On the morning following these events, Warkworth went down to the Isle of Wight to see his mother. On the journey he thought much of Julie. They had parted awkwardly the night before. The evening, which had promised so well, had, after all, lacked finish and point. What on earth had that tiresome Miss Lawrence wanted with him? They had talked of Simla and the Moffatts. The conversation had gone in spurts, she looking at him every now and then with eyes that seemed to say more than her words. All that she had actually said was perfectly insignificant and trivial. Yet there was something curious in her manner, and when the time came for him to take his departure she had bade him a frosty little farewell.
She had described herself once or twice as agreatfriend of Lady Blanche Moffatt. Was it possible?
But if Lady Blanche, whose habits of sentimental indiscretion were ingrained,hadgossiped to this lady, what then? Why should he be frowned on by Miss Lawrence, or anybody else? That malicious talk at Simla had soon exhausted itself. His present appointment was a triumphant answer to it all. His slanderers--including Aileen's ridiculous guardians--could only look foolish if they pursued the matter any further. What "trap" was there--whatmésalliance? A successful soldier was good enough for anybody. Look at the first Lord Clyde, and scores besides.
The Duchess, too. Why had she treated him so well at first, and so cavalierly after dinner? Her manners were really too uncertain.
What was the matter, and why did she dislike him? He pondered over it a good deal, and with much soreness of spirit. Like many men capable of very selfish or very cruel conduct, he was extremely sensitive, and took keen notice of the fact that a person liked or disliked him.
If the Duchess disliked him it could not be merely on account of the Simla story, even though the old maid might conceivably have given her a jaundiced account. The Duchess knew nothing of Aileen, and was little influenced, so far as he had observed her, by considerations of abstract justice or propriety, affecting persons whom she had never seen.
No, she was Julie's friend, the little wilful lady, and it was for Julie she ruffled her feathers, like an angry dove.
So his thoughts had come back to Julie, though, indeed, it seemed to him that they were never far from her. As he looked absently from the train windows on the flying landscape, Julie's image hovered between him and it--a magic sun, flooding soul and senses with warmth. How unconsciously, how strangely his feelings had changed towards her! That coolness of temper and nerve he had been able to preserve towards her for so long was, indeed, breaking down. He recognized the danger, and wondered where it would lead him. What a fascinating, sympathetic creature!--and, by George! what she had done for him!
Aileen! Aileen was a little sylph, a pretty child-angel, white-winged and innocent, who lived in a circle of convent thoughts, knowing nothing of the world, and had fallen in love with him as the first man who had ever made love to her. But this intelligent, full-blooded woman, who could understand at a word, or a half word, who had a knowledge of affairs which many a high-placed man might envy, with whom one never had a dull moment--this courted, distinguished Julie Le Breton--his mind swelled with half-guilty pride at the thought that for six months he had absorbed all her energies, that a word from him could make her smile or sigh, that he could force her to look at him with eyes so melting and so troubled as those with which she had given him her hands--her slim, beautiful hands--that night in Grosvenor Square.
How freedom became her! Dependency had dropped from her, like a cast-off cloak, and beside her fresh, melancholy charm, the airs and graces of a child of fashion and privilege like the little Duchess appeared almost cheap and trivial. Poor Julie! No doubt some social struggle was before her. Lady Henry was strong, after all, in this London world, and the solider and stupider people who get their way in the end were not, she thought, likely to side with Lady Henry's companion in a quarrel where the facts of the story were unquestionably, at first sight, damaging to Miss Le Breton. Julie would have her hours of bitterness and humiliation; and she would conquer by boldness, if she conquered at all--by originality, by determining to live her own life. That would preserve for her the small circle, if it lost her the large world. And the small circle was what she lived for, what she ought, at any rate, to live for.
It was not likely she would marry. Why should she desire it? From any blundering tragedy a woman of so acute a brain would, of course, know how to protect herself. But within the limits of her life, why should she refuse herself happiness, intimacy, love?
His heart beat fast; his thoughts were in a whirl. But the train was nearing Portsmouth, and with an effort he recalled his mind to the meeting with his mother, which was then close upon him.
He spent nearly a week in the little cottage at Sea View, and Mrs. Warkworth got far more pleasure than usual, poor lady, out of his visit. She was a thin, plain woman, not devoid of either ability or character. But life had gone hardly with her, and since her husband's death what had been reserve had become melancholy. She had always been afraid of her only son since they had sent him to Charterhouse, and he had become so much "finer" than his parents. She knew that he must consider her a very ignorant and narrow-minded person; when he was with her she was humiliated in her own eyes, though as soon as he was gone she resumed what was in truth a leading place among her own small circle.
She loved him, and was proud of him; yet at the bottom of her heart she had never absolved him from his father's death. But for his extravagance, and the misfortunes he had brought upon them, her old general would be alive still--pottering about in the spring sunshine, spudding the daisies from the turf, or smoking his pipe beneath the thickening trees. Silently her heart still yearned and hungered for the husband of her youth; his son did not replace him.
Nevertheless, when he came down to her with this halo of glory upon him, and smoked up and down her small garden through the mild spring days, gossiping to her of all the great things that had befallen him, repeating to her, word for word, his conversation with the Prime Minister, and his interview with the Commander-in-Chief, or making her read all the letters of congratulation he had received, her mother's heart thawed within her as it had not done for long. Her ears told her that he was still vain and a boaster; her memory held the indelible records of his past selfishness; but as he walked beside her, his fair hair blown back from his handsome brow, and eyes that were so much younger than the rest of the face, his figure as spare and boyish now as when he had worn the colors of the Charterhouse eleven, she said to herself, in that inward and unsuspected colloquy she was always holding with her own heart about him, that if his father could have seen him now he would have forgiven him everything. According to her secret Evangelical faith, God "deals" with every soul he has created--through joy or sorrow, through good or evil fortune. He had dealt with herself through anguish and loss. Henry, it seemed, was to be moulded through prosperity. His good fortune was already making a better man of him.
Certainly he was more affectionate and thoughtful than before. He would have liked to give her money, of which he seemed to have an unusual store; but she bade him keep what he had for his own needs. Her own little bit of money, saved from the wreck of their fortunes, was enough for her. Then he went into Ryde and brought her back a Shetland shawl and a new table-cloth for her little sitting-room, which she accepted with a warmer kiss than she had given him for years.
He left her on a bright, windy morning which flecked the blue Solent with foam and sent the clouds racing to westward. She walked back along the sands, thinking anxiously of the African climate and the desert hard-ships he was going to face. And she wondered what significance there might be in the fact that he had written twice during his stay with her to a Miss Le Breton, whose name, nevertheless, he had not mentioned in their conversations. Well, he would marry soon, she supposed, and marry well, in circles out of her ken. With the common prejudice of the English middle class, she hoped that if this Miss Le Breton were his choice, she might be only French in name and not in blood.
