She bent forward eagerly, clasping her hands and looking into the very depths of his eyes. Ivor Tolskoi saw his advantage, and pressed it home. His opportunity had come, he was not one to lose it for lack of courage to deal one more swift sure blow. Meeting Olga's strained violet eyes with his, in which the steel-blue light flamed out, he said slowly and with distinct emphasis:
"Adèle Lamien, or Lallovich, is a rarely beautiful woman, Olga, and beauty such as hers is a dangerous attribute. Count Mellikoff is a worshipper of woman's loveliness, and the story goes that when Adèle Lamien became the wife of Stevan Lallovich, she cast off a former lover whose chains had begun to gall. Who that lover was, Olga, I leave to your imagination. But when Stevan Lallovich repudiated and threw aside the woman, and an Imperial ukase released him from his obligations, is it unlikely that she sought her former friend and protector, or that he, maddened by her beauty and her wrongs, determined to avenge them?
"That is the story, mademoiselle, and you now know why I swore to you that sooner than see you Vladimir Mellikoff's wife I would kill him with my own hand."
But Olga made no reply. Silent, impassive, stricken through and through, she sat with blanched face and tightly clasped hands; and the sun shone, and the bells rang, and the populace shouted: "Long live the Tsar! Long live our little father!" but she neither saw nor heard any of it. All her heart and soul were in revolt and turmoil; all she had trusted to had gone down before her eyes, she was shipwrecked upon an ocean of deception and despair.
Presently the shouts and cries grew fainter, and the horses slackened speed as they turned into the Palace gates and were drawn up sharply at the side entrance, out of which she had passed so long ago—was it months or years, or alas! only hours? Should she ever again know what it was to feel light-hearted and joyous? Would this terrible burden of knowledge ever be lifted from her heart?
Ivor Tolskoi sprang down even as the threshold was reached and put out his arm to help her; she barely touched it with her gloved hand, and passed by him with but one burning look from her haunted eyes. For days after, the light pressure of her fingers rested there like iron, and the misery of her glance accompanied him as that of a lost spirit.
George Newbold's birthday fell within the first week of May, and certainly no more ideal spring morning could have dawned than that which Esther had set apart to be especially celebrated in honour of her spouse.
Mr. Newbold should, indeed, for the fitness of things, have been a young and blooming maiden—rather than a man verging towards middle age, and more or less disillusionised—to correspond with the rare loveliness and freshness of creation, that sprang afresh to life as Aurora, with blushing finger-tips, drew back the curtains of the night, and ushered in the roseate dawn. Even as the surroundings belonged more to that "garden of fair delights," consecrated by the Egyptians to Daphne, into which naught but harmony and sensuous peace and pleasure was allowed to enter, rather than to
"This live, throbbing age,That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,And spends more passion, more heroic heat,Between the mirrors of its drawing-roomsThan Roland with his knights at Roncevalles."
"This live, throbbing age,That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,And spends more passion, more heroic heat,Between the mirrors of its drawing-roomsThan Roland with his knights at Roncevalles."
But Nature is ever prodigal and unreasoning; she stops not to consider on whom to spend her largesse, she has no calculation in her giving, and she seeks no return, since, with her keen perceptiveness, she knows we mortals possess nothing of our own, no gift of jewel or of price, of intellect or of beauty, that can compare with the least of those benefits she pours with such lavish hand upon us.
Does not all creation join with the angelic choirs to hymn her praises? What song of mortal measure, sung by mortal tongue, can equal in strength and melody that heavenly canticle? Nay, let us stand rather with bowed head and reverent mien, lifting our hearts in silent ecstasy, thankful if we may so much as catch a distant echo of those "divine praises," borne to us maybe on the wings of the far west wind; or a reflection of the golden glory of that paradise, ensnared in the luminous fragility of a sunset cloud.
It is all we can hope for on this lower earth, and who of us dare count on ever realising the terrible sublimity, the awful purity, of "the beatific vision"?
It was very early in the morning when little Marianne came running down the broad terrace steps, and stood alone amidst the varied riches of Esther's flower garden. Her sunny hair was all unbound, and lay upon her shoulders and about her forehead, still damp from the morning's bath, glistening like threads of gold washed in a wavelet of sunshine. Her white frock glanced in and out against the tender background of early green foliage, as she ran from flower to flower, plucking here a blossom, and there a bud, studying each attentively before adding them to the bouquet in her hand, with the gravity of childhood, which invests every action with a separate importance.
And as she flew about rejoicing, as only children and animals can rejoice, in the mere pleasure of being, she sang from time to time the rhyming measure of a nursery song, which fell unheeded from her lips, and that had no sense or meaning, but sprang as spontaneously from her heart as did the song of the little brown thrush, who was pouring out his weight of thanksgiving, with such overwhelming rapture as to shake his very soul, and cause the quivering cat-kin on which he perched to bend and sway beneath its vibrations.
The windows of the Folly were still closed and curtained. Its inmates were as yet scarce turning on their couches of down, or realising that another day had begun for them, another day opened out full of sublime opportunities for good or evil. With the passing of another hour they would perforce be roused from their dreams by the inevitable early cup of tea, without which species of dram-drinking no woman of fashion can support the fatigues of her toilette, or the embarrassments of the morning post. But that is sixty minutes off yet—sixty long minutes—three thousand, six hundred seconds—and in the meantime, before the inevitable overtakes us, let us follow the preacher's advice and make the most of it. "Yet a little more sleep, and a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep."
Time enough to take up the burden of living when that burden is ruthlessly thrust upon us, and we bow our shoulders with accustomed habit to receive its weight.
But little Marianne entertained no such pessimistic views; to her the joy of life was simply in the act of living, and its triumph in escaping from the tyranny of Sarah, and being absolutely free to tear her frock or rumple her golden hair without the visible personality of that Nemesis. Presently Trim, her beloved Skye terrier, came leaping out to her as fast as his very short legs and corpulent body would allow him to travel; and then began a series of romps in which it was difficult to say which took the most satisfaction—the dog or the child. Trim, however, was the first to give up and retire on his laurels, selecting a particularly green spot of turf beneath a lilac-tree in full bloom, and after solemnly turning round and round in an unsuccessful race with his own tail, settled himself comfortably thereon, and with the tip of his red tongue showing between his teeth, watched the child with a benign and patronising expression. Marianne, thus deserted, returned to her flower-gathering, apostrophising Trim as she did so.
