The dinner, in the ordering of which the host had expended all his gastronomical knowledge and much anxiety, seemed long. Orange found himself opposite the famous portrait of “Edwyn, Lord Reckage of Almouth,” which represents that nobleman elaborately dressed, reclining on a grassy bank by a spring of water, with a wooded landscape, a sunrise, and a squire holding two horses in the distance. Robert studied, and remembered always, every detail of that singular composition. The warrior's shield, with its motto “Magica sympathia,” his fat white hands, velvet breeches, steel cuirass, and stiff lace collar remained for days a grotesque image before his mind. He traced, too, a certain resemblance between Reckage and that ancestor—they both wore pointed red beards, both were fair of skin, both had a dreaming violence in their blue eyes.
“You must have some pheasant,” said his lordship, at last. “You are eating nothing. And that Burgundy, you know, is unique of its kind. It was a present from the Emperor of the French to mamma.Her people were civil to him when he was regarded as a sort of adventurer. And he never forgot it. He's a very decent fellow. I dined with him at the Tuileries—did I mention it?”
Robert replied that he fancied he had heard of the occurrence.
“Well,” continued his friend, “I might have enjoyed that experience, but I was feeling depressed at the time; a lot of the depression went under the influence of frivolous talk, military music, and champagne. Yet, all the same, do these things really count for much? I felt just as wretched afterwards.”
The glimpse he had obtained that afternoon of Sara de Treverell—Sara flushed with agitation, very bright in her glance, exceedingly subtle in her smile, had stirred a great tenderness he had once felt for that young lady. The news, too, that she had been chosen as a bride by the prudent, rich, and most important Duke of Marshire made his lordship feel that perhaps he had committed a blunder in not having secured her, during her first season, for himself. He feared that he had lost an opportunity; and this reflection, while it lowered temporarily his self-esteem, placed Sara on a dangerous eminence. She would be a duchess—one of the great duchesses. Little Sara!
“She was looking extraordinarily handsome,” he exclaimed. “Of course she means to take him.But she liked me at one time. I am speaking of Sara de Treverell. Marshire is by way of being a stick. Who could have imagined him going in for a high-spirited, brilliant girl like Sara?”
Formerly he had always spoken of Sara as a clever little devil, but Robert showed no surprise at the new adjective.
“Brilliant!” repeated his lordship. “Don't you agree?”
“Absolutely. She is the most brilliant girl in London.”
“But heartless,” said his lordship pathetically; “she hasn't one bit of heart.”
“There I don't agree with you. Of course she is strange and rather wild.”
“Tête-montée.And then the Asiatic streak!”
“True. The fiercest wind cannot take the angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. You may break it, but you cannot destroy its angles. That is so, no doubt, with one's racial tendencies. The girl is wilful and romantic. It will be very bad for them both if there is no love on her side. She is capable, I should say, of very deep affection.”
“She did like me,” said his lordship, with emphasis and satisfaction—“she really did. And I wouldn't encourage it. I had no notion then of marrying. Her singularity, too, made me cautious. I couldn't believe in her. She talked like an actress in a play. I felt that she was not the woman for me. Essentiallyshe thought as I did, and seemed to comprehend my embarrassment. The worst of it is now—I may have been wrong.”
“I doubt it. You may be sure, on the whole, that your instincts were right.”
“Still, there is a distinct misgiving. I was drawn toward her, and, when I made up my mind to put an end to the matter, our friendship was severely strained. But it was not broken. Something I saw in her face to-day makes me sure that it was not broken.”
While he was speaking the servant entered with a salver, and on the salver was a note. The address showed Sara's large, defiant hand-writing. Reckage, who had a touch of superstition in his nature, changed colour and even hesitated before he broke the seal. The coincidence seemed extraordinary and fatal. What did it mean? He read the letter with an irresistible feeling of proud delight.
“20a, St. James's Square, W.“My dear Beauclerk,—Will you lunch with us to-morrow at two o'clock? Papa has invited a friend—a dreadful, boring friend—who has been absent from England for five years. Do you know the man? Sir Piers Harding? But I want some one to encourage me. You? Do!“Yours sincerely,“S. L. V.de Treverell.“P.S.—I am so happy about you and Agnes. Be kind to her always? Won't you?”
“20a, St. James's Square, W.
“My dear Beauclerk,—Will you lunch with us to-morrow at two o'clock? Papa has invited a friend—a dreadful, boring friend—who has been absent from England for five years. Do you know the man? Sir Piers Harding? But I want some one to encourage me. You? Do!
“Yours sincerely,
“S. L. V.de Treverell.
“P.S.—I am so happy about you and Agnes. Be kind to her always? Won't you?”
All his life he had found a difficulty in understanding women—the significance of their words, the precise translation of their glances, and their motives generally. He had nourished his experience on French novels; he had corrected it by various friendships; he had crowned it with the confession that one could never tell what the sex meant one way or the other. But this fact remained—he was a coxcomb, and, whenever he owned himself puzzled, it was on a single ground only—how seriously was the lady at stake affected by his charms? Feeling, as he did, the infinite inequality that existed between men, and conscious of his own reputation as a leader among them, it was not in his conscience to encourage any woman whom he did not find especially attractive or useful. Why spoil her chances? Why make her discontented with the average male creature? Had Sara written to him in ordinary circumstances, inviting him, after some months of mutual coldness, to lunch, he would have replied, with sorrowful dignity, that it was wiser to leave things as they were. But the case had altered. The future Duchess of Marshire was a personage. He made no secret of his admiration for all people of high rank. They represented influence and traditions; what was more, they could exercise a certain power, and introduce, when necessary, the ideas upon which fresh traditions could be based. A friend like Sara de Treverell with her new honoursmade life itself more rich to him. When he remembered that she was young, handsome, enthusiastic, and impulsive, his pleasure thrilled into something of genuine passion. He told himself that he had always been fond of the girl; that hundreds of times he had felt the hardness of his scrupulous position where she was concerned. If he had been asked what especially he conceived his own duty to be now, he would have said that it was not for him to hang back when she showed a coming spirit. But this was not all. He was a gamester; he was ambitious.
“This is very odd,” said he, reading Sara's note for the second time, “very odd. There's no harm in showing it to you, because there is nothing in it.”
