When Lord Earlscourt was at home the only two topics that were debarred from the dinner table were religion and politics; but when Lord Earlscourt was absent these were the only two topics admitted at the dinner table. Lady Earlscourt had views, well-defined, clearly outlined, on both religion and politics, and she greatly regretted that there still remained some people in the world who held other views on both subjects; it was very sad—for them; and she felt that it was clearly her duty to endeavor by all the legitimate means in her power—say, dinner parties for eight—to reduce the number of these persons. It was rumored that in the country she had shown herself ready to effect her excellent object by illegitimate means—say, jelly and flannel petticoats—as well.
She wore distinctly evangelical boots, though, in the absence of her husband, she had expressed her willingness to discuss the advantages of the confessional. She had, however, declined, in the presence of her husband, to entertain the dogma of infallibility: though she admitted that the cardinals were showy; she would have liked one about her house, say, as a footman. She thought there was a great deal in Buddhism (she had read “The Light of Asia” nearly through), and she believed that the Rev. George Holland had been badly treated by Phyllis Ayrton. She admitted having been young once—only once; but no one seemed to remember it against her, so she was obliged to talk about it herself, which she did with the lightness of a serious woman of thirty-two. When a man had assured her that she was still handsome, she had shaken her head deprecatingly, and had ignored his existence ever after. She had her doubts regarding the justice of eternal punishment for temporary lapses in the West End, but she sympathized with the missionary who said: “Thank God we have still got our hell in the East End.” She knew that all men are alike in the sight of Heaven, but she thought that the licensing justices should be more particular.
She believed that there were some good men.
She had more than once talked seriously to Phyllis on the subject of George Holland. Of course, George Holland had been indiscreet; the views expressed in his book had shocked his best friends, but think how famous that book had made him, in spite of the publication of Mr. Courtland’s “Quest of the Meteor-Bird.” Was Phyllis not acting unkindly, not to say indiscreetly, in throwing over a man who, it was rumored, was about to start a new religion? She herself, Lady Earlscourt admitted, had been very angry with George Holland for writing something that the newspapers found it to their advantage to abuse so heartily; and Lord Earlscourt, being a singularly sensitive man, had been greatly worried by the comments which had been passed upon his discrimination in intrusting to a clergyman who could bring himself to write “Revised Versions” a cure of such important souls as were to be found at St. Chad’s. He had, in fact, been so harassed—he was a singularly sensitive man—that he had found it absolutely necessary to run across to Paris from time to time for a change of scene. (This was perfectly true. Lord Earlscourt had gone more than once to Paris for a change of scene, and had found it; Lady Earlscourt was thirty-two, and wore evangelical boots.) But, of course, since George Holland’s enterprise had turned out so well socially, people who entertained could not be hard on him. There was the new religion to be counted upon. It was just as likely as not that he would actually start a new religion, and you can’t be hard upon a man who starts a new religion. There was Buddha, for instance,—that was a long time ago, to be sure; but still there he was, the most important factor to be considered in attempting to solve the great question of the reconcilement of the religions of the East,—Buddha, and Wesley, and Edward Irving, and Confucius, and General Booth; if you took them all seriously where would you be?
“Oh, no, my dear Phyllis!” continued Lady Earlscourt; “you must not persist in your ill-treatment of Mr. Holland. If you do he may marry someone else.”
Phyllis shook her head.
“I hope he will, indeed,” said she. “He certainly will never marry me.”
“Do not be obdurate,” said Lady Earlscourt. “He may not really believe in all that he put into that book.”
“Then there is no excuse for his publishing it,” said Phyllis promptly.
“But if he doesn’t actually hold the views which he has formulated in that book, you cannot consistently reject him on the plea that he is not quite—well, not quite what you and I call orthodox.”
This contention was too plain to be combated by the girl. She did not for a moment see her way out of the amazing logic of the lady. Quite a minute had passed before she said:
“If he propounds such views without having a firm conviction that they are true, he has acted a contemptible part, Lady Earlscourt. I think far too highly of him to entertain for a single moment the idea that he is not sincere.”
“But if you believe that he is sincere, why should you say that you will not marry him?”