"You are a lazy dog, Trim. I'm 'shamed of you! It's perfectly redic'lous your pretending to be tired; you can't be; it's only putting on shapes, just as Miss Dick says, and shapes isn't very nice manners in such a wee little doggie as you!"
Trim snapped at an intruding fly, and yawned for answer, then settled his nose on his paws and went to sleep, and Marianne, thus left companionless, grew a little weary of solitude.
"I guess I've got enough flowers now for Popsey's buffday," she said, regarding critically the glowing mass of blossoms held very tightly in her hot little hand. "I guess I'll go in and put 'em on his dressing-table, and cry 'boo' very loud in his ear. Then he'll have to get up!"
And fired with this most laudable device, Mimi trotted away very fast, without so much as a backward look at the recreant Trim. Little recked George Newbold of the awful fate in store for him at the hands, or rather in the shrill voice of his small daughter! But surely, could he have foreseen her advent in the character of a red Indian, he would have devoutly thanked chance for his timely delivery.
As Marianne tripped along, a dark shadow fell suddenly across her path and stopped her further advance. Pushing back the fringe of golden hair, that fell almost into her sapphire blue eyes, the child halted and looked up a little bewildered.
It was Vladimir Mellikoff who stood before her, looking very tall and dark against the brilliant green of the sun-swept lawn behind him. The child gazed up at him gravely and without speaking. This was not a familiar figure in her little world; she would have greeted Jack Howard, or Freddy Wylde, or even old Sir Piers Tracey with her accustomed quaint mingling of condescension and intimacy; but this tall, dark stranger, with his sombre face and deep black eyes, was unknown to her, and because unknown was not to be put on the same footing with her old companions.
However, Esther Newbold's small daughter was sufficiently a little worldling in training to recognise in this stranger one of "papa's men," as she called them, classifying all unknown masculine visitors under one head; she did not, therefore, run away, but stood quietly silent, her eyes raised frankly to his, and the sunlight turning to living gold each tendril of her fair hair.
Vladimir Mellikoff could be very gentle and winning to children; they touched that inner chord of tenderness that vibrated so passionately to Olga Naundorff's lightest word, and something in the fair child's face, with its deep blue eyes, recalled to him that other proud Russian face, with the violet eyes and scornful, curved lips. He bent down and spoke to Mimi in his softest voice.
"You are little Marianne, are you not?" he said.
"I am Marianne Newbold," replied the child, with grave directness.
"I wonder if you could say my name," continued Mellikoff, persuasively. "It is not so pretty as yours, but then I am a man, you see."
"Men's is never so pitty," remarked the child, didactically. "What is your name?"
"Vladimir," replied Count Mellikoff, gravely, and repeating each syllable distinctly: "Vla—di—mir. Do you think you can say it? Try."
But Marianne shook her golden mane in positive negation.
"I couldn't," she said, "not possibly. But I'll call you Mr. Val, if you like; it's pittier than your real name."
"Very well, then, Mr. Val it shall be," answered the Count, smiling broadly at the very English sobriquet bestowed upon him. "Who have you been gathering all those flowers for?"
"They's for my Popsey; it's his buffday. Do you know how old he is, Mr. Val? I guess he must be most a hundred."
To which Mr. Val replied with a laugh; but Marianne was no whit abashed.
"I think so," she went on, seating herself on a low garden bench that stood under a spreading ash-tree, and beginning to sort out the flowers as they lay upon her lap. "I think so, 'cause he's got so many grey hairs, more than I can count. When I was alittlegirl"—with great disdain—"I used to pull 'em out, till Sarah said ten new ones came to each old one's funeral. Then I asked Lammy the other day if she thought Popsey was nearly a hundred; but she only laughed. Does you know Lammy, Mr. Val?" she queried, abruptly.
"Oh, but that isn't a real name, you know," protested Vladimir, diplomatically; "that might be any creature's name—a dog's, or a cat's."
"Oh, no, it couldn't," cried the child, eagerly, "'cause it's a person's—a grown up's, you see. It isn't her very own, own name; but that's too long, so I just calls her Lammy."
"And what is her very own own name?" asked Mellikoff, idly, taking up a large white marguerite from Mimi's store, and carelessly stripping off its petals, his mind unconsciously repeating the old formula, "she loves me—she loves me not." The child's voice fell with startling distinctness across the morning stillness, and shattered Vladimir's sentiment with a straight, keen blow.
"Her very own name," said Marianne, slowly, and taking great pains with her syllables, "is Mademoiselle Lamien—Mademoiselle Adèle Lamien."
The stripped daisy-head fell from Count Mellikoff's fingers, and lay at his feet amidst its snow-flake petals unheeded. He started violently at this positive answer to his negligent question, and the blood rushed for one moment to his face. He, who was never known to show emotion even when confronting death, trembled now before the unconscious words of a little child. His dark eyes seemed to grow larger in their hollow settings, the fine veins about his temples throbbed visibly.
Mimi, however, was ignorant of the agitation she had awakened; her golden head was bent over her flowers, while with one little foot she kept off the repentant Trim, who, having awakened from his slumbers, was endeavouring with slavish abjection to reinstate himself in his little mistress's favour.
When Count Mellikoff next spoke, any one save a child would have noticed the forced lightness of his voice; as it was, even Mimi looked up surprised by the change in it.
"And is it, then, Mademoiselle Lamien—Adèle Lamien—that you call by thepetit-nomof Lammy?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the child, a little startled and impressed by his manner. "Mumsey calls her Mam'zelle Lamien; but I don't—not always—I call her Lammy. Is you sorry? Why does your eyes look so black?"
"Do they look black, Marianne?" Mellikoff asked, stupidly; then recovering himself with a laugh, and returning to his old manner: "No, I am not sorry. Why should I be? I've never seen your Mademoiselle Lamien."
"She's gone away," answered the child, quickly. "She had to; she said she must, 'cause she and Miss Hildreth couldn't possibly be here together.' But when I asked Mumsey about it, she only said: 'Nonsense, and don't bother.'"