He gave it to his friend, and ate, pleasantly, while Orange glanced down the page. His soul's wish was to be left alone. The effort of forcing himself—not to affect but honestly to feel—an interest in Reckage's conversation had proved successful. He had indeed put aside his own thoughts, and followed, with the exaggerated earnestness of a mind determined on self-sacrifice, every word his companion had uttered. The spirit invisible wears the laurel of mental victories, but the body has to bear the exhaustion, the scars, and the soreness. He was tired, but he stirred himself again to consider Sara's note. In the course of that year she had written several letters to Orange—letters about books, new pictures, and new music. Once she had given him a little song of her owncomposition as something of which she “desired to hear no more for ever.” The song was sentimental, and he locked it away, wondering at the time whether she really had an unfortunate affection for Lord Reckage. But in reading her note that evening he decided against his original fear. Women did not write in that strain to men whom they loved, or had ever loved ... even passably well. He returned it to the owner with this comment—
“A woman, you know, is like your shadow: run away from her and she follows you; run after her and she flies from you. That's an old saying. It is true so long as she does not love the man. And when she loves the man—well, then she ceases to be a shadow. She becomes a living thing.”
“That is no answer at all. If you could read her heart and whole thought at this moment, what would you see there?”
“Unhappiness,” said Robert; “discontent.”
Reckage took the little sheet and folded it into his pocket-book.
“That's wonderful,” said he, “because the same things are in my mind, too. I wish I could describe my feelings about Agnes. She satisfies the æsthetic side of my nature. But there is another side. And Sara comes nearer to it than she. Mind you, I know my duty in the matter. There are things which one is compelled to do under tremendous penalties. I have chosen, and I must abide by my choice.”
Robert looked well at his friend, and saw, in his expression, all that he had known would inevitably, either soon or too late, work to the surface.
“Yet the old tremulous affection lies in me,” continued Reckage; “my nerves are in a kind of blaze. You couldn't tell anything about it, because you don't know.”
The Emperor's burgundy, no doubt, had warmed his spirit to communicativeness. He drew his chair closer to the table, and talked in a low voice about his ghastly solitude of soul. His engagement to Miss Carillon had not been an agreeable experience.
“And marriage,” said he, “will be the crowning point of these unbearable days. In the present state of my feelings it would be awful. Agnes is very kind and most conscientious, but she does not know what is in me, what was always and will always be there. Old reminiscences crowd round me. They are very beautiful, although they are so sad.”
“What is one to do?” said Robert, “in the presence of fate and facts? It is necessary to look the affair in the face. Do you, or don't you, wish to marry Miss Carillon?”
“I do, and I don't,” answered Reckage doggedly. “But I can't close my eyes to the circumstances of the case. I found myself hard bested from the very beginning. I knew that I was expected to marry her. I knew, too, that it was a suitable match in every way. But then every girl is, to some extent, accomplished,pious, virtuous, and intelligent. I believe sometimes that my apparent indifference towards Agnes arises from the fact that I respect her—if anything—too much. She seems too remote—that is the word—for the ordinary wear and tear of domesticity. Other men—who might be called impassioned lovers—would be less scrupulous. I maintain that devotion of that violent kind is worth absolutely nothing. And I claim to know a little about life and love.”
“I should say,” said Orange, “that you knew more about mere physiology.”
Reckage laughed uneasily.
“You keep your mediæval views!” said he. “Perhaps I envy you. I can't say. I don't think I envy any one. I am quite contented.”
“Then what are you driving at?”
“Oh well, a fellow must think. You see, Sara suits me, in a sense. I am not afraid of her. Now a wife is a sacred object. You might as well flirt with the Ten Commandments as fall in love with your wife. I say, never begin love-making with the lady you hope to marry. It will end in disaster. Because the day must come when she will wonder why you have changed. No, a wife should be the one woman in the world with whom you can spend days and weeks of unreproved coldness.”
They were now smoking, and the tobacco seemed to produce a tranquillising effect upon his lordship. He closed his lips and amused himself by puffing rings ofsmoke into the air. When he next spoke, he suggested a visit to the theatre. He had engaged a box for the new burlesque, “The Blue Princess.”
“It will be very good, and it will cheer us up,” said he.
Orange was in no mood for the entertainment, but Reckage's evident misery seemed to require a fresh scene. The streets, as they left the house, were full of a deep purple fog, through which shone out, with a dull and brazen gleam, the lights of lamps and passing carriages. Above them, the sky was but a pall or vapour; the air, charged with the emotions, the struggling energy, the cruelty, confusion, painfulness, and unceasing agitation of life in a vast city, was damp and stifling; a noise of traffic—as loud but not so terrible as a breaking storm—destroyed the peace of night; there were foot passengers of every age and description moving like rooks in the wind, over the pavement, and vehicles filled with men and women—an irremediable pilgrimage bound, for the greater part, on pleasure. Robert felt that he would have given gladly the treasures of a universe for just the time to think a little while of his own love. So far that great attachment had brought him aberrations, sorrow, and perplexities; all its sweetness had flown, moth-like, into his heart, there to be burnt—burnt yet left unburied: all its happiness had glorified his life against his will; all its beauty had been starved with a pitiless rigour. What then had remained? A certain state of mind—apassionate resignation to its own indomitable cravings. And now on the eve of his marriage—a marriage never so much as imagined, far less hoped for—he could not have the leisure to behold, through tears of relief, the complete transformation of his destiny—once so frightful, now so joyous. The theatre was crowded, and when the two young men entered their box the burlesque was at the beginning of the second act. The scene represented an orange grove by moonlight, and a handsome girl in spangled muslin was whispering loudly, to an accompaniment of harps, her eternal fidelity to a gesticulating troubadour. Both performers were immensely popular, and the duet, with its refrain—
“Love, I will love thee always,For ever is not too long;Love, e'en in dark and dreary days,This shall be my one song,”
“Love, I will love thee always,For ever is not too long;Love, e'en in dark and dreary days,This shall be my one song,”
was repeated three times to the smiling, serene, and thoroughly convinced audience. Reckage, who attended public places of amusement solely from the desire of exhibiting himself, gave but a side-glance at the stage and turned his opera glass upon the auditorium.
“Really, town is very full,” said he; “I suppose many of them are up for the Hauconberg wedding. There's old Cliddesdon—just look at him. Did you ever see such an infernal ass? Hullo! I thought thatMillie Warfield wouldn't be far off. She's a perfect rack of bones. Lady Michelmarsh is getting rather pretty—it's wonderful how these dowdy girls can work up their profiles after a month or two in town. She was a lump as a bride—a regular lump. You never met anything like it. Aumerle is talking to her now. He was at the Capitol this afternoon. He begins to give himself airs. I can't stand him. In fact, I cannot understand those fellows on my sub-committee. Sometimes they are—if anything—too civil. A bit servile, in fact. Then they turn out and look as though they would like to make their teeth meet in my backbone. They sulk, and whisper in groups, and snicker. I am getting sick of it. I must get rid of them. By Jove! there's David Rennes, the painter. I thought he was at Amesbury—with the Carillons, doing Agnes's portrait. It can't be finished. She said distinctly in her letter this morning—“I may not add more because I have to give Mr. Rennes a sitting while the light is good.” Where's the letter? I must have left it on the breakfast-table. Anyhow that is what she said. I'll catch Rennes' eye and have him up. He is not a bad sort.”
