duchess's gossip had given point and body to a hundred vague suspicions, she was no longer able to calm, to master herself.
Suddenly a thought of another kind occurred to her. It added to her smart that Sir Wilfrid, in their meeting at Lady Hubert's, had spoken to her and looked at her with that slight touch of laughing contempt. There had been no insincerity in that emotion with which she had first appealed to him as her mother's friend; she did truly value the old man's good opinion. And yet she had told him lies.
"I can't help it," she said to herself, with a little shiver. The story about the biography had been the invention of a moment. It had made things easy, and it had a small foundation in the fact that Lady Henry had talked vaguely of using the letters lent her by Captain Warkworth for the elucidation--perhaps in aNineteenth Centuryarticle--of certain passages in her husband's Indian career.
Jacob Delafield, too. There also it was no less clear to her than to Sir Wilfrid that she had "overdone it." It was true, then, what Lady Henry said of her--that she had an overmastering tendency to intrigue--to a perpetual tampering with the plain fact?
"Well, it is the way in which such people as I defend themselves," she said, obstinately, repeating to herself what she had said to Sir Wilfrid Bury.
And then she set against it, proudly, that disinterestedness of which, as she vowed to herself, no one but she knew the facts. It was true, what she had said to the Duchess and to Sir Wilfrid. Plenty of people would give her money, would make her life comfortable, without the need for any daily slavery. She would not take it. Jacob Delafield would marry her, if she lifted her finger; and she would not lift it. Dr. Meredith would marry her, and she had said him nay. She hugged the thought of her own unknown and unapplauded integrity. It comforted her pride. It drew a veil over that wounding laughter which had gleamed for a moment through those long lashes of Sir Wilfrid Bury.
Last of all, as she sank into her restless sleep, came the remembrance that she was still under Lady Henry's roof. In the silence of the night the difficulties of her situation pressed upon and tormented her. What was she to do? Whom was she to trust?
"Dixon, how is Lady Henry?"
"Much too ill to come down-stairs, miss. She's very much put out; in fact, miss (the maid lowered her voice), you hardly dare go near her. But she says herself it would be absurd to attempt it."
"Has Hatton had any orders?"
"Yes, miss. I've just told him what her ladyship wishes. He's to tell everybody that Lady Henry's very sorry, and hoped up to the last moment to be able to come down as usual."
"Has Lady Henry all she wants, Dixon? Have you taken her the evening papers?"
"Oh yes, miss. But if you go in to her much her ladyship says you're disturbing her; and if you don't go, why, of course, everybody's neglecting her."
"Do you think I may go and say good-night to her, Dixon?"
The maid hesitated.
"I'll ask her, miss--I'll certainly ask her."
The door closed, and Julie was left alone in the great drawing-room of the Bruton Street house. It had been prepared as usual for the Wednesday--evening party. The flowers were fresh; the chairs had been arranged as Lady Henry liked to have them; the parquet floors shone under the electric light; the Gainsboroughs seemed to look down from the walls with a gay and friendly expectancy.
For herself, Julie had just finished her solitary dinner, still buoyed up while she was eating it by the hope that Lady Henry would be able to come down. The bitter winds of the two previous days, however, had much aggravated her chronic rheumatism. She was certainly ill and suffering; but Julie had known her make such heroic efforts before this to keep her Wednesdays going that not till Dixon appeared with her verdict did she give up hope.
So everybody would be turned away. Julie paced the drawing-room a solitary figure amid its lights and flowers--solitary and dejected. In a couple of hours' time all her particular friends would come to the door, and it would be shut against them. "Of course, expect me to-night," had been the concluding words of her letter of the morning. Several people also had announced themselves for this evening whom it was extremely desirable she should see. A certain eminent colonel, professor at the Staff College, was being freely named in the papers for the Mokembe mission. Never was it more necessary for her to keep all the threads of her influence in good working order. And these Wednesday evenings offered her the occasions when she was most successful, most at her ease--especially whenever Lady Henry was not well enough to leave the comparatively limited sphere of the back drawing-room.