“I would not marry an atheist, however sincere he might be.”
“An atheist! But Mr. Holland is not an atheist; on the contrary, he actually believes that there are two Gods; one worshiped of the Jews long ago, the other by us nowadays. An atheist! Oh, no!”
“I’m afraid that I can’t explain to you, dear Lady Earlscourt.”
Once more Phyllis shook her head with some degree of sadness. She felt that it would indeed be impossible for her to explain to this lady of logic that she believed the truth to be a horizon line, and that any opinion which was a little above this line was as abhorrent as any that was a little below it.
“If you are stubborn, God may marry you to a Dissenter yet,” said Lady Earlscourt solemnly.
Phyllis smiled and shook her head again.
“Oh, you needn’t shake your head, my dear,” resumed Lady Earlscourt. “I’ve known of such judgments falling on girls before now—yes, when the Dissenters were well off. But no Dissenter rides straight to hounds.”
Phyllis laughed.
“More logic,” she said, and shook hands with her friend.
“That girl has another man in her eye,” said her friend sagaciously, when Phyllis had left her opposite her own tea-table. “But I don’t despair; if we can only persuade our bishop to prosecute George Holland, she may return to him all right.”
She invariably referred to the bishop as if he were a member of the Earlscourt household; but it was understood that the bishop had never actually accepted the responsibilities incidental to such a position; though he had his views on the subject of Lady Earlscourt’s cook.
This interview had taken place a week before the dinner party for which Phyllis was carefully dressed by her maid Fidele while Herbert Courtland was walking away from the house. In spite of her logic, Lady Earlscourt now and again stumbled across the truth. When it occurred to her that Phyllis had another man in her eye,—the phrase was Lady Earlscourt’s and it served very well to express her meaning,—she had made some careful inquiries on the subject of the girl’s male visitors, and she had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element which, in Lady Earlscourt’s estimation, caused Phyllis’ vision to be distorted.
George Holland was at the dinner. Phyllis had been asked very quietly by the hostess if she would mind being taken in by George Holland; if she had the least feeling on the matter, Sir Lionel Greatorex would not mind taking her instead of Mrs. Vernon-Brooke. But Phyllis had said that of course she would be delighted to sit beside Mr. Holland. Mr. Holland was one of her best friends.
“Is his case so hopeless as that?” said Lady Earlscourt, in a low voice, and Phyllis smiled in response—the smile of the guest when the hostess had made a point.
When Lady Earlscourt had indiscreetly, but confidentially, explained to some of her guests the previous week that she meant her little dinner party to be the means of reuniting Mr. Holland and Miss Ayrton, one of them—he was a man—smiled and said, when she had gone away, that she was a singularly unobservant woman, or she would have known that the best way of bringing two people together is to keep them as much apart as possible. There was wisdom in the paradox, he declared; for everyone should know that it was only when a man and a woman were far apart that they came to appreciate each other.
It seemed, indeed, that there was some truth in what that man said, for Phyllis, before the ice pudding appeared, had come to the conclusion that George Holland was a very uninteresting sort of man. To be sure, he had not talked about himself,—he was not such a fool as to do that: he had talked about her to the exclusion of almost every other topic—he had been wise enough to do that,—but in spite of all, he had not succeeded in arousing her interest. He had not succeeded in making her think of the present when her thoughts had been dwelling on the past—not the distant past, not the past of two months ago, when they had been lovers, but the past of two hours ago, when she had watched the effect of her words upon Herbert Courtland.
She chatted away to George Holland very pleasantly—as pleasantly as usual—so pleasantly as to cause some of her fellow-guests to smile and whisper significantly to one another, suggesting the impossibility of two persons who got on so well together as Mr. Holland and Miss Ayrton being separated by a barrier so paltry as an engagement broken off by the young woman for conscience’ sake.
But when the significant smiles of these persons were forced upon the notice of their hostess, she did not smile; she was a lady with a really remarkable lack of knowledge; but she knew better than to accept the pleasant chat of George Holland and Phyllis Ayrton as an indication that thestatus quo ante bellum—to make use of the expressive phrase of diplomacy—had been re-established between them.