The act-drop had now descended, the lights were turned on to their full power, and Orange, following the direction of Reckage's gaze, saw, in the last row of the stalls, a large man about nine-and-thirty with an emotional, nervous face, a heavy beard, and dense black hair. He was leaning forward, for the seat infront of him was, at the moment, vacant; his hands were tightly locked, his eyes fixed on the curtain. At last Reckage's determined stare produced its effect. He moved, glanced toward the box, and, in response to his lordship's signal, left his place. Two minutes later Orange heard a tap at the door.
“That's right,” said Reckage, as Rennes entered, “take Orange's chair. He doesn't care a bit about the play, or anything in it. He is going to get married to-morrow. You know Robert Orange, don't you? You ought to paint him. Saint Augustine with a future.Mon devoir, mes livres, et puis ... et puis, madame, ma femme.”
The Emperor's burgundy, indeed, had not been opened in vain. Rennes could talk well, sometimes brilliantly, often with originality, and, with the tact of all highly sensitive beings, he led the conversation into impersonal themes. He said Miss Carillon's portrait was not yet finished, but he changed that subject immediately, and the evening, which had been to Orange a trial of patience, ended rather better than it began. Lord Reckage invited Rennes to accompany them home. The artist did not appear, at first, in the mood to accept that invitation. He, too, seemed to have many things he wished to think about undisturbed, and in the silence of his own company. His hesitation passed, however; the kindness in his nature had been roused by something unusual, haunting, ominous in Robert's face.
“I will come,” said he.
All the way, on their walk to Almouth House, he kept Reckage amused. Orange never once felt under the necessity to speak. He was able to dream, to hold his breath, to remember that he loved and was loved again, that he would see her to-morrow—to-morrow quite early, and then, no more unutterable farewells, heart-desolating separations. He surprised himself by saying aloud—“I love you ... I love you.” The two men, engrossed in talk, did not hear him. But he had caught the words, and it seemed as though he heard his own voice for the first time.
“You must want some supper,” said Reckage—“a rum omelette.”
“No! no! I couldn't.”
He sat down to the table, however, and watched them eat. First the burlesque was discussed, then the actresses, the dresses, the dancing.
“Russia is the place for dancing,” said Reckage, “I assure you. There was a dancer at Petersburg.... Something-or-other-ewskiwas her name, and a fellow shot himself while I was there on her account. An awful fool. I can tell you who painted her portrait. A Frenchman called Carolus-Duran. I believe he has a career before him. What is your opinion of French art?”
Rennes had studied in Paris and was well acquainted with the artist in question. They talkedabout the exhibitions of the year and the prices paid at a recent sale of pictures.
“Old Garrow has some fine pictures,” said Reckage. “I would give a good deal for his Ghirlandajo. Do you know it? And then that noble Tintoret? There are so many persons whose position in life compels them to encourage art without having any real enjoyment of it. Garrow is one of those persons. But his daughter, Lady Sara, has a touch of genius. She's a musician. You have heard her play, haven't you, Robert?”
“Yes.”
Robert had, at that instant, observed upon the mantelpiece a letter addressed to himself. It was from Brigit. He grew pale, and retired, with the little envelope lightly written on, to a far corner of the room. For some moments he could not break the seal. The sight of her writing filled him with a kind of agony—something beyond his control, beyond his comprehension. What did it mean—this tightening of the heart, this touch of fear, and love, and fear again, so deep that the whole web of life trembled and its strings grew confused one with another, and all was anguish, darkness, self-renunciation, and a wild, a dreadful mystery of human influence? At last he opened the letter.
“My dearest,” it began, “I can never say all that I wish to say, because when I am with you I forget everything and watch your face. When I am awayfrom you I forget your face, and I long to see it again in order that I may remember it more perfectly! It is so hard not to think of you too often. But I have had a great deal of sorrow, and everything I have in the world—except you—is a grief. I know that we are not born to be happy, and so, I wonder, have we stolen our happiness? If it is a gift—I know not what to do with it. I cannot speak a happy language: the atmosphere is strange and frightens me. Dear Robert, I am terrified, uncertain, but when we meet to-morrow you will give me courage. And then, as we shall not part again, I need never again be, as I am now, too anxious. YourBrigit.”
“My dearest,” it began, “I can never say all that I wish to say, because when I am with you I forget everything and watch your face. When I am awayfrom you I forget your face, and I long to see it again in order that I may remember it more perfectly! It is so hard not to think of you too often. But I have had a great deal of sorrow, and everything I have in the world—except you—is a grief. I know that we are not born to be happy, and so, I wonder, have we stolen our happiness? If it is a gift—I know not what to do with it. I cannot speak a happy language: the atmosphere is strange and frightens me. Dear Robert, I am terrified, uncertain, but when we meet to-morrow you will give me courage. And then, as we shall not part again, I need never again be, as I am now, too anxious. YourBrigit.”
Reckage's voice broke in again.
“I do wish you would try this rum omelette. It is capital.”
Orange laughed, but left the room. Rennes remarked that he had a powerful face.
“Yes. He has a strong character. And he would never deceive another. But he deceives himself hourly—daily.”
“In what way?” asked Rennes.
“He doesn't know,” said Reckage, “what a devilish fine chap he is! I wish to God that I could prevent this marriage.”
“Why?”
“I say nothing against Mrs. Parflete. She's a high-class woman and so on. Awfully beautiful, too. As clever as they make 'em, and not a breath against her. All the same, I am not very sweet on love matchesfor men of Orange's calibre. They never answer—never.”
“I don't agree with you there,” replied the artist, “because I believe that a love match—even when it dissolves, as it may, into a mistake—is the best thing that can happen to any man.”
After this they discussed bindings. Lord Reckage was the first amateur authority on the subject.