Moreover, the gatherings themselves ministered to a veritable craving in Julie Le Breton--the craving for society and conversation. She shared it with Lady Henry, but in her it was even more deeply rooted. Lady Henry had ten talents in the Scriptural sense--money, rank, all sorts of inherited bonds and associations. Julie Le Breton had but this one. Society was with her both an instinct and an art. With the subtlest and most intelligent ambition she had trained and improved her natural gift for it during the last few years. And now, to the excitement of society was added the excitement of a new and tyrannous feeling, for which society was henceforth a mere weapon to be used.
She fumed and fretted for a while in silence. Every now and then she would pause in front of one of the great mirrors of the room, and look at the reflection of her tall thinness and the trailing satin of her gown.
"The girl--so pretty, in a gossamer sort of way," The words echoed in her mind, and vaguely, beside her own image in the glass, there rose a vision of girlhood--pale, gold hair, pink cheeks, white frock--and she turned away, miserable, from that conscious, that intellectual distinction with which, in general, she could persuade herself to be very fairly satisfied.
Hutton, the butler, came in to look at the fire.
"Will you be sitting here to-night, miss?"
"Oh no, Hutton. I shall go back to the library. I think the fire in my own room is out."
"I had better put out these lights, anyway," said the man, looking round the brilliant room.
"Oh, certainly," said Julie, and she began to assist him to do so.
Suddenly a thought occurred to her.
"Hutton!" She went up to him and spoke in a lower tone. "If the Duchess of Crowborough comes to-night, I should very much like to see her, and I know she wants to see me. Do you think it could possibly disturb Lady Henry if you were to show her into the library for twenty minutes?"
The man considered.
"I don't think there could be anything heard up-stairs, miss. I should, of course, warn her grace that her ladyship was ill."
"Well, then, Hutton, please ask her to come in," said Miss Le Breton, hurriedly. "And, Hutton, Dr. Meredith and Mr. Montresor, you know how disappointed they'll be not to find Lady Henry at home?"
"Yes, miss. They'll want to know how her ladyship is, no doubt. I'll tell them you're in the library. And Captain Warkworth, miss?--he's never missed a Wednesday evening for weeks."
"Oh, well, if he comes--you must judge for yourself, Hutton," said Miss Le Breton, occupying herself with the electric switches. "I should like to tell them all--the old friends--how Lady Henry is."
The butler's face was respectful discretion itself.
"Of course, miss. And shall I bring tea and coffee?"
"Oh no," said Miss Le Breton, hastily; and then, after reflection, "Well, have it ready; but I don't suppose anybody will ask for it. Is there a good fire in the library?"
"Oh yes, miss. I thought you would be coming down there again. Shall I take some of these flowers down? The room looks rather bare, if anybody's coming in."
Julie colored a little.
"Well, you might--not many. And, Hutton, you're sure we can't disturb Lady Henry?"
Hutton's expression was not wholly confident.
"Her ladyship's very quick of hearing, miss. But I'll shut those doors at the foot of the back stairs, and I'll ask every one to come in quietly."
"Thank you, Hutton--thank you. That'll be very good of you. And, Hutton--"
"Yes, miss." The man paused with a large vase of white arums in his hand.
"You'll say a word to Dixon, won't you? If anybody comes in, there'll be no need to trouble Lady Henry about it. I can tell her to-morrow."
"Very good, miss. Dixon will be down to her supper presently."
The butler departed. Julie was left alone in the now darkened room, lighted only by one lamp and the bright glow of the fire. She caught her breath--suddenly struck with the audacity of what she had been doing. Eight or ten of these people certainly would come in--eight or ten of Lady Henry's "intimates." If Lady Henry discovered it--after this precarious truce between them had just been patched up!
Julie made a step towards the door as though to recall the butler, then stopped herself. The thought that in an hour's time Harry Warkworth might be within a few yards of her, and she not permitted to see him, worked intolerably in heart and brain, dulling the shrewd intelligence by which she was ordinarily governed. She was conscious, indeed, of some profound inner change. Life had been difficult enough before the Duchess had said those few words to her. But since!