"And has she been a long time with you?" asked Vladimir, putting the question indifferently.
Mimi shook all her golden curls. "Notverylong; she came on Sarah's buffday, and that isn't very long ago."
"Buthowlong?" queried Mellikoff. "A month, a year, a week? Try and think, Mimi; was it one Sunday ago, or two, or three? You know when Sunday comes, don't you?"
"Yes," replied the child, "it's the day after Saturday, and I always have my best pudding for dinner. What's your best pudding, Mr. Val?"
But Mr. Val was spared answering this embarrassing question by the advent of Sarah, who bore down upon them, her cap-strings flying, and whisked Marianne off, in a whirlwind of yellow hair and white petticoats, before he could even protest. She waved one little hand to him as she tripped away, holding on to her flowers with the other, and Trim barking at her heels; then the terrace door closed upon them, and Vladimir was left alone.
Mechanically he stooped and picked up one of the stray blossoms that had fallen from Mimi's lap; he turned it idly in his fingers, looking at it with unseeing eyes, while his busy brain went on thinking, planning, scheming.
Was he wrong after all? Had she escaped him; nay, had she ever been here at all? Why had she gone away? When would she come back? How could he piece out his welcome a little longer at the Folly? Was he altogether wrong in his suspicions? Had the woman tricked him again; fighting him with his own weapons, had she out-matched him and escaped?
And thus, as he stood lost in his self-questionings—a sombre, dark figure in the glowing beauty and sunlight of the fair May morning, twisting the drooping flower round and round in his fingers, and the song of the birds echoing ceaselessly in his ears—a sudden light broke over the gloom of his countenance, a half-formed exclamation rose to his lips; he dropped the flower suddenly, and took a step forward.
"No, I am not wrong," he said, in answer to himself. "Let Adèle Lamien beware, or I may turn her own arms against her." Then he turned abruptly and walked towards the house; and only the sunshine, and the birds, and Mimi's faded blossoms remained.
And so the long golden morning hours rolled on, and the garden remained untenanted. The sweet spring flowers—than which none are more beautiful and fragrant, because so redolent of promise—wasted their perfume on the gentle breezes that swayed their yielding blossoms; the birds' song grew hushed and lapsed into silence as the repose of noontide settled down upon them.
The sun fell in straight, level rays that were warm with a foretaste of tropical heat; far away in the distance a faint silver line marked the sea's limits, across which now and then a white sail flashed and was gone. All nature lay hushed and stilled in that strange peace that comes at the day's meridian, when the only sounds are those of the under-world, the drowsy humming of an early humble-bee, the impatient buzzing of a giant-fly, the bu-bu of multitudinous insects, the chip-chip of the grasshopper, broken sharply across by the monotonous hammer of the woodpecker.
Within the Folly all the lower rooms were alike deserted, not a ripple of laughter or an echo of voices was to be heard; even the billiard hall was void, the men, in the absence of the feminine element, having taken themselves off to the stables, or down to the club-house, where lay the yachts moored in harbour, curtsying gracefully to each succeeding wavelet as it broke against the sharp outline of stem or stern.
But up in Mrs. Newbold's boudoir however, there were life and action enough and to spare, for here were gathered Esther and her women guests, while each pair of feminine lips were eager to contribute their share to the general conversation.
Patricia Hildreth lay full length upon a couch pulled close to the hearth, on which a fire of fragrant hemlock burned, in mockery of the open window and in defiance of the dancing sunbeams. Miss Hildreth was in all things luxurious, and revelled with almost barbaric delight in warmth of atmosphere and colour.
Her slight but perfect figure was wrapped in a long loose cashmere robe of softest azure, about which the dark bands of Russian sables swept in classic lines, nestling closely about the firm white throat with caressing touch, and falling back from the white arms and rounded wrists. In her hand she held a dainty vellum-bound book, a collection of sonnets much in vogue, and from which she read aloud at intervals some specialjeu d'esprit.
At her feet, on a low, luxurious pile of cushions, sat Dick Darling, doing nothing, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes feasting, in true hero-worship, on the face of her divinity.
Before a large Psyche-glass stood Baby Leonard, absorbed in a row of suggestive little porcelain pots, and breathlessly engaged in the exciting process of "making up" in daylight,à proposof the evening's requirements.
Esther was resting in a lounging-chair with Mimi on her lap, the golden curls falling about the pretty face bent down over a new picture-book; and at the open window, on a low ottoman, sat Miss James, her hands clasped idly upon her lap, her thin face pale and tired, her dark, restless eyes fixed intently upon Miss Hildreth. Something in the attitude bespoke mental depression and dread, that even the alert watching of eyes and mouth could not disguise.
Dick's glib tongue had been running on aimlessly from topic to topic, taking in a wide range of subjects, from the races at Jerome Park, to the coming international yacht contest for the America Cup; and though the remarks of her auditors were few and far between, Dick was perfectly contented and asked nothing better than to listen to the sound of her own voice.
She was interrupted before long, however, by Miss James's sharp and rather high voice addressing no one in particular:
"Dick is certainly a living personation of Tennyson's 'Brook,' isn't she? 'for men may come, and men may go, but she goes on for ever!'"
To which Dick, arrested in mid-career, retorted sharply: "I can't say that I see any men about anywhere, either coming or going. The wish must be first cousin to Rosalie's thought. Good gracious, Baby! how much more rouge do you mean to annex? You're blushing like a peony now, and one eyebrow is half a mile longer than the other. You make me think of Jack Howard's story of Miss Grantham, the American beauty of London, you know."
"No, wedon'tknow," broke in Esther, languidly; "perhaps you'll be so good as to enlighten us."
"Town Opticscribbed it from him," continued Dick, once more in her element, "and positively quoted it as true. It appears some magnificent masher asked Cecilia Grantham if she didn't find her abnormally long eye-lashes rather inconvenient at times? To which Cis replied, smiling sweetly, 'Why, certainly; I am always obliged to have them borne in front of me when I go upstairs, for fear I shall trip upon them!' And will you believe me," went on Miss Darling, when the laugh evoked had died out, "that brainless masher has gone about ever since getting it off as a double extra specimen of American repartee, and all the time it never took place at all except in Jack Howard's budding intellect. I thinkTown Opticsowes him one for that."