At five the next morning Robert was writing letters. Then, as soon as the gates of Hyde Park were open, he walked out. The recurrence of familiar sentiments on the essentials that make up the condition known as happiness would neither convince, nor inspire, the powers of an imagination which, with all its richness, was, apart from the purely artistic faculty, analytical and foreboding. Self-doubt, however, has no part in passion. Of the many miseries it may bring, this, perhaps the worst of human woes, can never be in its train. Men in love—and women also—may distrust all things and all creatures, but their own emotion, like the storm, proves the reality of its force by the mischief it wreaks. Robert's spirit, borne along by this vehemence of feeling, caught the keen sweetness of the early air, not yet infected by the day's traffic. His melancholy—the inevitable melancholy produced by sustained thought on any subject, whether sublime or simple—was dispelled. The Park, which was empty but for a few men on their way to work, and runners anxious to keep in training, had its great treesstill beautiful from the lingering glance of summer; the wide and misty stretches of grey grass were fresh in dew; the softness and haze—without the gloom—of autumn were in the atmosphere. The pride of love requited and the instincts of youth could not resist these spells of nature. Robert remembered only that it was his wedding-day: that every throb of his pulse and every second of time brought him nearer to the supreme joy of his life and the supreme moment. He had never used his nerves with bliss and tears, and he did not belong to the large army of young gentlemen who own themselves proudly
“Light half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd....Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day.”
“Light half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd....Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day.”
This view of heroism was not possible to him, and he was too strong in mind and body to pretend to it. The two things which affect a career most profoundly are religion, or the lack of it, and marriage—or not marrying; for these things only penetrate to the soul and make what may be called its perpetual atmosphere. The Catholic Faith, which ignores no single possibility in human feeling and no possible flight in human idealism, produces in those who hold it truly a freshness of heart very hard to be understood by the dispassionate critic who weighs character by the newest laws of his favourite degenerate, but never by the primeval testsof God. Robert, therefore, was thinking of his bride's face, the pure curves of her mouth, her sapphirine eyes, her pretty hands, her golden hair, the nose which others found fault with, which he, nevertheless, thought wholly delightful. He wondered what she would say and how she would look when they met. Would she be pale? Would she be frightened? There had always been a certain agony in every former meeting because of the farewell which had to follow. With all his habits of self-control, he had never been able to feel quite sure that the word too much would not be said, that the glance too long would not be given. Her own simplicity, he told himself, had saved him from disaster. She showed her affection so fearlessly—with such tender and discerning trust—that his worst struggles were in solitude—not in her presence at all. It was when he was away from her immediate peaceful influence that the fever, the restlessness, the torments and the desperation (has not old Burton summed up for us the whole situation and all the symptoms in his “Anatomy”?) had to be endured and conquered. These trials now—for even a sense of humour could not make them less than trials—were ended. The tragi-comic labour of walking too much and riding too much, working and smoking too much, thinking and sleeping too little—the whole dreary business, in fact, of stifling any absorbing idea or ruling passion, would be no more.
When he returned to Almouth House, Reckagewas already dressed for his official duties as “best man.” He felt an unwonted and genuine excitement about Robert's marriage. He put aside the languor,ennui, and depression which he felt too easily on most occasions, and, that day at least, he was, as his own servant expressed it, “nervous and cut-up.”
“I shall miss the swimming, the boxing, the fencing, and the pistol practice,” he complained, referring to diversions in which Orange was an expert and himself the bored but dutiful participant. “They nearly always drop these things when they marry.” The loss he really feared was the moral support and affection of his former secretary—advantages which a selfish nature is slow to appreciate, yet most tenacious of when once convinced of their use. The nuptial mass had been fixed for eight o'clock, the wedding party were to breakfast at Almouth House afterwards, then the bride and groom were to leave by the mail for Southamptonen routefor Miraflores in Northern France. The two young men drove together to the chapel attached to the Alberian Embassy. Not a word passed between them, but Reckage, under his eyelids, examined every detail of his friend's attire. He wondered at its satisfactoriness on the whole, inasmuch as Orange had not seen fit to consult him on the point. The church was small and grey and sombre; the flowers on the altar (sent by his lordship) were all white; their perfume filled the building.
“They look very nice,” said Reckage, “and inexcellent taste. Some of these old pictures on the wall are uncommonly good, and I particularly like that bronze crucifix. Ten to one if it isn't genuine eleventh century. I will ask the old fellow afterwards. He's a dear. His Latin is lovely. It's an artistic pleasure to hear him read the Gospel. I looked in the other morning, just to get the run, as it were, of the place. By Jove! Here they are.”
Pensée Fitz Rewes came first—very graceful in lavender silk, and accompanied by her little boy, who showed by an unconscious anxiety of expression that he felt instinctively his mother's air of contentment was assumed. Then Baron Zeuill, with Brigit on his arm, followed. The Baron looked grave—too grave for the happy circumstances. Brigit seemed as pale as the lilies on the altar; she was less beautiful but more ethereal than usual. There was something frail, transparent, unsubstantial about her that day which Robert had never noticed before. Had the many emotional strains of the last year tried her delicate youth beyond endurance? She seemed very childish, too, and immature. She took Orange's hand when he met her, held it closely, and watched the others with a kind of wonder most pitiful to witness—as though she had suffered too much from her contact with life and could no more. Her eyes seemed darker than the sapphires to which Robert had so often compared them: this effect, he told himself, was due to the strong contrast given by the pallor of herface. It was quite clear, however, that she was not under the influence then of any dominant thought. Her nerves and senses were strained to that extreme tension resembling apathy, until the vibration given by some touch or tone sets the whole system trembling with all the spiritual and bodily forces which make the mystery of human life. She spoke her responses, signed the register, and walked out from the church on Robert's arm without a single change of countenance or token of feeling. As they drove away from the church, she flushed a little and drew far back, with a new timidity, into her corner. One look she gave of perfect love and confidence. She pressed his hand and held it, for a moment, against her cheek. But neither of them spoke. And indeed, what was there to be said? The identification of their two minds had been full and absolute from the moment of their first encounter long ago in Chambord. The accidental differences of sex and age, training, accomplishments, and education had not affected—and could not affect—a sympathy in temperament which depended—not on the similarity of opinions—but on a similarity of moral fibre. Many forms can be cut, by the same hand, from the same piece of marble, and although one may be a grotesque and the other a cross, one a pursuing goddess and the other an angel for a tomb, the same substance, light, touch, and colour will be characteristic of all four. Marriage, at best, could but give a certain crude emphasis to thestrange spiritual bond which united these two beings. Practical as they both were in the common affairs of life, they shrank from anything which would promise to materialise the subtleties of the mind. Some thoughts, they felt, were as impalpable as sounds, and, just as music ceases to be divine when it is poured out of some mechanical contrivance, so the mysteries of the human soul become mere bodily conditions—more or less humiliating—when demonstrated, catalogued, and legalised. There is nothing modern nor uncommon in this especial disposition. One may describe it as ascetic, anæmic, sentimental, hysterical, neurotic; but the men and women who possess this fragile organism show, as a rule, powers of endurance and a strength of will by no means characteristic of the average sanguine and sensual creature who eats, drinks, fights, loves, and does his best in a world which he calls vile, yet would not renounce for all the ecstasies of Paradise.