Only when George Holland ventured to express his admiration of Mr. Ayrton’s adroitness in dealing with the foolish question of the gentleman from Wales did he succeed in interesting Miss Ayrton.
“What a very foolish letter those missionaries sent home regarding the explorations of Mr. Courtland!” said he. “Did they hope to jeopardize the popularity of Mr. Courtland by suggesting that he had massacred a number of cannibals?”
“I suppose that was their object,” said Phyllis.
“They must be singularly foolish persons, even for missionaries,” said the Rev. George Holland.
“Even for missionaries?” Phyllis repeated. “Oh, I forgot that you are no believer in the advantages of missions to the people whom we call heathen. But I have not been able to bring myself to agree with you there. They have souls to be saved.”
“That is quite likely,” said he. “But the methods of the missionaries, generally speaking, have not tended in that direction. Hence the missionary as a comestible is more highly esteemed by the natives than the missionary as a reformer. They rarely understand the natives themselves, and they nearly always fail to make themselves intelligible to the natives. It would appear that the two foolish persons who wrote that letter about Mr. Courtland made but a poor attempt at understanding even their own countrymen, if they fancied that any rumor of a massacre of cannibals—nay, any proof of such a massacre—would have an appreciable effect upon the popularity of the man who brought home the meteor-bird.”
“You don’t think that the public generally would believe the story?” said Phyllis.
“I think it extremely unlikely that they would believe it,” he replied. “But even if they believed every word of it they would not cease to believe in Mr. Courtland’s bravery. What is a hecatomb of cannibals compared to the discovery of the meteor-bird,—that is, in the eyes of the general public, or for that matter, the Nonconformist public who turn up their eyes at the suggestion of a massacre of natives of an island that is almost as unknown to them as Ireland itself? The people of this country of ours respect bravery more than any other virtue, and I’m not altogether sure that they are generally astray in this matter. The Christian faith is founded upon bravery, and the same faith has inspired countless acts of brave men and women. Oh, no! Mr. Courtland will not suffer from the attacks of these foolish persons.”
“I saw him this—a short time ago,” said Phyllis, “and he told me that his publishers were delighted at the result of the agitation which that newspaper tried to get up against him: they said it was selling his book.”
“I saw you talking with Mr. Courtland after the first production of ‘Cagliostro.’ I envied you—and him,” said Mr. Holland. “I wonder if he was really placed in the unfortunate position of having to massacre a horde of cannibals.”
Phyllis laughed, and forthwith told him the truth as it had been communicated to her regarding the dynamite outrage upon the unsuspecting natives, and George Holland was greatly amused at the story—much more highly amused, it would have occurred to some persons, than a clergyman should be at such a recital. But then George Holland was not as other clergymen. He was quite devoid of the affectations of his cloth. He did not consider it necessary to put the tips of his fingers together and show more of the white portion of the pupil of his eye than a straight-forward gaze entailed, when people talked of the overflowing of a river in China and the consequent drowning of a quarter of a million of men—that is to say, Chinamen. He was no more affected by such tidings than the Emperor of China. He was infinitely more affected when he read of the cold-blooded massacre by David, sometime King of Israel, in order to purchase for himself a woman for whom he had conceived a liking. He knew that the majority of clergymen considered it to be their duty to preach funeral service over the drowned Chinamen, and to impress upon their hearers that David was a man after God’s own heart. He also knew that the majority of clergymen preached annual sermons in aid of the missionaries who did some yachting in the South Seas, and had brought into existence the sin of nakedness among the natives, in order that they might be the more easily swindled by those Christians who sold them shoddy for calico, to purge them of their sin. George Holland could not see his way to follow the example of his brethren in this respect. He did not think that the Day of Judgment would witness the inauguration of any great scheme of eternal punishment for the heathen in his blindness who had been naked all his life without knowing it. He knew that the heathen in his blindness had curiosity enough at his command to inquire of the missionaries if the white beachcomber and his bottle of square-face represented the product of centuries of Christianity, and if they did not, why the missionaries did not evangelize the beachcomber and his bottle off the face of the earth.