"I can cap your story by a better, Dick," retorted Esther, rousing herself and sitting up very straight, "and mine is absolutely true, for it happened to George's sister, when she was in London, oh, ever so long ago, before the war."
"Ancient history!" groaned Miss Darling, resignedly. "Drive ahead, Esther, only you are awfully behind the age."
"A story's a story, no matter when it happened," replied Mrs. Newbold, a little confused in her grammar, "and you are not obliged to listen, Dick."
"Oh, yes, but I shall," remarked that young person—"listen and remember, and get it off with effect as first-hand, at my next big spread. Go on, Esther, do, like a daisy."
"Well, you must know, my dears, that George's sister was a very pretty girl——"
"Oh!" interpolated Miss Darling, making tragic efforts to control her astonishment.
"Yes, very pretty," went on Esther, severely, "and when she was in London she was presented at Court, and went out a great deal, and that's when old Sir Piers first saw her and wanted to make her Lady Tracey."
"For her sins! I am sure there could be no other reason for such a punishment," again interjected Miss Darling, piously.
"Ah, but Sir Piers was a gay young baronet in those days," said Esther, with decision. "Anygirl might have hesitated before she gave him hiscongé. However, that's neither here nor there. Margaret Newbold was a very great favourite; and one evening, at a big dinner party at a tremendously swell house, she was given a proportionately great grandee as a cavalier. This very high-bred personage began by staring at her, up and down and round and about, through his eye-glasses and over them; and when he found this was not in the least discomposing to the young woman, but that she talked on glibly to her left-hand neighbour, he gave a loud 'ahem!' and said, so that all the company might hear: 'Ah—miss—ah—I perceive, though you are an American, you speak English quite fluently—ah——' Margaret eyed him for a moment over the rim of her wine-glass, and then replied, with calm distinctness and an air of inward satisfaction: 'Well—yes—ah—Mr.—I do. You see, the missionary who converted our tribe was an Englishman, and he taught us the language.' Then she went on eating her fish, quite undisturbed by the shouts of laughter that went up at the expense of her unfortunate questioner."
"Served him right, too," cried Miss Darling, indignantly. "I never heard of anything so caddish. We might just as well ask, in an off-hand, jovial kind of a way, if it's because they have so many H's lying round loose, that they forget to pick 'em up and use 'em in the right places! And one might suppose so, you know, with reason, judging from some of the specimens we get over here."
"It's very trying," broke in Baby Leonard, plaintively; "Ican'tget both sides of my face to look alike, and thiscrème impératriceis so sticky! What shall I do?"
"Leave it all alone," cried Miss Darling, brusquely. "You can't improve on nature, Baby—it's no use! 'Bad's the best,' as my old mammy-nurse used to say. You won't make your eyes any the larger or prettier by painting them a distinct violet, and your mouth's a far better shape left to its own lines; you can't make a Cupid's bow out of it, try as you may."
"Only listen to Dick the virtuous!" laughed Esther. "She positively waxes eloquent on the shams of the hour, and is developing a soul above frivolities! We shall have her quoting Carlyle next; or, stay, I know what it will be. What's that sentimental couplet, Dick, tucked carefully away beneath your pot of 'cherry-lip,' in your new silver-mountedtoilette des ongles? Is this the way it runs:
'Why send me to this little girl?Sure such a gift were silly!Can I add lustre to the pearl,Or paint the gilded lily?'"
'Why send me to this little girl?Sure such a gift were silly!Can I add lustre to the pearl,Or paint the gilded lily?'"
"Oh, Esther, you're a brute!" cried poor Dick, the tears actually in her eyes, her cheeks very red. "How could you? It's only—only some stupid little lines about a still more stupid joke. They don't meanmeat all."
"And then, fancy Dick being compared to a pearl, and a lily—a painted lily!" exclaimed Miss James, in her most disagreeable voice, and with a slow smile creeping over her face.
"Oh, Esther, how could you!" cried poor Dick again; but Mrs. Newbold only laughed.
"Don't be cynical and fault-finding, then, my dear Dick," she said, quietly, drawing one of Mimi's golden curls through her fingers; "it doesn't suit you, my dear, nor your little round, brown, winsome face."
"Since poetry seems to be the order of the day, listen to this," broke in Miss Hildreth, in her clear musical voice, and lifting her eyes from the tiny vellum book she held:
"'Near my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels would not buy from me.'Tis a siren, a brown siren,Playing on a lute of amber by the margin of a sea."In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strongWith the dampness, I hear music—hear a quiet, plaintive song—A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong."Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a soul that pleads in vain,Of a damnèd soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain."And whence comes this mournful music? Whence, unless it chance to beFrom the siren, the brown siren,Playing on her lute of amber by the margin of a sea?'"
"'Near my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels would not buy from me.'Tis a siren, a brown siren,Playing on a lute of amber by the margin of a sea.
"In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strongWith the dampness, I hear music—hear a quiet, plaintive song—A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong.
"Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a soul that pleads in vain,Of a damnèd soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain.
"And whence comes this mournful music? Whence, unless it chance to beFrom the siren, the brown siren,Playing on her lute of amber by the margin of a sea?'"
Silence fell upon the little group as Patricia's voice died away. For a moment all were held by the spell of the poet's words, with their deep undernote of passionate protest. The present faded out of the line of mental vision, replaced by the past, within whose mystery of silence, somewhere a great wrong lay hidden, and unappeased.
Had the poet known of it, in all its details, and kept inviolate this secret of another's existence, or had he only guessed at its outlines, fearing to fill in the lights and shadows, lest imagination should fall short of reality?
So vivid, indeed, was the impression produced, it seemed only a continuation of the tragedy when Miss Hildreth spoke again, slowly and without any apparent reason, save inward impulse.
"I have known one such woman once, to whom all life and all time was but the cry of 'a damnèd soul,' crying out ceaselessly against 'an immortal wrong.' Did our poet know her story, I wonder, when he wrote of his 'brown siren'? But no; this poor soul has had no one to sing out her wrongs, or open up the story of the treachery that blasted her life. Alone she has had to bear her burden, and alone she must bear it to the very end."