The carriage wheels rolled on—as swift and noiseless as the sand in an hour-glass. Why was the road so short? Why could they not be carried thus for ever, tranquil with happiness, wanting nothing, seeking nothing, bound no-whither? Foolish questions and a foolish longing: yet happiness consists in being able to formulate wishes with the serene knowledge that a better wisdom directs their fulfilment. Neither passers-by nor other vehicles, neither houses nor streets caught the entranced attention of these young lovers.The delight of being purely self-absorbed is very great and intoxicating to those who are constantly—either by desire or the force of circumstances—unselfish. A faint flush swept into Brigit's face under the effect of an experience so novel. Their twofold consciousness had all the pathos of self-effacement, and all the thrill of satisfied egoism. Such instants cannot last, and they are shortest when one's habits of thought are antagonistic to such luxury. Brigit sighed deeply, and roused herself with a painful sense that the minute she wilfully cut short had been the sweetest in her life.
“Pensée,” she said, “has been so kind to me. She gave me her room at Wight House last night. She had the little dressing-room just off it. Did you notice her dress? She was very anxious that you should like it.”
“She seemed all right,” said Robert; “and wasn't Reckage splendid?”
Having spoilt their perfect moment, they became as mere mortals, more at ease in this planet, where complete joy has an unfamiliar mien. Brigit's actual physical beauty returned. The sunshine stole in at the open window and lit up her golden hair, which was half hidden by a hat with white plumes. She looked down at her hand with its new wedding ring, and was pleasantly aware of Robert's admiration.
“I am so glad,” she exclaimed, “that you think my hand is nice. Because I have given it to you for all time. And if you are ever tired, or discouraged,or unhappy, or lonely, and you want me, I shall come to you.”
“But you will be with me now always.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, Robert, always.”
They had now reached Almouth House. Her little foot, with its arched instep, seemed too slight and delicate for the pavement. Robert knew that her arm rested upon his, because he felt it trembling. They crossed the threshold together. The doors closed after them.
“And he never once kissed her on the way from church!” exclaimed the footman.
But the coachman did not think this very peculiar. “I don't hold with kissing,” said he; “to my mind there's nothing in it. Kissing is for boys and gals—not for men and wives.”
Baron Zeuill was unable to join them all at breakfast, but Pensée, and Reckage, and David Rennes (who had been especially invited the night before because he had proved so entertaining), did more than their duty as friends by talking feverishly, eating immoderately, and affecting the conventional joyousness universally thought proper at such times. Pensée ventured to make a reference to the forthcoming marriage of the “best man,” and expressed the faltering hope that “dear Agnes would be as happy as dear Brigit.” Reckage scowled. Rennes was seized with a fit of coughing. It was the one unlucky hit in the whole conversation, and it was soon forgotten by every one present except Orange, who remembered itfrequently in later days. At last the hour for departure came. Pensée, weeping, kissed Brigit on both cheeks, looked into her grave eyes long and lovingly, put her arms around the slight, girlish form with that exquisite, indefinable tenderness, unconscious, unpremeditated, and protective, which married women show toward very youthful brides. Robert handed his wife into the brougham, the order was given “To Waterloo,” the horses started, rice and slippers were thrown.
“They go into the world for the first time,” exclaimed Rennes.
Then Pensée was assisted into the barouche, and drove homewards.
“We shall meet again,” she said, as she parted from Reckage; “we meet at Sara's at lunch.”
The two men were thus left alone. They decided to smoke, for they were both a little affected by the pathos of the situation.
“Explain Robert,” said his lordship, as they returned to the dining-room, “explain that kind of love. You are an artist.”
“Well, it isn't my way,” rejoined the other, with a forced laugh, “but there are many manifestations of personal magnetism.”
“This kind is very interesting,” said Reckage, “although it is, of course, high-flown. Orange is romantic and scrupulous—he knows next to nothing of the sensual life; and that next to nothing is merely a source of disgust and remorse. You follow me?”
“Perfectly,” said Rennes. “It is a question of temperament. The wonder is that he has not entered, in some delirium of renunciation, the priesthood.”
“That would mean, for his gifts, a closed career. It beats my wits to guess how this marriage will turn out. He is madly in love. He has suffered frightfully. Too much moral anguish has a depraving effect in the long run.”
“I am not so sure of that.”
“I think so, at any rate. Now many a decent sort of fellow can get along well enough—if he has a woman to his taste and wine which he considers good. You observe I condense the situation as much as possible. But Orange is different.”
“Not so different—except in degree, or experience. At present, he oscillates between the woe of love and the joy of life. You compared him to St. Augustine. St. Augustine never pretended that earthly happiness was a delusion. He knew better. He said, ‘Do not trust it, but seek the happiness which hath no end.’ Personally, I can accept with gratitude as much as I can get. ‘Is not the life of men upon earth all trial, without any interval?’ This may be; yet it is something to learn how to sympathise with happiness. Our best men and women devote themselves too exclusively to the diagnosis of misery.”
“You have thought a lot, I can see,” said Reckage.
The artist gave him a quick, friendly glance.
“I have played the fool,” said he. “I envy Orange.He will know things that I can never know—now. I haven't lived up to my thoughts. I am not remorseful—I don't believe in remorse. It is a thing for the half-hearted. But if I am not sad, I am not especially gay. The middle course between sentimentality and gallantry seems to me intimately immoral and ridiculous into the bargain. So I am an idealist with senses. There are times when I hate life. And why? Because life is evil? By no means; but because we tell lies about it, and write lies about it, from morning till night.”
“You seem a bit depressed,” said Lord Reckage. “But, by the by, how is the portrait going? My brother Hercy, who paints a little, always declared that Agnes was unpaintable. Do you find her unpaintable?”
“No,” said Rennes; “oh no!”