Phyllis, being well aware of George Holland’s views, was not shocked at the sound of his laughter at the true story of Mr. Courtland’s dynamite outrage at New Guinea; but all the same, she was glad that she was not going to marry him.
He had not, however, been altogether uninteresting in her eyes while sitting beside her, and that was something to record in his favor.
She drove home early, and running upstairs found herself face to face with Ella Linton.
Ella was standing waiting for her outside the open door of a drawing room. She was wearing a lovely evening dress with a corsage of white lace covered with diamonds and sapphires. Her hair—it was of the darkest brown and was very plentiful—was also glittering with gems under the light that flowed through the open door. The same light showed Phyllis how deathly white Ella’s face and neck were—how tumultuously her bosom was heaving. She had one hand pressed to her side, and the other on the handle of the door when Phyllis met her; and in that attitude, even though the expanse of white flesh, with its gracious curves that forced out her bodice, had no roseate tint upon it, she looked lovely—intoxicating to the eyes of men.
Phyllis was certainly surprised. The hour was scarcely eleven, but Ella had given no notice of her intention to pay a visit to her friend that night. When the girl raised her hands with a laugh of admiration, of pleasure, Ella grasped her hands with both of her own and drew her into the drawing room without a word. Then with a cry,—a laugh and a cry mingled,—she literally flung herself into the girl’s arms and kissed her convulsively a dozen times, on the throat, on the neck, on the shoulder whereon her head lay.
“My darling, my darling!” she cried,—and now and again her voice was broken with a sob,—“my darling Phyllis! I have come to you—I want to be with you—to be near you—to keep my arms about you, so tightly that no one can pluck us asunder. Oh, you don’t know what men are—they would pluck us asunder if they could; but they can’t now. With you I am safe—that is why I have come to you, my Phyllis. I want to be safe—indeed I do!”
She had now raised her head from Phyllis’ shoulder, but was still holding her tightly—a hand on each of her arms, and her face within an inch of the girl’s face.
Phyllis kissed her softly on each cheek.
“My poor dear!” she said, “what can have happened to you?”
“Nothing—nothing! I tell you that nothing has happened to me,” cried Ella, with a vehemence that almost amounted to fierceness in her voice. “Would I be here with you now if anything had happened to me? tell me that. I came to you—ah! women have no guardian angels, but they have sisters who are equally good and pure, and you are my sister—my sister—better than all the angels that ever sang a dirge over a lost soul that they put forth no hand to save. You will not let me go, darling Phyllis, you will not let me go even if I tell you that I want to go. Don’t believe me, Phyllis; I don’t want to go—I don’t want to be lost, and if I leave you I am lost. You will keep me, dear, will you not?”
“Until the end of the world,” said Phyllis. “Come, dearest Ella, tell me what is the matter—why you have come to me in that lovely costume. You look as if you were dressed for a bridal.”
“A bridal—a bridal? What do you mean by that?” said Ella, with curious eagerness—a suggestion of suspicion was in her tone. She had loosed her hold upon the girl’s arms.
Phyllis laughed. She put a hand round Ella’s waist and led her to a sofa, saying:
“Let us sit down and talk it all over. That is the lace you told me you picked up at Munich. What a design—lilies!”
“The Virgin’s flower—the Virgin’s flower! I never thought of that,” laughed Ella. “It is for you—not me, this lace. I shall tear it off and—”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” cried Phyllis. “I have heaps of lace—more than I shall ever wear. What a lovely idea that is of yours,—I’m sure it is yours,—sewing the diamonds around the cup of the lilies, like dewdrops. I always did like diamonds on lace. Some people would have us believe that diamonds should only be worn with blue velvet. How commonplace! Where have you been to-night?”
“Where have I been? I have been at home. Where should a good woman be in the absence of her husband, but at home—his home and her home?”