As Miss Hildreth spoke, Dick Darling crept close to her side, and knelt there, listening eagerly, with quick-coming breath, to the disjointed sentences. In the deep interest of the moment no one looked towards the window where sat Rosalie James, or noticed the intense nervous restraint she was exercising. Her face was absolutely colourless; her hands pressed so hard one upon the other that they left blue marks upon the soft flesh; her eyes were strained and feverish; she bent forward in an alert, expectant attitude, as of one awaiting, yet not certain of, some preconceived revelation. At the Psyche-mirror sat Baby Leonard, still placidly trying one artistic preparation after another, and totally oblivious to the tense atmosphere of suppressed excitement about her.
"And who was she? Is she alive?" asked Dick, her whisper catching up Miss Hildreth's falling inflection, and sustaining the interest of the moment. "Who was she? Is she alive? Where did you know her?"
"Yes, she is alive; oh, yes, indeed, she is alive," answered Patricia, still in a retrospective tone; "and I knew her in Petersburg when I was last there—such a little time ago, as it seems now."
"Was she beautiful?" Again it was Dick's voice that asked, and Patricia's that replied.
"She was very beautiful—so beautiful that no one could withstand her loveliness. And her beauty became her curse; ah, what a curse, since it attracted the attention of one so high above her that his lightest regard was an insult! What but bitter wrong and crime could be the outcome of a love proffered by a scion of the Imperial house to a woman of the people? Beauty is a grand leveller, it is true, but it cannot level the iron hand and cruel laws of Russia. It was the old story—the old, old, pitiful story—that comes to every woman once in her lifetime, and that each woman translates as best suits her desires—the story that makes a heaven upon earth, a paradise within our hearts."
Again the musical tones died away in a sigh of regret, and again Dick cried out in her quick, absorbed whisper:
"Is there any more to tell? What happened? What was the end?"
"What any woman might have looked for, save a woman blinded by love, and a man absorbed by passion. They lived in a fool's paradise for an all too brief space, and then, before the golden sheen had fallen from their vision, while the woman still played with fate and the man toyed with destiny, the blow fell—sudden, sharp, omnipotent, as is the nature of Russia's potency. Taken away from his very arms, her marriage annulled by Imperial ukase, her life ruined, her soul lost in a whirlwind of injustice and despair, what wonder that her woman's nature revolted, and that throwing aside the narrower swathing bands of law and conventionality, she stood forth, bold and free and savage, and struck down her craven lover in the very zenith of his manhood, with a hand that never faltered, as it drove home the steel to his very heart?"
Miss Hildreth had grown strangely excited as she told the tragic story; she rose up now and stood at her full height, the clinging cashmeres marking every line and curve of her beautiful form; her face was pale as death, and beneath her dark brows her eyes gleamed with their old dangerous fire; she lifted her hands and brought them together before her, throwing them out palm upwards in passionate protest; her voice was low and concentrated, vibrating with intolerance.
"And I who tell you this," she continued, "I speak as only one can who has looked upon such suffering as hers; who has beheld the soul drink to the very dregs of the cup of renunciation, despair, desertion; seen it touch the very heights and depths of mental anguish, and wandered with it so far in the paths of darkness that even crime seemed but justice, if it would in any way balance the debt of honour."
She faltered suddenly, and turning with quick impetuosity, sank back upon the couch, her light mocking laugh ringing out discordantly as she concluded.
"Was I not right, Dick? The poet must have known this story to write so tellingly of an 'immortal wrong, and of a soul repentant longing to be pure again.'"
Miss Darling had started back when Patricia had arisen, and though she remained kneeling, her eyes never left the other's face. Across the room, in the full warm glow of the noontide sun, Miss James sat shivering, but watching ever and always with the same look of expectancy, and yet of certainty, on her face.
As Miss Hildreth's little laugh struck so harshly across the compressed emotion of the moment, and made, as it were, a half-bar of discord in the tragic score, Dick Darling shuddered, and put out her hand, as though to ward off some impending danger.
"Don't," she cried, her brown face paling and flushing alternatively, "don't laugh in that dreadful way; oh, Miss Hildreth, it hurts me!" She crept a little nearer to her and laid one hand on the pale blue draperies. "That is not all, not all of the story, it cannot be all. Tell me the rest of it. Tell me her name!"
Dick's whisper was imperative, imperious, and Miss Hildreth, fingering nervously the vellum-covered volume, felt the force of the girl's candid eyes, and honest, earnest gaze.
"Her name"—she said, slowly and hesitatingly—"her name——"
But before she could complete her sentence Esther started up, putting Marianne hastily down, and came towards her.
"You have said quite enough," she exclaimed, excitedly. "Patty, Patty, let me beg you to be careful."
As she spoke, the door behind the swingingportièresopened slightly, unperceived by any one except Miss James, over whose face the same sneering smile crept out again. Miss Hildreth looked up at Mrs. Newbold with defiance in her eyes and on her lips.
"My dear Esther, surely you are a little too dramatic. Why should not I gratify Miss Dick's romantic inquisitiveness? Her name—the name of this woman—was—is—well, let us call it Adèle Lallovich."
As she uttered the words clearly and distinctly, theportièreswere pushed hastily aside, and George Newbold's voice preceded himself in person, exclaiming:
"May we come in, my dear? We are bored to the verge of insanity."
And crossing the threshold he held back the curtains, and Vladimir Mellikoff stepped into their midst. As he did so a sudden quick sigh broke from Miss James, she got up hastily and passing down the room met his cool impenetrable glance with the slightest possible recognition, and upward gesture of her hand. He stepped forward to open the door for her, and when it closed upon her and he returned to the little group, a keen observer might have noticed a slight increase in the brilliancy of his eyes, a touch of triumph in the smile with which he bent over Miss Hildreth's hand, held out in greeting to him.
Patricia's face, however, looked cold and hard; and the line of dark fur lay about her white throat like the shadow of a coming calamity.
Mr. Tremain did not again see Miss Hildreth after she left him standing by the fountain in the little wood, until they met in the green-room an hour before the play.
She had gone from him then with scorn and anger in her words, and with scorn and defiance in her heart; she met him now with cold and indifferent hauteur, amounting almost to insolence.