Meanwhile, Warkworth sped up to London in high spirits, enjoying the comforts of a good conscience.
He drove first to his club, where a pile of letters awaited him--some letters of congratulation, others concerned with the business of his mission. He enjoyed the first, noticing jealously who had and who had not written to him; then he applied himself to the second. His mind worked vigorously and well; he wrote his replies in a manner that satisfied him. Then throwing himself into a chair, with a cigar, he gave himself up to the close and shrewd planning of the preparations necessary for his five weeks' march, or to the consideration of two or three alternative lines of action which would open before him as soon as he should find himself within the boundaries of Mokembe. Some five years before, the government of the day had sent a small expedition to this Debatable Land, which had failed disastrously, both from the diplomatic and the military points of view. He went backward and forward to the shelves of the fine "Service" library which surrounded him, taking down the books and reports which concerned this expedition. He buried himself in them for an hour, then threw them aside with contempt. What blunders and short-sight everywhere! The general public might well talk of the stupidity of English officers. And blunders so easily avoided, too! It was sickening. He felt within himself a fulness of energy and intelligence, a perspicacity of brain which judged mistakes of this kind unpardonable.
As he was replacing some of the books he had been using in the shelves, the club began to fill up with men coming in to lunch. A great many congratulated him; and a certain number who of old had hardly professed to know him greeted him with cordiality. He found himself caught in a series of short but flattering conversations, in which he bore himself well--neither over-discreet nor too elate. "I declare that fellow's improved," said one man, who might certainly have counted as Warkworth's enemy the week before, to his companion at table. "The government's been beastly remiss so far. Hope he'll pull it off. Ripping chance, anyway. Though what they gave it to him for, goodness knows! There were a dozen fellows, at least, did as well as he in the Mahsud business. And the Staff-College man had a thousand times more claim."
Nevertheless, Warkworth felt the general opinion friendly, a little surprised, no doubt, but showing that readiness to believe in the man coming to the front, which belongs much more to the generous than to the calculating side of the English character. Insensibly his mental and moral stature rose. He exchanged a few words on his way out with one of the most distinguished members of the club, a man of European reputation, whom he had seen the week before in the Commander-in-Chief's room at the War Office. The great man spoke to him with marked friendliness, and Warkworth walked on air as he went his way. Potentially he felt himself the great man's equal; the gates of life seemed to be opening before him.
And with the rise of fortune came a rush of magnanimous resolution. No more shady episodes; no more mean devices; no more gambling, and no more debt.MajorWarkworth's sheet was clean, and it should remain so. A man of his prospects must run straight.
He felt himself at peace with all the world. By-the-way, just time to jump into a cab and get to Park Crescent in time for his sister's luncheon. His last interview with his brother-in-law had not been agreeable. But now--he felt for the check-book in his pocket--he was in a position to repay at least half the last sum of money which Bella had lent him. He would go and give it her now, and report news of the mother. And if the two chicks were there--why, he had a free hour and he would take them to the Zoo--he vowed he would!--give them something pleasant to remember their uncle by.
And a couple of hours later a handsome, soldierly man might have been seen in the lion-house at the Zoo, leading a plump little girl by either hand. Rose and Katie Mullins enjoyed a golden time, and started a wholly new adoration for the uncle who had so far taken small notice of them, and was associated in their shrewd, childish minds rather with tempests at home than buns abroad. But this time buns, biscuits, hansom-drives and elephant-rides were showered upon them by an uncle who seemed to make no account of money, while his gracious and captivating airs set their little hearts beating in a common devotion.
"Now go home--go home, little beggars!" said that golden gentleman, as he packed them into a hansom and stood on the step to accept a wet kiss on his mustache from each pink mouth. "Tell your mother all about it, and don't forget your uncle Harry. There's a shilling for each of you. Don't you spend it on sweets. You're quite fat enough already. Good-bye!"
"That's the hardest work I've done for many a long day," he said to himself, with a sigh of relief, as the hansom drove away. "I sha'n't turn nurse-maid when other trades fail. But they're nice little kids all the same.
"Now, then, Cox's--and the City"--he ran over the list of his engagements for the afternoon--"and by five o'clock shall I find my fair lady--at home--and established? Where on earth is Heribert Street?"
He solved the question, for a few minutes after five he was on Miss Le Breton's doorstep. A quaint little house--and a strange parlor-maid! For the door was opened to him by a large-eyed, sickly child, who looked at him with the bewilderment of one trying to follow out instructions still strange to her.
"HE ENTERED UPON A MERRY SCENE"
"Yes, sir, Miss Le Breton is in the drawing-room," she said, in a sweet, deliberate voice with a foreign accent, and she led the way through the hall.
Poor little soul--what a twisted back, and what a limp! She looked about fourteen, but was probably older. Where had Julie discovered her?
Warkworth looked round him at the little hall with its relics of country-house sports and amusements; his eye travelled through an open door to the little dining-room and the Russell pastels of Lady Mary's parents, as children, hanging on the wall. Thecharacterof the little dwelling impressed itself at once. Smiling; he acknowledged its congruity with Julie. Here was a lady who fell on her feet!
The child, leading him, opened the door to the left.
"Please walk in, sir," she said, shyly, and stood aside.
As the door opened, Warkworth was conscious of a noise of tongues.
So Julie was not alone? He prepared his manner accordingly.
He entered upon a merry scene. Jacob Delafield was standing on a chair, hanging a picture, while Dr. Meredith and Julie, on either side, directed or criticised the operation. Meredith carried picture-cord and scissors; Julie the hammer and nails. Meredith was expressing the profoundest disbelief in Jacob's practical capacities; Jacob was defending himself hotly; and Julie laughed at both.
Towards the other end of the room stood the tea-table, between the fire and an open window. Lord Lackington sat beside it, smiling to himself, and stroking a Persian kitten. Through the open window the twinkling buds on the lilacs in the Cureton House garden shone in the still lingering sun. A recent shower had left behind it odors of earth and grass. Even in this London air they spoke of the spring--the spring which already in happier lands was drawing veils of peach and cherry blossom, over the red Sienese earth or the green terraces of Como. The fire crackled in the grate. The pretty, old-fashioned room was fragrant with hyacinth and narcissus; Julie's books lay on the tables; Julie's hand and taste were already to be felt everywhere. And Lord Lackington with the kitten, beside the fire, gave the last touch of home and domesticity.
"So I find you established?" said Warkworth, smiling, to the lady with the nails, while Delafield nodded to him from the top of the steps and Meredith ceased to chatter.
"I haven't a hand, I fear," said Julie. "Will you have some tea? Ah, Léonie, tu vas en faire de nouveau, n'est-ce pas, pour ce monsieur?"
A little woman in black, with a shawl over her shoulders, had just glided into the room. She had a small, wrinkled face, bright eyes, and a much-flattened nose.