Ella laughed loud and long with her head thrown back on the cushion of the sofa, and the diamonds in her hair giving back flash for flash to the electric candles above her head. “Yes; I was at home—I dined at home, and, God knows why, I conceived a sudden desire to go to the opera,—Melba is theJuliet,—and forgetting that you were engaged to the Earlscourts—you told me last week that you were going, but I stupidly forgot, I drove across here to ask you to be my companion. Oh, yes, I have been here since—since nine, mind that! nine—nine—ask the servants. When I heard that you were dining out I thought that I was lost—one cannot drive about the streets all night, can one? Ah! I thought that God was against me now, as he ever has been; and as for my guardian angel—ah! our guardian angels are worse than the servants of nowadays who have no sense of responsibility. Thompson, your butler, is worth a whole heavenful of angels, for it was he who asked me if I would come in and wait for your return—ask him, if you doubt my word.”
“Good Heavens, Ella, what do you say? Doubt your word—I doubt your word? You wound me deeply.”
“Forgive me, my Phyllis. I don’t quite know what I said. Ah, let me nestle here—here.” She had put her head down to Phyllis’ bare neck and was looking up to her face as a child might have done. “There is no danger here. Now pet me, and say that you forgive me for having said whatever I did say.”
Phyllis laughed and put her lips down among the myriad diamonds that glowed amid the other’s hair, like stars seen among the thick foliage of a copper beech.
“I forgive you for whatever you said,” she cried. “I, too, have forgotten what it was; but you must never say so again. But had you really no engagement for to-night that you took that fancy for going to ‘Romeo’?”
“No engagement? Had I no engagement, do you ask me?” cried Ella. “Oh, yes, yes! I had an engagement, but I broke it—I broke it—I broke it, and that is why I am here. Whatever may come of it, I am here, and here I mean to stay. I am safe here. At home I am in danger.”
Phyllis wondered greatly what had come to her friend to make her talk in this wild strain.
“Where were you engaged?” she inquired casually. She had come to the conclusion that there was safety in the commonplace: she would not travel out of the region of commonplaces with Ella in her present state.
“Where was I engaged? Surely I told you. Didn’t I say something about the opera—‘Romeo and Juliet’?—that was to be the place, but I came to you instead. Ah, what have we missed! Was there ever such a poem written as ‘Romeo and Juliet’? Was there ever such music as Gounod’s? I thought the first time that I went to the opera that it would spoil Shakspere—how could it do otherwise? I asked. Could supreme perfection be improved upon? Before the balcony scene had come to an end I found that I had never before understood the glory of the poem. Ah, if you could understand what love means, my Phyllis, you would appreciate the poem and the music; the note of doom runs through it; that—that is wherein its greatness lies—passion and doom—passion and doom—that is my own life—the life of us women. We live in a whirlwind of passion, and fancy that we can step out of the whirlwind into a calm at any moment. We marry our husbands and we fancy that all the tragedy of human passion is over so far as we are concerned. ‘The haven entered and the tempest passed.’ Philip Marston’s terrible poem,—you have read it,—‘A Christmas Vigil’? ‘The haven entered,’—the whirlwind of passion has been left far away, we fancy. Oh, we are fools! It sweeps down upon us and then—doom—doom!”
“My poor dear, you are talking wildly.”
“If you only understood—perhaps you will some day understand, and then you will know what seems wild in my speech is but the incoherence of a poor creature who has been beaten to the ground by the whirlwind, and only saved from destruction by a miracle.”
She had sprung from her place on the sofa and was pacing the room, her diamonds quivering, luminous as a shower of meteors—that was the fancy that flashed from her to Phyllis. Meteors—meteors—what a splendid picture she made flashing from place to place! Meteors—ah, surely there was the meteor-bird flashing across the drawing room!
“Come and sit down, my dear Ella,” said Phyllis. “You are, as you know, quite unintelligible to me.”
“Unintelligible to you? I am unintelligible to myself,” cried Ella. “Why should I be tramping up and down your room when I might be at this very moment——” She clutched Phyllis’ arm. “I want to stay with you all night,” she whispered. “I want to sleep in your bed with you, Phyllis. I want to feel your arms around me as I used to feel my mother’s long ago. Whatever I may say, you will not let me go, Phyllis?”
“I will load you with chains,” said Phyllis, patting her lovely hair—it was no longer smooth. “Why should you want to go away from me? Cannot we be happy together once again as we used to be long ago?”