Philip had stood for a long time alone beside the marble boy Narcissus, revolving moodily the sharp home truths she had thrust upon him. He did not forget one curl of her lip, one flash of her eyes, one inflection of her clear voice, as she flung back the love he offered; flung it back with bitter disdain and contempt. And yet, curiously enough, he was not angry with her; there was no such positive element in his feelings as that; he seemed to himself to hold, as it were, an outsider's position, and to look on and judge her from an outsider's point of view.
Was it her own complete indifferentism, her absolute disbelief in the ordinary delusions of life, her cynical acceptance of the contradictions of destiny, together with her sudden outburst of passionate derision, that had produced in him this state of cool analysis and judicial judgment?
He had pleaded his love fervently enough under the glamour of the moonlight and her loveliness, and he had meant what he said then; he would gladly have taken her in his arms, and given his answer to her letter in a fond and foolish lover's way; but—and here lay the difficulty—she must return to him as she had gone from him, the same yielding, loving, believing, if wilful Patty; he could accept no other; no new Patricia, no woman whose eyes spoke of the fires of conflict, whose face had that written upon it which tells of the lower depths of mental pain and struggle.
For Philip, as we know, was above all things, masterful, and his idea of dual happiness was autocratic rather than constitutional; he would share no divided throne and sceptre, even with the woman of his heart; he must reign, and he alone, and she must be the empire over which he ruled unquestioningly.
All this had been in his heart, though unspoken, when he pleaded with her to return to their old relations, and, unconsciously, perhaps, there was an echo of his despotism even in his tenderest words. However that may have been, Patricia would have none of it. She was not to be won by pity when passion had failed.
And so it was that as she stood tall and beautiful before him, with her rich white draperies clinging about her in sensuous lines and curves, her face pale with suppressed emotion, her eyes dark with endurance, she tossed back his proffered gift, his reawakened love—a love that would share no rights and no prerogatives—and, with the fine irony of a woman who sees her advantage and presses it, thrust back and away from her all appeal from out the past, touched though it was with the pure gold of that time when love and youth, belief and trust, went hand in hand together.
Even yet, then, after ten long years of experience and knowledge, Philip could not read her heart aright. And she, should she forgive him? Give up the unequal game, lay down her arms, acknowledge herself vanquished, and creep timidly back into his embrace, repentant and abject, meek and thankful?
Then she looked at Philip's face, calm and quiet and victorious, with just a touch of wearied assurance in its smile, and her heart leapt up again in sudden protest and passion. No, she would not yield, she would never yield until she saw him suffering, through a woman, some portion of the pain and humiliation he had inflicted upon her. Then, when expiation brought forth the fruit of atonement, why then—ah, then Miss Hildreth would reconsider.
It was Miss Rosalie James who first introduced the canker of doubt in Philip's mind concerning Patricia, of suspicion regarding her past.
It had never occurred to him to speculate upon the possible experiences and circumstances which must have made up the ten years of their separation.
Miss Hildreth had passed the greater part of that time abroad, and his news of her had not only been meagre but nil, for after the first few weeks of her absence, during which her name had been on every one's lips, coupled with her broken engagement, and her inherited fortune, it was rarely mentioned, and never in Philip's presence.
The most perfectly controlled human heart cannot so entirely root up envy and malice as not to cavil somewhat at the perversity of Providence, in showering benefits with both hands upon a fellow mortal, who certainly cannot so thoroughly deserve them as oneself. However, if destiny will be so blindly prejudiced, why let us become as indifferent to it as possible, and in perfecting ourselves in this fine-art forget both the name and existence of our once bosom friend.
This was society's philosophy regarding Patricia Hildreth, and thus for ten long years her place had been vacant in the circles of the great world, and she herself forgotten as completely as the snows of last year. "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?" may be asked of more things than Musset dreamed of, when he wrote his sad and bitter reproach.
Miss James had met Philip late in the afternoon of George Newbold'sfesta, as he was strolling idly about the garden-paths, the inevitable cigarette between his lips, and his hands, as was his fashion, clasped loosely behind him. He caught sight of the small dark figure coming towards him down the terrace steps, and though at first impatient of the interruption, something in the thin outline of face and form, the lassitude of step and bearing, touched a chord of compassion in his kind heart.
He had not indeed been altogether insensible to the nature of Miss James's feeling towards him; no man is quite so dull and hard as not to be touched by the unasked devotion of a woman; it is wonderful when that devotion is directed to one's self how unselfish and pure, though hopeless, it appears! Philip's heart might be in the position of being captured in the rebound, but Miss James was not the one to do it; nevertheless her attraction to him, to call it by no warmer name, was harmless, if ineffectual, and not unpleasant.
Thus argued Mr. Tremain, though in justice to him let it be said the argument was not carried on in words, scarcely in sensations; it was negative rather than positive. He met her therefore with that deference and attention which made his slightest service a distinction, lifting his hat and throwing aside his half-smoked cigarette as he did so. Miss James looked at him steadily for a moment, watching him as he tossed away the end of burning paper.
"Oh, I am sorry you should do that," she said, in her rather hard voice. "I don't in the least object to cigarettes; in fact, I like them."
But Philip only smiled and shook his head.
"Oh, I've had quite enough of it, Miss James, I assure you. I was only smoking as a distraction and to make the time go."
"Has it been such a long day?" she asked, a trifle sharply. She knew Mr. Tremain and Patricia had not met that day, and shrewdly suspected the reason of his restlessness, and though she acknowledged to herself the hopelessness of her own hopes, she could not endure to have it brought home to her by him.
"Very long," replied Philip, candidly; "it's a way time has of never weighing his goods. The hours thatbego by on lagging steps, the hours to come rush and tumble one on top of the other, and are never in the future but always in the past."
"I should think that rather depended upon one's occupation," responded Miss James, tritely. "If one's copybook was to be trusted, time never halted or stood still. 'Time Flies,' with a very large T and F is among my earliest recollections."
Mr. Tremain laughed a little as he replied:
"You shame me, Miss James, into an open confession of laziness. To be lazy is to find time out of joint, and in consequence out of touch with one. One can only be legitimately lazy on board a yacht, or fishing; under such circumstances action becomes criminal. By the way, let me congratulate you on your distinct success as Mrs. Bouncer, last evening. I asked for you after rehearsal, but did not see you."
"No," replied Miss James, slowly, "I did not come back to the theatre."