Suppose he had deceived her at Lady Hubert's party! Through all her mounting passion her acute sense of character did not fail her. She secretly knew that it was quite possible he had deceived her. But the knowledge merely added to the sense of danger which, in this case, was one of the elements of passion itself.
"He must have money--of course he must have money," she was saying, feverishly, to herself. "But I'll find ways. Why should he marry yet--for years? It would be only hampering him."
Again she paused before the mirrored wall; and again imagination evoked upon the glass the same white and threatening image--her own near kinswoman--the child of her mother's sister! How strange! Where was the little gossamer creature now--in what safe haven of money and family affection, and all the spoiling that money brings? From the climbing paths of her own difficult and personal struggle Julie Le Breton looked down with sore contempt on such a degenerate ease of circumstance. She had heard it said that the mother and daughter were lingering abroad for a time on their way home from India. Yet was the girl all the while pining for England, thinking not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but only of this slim young soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would knock at Lady Henry's door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt's unknown, unguessed-of cousin? These thoughts sent wild combative thrills through Julie's pulses. She turned to one of the old French clocks. How much longer now--till he came?
"Her ladyship would like to see you, miss."
The voice was Dixon's, and Julie turned hurriedly, recalling all her self-possession. She climbed some steep stairs, still unmodernized, to Lady Henry's floor. That lady slept at the back of the house, so as to be out of noise. Her room was an old-fashioned apartment, furnished about the year Queen Victoria came to the throne, with furniture, chintzes, and carpet of the most approved early Victorian pattern. What had been ugly then was dingy now; and its strong mistress, who had known so well how to assimilate and guard the fine decorations and noble pictures of the drawing-rooms, would not have a thing in it touched. "It suits me," she would say, impatiently, when her stout sister-in-law pleaded placidly for white paint and bright colors. "If it's ugly, so am I."
Fierce, certainly, and forbidding she was on this February evening. She lay high on her pillow, tormented by her chronic bronchitis and by rheumatic pain, her brows drawn together, her vigorous hands clasped before her in an evident tension, as though she only restrained herself with difficulty from defying maid, doctor, and her own sense of prudence.
"Well, you have dressed?" she said, sharply, as Julie Le Breton entered her room.
"I did not get your message till I had finished dinner. And I dressed before dinner."
Lady Henry looked her up and down, like a cat ready to pounce.
"You didn't bring me those letters to sign?"
"No, I thought you were not fit for it."
"I said they were to go to-night. Kindly bring them at once."
Julie brought them. With groans and flinchings that she could not repress, Lady Henry read and signed them. Then she demanded to be read to. Julie sat down, trembling. How fast the hands of Lady Henry's clock were moving on!
Mercifully, Lady Henry was already somewhat sleepy, partly from weakness, partly from a dose of bromide.
"I hear nothing," she said, putting out an impatient hand. "You should raise your voice. I didn't mean you to shout, of course. Thank you--that'll do. Good-night. Tell Hutton to keep the house as quiet as he can. People must knock and ring, I suppose; but if all the doors are properly shut it oughtn't to bother me. Are you going to bed?"
"I shall sit up a little to write some letters. But--I sha'n't be late."
"Why should you be late?" said Lady Henry, tartly, as she turned away.
Julie made her way down-stairs with a beating heart. All the doors were carefully shut behind her. When she reached the hall it was already half-past ten o'clock. She hurried to the library, the large panelled room behind the dining-room. How bright Hutton had made it look! Up shot her spirits. With a gay and dancing step she went from chair to chair, arranging everything instinctively as she was accustomed to do in the drawing-room. She made the flowers less stiff; she put on another light; she drew one table forward and pushed its fellow back against the wall. What a charming old room, after all! What a pity Lady Henry so seldom used it! It was panelled in dark oak, while the drawing-room was white. But the pictures, of which there were two or three, looked even better here than up-stairs. That beautiful Lawrence--a "red boy" in gleaming satin--that pair of Hoppners, fine studies in blue, why, who had ever seen them before? And another light or two would show them still better.