When Reckage asked Rennes whether he found Miss Carillon “unpaintable,” the artist was conscious of a swift, piercing emotion, which passed, indeed, but left an ache. And as the day advanced the smart of the wound grew more intense. A visit to the National Gallery, a call at his tailor's, an inspection of maps at his club, afforded little relief to the indefinable misery. He was tortured by the disingenuousness of his own mind. He had done so much, and thought so much, and read so much; he could give so many scientific reasons for each idea and each movement of his mental and physical being, that the joy of life had been cut up in its machinery. He had lost the power of being natural either in his pains or his pleasures. He knew all the answers, but not one of the questions which trouble youth. He had never wondered at anything. Wonder—the lovely mistress of wisdom—had taught him none of her secrets. Dead certainty had dogged his steps from his first appearance on this unknowable world. Once, when a very little boy, he admired a vase full of pink roses. “They will keep twice aslong,” said his nurse, “in dirty water. It is such a waste to put fresh water on roses!” This remark—slight in itself—remained in his memory as the first truth—the Logos, in fact—from which all other truths generated. He was now nine-and-thirty: he had executed an abnormal amount of work, and he had a just reputation as a portrait-painter. His technical skill was considered unique. The something lacking was that mysteriousness which belongs to all great art, and is, essentially, in life.
“Rennes,” said one of his friends, “can work for sixteen hours a day. It is all taken from without. He gives nothing except his undivided attention.” The saying was not true; he gave himself absolutely—soul, brain, and heart—to his task, but the gift was too premeditated, too accurately weighed. There was no self-abandonment, nor self-forgetfulness. His admiration for Miss Carillon had been of this kind. Having added up her attractions, her figure, her face, her youth, her intelligence, her grace, he decided that she was exceptional in many ways. He found real happiness in her society—she was so sane, so clear, so unaffected. His attitude toward her had remained for some time one of fraternal affection, partly by force of will, chiefly because his relations with other women were not so restrained. But the position was changing. Certain forces in life were assuming for him a complicated and threatening aspect. What if, after all, there was an incalculable element in man?
“Now to be practical,” he said to himself. He had not seen his mother for a fortnight. She lived in Kensington Square. “I must really go and see my mother!” The cab drove quickly; the little grey house was soon reached. David opened the door with his latch-key and rushed upstairs into the small drawing-room, furnished in white and green, with fresh flowers on the mantelpiece, and many shelves of vellum-bound books. A bronze lamp hung from the ceiling, and its globe, covered in violet silk, cast a light like that of the early dawn in hilly regions. A faint odour of lavender filled the air. In one corner of the room there was a chess-table with its chessmen showing an interrupted game. A velvet footstool, much indented by the pressure of a firm foot, stood in front of the carved armchair in which Mrs. Rennes usually sat. Her work-basket, lined with blue satin and shining with steel fittings, stood in its customary place on a gipsy stool near the fireplace. A few old English prints hung on the walls, and between the windows there was a Chippendale cabinet filled with Worcester and Crown Derby china. The aspect of all things was restful, emotionless, and some of its calm seemed to overtake and soothe David's agitated spirit. He sat down at the piano and played, with much passion, bits from Wagner's “Tristan,” the first performance of which he had seen at Munich. “Good Heavens!” he thought. “What a genius! What a soul! What a phrase!” Suddenly the door openedand Agnes Carillon was ushered in. She hesitated a second, and then recognised Rennes, who had his back to the light. Her first instinct was to retreat; her first feeling was a strange sensation of pleasure and fear. His usually cold and wearied face took an expression of controlled but unmistakable delight. She blushed, though not with resentment, yet she avoided, by appearing to have some difficulty with her muff, his outstretched hand.
“I have called on your mother,” said she. “I thought you would be on your way to Rome.”
Her lips were red and rather full: her cheeks were pink, her throat and brows were white. Her demeanour was, while modest, neither shy nor self-conscious. David was struck by her height and the extreme slightness of her figure. She wore a large Gainsborough hat with long plumes, a black gown, and a collar of oldpoint de Venise. She had come up from the country, and her presence brought its freshness.
“Why are you in town?” he asked abruptly.
“I was bored at home.”
“And the trousseau?”
“The trousseau?” she said, lifting her eyes for the first time to his.
“They say it is unlucky to try on your wedding-dress,” he continued, seeking relief in the very torture of reminding himself that the date of her marriage with Lord Reckage was fixed.
“I never think about luck,” she answered.
“I met Reckage at the play last night. I lunched with him to-day,” said Rennes.
“I am so glad that you are friends. I want you to like him.”
“No doubt he thinks me mad. Politicians always regard artists as madmen.”
“But Beauclerk is considered very cultured. I hate the word. He is interested in art.”
“No doubt—as a means of investment, an educational influence, or a topic of conversation for light moments.”
“You are severe. Yet I like to hear you talk.”
She hoped that his talk would drown the singing in her heart, the whispering in her ears, the footsteps of doubt—doubt of herself, doubt of Reckage, coming nearer and nearer. She had been taught everything. She had discovered nothing. Love itself had come to her in the shape of a cruel code of responsibilities. Lately she had been dwelling with an almost feverish emphasis on the question of duty. She had wearied Reckage; she had exhausted herself by the tenacity of her mind toward that dull subject. And the real truth about much in life was forcing itself upon her. She was essentially a woman of affairs. Her face absorbed the poetry of her nature, just as a flower extracts every excellence from its surrounding soil, and, shining out for the sun, wastes no blossom underground. It had been her earliest ambition to marry a Member ofParliament and help him—by her prayers and counsel—on his conscientious career toward Downing Street. She had received an austere education, and even her native generosity of heart could not soften the indignation she had been trained to feel against any neglect of duty. Duty was a term which she applied to that science of things generally expedient which tradition has presented to us in the household proverbs and maxims of every nation. Early rising, controlling one's temper, paying one's debts, consideration for others, working while it is day, taking stitches in time—all these to that orthodox mind were matters of imperative obligation, if not Divine command. David's impulsive nature and self-indulgent habits filled her with overwhelming sorrow and dismay. She could not understand the rapid changes of mood, the disordered views, the storm and violence which are characteristic of every artist whose work is a form of autobiography rather than a presentment of impersonal forms and effects.