"Tout de suite, monsieur," she said, quickly, and disappeared with the teapot. Warkworth guessed, of course, that she was Madame Bornier, the foster-sister--the "Propriety" of thisménage.
"Can't I help?" he said to Julie, with a look at Delafield.
"It's just done," she said, coldly, handing a nail to Delafield. "Justa trifle more to the right. Ecco! Perfection!"
"Oh, you spoil him," said Meredith, "And not one word of praise for me!"
"What have you done?" she said, laughing. "Tangled the cord--that's all!"
Warkworth turned away. His face, so radiant as he entered, had settled into sharp, sudden lines. What was the meaning of this voice, this manner? He remembered that to his three letters he had received no word of reply. But he had interpreted that to mean that she was in the throes of moving and could find no time to write.
As he neared the tea-table, Lord Lackington looked up. He greeted the new-comer with the absent stateliness he generally put on when his mind was in a state of confusion as to a person's identity.
"Well, so they're sending you to D----? There'll be a row there before long. Wish you joy of the missionaries!"
"No, not D----," said Warkworth, smiling. "Nothing so amusing. Mokembe's my destination."
"Oh, Mokembe!" said Lord Lackington, a little abashed. "That's where Cecil Ray, Lord R's second son, was killed last year--lion-hunting? No, it was of fever that he died. By-the-way, a vile climate!"
"In the plains, yes," said Warkworth, seating himself. "As to the uplands, I understand they are to be the Switzerland of Africa."
Lord Lackington did not appear to listen.
"Are you a homoeopath?" he said, suddenly, rising to his full and immense stature and looking down with eagerness on Warkworth.
"No. Why?"
"Because it's your only chance, for those parts. If Cecil Ray had had their medicines with him he'd be alive now. Look here; when do you start?" The speaker took out his note-book.
"In rather less than a month I start for Denga."
"All right. I'll send you a medicine-case--from Epps. If you're ill, take 'em."
"You're very good."
"Not at all. It's my hobby--one of the last." A broad, boyish smile flashed over the handsome old face. "Look at me; I'm seventy-five, and I can tire out my own grandsons at riding and shooting. That comes of avoiding all allopathic messes like the devil. But the allopaths are such mean fellows they filch all our ideas."
The old man was off. Warkworth submitted to five minutes' tirade, stealing a glance sometimes at the group of Julie, Meredith, and Delafield in the farther window--at the happy ease and fun that seemed to prevail in it. He fiercely felt himself shut out and trampled on.
Suddenly, Lord Lackington pulled up, his instinct for declamation qualified by an equally instinctive dread of boring or being bored. "What did you think of Montresor's statement?" he said, abruptly, referring to a batch of army reforms that Montresor the week before had endeavored to recommend to a sceptical House of Commons.
"All very well, as far as it goes," said Warkworth, with a shrug.
"Precisely! We English want an army and a navy; we don't like it when those fellows on the Continent swagger in our faces, and yet we won't pay either for the ships or the men. However, now that they've done away with purchase--Gad! I could fight them in the streets for the way in which they've done it!--now that they've turned the army into an examination-shop, tempered with jobbery, whatever we do, we shall go to the deuce. So it don't matter."
"You were against the abolition?"
"I was, sir--with Wellington and Raglan and everybody else of any account. And as for the violence, the disgraceful violence with which it was carried--"
"Oh no, no," said Warkworth, laughing. "It was the Lords who behaved abominably, and it'll do a deal of good."
Lord Lackington's eyes flashed.
"I've had a long life," he said, pugnaciously. "I began as a middy in the American war of 1812, that nobody remembers now. Then I left the sea for the army. I knocked about the world. I commanded a brigade in the Crimea--"
"Who doesn't remember that?" said Warkworth, smiling.
The old man acknowledged the homage by a slight inclination of his handsome head.
"And you may take my word for it that this new system will not give you men wortha tenth partof those fellows who bought and bribed their way in under the old. The philosophers may like it, or lump it, but so it is."
Warkworth dissented strongly. He was a good deal of a politician, himself a "new man," and on the side of "new men." Lord Lackington warmed to the fight, and Warkworth, with bitterness in his heart--because of that group opposite--was nothing loath to meet him. But presently he found the talk taking a turn that astonished him. He had entered upon a drawing-room discussion of a subject which had, after all, been settled, if only by what the Tories were pleased to call thecoup d'étatof the Royal Warrant, and no longer excited the passions of a few years back. What he had really drawn upon himself was a hand-to-hand wrestle with a man who had no sooner provoked contradiction than he resented it with all his force, and with a determination to crush the contradictor.
Warkworth fought well, but with a growing amazement at the tone and manner of his opponent. The old man's eyes darted war-flames under his finely arched brows. He regarded the younger with a more and more hostile, even malicious air; his arguments grew personal, offensive; his shafts were many and barbed, till at last Warkworth felt his face burning and his temper giving way.
"Whatareyou talking about?" said Julie Le Breton, at last, rising and coming towards them.
Lord Lackington broke off suddenly and threw himself into his chair.
Warkworth rose from his.
"We had better have been handing nails," he said, "but you wouldn't give us any work." Then, as Meredith and Delafield approached, he seized the opportunity of saying, in a low voice:
"Am I not to have a word?"
She turned with composure, though it seemed to him she was very pale.
"Have you just come back from the Isle of Wight?"
"This morning." He looked her in the eyes. "You got my letters?"
"Yes, but I have had no time for writing. I hope you found your mother well."
"Very well, thank you. You have been hard at work?"
"Yes, but the Duchess and Mr. Delafield have made it all easy."
And so on, a few more insignificant questions and answers.
"I must go," said Delafield, coming up to them, "unless there is any more work for me to do. Good-bye, Major, I congratulate you. They have given you a fine piece of work."
Warkworth made a little bow, half ironical. Confound the fellow's grave and lordly ways! He did not want his congratulations.
He lingered a little, sorely, full of rage, yet not knowing how to go.
Lord Lackington's eyes ceased to blaze, and the kitten ventured once more to climb upon his knee. Meredith, too, found a comfortable arm-chair, and presently tried to beguile the kitten from his neighbor. Julie sat erect between them, very silent, her thin, white hands on her lap, her head drooped a little, her eyes carefully restrained from meeting Warkworth's. He meanwhile leaned against the mantel-piece, irresolute.
Meredith, it was clear, made himself quite happy and at home in the little drawing-room. The lame child came in and took a stool beside him. He stroked her head and talked nonsense to her in the intervals of holding forth to Julie on the changes necessary in some proofs of his which he had brought back. Lord Lackington, now quite himself again, went back to dreams, smiling over them, and quite unaware that the kitten had been slyly ravished from him. The little woman in black sat knitting in the background. It was all curiously intimate and domestic, only Warkworth had no part in it.
"Good-bye, Miss Le Breton," he said, at last, hardly knowing his own voice. "I am dining out."