A loud knock and ring. Julie held her breath. Ah! A distant voice in the hall. She moved to the fire, and stood quietly reading an evening paper.
"Captain Warkworth would be glad if you would see him for a few minutes, miss. He would like to ask you himself about her ladyship."
"Please ask him to come in, Hutton."
Hutton effaced himself, and the young man entered, Then Julie raised her voice.
"Remember, please, Hutton, that Iparticularlywant to see the Duchess."
Hutton bowed and retired. Warkworth came forward.
"What luck to find you like this!"
He threw her one look--Julie knew it to be a look of scrutiny--and then, as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed it.
"He wants to know that my suspicions are gone," she thought. "At any rate, he should believe it."
"The great thing," she said, with her finger to her lip, "is that Lady Henry should hear nothing."
She motioned her somewhat puzzled guest to a seat on one side of the fire, and, herself, fell into another opposite. A wild vivacity was in her face and manner.
"Isn't this amusing? Isn't the room charming? I think I should receive very well"--she looked round her--"in my own house."
"You would receive well in a garret--a stable," he said. "But what is the meaning of this? Explain."
"Lady Henry is ill and is gone to bed. That made her very cross--poor Lady Henry! She thinks I, too, am in bed. But you see--you forced your way in--didn't you?--to inquire with greater minuteness after Lady Henry's health."
She bent towards him, her eyes dancing.
"Of course I did. Will there presently be a swarm on my heels, all possessed with a similar eagerness, or--?"
He drew his chair, smiling, a little closer to her. She, on the contrary, withdrew hers.
"There will, no doubt, be six or seven," she said, demurely, "who will want personal news. But now, before they come"--her tone changed--"is there anything to tell me?"
"Plenty," he said, drawing a letter out of his pocket. "Your writ, my dear lady, runs as easily in the City as elsewhere." And he held up an envelope.
She flushed.
"You have got your allotment? But I knew you would. Lady Froswick promised."
"And a large allotment, too," he said, joyously. "I am the envy of all my friends. Some of them have got a few shares, and have already sold them--grumbling. I keep mine three days more on the best advice--the price may go higher yet. But, anyway, there"--he shook the envelope--"there it is--deliverance from debt--peace of mind for the first time since I was a lad at school--the power of going, properly fitted out and equipped, to Africa--ifI go--and not like a beggar--all in that bit of paper, and all the work of--some one you and I know. Fairy godmother! tell me, please, how to say a proper thank you."
The young soldier dropped his voice. Those blue eyes which had done him excellent service in many different parts of the globe were fixed with brilliance on his companion; the lines of a full-lipped mouth quivered with what seemed a boyish pleasure. The comfort of money relief was never acknowledged more frankly or more handsomely.
Julie hurriedly repressed him. Did she feel instinctively that there are thanks which it sometimes humiliates a man to remember, lavishly as he may have poured them out at the moment--thanks which may easily count in the long run, not for, but against, the donor? She rather haughtily asked what she had done but say a chance word to Lady Froswick? The shares had to be allotted to somebody. She was glad, of course, very glad, if he were relieved from anxiety....
So did she free herself and him from a burdensome gratitude; and they passed to discussing the latest chances of the Mokembe appointment. The Staff-College Colonel was no doubt formidable; the Commander-in-Chief, who had hitherto allowed himself to be much talked to on the subject of young Warkworth's claims by several men in high place--General M'Gill among them--well known in Lady Henry's drawing-room, was perhaps inclining to the new suggestion, which was strongly supported by important people in Egypt; he had one or two recent appointments on his conscience not quite of the highest order, and the Staff-College man, in addition to a fine military record, was virtue, poverty, and industry embodied; was nobody's cousin, and would, altogether, produce a good effect.
Could anything more be done, and fresh threads set in motion?