“How long ago that was! And we read ‘Romeo and Juliet’ together, and fancied that we had gone down to the very depths of its meaning. We fancied that we had sounded the very depths of its passion and pathos. We were only girls. Ah, Phyllis, I tell you—I, who know—I, who have found it out,—I tell you that the tragedy is the tragedy of all lovers who have ever lived in the world. I tell you that it is the tragedy of love itself. ‘Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds!’ That is the poem that the heart of the lover sings all day—all day! I have heard it—my heart has sung it. I have heard the passionate gallop of those fiery-footed steeds. I have listened to them while my heart beat in unison with their frantic career—all day counting the moments with fiery face, and then—then—something that was not passion forced me to fly from it for the salvation of my soul. I was a fool! Why am I here, when I should be where he——What is the hour? Why, it is scarcely twelve o’clock! Did I say nine in my letter? What does it matter? I wonder if on that wonderful night—Gounod translated its glory into music—Juliet kept her lover waiting for three hours.”
“What are you doing?” cried Phyllis, rising.
Ella had picked up her theatre wrap—it was a summer cloud brocaded with golden threads of quivering sunlight, and had flung it around her.
She held out a hand to Phyllis. Phyllis grasped her round the waist.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“To hell!”
She had whispered the words, and at their utterance Phyllis gave a cry of horror and covered her face with her hands.
Had she seen a suggestion of the satyr in the expression of that lovely face before her?
In the pause that followed the sound of footsteps upon the stairs outside was heard; the sound of footsteps and of men’s friendly laughter. Some persons were in the act of ascending.
“My God!” whispered Ella. “He has followed me here!”
“Hush!” said Phyllis. “Papa is bringing someone to us.”
“Whom—whom?”
They were both standing together in the middle of the room, both having their eyes fixed on the door, when the door opened and Mr. Ayrton appeared, having by his side a man with iron-gray hair and a curiously pallid face.
At the sight of that man Ella’s hands, that had been holding her wrap close to her throat, feeling for its silver clasp, fell limp, and the splendid mass of white brocade slipped to the floor and lay in folds about her feet, revealing her lovely figure sparkling from the hem of her dress to the top of her shapely head.
For several seconds the tableau remained unchanged: the two women standing side by side, the two men motionless at the half-open door.
Ella was staring at the man who had entered with Mr. Ayrton. There was some apprehension in her eyes.
The man had his eyes fixed upon her. But his face was wholly devoid of expression.
Phyllis was the first to break the silence that made a frame, so to speak, for the picture.
“How do you do, Mr. Linton?” she said, taking a step toward the door.
“I am very well, thank you, Miss Ayrton,” the man replied, shaking hands with her. “Rather a singular hour for a visit, is it not?”
“Oh, no! only Ella didn’t tell me that you——”
She turned to Ella, and noticed that the expression of apprehension on her face had increased. She was still gazing at her husband as one shut up in a room with a snake might gaze at it, waiting for it to strike.
“Ella didn’t tell you that I was coming?” said he. “She had the best of reasons for her reticence.”
“Ah!”
The sound came from Ella. There was a little scornful smile on her face.
“The best of reasons?” said Phyllis interrogatively.
“The very best; she had no idea that I was coming. I wonder if she is glad to see me. She has not spoken a word to me yet.”
“You have startled her by your sudden appearance,” said Phyllis. “She is not certain whether you are flesh and blood or a ghost.”
Then Ella gave a laugh.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “He is my husband. Go on with what you have to say, Stephen. I will not run away.”
“Run away? What nonsense is this, my dear? Run away? Who said anything about your running away?”
Her husband had advanced to her as he spoke. He put a hand caressingly on one of her bare arms and the other at the back of her head. She suffered him to press her head forward until he put his lips upon her forehead.
When he had released her, and had taken a step back from her,—he seemed abut to address Phyllis,—a little cry forced itself from her. She called his name twice,—the second time louder,—and threw herself into his arms, burying her face on his shoulder, as she had buried it on Phyllis’ shoulder.
In a few moments, however, she looked up. Her husband was patting her on the arm. She had acquired two new gems since she had bent her head. They were shining in her eyes.