She rose and gave him her hand. But it dropped from his like a thing dead and cold. He went out in a sudden suffocation of rage and pain; and as he walked in a blind haste to Cureton Street, he still saw her standing in the old-fashioned, scented room, so coldly graceful, with those proud, deep eyes.
When he had gone, Julie moved to the window and looked out into the gathering dusk. It seemed to her as if those in the room must hear the beating of her miserable heart.
When she rejoined her companions, Dr. Meredith had already risen and was stuffing various letters and papers into his pockets with a view to departure.
"Going?" said Lord Lackington. "You shall see the last of me, too, Mademoiselle Julie."
And he stood up. But she, flushing, looked at him with a wistful smile.
"Won't you stay a few minutes? You promised to advise me about Thérèse's drawings."
"By all means."
Lord Lackington sat down again. The lame child, it appeared, had some artistic talent, which Miss Le Breton wished to cultivate. Meredith suddenly found his coat and hat, and, with a queer look at Julie, departed in a hurry.
"Thérèse, darling," said Julie, "will you go up-stairs, please, and fetch me that book from my room that has your little drawings inside it?"
The child limped away on her errand. In spite of her lameness she moved with wonderful lightness and swiftness, and she was back again quickly with a calf-bound book in her hand.
"Léonie!" said Julie, in a low voice, to Madame Bornier.
The little woman looked up startled, nodded, rolled up her knitting in a moment, and was gone.
"Take the book to his lordship, Thérèse," she said, and then, instead of moving with the child, she again walked to the window, and, leaning her head against it, looked out. The hand hanging against her dress trembled violently.
"What did you want me to look at, my dear?" said Lord Lackington, taking the book in his hand and putting on his glasses.
But the child was puzzled and did not know. She gazed at him silently with her sweet, docile look.
"Run away, Thérèse, and find mother," said Julie, from the window.
The child sped away and closed the door behind her.
Lord Lackington adjusted his glasses and opened the book. Two or three slips of paper with drawings upon them fluttered out and fell on the table beneath. Suddenly there was a cry. Julie turned round, her lips parted.
Lord Lackington walked up to her.
"Tell me what this means," he said, peremptorily. "How did you come by it?"
It was a volume of George Sand. He pointed, trembling, to the name and date on the fly-leaf--"Rose Delaney, 1842."
"It is mine," she said, softly, dropping her eyes.
"But how--how, in God's name, did you come by it?"
"My mother left it to me, with all her other few books and possessions."
There was a pause. Lord Lackington came closer.
"Who was your mother?" he said, huskily.
The words in answer were hardly audible. Julie stood before him like a culprit, her beautiful head humbly bowed.
Lord Lackington dropped the book and stood bewildered.
"Rose's child?" he said--"Rose's child?"
Then, approaching her, he placed his hand on her arm.
"Let me look at you," he commanded.
Julie raised her eyes to him, and at the same time dumbly held out to him a miniature she had been keeping hidden in her hand. It was one of the miniatures from the locked triptych.
He took it, looked from the pictured to the living face, then, turning away with a groan, he covered his face with his hands and fell again into the chair from which he had risen.
Julie hurried to him. Her own eyes were wet with tears. After a moment's hesitation she knelt down beside him.
"I ought to ask your pardon for not having told you before," she murmured.
It was some time before Lord Lackington looked up. When at last his hands dropped, the face they uncovered was very white and old.
"So you," he said, almost in a whisper, "are the child she wrote to me about before she died?"
Julie made a sign of assent.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-nine."
"Shewas thirty-two when I saw her last."
There was a silence. Julie lifted one of his hands and kissed it. But he took no notice.
"You know that I was going to her, that I should have reached her in time"--the words seemed wrung from him--"but that I was myself dangerously ill?"
"I know. I remember it all."
"Did she speak of me?"
"Not often. She was very reserved, you remember. But not long before she died--she seemed half asleep--I heard her say, 'Papa!--Blanche!' and she smiled."
Lord Lackington's face contracted, and the slow tears of old age stood in his eyes.
"You are like her in some ways," he said, brusquely, as though to cover his emotion; "but not very like her."
"She always thought I was like you."
A cloud came over Lord Lackington's face. Julie rose from her knees and sat beside him. He lost himself a few moments amid the painful ghosts of memory. Then, turning to her abruptly, he said:
"You have wondered, I dare say, why I was so hard--why, for seventeen years, I cast her off?"
"Yes, often. You could have come to see us without anybody knowing. Mother loved you very much."
Her voice was low and sad. Lord Lackington rose, fidgeted restlessly with some of the small ornaments on the mantel-piece, and at last turned to her.
"She brought dishonor," he said, in the same stifled voice, "and the women of our family have always been stainless. But that I could have forgiven. After a time I should have resumed relations--private relations--with her. But it was your father who stood in the way. I was then--I am now--you saw me with that young fellow just now--quarrelsome and hot-tempered. It is my nature." He drew himself up obstinately. "I can't help it. I take great pains to inform myself, then I cling to my opinions tenaciously, and in argument my temper gets the better of me. Your father, too, was hot-tempered. He came, with my consent, once to see me--after your mother had left her husband--to try and bring about some arrangement between us. It was the Chartist time. He was a Radical, a Socialist of the most extreme views. In the course of our conversation something was said that excited him. He went off at score. I became enraged, and met him with equal violence. We had a furious argument, which ended in each insulting the other past forgiveness. We parted enemies for life. I never could bring myself to see him afterwards, nor to run the risk of seeing him. Your mother took his side and espoused his opinions while he lived. After his death, I suppose, she was too proud and sore to write to me. I wrote to her once--it was not the letter it might have been. She did not reply till she felt herself dying. That is the explanation of what, no doubt, must seem strange to you."
"'FOR MY ROSE'S CHILD,' HE SAID, GENTLY"
He turned to her almost pleadingly. A deep flush had replaced the pallor of his first emotion, as though in the presence of these primal realities of love, death, and sorrow which she had recalled to him, his old quarrel, on a political difference, cut but a miserable figure.
"No," she said, sadly, "not very strange. I understood my father--my dear father," she added, with soft, deliberate tenderness.
Lord Lackington was silent a little, then he threw her a sudden, penetrating look.
"You have been in London three years. You ought to have told me before."
It was Julie's turn to color.
"Lady Henry bound me to secrecy."
"Lady Henry did wrong," he said, with emphasis. Then he asked, jealously, with a touch of his natural irascibility, "Who else has been in the secret?"
"Four people, at most--the Duchess, first of all. I couldn't help it," she pleaded. "I was so unhappy with Lady Henry."
"You should have come to me. It was my right."
"But"--she dropped her head--"you had made it a condition that I should not trouble you."