In Rennes there were two principles constantly at work: the David who acted, and the David who observed, criticised, and reproduced in allegorical guise, the inspiring performance. Agnes knew nothing of this common phenomenon in creative genius, and when her friend refreshed his imagination by appearing in a newrôle, she was as terrified as a child before some clever trick in experimental chemistry. From time to time he expressed opinions which startled her.She begged him once to paint a “religious” picture. He would not. A feeling that she had experienced some bitter disappointment weighed upon her spirit. Yet when she seemed to give that disappointment a cause, she was careful to leave it in obscurity. She would not permit herself to think, and, pale with suffering, she would check the painful questions which rose already answered. Her affection for Rennes was one of those serious passions which sometimes take root in an unsentimental nature, and derive a strength from philosophy which romantic considerations, pleasant as they are, can never bestow. Romance will add a magical delight to the pleasures of existence, but for the burden of the day one needs a sobriety of thought which would ring singularly flat in a love-lyric, which is certainly opposed to those emotions which produce what is commonly regarded as interesting behaviour. Agnes had not been drawn to Rennes at first sight, but rather by degrees and against her better judgment. She had found him unstable and affected; on the other hand, she admired his fine figure, his talent, his conversation, and the fire in his brilliant eyes. She told herself that she was deeply anxious about his soul, but, in a crowd, she watched for his broad shoulders and his handsome face. Such was her friendship, and she had known him for two years. Her first season had been a startling success. She had the misery of rejecting several suitors of whom her father fully approved—one was an Archdeacon. Shehad been drawn more than kindly toward a consumptive violinist whom she had met at a Saturday entertainment for the poor at Kensal Green. Not a single word of love ever passed between them. He called once or twice at her aunt's house in Chester Square, and they had played together some of Corelli's sonatas. Her aunt carried her away to Brighton, and no more was heard of the young violinist till a rumour reached them that he was drinking himself to death at St. Moritz. Agnes said many prayers for him. At last a second rumour reached her that the first was wholly incorrect. He had married a very nice girl with a lot of money and was building a villa at Cannes. Agnes told herself that she was thankful to hear it. The next year she became engaged to a young Member of Parliament with really fine prospects. She was not in love, but she liked him better than all her friends. She felt serene, and at last useful. Then a story reached her about another woman, and yet another woman before that one. The story was true and not at all pretty. The Bishop was obliged to support his daughter in her refusal to regard matters in what her betrothed described as a sane and reasonable manner. He had sinned and he was sorry, and what was more, he had every desire to reform. But Agnes remained firm, although she had probably never been so nearly in love with him as she was on the day when she returned all his charming letters and the ring and his photograph. It was a trying moment. She wasordered abroad, and she spent the winter at Rome, where she read ancient history and visited churches and excited a great deal of admiration. Mrs. Rennes and David were also at Rome. The three met at the house of an irreproachable Marchesa. They became friends. Miss Carillon's aunt, who was a maiden lady with means, succumbed to the fascinating eloquence of an amateurconnoisseurof antique gems. In her new character offiancée, she found it inconvenient to chaperon a young niece. She joined a widowed friend, and gladly assented to the suggestion that dear Agnes should visit Mrs. Rennes in Paris. The Bishop saw no impediment to the plan. He had been at Oxford with the late Archibald Rennes, an odd fellow but high-minded. Mrs. Rennes was the daughter of a General Hughes-Drummond. Every one knew the Hughes-Drummonds. They were very good people indeed. The Bishop hoped that Agnes would enjoy herself, give her kind friend as little trouble as possible, and come home fully restored in spirits. He forgot David. It may be that others omitted to mention him. The Bishop was not pleased when the rumour reached him that this artist was included in the party. What were his habits? What were his prospects? Were his artistic talents such that he might reasonably hope to become a Royal Academician and maintain an establishment? Whatclassof pictures did he paint? Were they lofty in tone? Did they exalt and purify the mind? Wouldthey make good engravings—such engravings as one might hang on one's walls? The correspondence and the questions were endless. David spent a week end at the Episcopal Palace, and behaved so well that he became frightened at his own capabilities for John Bullism. He was a little annoyed, too, to find himself at ease in a British home circle. The Bishop was, at all events, satisfied. Agnes was enchanted, and, transfigured by unconscious passion, looked more beautiful than ever. David enjoyed the services in the cathedral; he liked the quiet Sunday afternoon, he was impressed by Dr. Carillon's real earnestness in the pulpit. The visit was a great success. Before he left, he begged Agnes to write to him “when she could spare the time.” The young man had tried everything except a Platonic friendship with a lovely girl. He fancied that he found in Agnes Carillon that purity coupled with magnetism which makes such experiments attractive. They corresponded regularly, but they did not meet again for several months. When he returned, a little tired of platonism, letter-writing, intellectuality, and longing a great deal for the sight of her face, he found her engaged to Lord Reckage. So nature revenges itself. He detected a certain triumph and also a certain deep reproach in her gaze. She insisted that she was more than happy, but something under these words seemed to murmur—“You have spoilt our lives.” Her manner, nevertheless, never altered. She was invariably sympathetic, gracious, delicately emotional. In letters she signed herself, “Yours affectionately, Agnes Carillon.”
“How I should like to paint you in this light!” he said, all at once. “That is the dress I love best. Don't wear it often.” The remark was slight enough as a pretty speech within the bounds of flirtation, but the tone in which he uttered it meant more, and the girl's womanly instinct told her that the dangerous limit in their “friendship” had been reached. He saw her turn pale. She looked away from him, and swallowed thoughts which were far more bitter than any words she could have spoken.
“You never used to say these things,” she exclaimed at last; “why do you say them now?”
“I thought them—always,” he answered. “But I am a Pagan. I tried to keep my Paganism for others, and what you would call ‘the best in me’ for you. You may be able to understand. Anyhow, I made a mistake—a terrible mistake. It was a false position, and I couldn't maintain it. Now I don't even want to maintain it. Then it was a kind of vanity. I mean that time when I was at the Palace. I had been reading a lot of beautiful unreal stuff about the soul. I thought I had reached a very high place. Of course I had—because nothing is higher or purer than real human love. But I wouldn't call it love. So I went abroad, and wrote any amount of ‘literature’ to you.And all the time Reckage was here—asking you, wisely enough, to marry him. And you, wisely enough, accepted him.”
Agnes sat still, with her eyes down, cold, silent, forbidding. She did not understand him. She had neither the knowledge of life, nor the imagination, which could make such understanding possible. But she saw in his look that he loved her, that he was unhappy. She knew that Reckage had never shown so much feeling. Yet had she not given her word to Reckage? Was it not irrevocable? Was Rennes behaving well in speaking out—too late? Was it too late? A torrent of questions poured into her mind. She dragged off her gloves, and spread out her hands, which were slim and white, and stared at her sapphire engagement ring.