“Don’t go away, Phyllis dear,” she said. Phyllis and her father were standing at theportierebetween the drawing rooms. Mr. Ayrton had a hand at the embroidered edge in the act of raising it. “Don’t go away. I am all right now. I was quite dazed at Stephen’s sudden appearance. I thought that perhaps he had—had——Ah, I scarcely know what I thought. How did you come here—why did you come here?”
She had turned to her husband. In spite of her manifestation of affection,—the result of a certain relief which she experienced at that moment,—there was a note of something akin to indignation in her voice.
“It is very simple, my dear,” replied her husband. His curiously sallow face had resumed its usual expressionless appearance. “Nothing could be more simple. I got a telegram at Paris regarding the mine, and I had to start at a moment’s notice. I wrote out a telegram to send to you, and that idiotic courier put it into the pocket of my overcoat instead of sending it. I found it in my pocket when we had come as far as Canterbury. I am not one of those foolish husbands who keep these pleasant surprises for their wives—it is usually the husband who receives the surprise in such cases.”
“And the coachman told you that he had driven me here?” said Ella.
“Quite so,” replied the husband. “But, you see, I had some little hesitation in coming here at half-past ten o’clock to make inquiries about my wife—you might have gone to some place else, you know, in which case I should have looked a trifle foolish; so I though that, on the whole, my best plan would be to drop in upon Mr. Ayrton at the House of Commons and drive here with him when he was coming home for the night. I took it for granted that even so earnest a legislator as Mr. Ayrton allows himself his nights—after twelve, of course—at home. I’m very sorry I startled you, Ella. It shall not occur again.”
“What time did you reach home?” inquired Ella casually—so casually that her husband, who had a very discriminating ear, gave a little glance in her direction. She was disengaging a corner of her lace trimming that had become entangled with a large sapphire in a pendant.
“I reached home at nine,” he replied.
“At nine?” She spoke the words after him in a little gasp. Then she said, walking across the room to a sofa, “I could not have left many minutes before you arrived. I intended going to the opera.”
“That toilet should not have been wasted,” said he. “It is exquisite—ravissante!”
“It was an inspiration, your putting it on,” said Phyllis. “I wonder if she really had no subtle suggestion from her own heart that you were on your way to her, Mr. Linton,” she added, turning to the husband.
“I dare say it was some inward prompting of that mysterious nature, Miss Ayrton,” he replied. “A woman’s heart is barometric in its nature, it is not? Its sensitiveness is so great that it moves responsive to a suggestion of what is to come. Is a woman’s heart prophetic, I wonder?”
“It would be a rank heresy to doubt it, after the example we have had to-night,” said Mr. Ayrton. “Yes, a woman’s heart is a barometer suggesting what is coming to her, and her toilet is a thermometer indicating the degree of expectancy.”
“A charming phrase,” said Mr. Linton; “a charming principle, only one that demands some years of close study to be rendered practical. For instance, look at my wife’s toilet: it is bridal, and yet we have been married three years.”
“Quite so; and that toilet means that you are the luckiest fellow in the world,” said Mr. Ayrton.
“I admit the interpretation,” said her husband. “I told the hansom to wait for me. He is at the door now. You have had no opera to-night, my dear?”
“You would not expect me to go alone? Phyllis was dining at the Earlscourts’,” said the wife.
“You are the soul of discretion, my beloved,” said the husband. “Is your stock of phrases equal to a suggestion as to what instrument is the soul of a woman, Ayrton?” he added. “Her heart is a barometer, her toilet a thermometer, and her soul——”
“The soul of a woman is not an instrument, but a flower—a lily,” said Mr. Ayrton.
“And my wife wears her soul upon her sleeve,” said Mr. Linton, touching the design on the lace that fell from her shoulders.
“But not for daws to peck at—that is the heart,” laughed Mr. Ayrton. “Talking of woman’s soul, how is Lady Earlscourt?” he added, to his daughter.
“I was so sorry that I was at that stupid dinner,” said Phyllis. “I might have enjoyed the music of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ But I had engaged myself to Lady Earlscourt a fortnight ago.”
“You did not see Lord Earlscourt, at any rate,” said her father.