He was silenced; and once more he leaned against the mantel-piece and hid his face from her, till, by a secret impulse, both moved. She rose and approached him; he laid his hands on her arms. With his persistent instinct for the lovely or romantic he perceived, with sudden pleasure, the grave, poetic beauty of her face and delicate form. Emotion had softened away all that was harsh; a quivering charm hovered over the features. With a strange pride, and a sense of mystery, he recognized his daughter and his race.
"For my Rose's child," he said, gently, and, stooping, he kissed her on the brow. She broke out into weeping, leaning against his shoulder, while the old man comforted and soothed her.
After the long conversation between herself and Lord Lackington which followed on the momentous confession of her identity, Julie spent a restless and weary evening, which passed into a restless and weary night. Was she oppressed by this stirring of old sorrows?--haunted afresh by her parents' fate?
Ah! Lord Lackington had no sooner left her than she sank motionless into her chair, and, with the tears excited by the memories of her mother still in her eyes, she gave herself up to a desperate and sombre brooding, of which Warkworth's visit of the afternoon was, in truth, the sole cause, the sole subject.
Why had she received him so? She had gone too far--much too far. But, somehow, she had not been able to bear it--that buoyant, confident air, that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she wasnothis chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those days she had passed through.
He, apparently, to judge from his letters to her from the Isle of Wight, had been conscious of no crisis whatever. Yet he must have seen from the little Duchess's manner, as she bade farewell to him that night at Crowborough House, that something was wrong. He must have realized that Miss Lawrence was an intimate friend of the Moffatts, and that--Or was he really so foolish as to suppose that his quasi-engagement to this little heiress, and the encouragement given him, in defiance of the girl's guardians, by her silly and indiscreet mother, were still hidden and secret matters?--that he could still conceal them from the world, and deny them to Julie?
Her whole nature was sore yet from her wrestle with the Duchess on that miserable evening.
"Julie, I can't help it! I know it's impertinent--but--Julie, darling!--do listen! What business has that man to make love to you as he does, when all the time--Yes, he does make love to you--he does! Freddie had a most ill-natured letter from Lady Henry this morning. Of course he had--and of course she'll write that kind of letter to as many people as she can. And it wouldn't matter a bit, if--But, you see, youhavebeen moving heaven and earth for him! And now his manner to you" (while the sudden flush burned her cheek, Julie wondered whether by chance the Duchess had seen anything of the yielded hands and the kiss) "and that ill-luck of his being the first to arrive, last night, at Lady Henry's! Oh, Julie, he's a wretch--he is!Of course he is in love with you. That's natural enough. But all the time--listen, that nice woman told me the whole story--he's writing regularly to that little girl. She and her mother, in spite of the guardians, regard it as an engagement signed and sealed, and all his friends believe he'squitedetermined to marry her because of the money. You may think me an odious little meddler, Julie, if you like, but I vow I could stab him to the heart, with all the pleasure in life!"
And neither the annoyance, nor the dignity, nor the ridicule of the supposed victim--not Julie's angry eyes, nor all her mocking words from tremulous lips--had availed in the least to silence the tumult of alarmed affection in the Duchess's breast. Her Julie had been flouted and trifled with; and if she was so blind, so infatuated, as not to see it, she should at least be driven to realize what other people felt about it.
So she had her say, and Julie had been forced, willy-nilly, upon discussion and self-defence--nay, upon a promise also. Pale, and stiffly erect, yet determined all the same to treat it as a laughing matter, she had vouchsafed the Duchess some kind of assurance that she would for the future observe a more cautious behavior towards Warkworth. "He is myfriend, and whatever any one may say, he shall remain so," she had said, with a smiling stubbornness which hid something before which the little Duchess shrank. "But, of course, if I can do anything to please you, Evelyn--you know I like to please you."
But she had never meant, she had never promised to forswear his society, to ban him from the new house. In truth she would rather have left home and friends and prospects, at one stroke, rather than have pledged herself to anything of the sort. Evelyn should never bind her to that.
Then, during his days of absence, she had passed through wave after wave of feeling, while all the time to the outer eye she was occupied with nothing but the settlement into Lady Mary's strange little house. She washed, dusted, placed chairs and tables. And meanwhile a wild expectancy of his first letter possessed her. Surely there would be some anxiety in it, some fear, some disclosure of himself, and of the struggle in his mind between interest and love?
Nothing of the kind. His first letter was the letter of one sure of his correspondent, sure of his reception and of his ground; a happy and intimate certainty shone through its phrases; it was the letter, almost, of a lover whose doubts are over.
The effect of it was to raise a tempest, sharp and obscure, in Julie's mind. The contrast between theposeof the letter and the sly reality behind bred a sudden anguish of jealousy, concerned not so much with Warkworth as with this little, unknown creature, who, without any effort, any desert--by the mere virtue of money and blood--sat waiting in arrogant expectancy till what she desired should come to her. How was it possible to feel any compunction towards her? Julie felt none.
As to the rest of Miss Lawrence's gossip--that Warkworth was supposed to have "behaved badly," to have led the pretty child to compromise herself with him at Simla in ways which Simla society regarded as inadmissible and "bad form"; that the guardians had angrily intervened, and that he was under a promise, habitually broken by the connivance of the girl's mother, not to see or correspond with the heiress till she was twenty-one, in other words, for the next two years--what did these things matter to her? Had she ever supposed that Warkworth, in regard to money or his career, was influenced by any other than the ordinary worldly motives? She knew very well that he was neither saint nor ascetic. These details--or accusations--did not, properly speaking, concern her at all. She had divined and accepted his character, in all its average human selfishness and faultiness, long ago. She loved him passionately in spite of it--perhaps, if the truth were known, because of it.
As for the marrying, or rather the courting, for money, that excited in her no repulsion whatever. Julie, in her own way, was a great romantic; but owing to the economic notions of marriage, especially the whole conception of thedot, prevailing in the French or Belgian minds amid whom she had passed her later girlhood, she never dreamed for a moment of blaming Warkworth for placing money foremost in his plans of matrimony. She resembled one of the famousamoureusesof the eighteenth century, who in writing to the man she loved but could not marry, advises him to take a wife to mend his fortunes, and proposes to him various tempting morsels--une jeune personne, sixteen, with neither father nor mother, only a brother. "They will give her on her marriage thirteen thousand francs a year, and the aunt will be quite content to keep her and look after her for some time." And if that won't do--"I know a man who would be only too happy to have you for a son-in-law; but his daughter is only eleven; she is an only child, however, and she will beveryrich. You know,mon ami, I desire your happiness above all things; how to procure it--there lies the chief interest of my life."
This notion of things, more or less disguised, was to Julie customary and familiar; and it was no more incompatible in her with the notions and standards of high sentiment, such as she might be supposed to have derived from her parents, than it is in the Latin races generally.
No doubt it had been mingled in her, especially since her settlement in Lady Henry's house, with the more English idea of "falling in love"--the idea which puts personal choice first in marriage, and makes the matter of dowry subordinate to that mysterious election and affinity which the Englishman calls "love." Certainly, during the winter, Julie had hoped to lead Warkworth to marry her. As a poor man, of course, he must have money. But her secret feeling had been that her place in society, her influence with important people, had a money value, and that he would perceive this.