“A weak man submits to destiny,” said Rennes, “a strong one makes his own. It is what we think of ourselves which determines our fate. If I regard myself as a poor creature, I shall, no doubt, act the part of a poor creature. But,” he added, with an ironical smile, “it is never too late to give up one's prejudices. I can't stand by and look on any longer. I intend to leave England for some years. I hope we may never meet again. Don't answer me, because there is nothing for you to say. You have been perfectly kind, perfectly charming, perfectly consistent. You have never deceived me and you have never deceived yourself.”
She interrupted him:
“I hope not. Oh, I hope I have never deceived myself—or you.”
“I was grateful for your friendship,” he said. “I can't be grateful for it now.”
Agnes drew a long breath and murmured random words about the “time.” Was it getting late?
“Yes,” replied Rennes, “too late. Did I ever tell you why my father, with all his prospects, became a drawing-master? He told me that he had suffered so much learning why he could never paint, nor hope to paint, that he was determined to devote his knowledge to the service of apprentices. It seemed to him such an awful thing to mistake one's vocation. Now I feel that one of us—perhaps both of us, you and I, are doing even a worse thing. We are deliberately throwing happiness to the dogs.”
“I don't think so,” said Agnes, in a trembling voice. “There is duty, you know; that is something higher than happiness, I believe.”
“Are you so sure?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I envy you. I don't even know what you mean by duty. It seems to me another name for the tyranny of false sentiment.”
“Don't disturb my ideas,” she exclaimed, with an appealing gesture. “Don't say these things. They make me wretched. I can't afford to doubt and question. One must have a few permanent rules of conduct.”
“But if they are fantastic, capricious, insincere?”
“I can't argue. I am not clever. I will not change my views. I dare not. It would make me hate you.”
“You are the slave of convention.”
“That may be. That is safer, after all, than being the slave of some other will stronger than my own. Why do you try to disturb my life—now—after so many really happy months of friendship?”
“Were they so happy? Agnes, were they happy?”
She hesitated.
“Yes,” she said, at last; “relatively, yes.”
“It is quite true. Good women drive us to the bad ones.”
“Oh! what can you mean? Surely we are saying too much. We shall reproach ourselves later. I live, again and again, through one conversation. The phrases come into my mind with every possible shade of significance.”
She pushed back her hat, and pressed her hand to her brow, which was contracting nervously as she spoke.
“I don't wish to be altered by any change in principle,” she continued, “nor distracted, from my plain obligations, into other interests. I daresay I sound quite heartless and odd. I daresay you won't like me any more.” Her voice faltered, but her lips remained precise. “But one must know one's mind—onemust. You don't know yours; that is the whole trouble, David.”
She had never called him by his Christian name before, and now the forced sternness of her tone gave it almost the accent of a farewell.
“Perhaps we have helped each other,” she went on; “at all events, you have taught me how to look at things. You are clever and original and all that. I am rather commonplace, and I never have new or surprising thoughts. The more I learn, the more I grow attached to the ordinary ways. Once you called me the idealbourgeoise. You were right.”
“Not entirely,” said Rennes. “You think too much.”
“You taught me that. I never used to consider people or notions. I accepted them without criticism.”
“The madness of criticism has entered into you,” he said. “It is the worst, most destructive thing on earth.”
“How could I have accepted you—as my friend—without it?” she asked. “You puzzled me. I tried to understand you. No one had ever puzzled me before. No one, you may be quite sure, will ever puzzle me, in the same degree, again.”
She gave him a long, tearful glance, in which defiance, reproach, determination, and a certain cruelty shone like iron under water. He made a movement toward her. The strength of his more emotional nature might have made a final assault—not uselessly—on her assumed “reasonableness.” No appeal, nothreat could have moved her from the mental attitude she had decided on—the duty of keeping her word to Lord Reckage. But she might have been urged to the more candid course of ascertaining how far his lordship's true happiness was really involved in the question. At that moment, however, Mrs. Rennes came into the room. She gave a little cry of surprise when she saw her son. Then she kissed Agnes, and sat down, looking anxiously from one to the other with something not unlike grief, not unlike jealousy.
Her life and habits of thought were simple, but she had been highly educated. She was an accomplished linguist, a good musician, a most intelligent companion. Things which she could not comprehend she would, at least, accept on faith. There had never been the shadow of a quarrel between David and herself. But she felt, by intuition, that Agnes Carillon had, in some way, affected his life, his work, his whole nature. She could not blame her, because she knew nothing definite about the understanding which existed, plainly enough, between her son and this young lady. She had a horror, however, of flirtation and flirts. It seemed to her that, under all this talk and correspondence on art, poetry, scenery, and the like, there was a strong under-current of emotion. So she smiled upon Agnes with a certain reserve, as though she were not quite sure whether she had any great reason to feel delighted at her call. At a glancefrom David, however, her look softened into real friendliness.
“I was so surprised to see Mr. Rennes here,” said Agnes.
“I am surprised, too,” said the older woman.
A restraint fell upon all three. David walked about the room, looking for things he did not want, and asking questions he did not wish answered, although he hoped they would interest his mother. But his spirits soon flagged. The conversation became trivial and absurd.
“Where are you staying?” asked Mrs. Rennes.
“I am with Pensée Fitz Rewes,” said Agnes; “she has gone in the carriage to do a little shopping. She will send it here for me.”
The carriage was at that instant announced. David went down the stairs with Agnes and handed her in. He said nothing. Mrs. Rennes watched the pair from the window and nodded her farewell with much gravity. When David returned to her, he found her reading peacefully Trollope's last novel. It was for these graces that he loved her most. He scribbled letters at her writing-table for the next hour. Then he spoke—
“I am going,” said he, “to the East. I need a change. I suppose it will mean six months.”
“But how you will enjoy it!”
“And what will you do?”
“I live from day to day, my dear. I am quite contented.”
“This journey is not a mere caprice. I have been contemplating it for some time,” he said.
Mrs. Rennes' hair was white and her long, equine countenance, sallow. When her feelings were stirred, she showed it only by a cloudy pallor which would steal over her face as a kind of veil—separating her from the rest of mortals.
“One has to get away from England,” continued Rennes: “one has to get away from one's self.”
“And where is your self now?” she asked, not venturing to look at him.
“With that girl,” he answered, suddenly; “with that girl.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don't know. I suppose I do. Oh! I would love her if I could ever be absolutely sincere. But this I do know—I can't see her married to that fellow Reckage. So I must go away.”
“I am afraid she is a coquette—a serious coquette, my dear boy.”
“She is nothing of the kind. She is a true woman. Don't talk about her.”