As she spoke a dull flush rose to her cheeks, for she remembered how and where she passed those two hours, when all the world were absorbed in the miniature playhouse. With one of those strange sudden waves of perception she saw again a broken feather-fan and golden-hued rose lying together on the velvet carpet, and Vladimir Mellikoff, tall and dark and smiling, holding back the heavyportières, through which she escaped trembling and doomed.
She caught her breath and went on a little nervously:
"I am very flattered to be praised by you, Mr. Tremain. I can't bear Mrs. Bouncer myself; she is quite antipathetic to me."
"Then surely you deserve all the more praise," said Mr. Tremain, courteously. "If to be out of accord with one's rôle results so favourably I shall devoutly pray that Henri de Flavigneul and I may be at daggers drawn this evening."
"But what would Miss Hildreth say to that?" asked the girl, sharply, and looking up so quickly as to catch the sudden frown of annoyance that spread over Mr. Tremain's face at the mention of Patricia's name.
"Ah, Miss Hildreth," he replied, with assumed carelessness. "I had not taken her into consideration."
"And yet Miss Hildreth is not one to be left unconsidered?" said Miss James, questioningly. "She is not one to be easily passed over." Then, with a sudden change of manner, she added: "You have known Miss Hildreth a long time, have you not, Mr. Tremain?"
Philip looked down at her a little startled and surprised. Was she laughing at him—this pale, quiet, almost insignificant girl—or mocking him? Surely the subject of his and Patricia's broken engagement had been public property too long to have escaped her knowledge. Was it impertinence or ignorance that dictated the question? But Miss James's face was placid and mildly interested as she looked up at him with a little smile, and waited for him to speak.
"Oh, yes, I have known Miss Hildreth for some years," he replied, shortly; and then with an abrupt laugh: "but I have not seen her for almost as long as I have known her."
"Ah," said Miss James, meditatively, "she has been abroad for ten years, and ten years makes such a difference in one's knowledge of another. Only think what might not happen in ten years!"
"Apparently Miss Hildreth's experiences have been more or less narrow," answered Philip, annoyed that the conversation should have turned upon Patricia, and yet unable to keep from discussing her.
"Oh, do you think so?" asked Miss James, with quite a look of surprised inquiry in her eyes. "To be sure you ought to know; but do you think she—any woman—could come back quite unchanged after ten years abroad?"
There was so much of veiled controversy in her tones that Philip at once found himself looking at the matter from her point of view, and debating his own question with a decided negative bias.
"What do you mean?" he said at last, after a moment's delay. "What do you think are some of the experiences that may have come in Miss Hildreth's way—or any woman's—during ten years' absence abroad?"
"That would depend so much as to where one went, what countries, or towns, or cities; whom one associated with; and how one lived. Each country has its own peculiar influences, dangers, casualties, but some countries have the two former more developed. Russia, for example; in Russia one instinctively looks for dangers, intrigues, conspiracies. Has Miss Hildreth ever been to Russia, Mr. Tremain?"
Miss James was treating the subject with so much gravity and impressiveness that Philip felt himself carried along with her, and inclined to look at Patricia's past career and its attendant trivialities in a serious and grave light.
"I really cannot answer you in detail, Miss James," he said, "but collectively I should say that nothing was more probable than Miss Hildreth's being perfectly familiar with Russia, and Russian society, in all its phases."
"Yes, I should say so too," answered Miss James, nodding her head in confirmation of her words. "In fact I am sure of it. Mr. Tremain, do you think Miss Hildreth has ever before met and known Count Mellikoff?"
They had been walking up and down a garden-path, but she stopped when she put this question and faced him. Philip of course, also stopped, and for a moment there was silence between them.
"That is an extraordinary question," he said at last; "have you any reason for asking it, Miss James?"
"But you have not answered me yet," she protested; "when you do so I will reply to you. Do you think Miss Hildreth has ever before seen and known Count Mellikoff; say in Paris, or St. Petersburg?"
"To the best of my belief Count Mellikoff is a stranger to America, Miss James."
"But is Count Mellikoff a stranger to Miss Hildreth, Mr. Tremain?"
"That is beyond me to answer," replied Philip, with an unconscious inflection of curiosity in his tone.
"Then I will answer for you," said Rosalie, her thin sharp voice growing rounder and fuller, "but you must bear in mind I have no reality to go upon, only surmise and observation. Very well, then, I say Miss Hildreth has not only met and known Count Mellikoff before, but she has known him well, and she is afraid of him. That surprises you, Mr. Tremain, and yet I don't know why it should. You must remember you have seen nothing of Miss Hildreth for ten years, and you know nothing—positively nothing—of her life during that time. Why shouldn't she have known Count Mellikoff, and why shouldn't she have reason to fear him? Ten years is a very long time; long enough to drink deep of experience; long enough to plant, and sow, and reap. Long enough to lose more than one friend, make more than one enemy; long enough to sink oneself to the neck in intrigue, and to bury oneself in crime. May not Miss Hildreth have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and found the evil overweigh the good? May not Count Mellikoff have been her friend, and become her enemy? Is it not possible that each is striving to outwit the other, and each is afraid of the other? I see you think me rather mad, Mr. Tremain, and credit me with a morbid love of melodrama, or a desire to make mountains out of mole-hills. Ah, very well, let us say no more about it: only when next you see Miss Hildreth and Count Mellikoff together, watch his manner towards her, and see for yourself if he carries himself as a stranger to her. Ten years is a long time for a woman to wander about the world alone."
She finished abruptly, and turned away from him, leaving him without another word.
Philip's meditations, if unpleasant before, were now distinctly disagreeable. He disliked mystery, and above all things and most of all he disliked it in connection with a woman. In his eyes all women should be, like Cæsar's wife, above suspicion, and it hurt and galled him that even a shadow of aspersion should rest on Patricia's fair fame.
And yet, as Miss James had said, ten years was a long time, and Miss Hildreth gave no explanation, beyond a vague and general one, as to how she had spent that time. Might there not be some secret bound up in those years; some secret between herself and Vladimir Mellikoff, which it was wisest to leave so buried? Was it possible of belief that in all that time Patricia had never consoled herself for the lost love of her youth?