Well, she had been a mere trusting fool, and he had deceived her. There was his crime--not in seeking money and trusting to money. He had told her falsehoods and misled her. He was doing it still. His letter implied that he loved her? Possibly. It implied to Julie's ear still more plainly that he stood tacitly and resolutely by Aileen Moffatt and her money, and that all he was prepared to offer to the dear friend of his heart was a more or less ambiguous relation, lasting over two years perhaps--till his engagement might be announced.
A dumb and bitter anger mounted within her. She recalled the manner in which he had evaded her first questions, and her opinion became very much that of the Duchess. She had, indeed, been mocked, and treated like a child. So she sent no answer to his first letter, and when his second came she forbade herself to open it. It lay there on her writing-table. At night she transferred it to the table beside her bed, and early in the spring dawn her groping fingers drew it trembling towards her and slipped it under her pillow. By the time the full morning had come she had opened it, read and reread it--had bathed it, indeed, with her tears.
But her anger persisted, and when Warkworth appeared on her threshold it flamed into sudden expression. She would make him realize her friends, her powerful friends--above all, she would make him realize Delafield.
Well, now it was done. She had repelled her lover. She had shown herself particularly soft and gracious to Delafield. Warkworth now would break with her--might, perhaps, be glad of the chance to return safely and without further risks to his heiress.
She sat on in the dark, thinking over every word, every look. Presently Thérèse stole in.
"Mademoiselle, le souper sera bientôt prêt."
Julie rose wearily, and the child slipped a thin hand into hers.
"J'aime tant ce vieux monsieur," she said, softly. "Je l'aime tant!"
Julie started. Her thoughts had wandered far, indeed, from Lord Lackington.
As she went up-stairs to her little room her heart reproached her. In their interview the old man had shown great sweetness of feeling, a delicate and remorseful tenderness, hardly to have been looked for in a being so fantastic and self-willed. The shock of their conversation had deepened the lines in a face upon which age had at last begun to make those marks which are not another beauty, but the end of beauty. When she had opened the door for him in the dusk, Julie had longed, indeed, to go with him and soothe his solitary evening. His unmarried son, William, lived with him intermittently; but his wife was dead. Lady Blanche seldom came to town, and, for the most part, he lived alone in the fine house in St. James's Square, of which she had heard her mother talk.
He liked her--had liked her from the first. How natural that she should tend and brighten his old age--how natural, and how impossible! He was not the man to brave the difficulties and discomforts inseparable from the sudden appearance of an illegitimate granddaughter in his household, and if he had been, Julie, in her fierce, new-born independence, would have shrunk from such a step. But she had been drawn to him; her heart had yearned to her kindred.
No; neither love nor kindred were for her. As she entered the little, bare room over the doorway, which she had begun to fill with books and papers, and all the signs of the literary trade, she miserably bid herself be content with what was easily and certainly within her grasp. The world was pleased to say that she had a remarkable social talent. Let her give her mind to the fight with Lady Henry, and prove whether, after all, the salon could not be acclimatized on English soil. She had the literary instinct and aptitude, and she must earn money. She looked at her half-written article, and sighed to her books to save her.
That evening Thérèse, who adored her, watched her with a wistful and stealthy affection. Her idol was strangely sad and pale. But she asked no questions. All she could do was to hover about "mademoiselle" with soft, flattering services, till mademoiselle went to bed, and then to lie awake herself, quietly waiting till all sounds in the room opposite had died away, and she might comfort her dumb and timid devotion with the hope that Julie slept.
Sleep, however, or no sleep, Julie was up early next day. Before the post arrived she was already dressed, and on the point of descending to the morning coffee, which, in the old, frugal, Bruges fashion, she and Léonie and the child took in the kitchen together. Lady Henry's opinion of her as a soft and luxurious person dependent on dainty living was, in truth, absurdly far from the mark. After those years of rich food and many servants in Lady Henry's household, she had resumed the penurious Belgian ways at once, without effort--indeed, with alacrity. In the morning she helped Léonie and Thérèse with the housework. Her quick fingers washed and rubbed and dusted. In less than a week she knew every glass and cup in Cousin Mary Leicester's well-filled china cupboard, and she and Thérèse between them kept the two sitting-rooms spotless. She who had at once made friends and tools of Lady Henry's servants, disdained, so it appeared, to be served beyond what was absolutely necessary in her own house. A charwoman, indeed, came in the morning for the roughest work, but by ten o'clock she was gone, and Julie, Madame Bornier, and the child remained in undisputed possession. Little, flat-nosed, silent Madame Bornier bought and brought in all they ate. She denounced the ways, the viands, the brigand's prices of Englishfournisseurs, but it seemed to Julie, all the same, that she handled them with a Napoleonic success. She bought as the French poor buy, so far as the West End would let her, and Julie had soon perceived that their expenditure, even in this heart of Mayfair, would be incredibly small. Whereby she felt herself more and more mistress of her fate. By her own unaided hands would she provide for herself and her household. Each year there should be a little margin, and she would owe no man anything. After six months, if she could not afford to pay the Duke a fair rent for his house--always supposing he allowed her to remain in it--she would go elsewhere.
As she reached the hall, clad in an old serge dress, which was a survival from Bruges days, Thérèse ran up to her with the letters.
Julie looked through them, turned and went back to her room. She had expected the letter which lay on the top, and she must brace herself to read it.
It began abruptly:
/# "You will hardly wonder that I should write at once to ask if you have no explanation to give me of your manner of this afternoon. Again and again I go over what happened, but no light comes. It was as though you had wiped out all the six months of our friendship; as though I had become for you once more the merest acquaintance. It is impossible that I can have been mistaken. You meant to make me--and others?--clearly understand--what? That I no longer deserved your kindness--that you had broken altogether with the man on whom you had so foolishly bestowed it?
"My friend, what have I done? How have I sinned? Did that sour lady, who asked me questions she had small business to ask, tell you tales that have set your heart against me? But what have incidents and events that happened, or may have happened, in India, got to do with our friendship, which grew up for definite reasons and has come to mean so much--has it not?--to both of us? I am not a model person, Heaven knows!--very far from it. There are scores of things in my life to be ashamed of. And please remember that last year I had never seen you; if I had, much might have gone differently.
"But how can I defend myself? I owe you so much. Ought not that, of itself, to make you realize how great is your power to hurt me, and how small are my powers of resistance? The humiliations you can inflict upon me are infinite, and I have no rights, no weapons, against you.