“No; he left us in the evening for Southampton,” said Phyllis.
“And, curiously enough, I dined with him at the club,” said her father. “Yes, he came in with Herbert Courtland at half-past seven; he had met Courtland and persuaded him to join him in his cruise to Norway. They dined at my table, and by the time we had finished Courtland’s man had arrived with his bag. He had sent the man a message from the club to pack. They left by the eight-forty train, and I expect they are well under way by this time.”
“That’s quite too bad of Courtland,” said Mr. Linton. “I wanted to have a talk with him—a rather serious talk.”
Ella had listened to Mr. Ayrton’s account of that little dinner party at the club with white cheeks—a moment before they had been red—and with her lips tightly closed. Her hands were clenched until the tips of the nails were biting into each of her palms, before he had come to the end of his story—a story of one incident. But when her husband had spoken her hands relaxed. The blaze that had come to her eyes for a second went out without a flicker.
“A serious talk?” she murmured.
“A serious talk—about the mine,” replied her husband.
“About the mine,” she repeated, and a moment after burst into a laugh that was almost startling in its insincerity. “It is so amusing, this chapter of cross-purposes,” she cried. “What a sight it has been! a night of thrilling surprises to all of us! I miss Phyllis by half an hour and my husband misses me by less than half an hour. He comes at express speed from Paris to have a talk, a serious talk, with Mr. Courtland about the mine, and while he is driving from Victoria, Mr. Courtland is driving to the same station with Lord Earlscourt!”
“What a series of fatalities!” said Mr. Ayrton. “But what seemed to me most amusing was the persuasiveness of Earlscourt. He has only to speak half a dozen words to Courtland, and off he goes to Norway at a moment’s notice with probably the most uncongenial boat’s load that Courtland ever sailed with, and he must have done a good deal in that way in New Guinea waters. Now, why should Courtland take such a turn?”
“Ah, why, indeed!” cried Mrs. Linton. “Yes, that is, as you say, the most amusing part of the whole evening of cross-purposes. Why should he run away just at this time—to-night—to-night?”
“What is there particular about to-night that Courtland’s running away should seem doubly erratic?” asked Mr. Linton, after a little pause. He had his eyes fixed coldly upon his wife’s face.
She turned to him and laughed quite merrily.
“What is there particular about to-night?” she repeated. “Why, have you not arrived from Paris to-night to have that serious talk with him about the mine? Doesn’t it seem to you doubly provoking that he didn’t stay until to-morrow or that you didn’t arrive yesterday? Why, why, why did he run away to-night before nine?”
“Why before nine?” said her husband.
“Heavens! Was not that the hour when you arrived home? You said so just now,” she cried. Then she picked up her wrap. Phyllis had thrown it over a chair when it had lain in a heap on the floor as Cleopatra’s wrap may have lain when she was carried into the presence of her lover. “My dear Stephen, don’t you think that as it is past nine, and Mr. Courtland is probably some miles out at sea with his head reposing on something hard,—there is nothing soft about a yacht,—we should make a move in the direction of home? It seems pretty clear that you will have no serious talk with him to-night. Alas! my Phyllis, our dream of happiness is over. We are to be separated by the cruelty of man, as usual. Good-night, my dear! Good-night, Mr. Ayrton! Pray forgive us for keeping you out of bed so long; and receive my thanks for restoring my long-lost husband to my arms. Didn’t you say that the hansom was waiting, Stephen?”
“I expect the man has been asleep for the last half-hour,” said her husband.
“I hope nothing has gone astray with the gold mine,” said she. “Hasn’t someone made a calculation regarding the accumulation of a shilling hansom fare at compound interest when the driver is kept waiting? It is like the sum about the nails in the horse’s shoe. We shall be ruined if we remain here much longer.”
“Ah, my dear,” said Mr. Ayrton, when he had kissed her hand, and straightened the sable collar of her wrap; “ah, my dear, a husband is a husband.”
“Even when he stays away from his wife for three months at a time?” said Ella.
“Not in spite of that, but on account of it,” said Mr. Ayrton. “Have you been married all these years without finding that out?”
“Good-night!” said she.