Hers was an impetuous nature, open to sudden convictions, quick to act, ardent, impressionable; with such a temperament in the hands of Vladimir Mellikoff, what imprudence might not have taken place? Even a secret marriage, and a subsequent purgatory of disenchantment, were not impossible consequences. Indeed, the range of possibilities was so varied and so unsatisfactory, Mr. Tremain felt himself unable either to seize or exorcise them.
At the tea hour that same day, Miss James asked suddenly, in a lull of conversation, bending forward and addressing Patricia in her highest voice:
"Oh, Miss Hildreth, by the way, Mr. Tremain and I have been discussing your long absence from your native land, and your possible and probable experiences. Will you tell me, for it was rather a question of difference between us, have you ever been to Russia; do you know St. Petersburg?"
Something in Rosalie's sharp, hard tones commanded attention, and when she finished all eyes were turned upon Patricia, as she sat in a high-backed chair; her tea-gown of marvellous old lace and fluttering ribbons seeming but a fitting setting to her delicate beauty. Vladimir Mellikoff put down his cup of untasted tea, and drew near the central group.
Miss Hildreth looked up a little surprised at Rosalie's earnestness. She raised the tiny apostle spoon in her fingers, and studied it attentively as she answered:
"Oh, yes, indeed, Miss James, I have done the whole grand tour. I know my London, my Paris, and my Petersburg thoroughly, and like a loyal American place the Peerage and the Almanach de Gotha next to my Bible." Her voice was clear and mocking, and a trifle artificial.
"And may I also be permitted to ask a question, mademoiselle?" said Count Mellikoff, advancing towards her and bowing slightly.
Patricia raised her delicate eyebrows in cool superciliousness. "Oh, certainly, Count Mellikoff; in what way can I add to your knowledge?"
She put out her hand with the empty tea-cup, and Dick Darling flew to take it from her; the outstretched hand trembled ever so little, and the spoon fell to the floor.
"Since you know my home, mademoiselle, Petersburg, I do not make a blunder when I suppose you to have known it socially as well as——"
"According to Baedeker," broke in Miss Hildreth, with a little laugh. "Make your mind easy, Count Mellikoff; your Court and yourgrand mondeshowed me nothing but civilities."
"That goes without the saying, mademoiselle," replied Vladimir, still more gravely. "And, pardon me, it is pleasant to speak on home subjects to one who understands them so well; did you, then, when at Court, or in society, did you ever meet the most brilliant man of his time, the most fascinating, handsome, rich young noble of all Russia? You will recall him at once when I name him. Mademoiselle, did you ever know Count Stevan Lallovich?"
There was silence for a moment as Vladimir Mellikoff asked his question, and for a moment after, during which all eyes were again turned towards Patricia. She had started forward a little, and half rose up from her chair; her face had grown suddenly pale, and her eyes, beneath their dark pencilled brows, flashed strangely.
It was but a moment, a second of time, a heart-throb, then she controlled herself, and, with one of her lightest, most mocking laughs, sank back upon her chair, sweeping her laces about her royally.
"Count Stevan Lallovich," she said, very distinctly; "you ask me if I knew Stevan Lallovich? My dear Count Mellikoff, your very question is superfluous. Could any woman who knew Petersburg, fail to know Stevan Lallovich? The handsomest man of his day, as you have said, and the most unscrupulous." Then she turned to Miss Darling: "My dear Dick, will you beg Esther for another cup of tea, and boiling, my dear, positively boiling. You see, Count, among other Russian peculiarities, I cling to my Russian tea."
"I see, mademoiselle," replied Mellikoff, gravely. "May you always prove as loyal to all things Russian."
Mr. Tremain had not been present during this little passage at arms, but Miss James, as she sat before her mirror that evening "making-up" her small sallow face into a hard-visaged, calculating Mrs. Bouncer, congratulated herself upon her strategy.
"My shot told," she was thinking, as she painted in another wrinkle, "it almost took Miss Hildreth off her guard. She is not likely to forget herself again; but I have seen her once without her mask, and that is enough. Oh yes, 'it moves, it moves.'"
Then, with Galileo's immortal words on her lips, she added a final touch to her eyebrows, and glided quickly away, appearing a few moments later in the flies, and calling forth Mr. Robinson's encomiums upon her as a model of punctuality.
In another half-hour the little playhouse was full to overflowing. Not a seat was vacant, and scarcely an inch of space was left for the men of the party to plant their feet upon. Gay and musical were the tones of women's voices and laughter that rose and fell upon the scented air, sustained and strengthened by the more manly bassos.
The theatre itself glowed in the soft effulgence of electric light, each filament incased in a hanging crystal vase, subdued to a warm palpitating softness by silk shades of roseate hue. Flowers bloomed everywhere, piled in glowing masses along the walls and across the miniature orchestra screen. The rose-houses had been stripped of their loveliest exotics, and these rifled blossoms hung their gorgeous heads amidst a quivering background of clinging green smilax.
On each rose-silkfauteuillay a bouquet of the golden-hued Maréchal Niels, tied with long ribbons of palest amber, and a tiny satin programme on which, amidst quaint device of scroll work, were inscribed the characters and scenes of the coming drama.
Thelever de rideauwas a masterpiece from the hand of an English Academician, whose foreign name was better known in the two great English-speaking countries than others boasting a more national ring. The heavy folds of richest white silk bore testimony to the versatility of his brain and brush, since here swept garlands of trailing roses across a wonderful marble terrace, upon which were grouped in classic attitudes the sisters of histrionic art, Melpomene, Thalia, and Terpsichore.
The scene was one of luxury that had become a fine art, every detail being in itself so faultless, it required but the completing touch of contiguity to render it a rounded whole of perfection. The onlooker might well pause and ask himself if the developments of wealth, refinement, and culture, could reach a higher degree than was displayed that evening within the walls of this miniature La Scala.
The curtain rose on the perennially new and refreshingBox and Cox, in which Miss James again distinguished herself and scored her final points to rounds of ringing laughter and spontaneous applause, which savoured more of the "Surrey side," than of a languidnil admirariaudience of this critical century. Between the farce and the serious work of the evening music held sway, and La Diva's glorious voice captivated all hearts and brains in Owen Meredith's "Aux Italiens," its final appealing line rounding each verse with the pathetic cry,