"I hardly know what I am saying. It is very late, and I am writing this after a dinner at the club given me by two or three of my brother officers. It was a dinner in my honor, to congratulate me on my good fortune. They are good fellows, and it should have been a merry time. But my half hour in your room had killed all power of enjoyment for me. They found me a wretched companion, and we broke up early. I came home through the empty streets, wishing myself, with all my heart, away from England--facing the desert. Let me just say this. It is not of good omen that now, when I want all my faculties at their best, I should suddenly find myself invaded by this distress and despondency. You have some responsibility now in my life and career; if you would, you cannot get rid of it. You have not increased the chances of your friend's success in his great task.
"You see how I restrain myself. I could write as madly as I feel--violently and madly. But of set purpose we pitched our relation in a certain key and measure; and I try, at least, to keep the measure, if the music and the charm must go. But why, in God's name, should they go? Why have you turned against me? You have listened to slanderers; you have secretly tried me by tests that are not in the bargain, and you have judged and condemned me without a hearing, without a word. I can tell you I am pretty sore.
"I will come and see you no more in company for the present. You gave me a footing with you, which has its own dignity. I'll guard it; not even from you will I accept anything else. But--unless, indeed, the grove is cut down and the bird flown forever--let me come when you are alone. Then charge me with what you will. I am an earthy creature, struggling through life as I best can, and, till I saw you, struggling often, no doubt, in very earthy ways. I am not a philosopher, nor an idealist, with expectations, like Delafield. This rough-and-tumble world is all I know. It's good enough for me--good enough to love a friend in, as--I vow to God, Julie!--I have loved you.
"There, it's out, and you must put up with it. I couldn't help it. I am too miserable.
"But--
"But I won't write any more. I shall stay in my rooms till twelve o'clock. You owe me promptness." #/
Julie put down the letter.
She looked round her little study with a kind of despair--the despair perhaps of the prisoner who had thought himself delivered, only to find himself caught in fresh and stronger bonds. As for ambition, as for literature--here, across their voices, broke this voice of the senses, this desire of "the moth for the star." And she was powerless to resist it. Ah, why had he not accepted his dismissal--quarrelled with her at once and forever?
She understood the letter perfectly--what it offered, and what it tacitly refused. An intimate and exciting friendship--for two years. For two years he was ready to fill up such time as he could spare from his clandestine correspondence with her cousin, with this romantic, interesting, but unprofitable affection. And then?
She fell again upon his letter. Ah, but there was a new note in it--a hard, strained note, which gave her a kind of desperate joy. It seemed to her that for months she had been covetously listening for it in vain.
She was beginning to be necessary to him; he hadsuffered--through her. Never before could she say that to herself. Pleasure she had given him, but not pain; and it is pain that is the test and consecration of--
Of what?... Well, now for her answer. It was short.
/# "I am very sorry you thought me rude. I was tired with talking and unpacking, and with literary work--housework, too, if the truth were known. I am no longer a fine lady, and must slave for myself. The thought, also, of an interview with Lord Lackington which faced me, which I went through as soon as you, Dr. Meredith, and Mr. Delafield had gone, unnerved me. You were good to write to me, and I am grateful indeed. As to your appointment, and your career, you owe no one anything. Everything is in your own hands. I rejoice in your good fortune, and I beg that you will let no false ideas with regard to me trouble your mind.
"This afternoon at five, if you can forgive me, you will find me. In the early afternoon I shall be in the British Museum, for my work's sake." #/
She posted her letter, and went about her daily housework, oppressed the while by a mental and moral nausea. As she washed and tidied and dusted, a true housewife's love growing up in her for the little house and its charming, old-world appointments--a sort of mute relation between her and it, as though it accepted her for mistress, and she on her side vowed it a delicate and prudent care--she thought how she could have delighted in this life which had opened upon her had it come to her a year ago. The tasks set her by Meredith were congenial and within her power. Her independence gave her the keenest pleasure. The effort and conquests of the intellect--she had the mind to love them, to desire them; and the way to them was unbarred.
What plucked her back?
A tear fell upon the old china cup that she was dusting. A sort of maternal element had entered into her affection for Warkworth during the winter. She had upheld him and fought for him. And now, like a mother, she could not tear the unworthy object from her heart, though all the folly of their pseudo-friendship and her secret hopes lay bare before her.
Warkworth came at five.
He entered in the dusk; a little pale, with his graceful head thrown back, and that half-startled, timid look in his wide, blue eyes--that misleading look--which made him the boy still, when he chose.
Julie was standing near the window as he came in. As she turned and saw him there, a flood of tenderness and compunction swept over her. He was going away. What if she never saw him again?
She shuddered and came forward rapidly, eagerly. He read the meaning of her movement, her face; and, wringing her hands with a violence that hurt her, he drew a long breath of relief.
"Why--why"--he said, under his breath--"have you made me so unhappy?"
The blood leaped in her veins. These, indeed, were new words in a new tone.
"Don't let us reproach each other," she said. "There is so much to say. Sit down."
To-day there were no beguiling spring airs. The fire burned merrily in the grate; the windows were closed.
A scent of narcissus--the Duchess had filled the tables with flowers--floated in the room. Amid its old-fashioned and distinguished bareness--tempered by flowers, and a litter of foreign books--Julie seemed at last to have found her proper frame. In her severe black dress, opening on a delicate vest of white, she had a muselike grace; and the wreath made by her superb black hair round the fine intelligence of her brow had never been more striking. Her slender hands busied themselves with Cousin Mary Leicester's tea-things; and every movement had in Warkworth's eyes a charm to which he had never yet been sensible, in this manner, to this degree.
"Am I really to say no more of yesterday?" he said, looking at her nervously.
Her flush, her gesture, appealed to him.
"Do you know what I had before me--that day--when you came in?" she said, softly.
"No. I cannot guess. Ah, you said something about Lord Lackington?"
She hesitated. Then her color deepened.
"You don't know my story. You suppose, don't you, that I am a Belgian with English connections, whom Lady Henry met by chance? Isn't that how you explain me?"
Warkworth had pushed aside his cup.
"I thought--"
He paused in embarrassment, but there was a sparkle of astonished expectancy in his eyes.
"My mother"--she looked away into the blaze of the fire, and her voice choked a little--"my mother was Lord Lackington's daughter."
"Lord Lackington's daughter?" echoed Warkworth, in stupefaction. A rush of ideas and inferences sped through his mind. He thought of Lady Blanche--things heard in India--and while he stared at her in an agitated silence the truth leaped to light.
"Not--not Lady Rose Delaney?" he said, bending forward to her.
She nodded.
"My father was Marriott Dalrymple. You will have heard of him. I should be Julie Dalrymple, but--they could never marry--because of Colonel Delaney."
Her face was still turned away.
All the details of that famous scandal began to come back to him. His companion, her history, her relations to others, to himself, began to appear to him in the most astonishing new lights. So, instead of the mere humble outsider, she belonged all the time to the best English blood? The society in which he had met her was full of her kindred. No doubt the Duchess knew--and Montresor.... He was meshed in a net of thoughts perplexing and confounding, of which the total result was perhaps that she appeared to him as she sat there, the slender outline so quiet and still, more attractive and more desirable than ever. The mystery surrounding her in some way glorified her, and he dimly perceived that so it must have been for others.