They bandied names a little, Julie quite as subtly and minutely informed as the man with regard to all the sources of patronage. New devices, fresh modes of approach revealed themselves to the woman's quick brain. Yet she did not chatter about them; still less parade her own resources. Only, in talking with her, dead walls seemed to give way; vistas of hope and possibility opened in the very heart of discouragement. She found the right word, the right jest, the right spur to invention or effort; while all the time she was caressing and appeasing her companion's self-love--placing it like a hot-house plant in an atmosphere of expansion and content--with that art of hers, which, for the ambitious and irritable man, more conscious of the kicks than of the kisses of fortune, made conversation with her an active and delightful pleasure.
"I don't know how it is," Warkworth presently declared; "but after I have been talking to you for ten minutes the whole world seems changed. The sky was ink, and you have turned it rosy. But suppose it is all mirage, and you the enchanter?"
He smiled at her--consciously, superabundantly. It was not easy to keep quite cool with Julie Le Breton; the self-satisfaction she could excite in the man she wished to please recoiled upon the woman offering the incense. The flattered one was apt to be foolishly responsive.
"That is my risk," she said, with a little shrug. "If I make you confident, and nothing comes of it--"
"I hope I shall know how to behave myself," cried Warkworth. "You see, you hardly understand--forgive me!--your own personal effect. When people are face to face with you, they want to please you, to say what will please you, and then they go away, and--"
"Resolve not to be made fools of?" she said, smiling. "But isn't that the whole art--when you're guessing what will happen--to be able to strike the balance of half a dozen different attractions?"
"Montresor as the ocean," said Warkworth, musing, "with half a dozen different forces tugging at him? Well, dear lady, be the moon to these tides, while this humble mortal looks on--and hopes."
He bent forward, and across the glowing fire their eyes met. She looked so cool, so handsome, so little yielding at that moment, that, in addition to gratitude and nattered vanity, Warkworth was suddenly conscious of a new stir in the blood. It begat, however, instant recoil. Wariness!--let that be the word, both for her sake and his own. What had he to reproach himself with so far? Nothing. He had never offered himself as the lover, as the possible husband. They were bothesprits faits--they understood each other. As for little Aileen, well, whatever had happened, or might happen, that was not his secret to give away. And a woman in Julie Le Breton's position, and with her intelligence, knows very well what the difficulties of her case are. Poor Julie! If she had been Lady Henry, what a career she would have made for herself! He was very curious as to her birth and antecedents, of which he knew little or nothing; with him she had always avoided the subject. She was the child, he understood, of English parents who had lived abroad; Lady Henry had come across her by chance. But there must be something in her past to account for this distinction, this ease with which she held her own in what passes as the best of English society.
Julie soon found herself unwilling to meet the gaze fixed upon her. She flushed a little and began to talk of other things.
"Everybody, surely, is unusually late. It will be annoying, indeed, if the Duchess doesn't come."
"The Duchess is a delicious creature, but not for me," said Warkworth, with a laugh. "She dislikes me. Ah, now then for the fray!"
For the outer bell rang loudly, and there were steps in the hall.
"Oh, Julie"--in swept a white whirlwind with the smallest white satin shoes twinkling in front of it--"how clever of you--you naughty angel! Aunt Flora in bed--and you down here! And I who came prepared for such a dose of humble-pie! What a relief! Oh, how do you do?"
The last words were spoken in quite another tone, as the Duchess, for the first time perceiving the young officer on the more shaded side of the fireplace, extended to him a very high wrist and a very stiff hand. Then she turned again to Julie.
"My dear, there's a small mob in the hall. Mr. Montresor--and General Somebody--and Jacob--and Dr. Meredith with a Frenchman. Oh, and old Lord Lackington, and Heaven knows who! Hutton told me I might come in, so I promised to come first and reconnoitre. But what's Hutton to do? You really must take a line. The carriages are driving up at a fine rate."
"I'll go and speak to Hutton," said Julie.
And she hurried into the hall.