"How did you ever bear the Bruton Street life?" he said, presently, in a low voice of wonder. "Lady Henry knew?"
"Oh yes!"
"And the Duchess?"
"Yes. She is a connection of my mother's."
Warkworth's mind went back to the Moffatts. A flush spread slowly over the face of the young officer. It was indeed an extraordinary imbroglio in which he found himself.
"How did Lord Lackington take it?" he asked, after a pause.
"He was, of course, much startled, much moved. We had a long talk. Everything is to remain just the same. He wishes to make me an allowance, and, if he persists, I suppose I can't hurt him by refusing. But for the present I have refused. It is more amusing to earn one's own living." She turned to him with a sharp brightness in her black eyes. "Besides, if Lord Lackington gives me money, he will want to give me advice. And I would rather advise myself."
Warkworth sat silent a moment. Then he took a great resolve.
"I want to speak to you," he said, suddenly, putting out his hand to hers, which lay on her knee.
She turned to him, startled.
"I want to have no secrets from you," he said, drawing his breath quickly. "I told you lies one day, because I thought it was my duty to tell lies. Another person was concerned. But now I can't. Julie!--you'll let me call you so, won't you? The name is already"--he hesitated; then the words rushed out--"part of my life! Julie, it's quite true, there is a kind of understanding between your little cousin Aileen and me. At Simla she attracted me enormously. I lost my head one day in the woods, when she--whom we were all courting--distinguished me above two or three other men who were there. I proposed to her upon a sudden impulse, and she accepted me. She is a charming, soft creature. Perhaps I wasn't justified. Perhaps she ought to have had more chance of seeing the world. Anyway, there was a great row. Her guardians insisted that I had behaved badly. They could not know all the details of the matter, and I was not going to tell them. Finally I promised to withdraw for two years."
He paused, anxiously studying her face. It had grown very white, and, he thought, very cold. But she quickly rose, and, looking down upon him, said:
"Nothing of that is news to me. Did you think it was?"
And moving to the tea-table, she began to make provision for a fresh supply of tea.
Both words and manner astounded him. He, too, rose and followed her.
"How did you first guess?" he said, abruptly.
"Some gossip reached me." She looked up with a smile. "That's what generally happens, isn't it?"
"There are no secrets nowadays," he said, sorely. "And then, there was Miss Lawrence?"
"Yes, there was Miss Lawrence."
"Did you think badly of me?"
"Why should I? I understand Aileen is very pretty, and--"
"And will have a large fortune. You understand that?" he said, trying to carry it off lightly.
"The fact is well known, isn't it?"
He sat down, twisting his hat between his hands. Then with an exclamation he dashed it on the floor, and, rising, he bent over Julie, his hands in his pockets.
"Julie," he said, in a voice that shook her, "don't, for God's sake, give me up! I have behaved abominably, but don't take your friendship from me. I shall soon be gone. Our lives will go different ways. That was settled--alack!--before we met. I am honorably bound to that poor child. She cares for me, and I can't get loose. But these last months have been happy, haven't they? There are just three weeks left. At present the strongest feeling in my heart is--" He paused for his word, and he saw that she was looking through the window to the trees of the garden, and that, still as she was, her lip quivered.
"What shall I say?" he resumed, with emotion. "It seems to me our case stands all by itself, alone in the world. We have three weeks--give them to me. Don't let's play at cross purposes any more. I want to be sincere--I want to hide nothing from you in these days. Let us throw aside convention and trust each other, as friends may, so that when I go we may say to each other, 'Well, it was worth the pain. These have been days of gold--we shall get no better if we live to be a hundred.'"
She turned her face to him in a tremulous amazement and there were tears on her cheek. Never had his aspect been so winning. What he proposed was, in truth, a mean thing; all the same, he proposed it nobly.
It was in vain that something whispered in her ear: "This girl to whom he describes himself as 'honorably bound' has a fortune of half a million. He is determined to have both her money and my heart." Another inward voice, tragically generous, dashed down the thought, and, at the moment, rightly; for as he stood over her, breathless and imperious, to his own joy, to his own exaltation, Warkworth was conscious of a new sincerity flowing in a tempestuous and stormy current through all the veins of being.
With a sombre passion which already marked an epoch in their relation, and contained within itself the elements of new and unforeseen developments, she gazed silently into his face. Then, leaning back in her chair, she once more held out to him both her hands.
He gave an exclamation of joy, kissed the hands tenderly, and sat down beside her.
"Now, then, all your cares, all your thoughts, all your griefs are to be mine--till fate call us. And I have a thousand things to tell you, to bless you for, to consult you about. There is not a thought in my mind that you shall not know--bad, good, and indifferent--if you care to turn out the rag-bag. Shall I begin with the morning--my experiences at the club, my little nieces at the Zoo?" He laughed, but suddenly grew serious again. "No, your story first; you owe it me. Let me know all that concerns you. Your past, your sorrows, ambitions--everything."
He bent to her imperiously. With a faint, broken smile, her hands still in his, she assented. It was difficult to begin, then difficult to control the flood of memory; and it had long been dark when Madame Bornier, coming in to light the lamp and make up the fire, disturbed an intimate and searching conversation, which had revealed the two natures to each other with an agitating fulness.
Yet the results of this memorable evening upon Julie Le Breton were ultimately such as few could have foreseen.
When Warkworth had left her, she went to her own room and sat for a long while beside the window, gazing at the dark shrubberies of the Cureton House garden, at the few twinkling, distant lights.
The vague, golden hopes she had cherished through these past months of effort and scheming were gone forever. Warkworth would marry Aileen Moffatt, and use her money for an ambitious career. After these weeks now lying before them--weeks of dangerous intimacy, dangerous emotion--she and he would become as strangers to each other. He would be absorbed by his profession and his rich marriage. She would be left alone to live her life.
A sudden terror of her own weakness overcame her. No, she could not be alone. She must place a barrier between herself and this--this strange threatening of illimitable ruin that sometimes rose upon her from the dark. "I have no prejudices," she had said to Sir Wilfrid. There were many moments when she felt a fierce pride in the element of lawlessness, of defiance, that seemed to be her inheritance from her parents. But to-night she was afraid of it.
Again, if love was to go,power, the satisfaction of ambition, remained. She threw a quick glance into the future--the future beyond these three weeks. What could she make of it? She knew well that she was not the woman to resign herself to a mere pining obscurity.
Jacob Delafield? Was it, after all, so impossible?
For a few minutes she set herself deliberately to think out what it would mean to marry him; then suddenly broke down and wept, with inarticulate cries and sobs, with occasional reminiscences of her old convent's prayers, appeals half conscious, instinctive, to a God only half believed.