She tried to place herself outside—wholly outside—the abominable little scene.
Supposing a woman—the foolish woman who hadacted on so strange an impulse—now came in, and telling her what had occurred, asked her advice, how would she, Penelope, make answer to such a one?
Quick came the words: 'Of course you can only do one of two things—either never see him again, or go on as if nothing had happened.'
She saw, felt, the woman wince.
'As to not seeing him again, that is quite out of the question. Besides, there are circumstances——'
'Oh, well,' she—Penelope—would say severely, 'of course, if you come and ask my advice without telling meeverything——'
'No one ever tells everything,' the woman would object, 'but this much I will confide to you. There was a time—I am sure, by all sorts of things, that he remembers it more often than I do—when this man and I were lovers, when he kissed me—ah, how often!'
Penelope flushed. How could the other, this wraith-like woman, tell this to her? But, even so, she would answer her patiently: 'That may be. But in those days you two loved one another dearly. To such a man that fact makes all the difference. He is the type—the rather unusual type—who would far rather have no bread than only half the loaf.'
'But how wrong! how utterly absurd!' the other woman would cry. 'How short-sighted of him! The more so that sometimes, not of course always, the half has been known to include the whole.'
'Yes—but David Winfrith is not a man to understand that. And if I may say so'—thus would she, the wise mentor, conclude her words of advice and consolation to this most unwise and impulsive friend—'I think you have really had an escape! In this case the half would certainly have come to include the whole. To-night you are tired and lonely; in the morning you will realize that you are much better off as you are. You already see quite as much of him as you want to do, when in your sober senses.'
('Oh, but I do miss him when he isn't there.')
'What nonsense! You do not miss him when you are abroad, when you—forgive me, dear, the vulgar expression—have other fish to fry. No, no, you have had an escape! Being what he is, he will meet you to-morrow exactly as if nothing had happened, and then you will go abroad and have a delightful time.'
('Yes, alone!')
'Alone? Of course. Seeing beautiful places of which he, if with you, would deny the charm; for, as you have often said to yourself, he has no love, no understanding, of a whole side of life which is everything to you.'
('Yes, but he would have enjoyed being with me.')
'So he would, only more so, in a coal-pit. No, no, you have made the life you lead now one which exactly suits you.'
Mrs. Robinson got up. She rang the bell. 'Would you please ask Mrs. Mote to come to me here?'
And when the short, stout little woman, who had been the nurse of her childhood and was now her maid, came in answer to the summons, she said hastily: 'Motey, I am going to Brighton next week for a few days. I do not intend to go abroad till later. Mr. Winfrith cannot get away just now. He is too busy.'
'He always was a busy young gentleman,' declared the old woman rather sourly, as she took the cloak, the gloves, and the hat of her mistress, and went quietly out of the room.
'There was a Door to which I found no Key:There was a Veil past which I could not see:Some little talk awhile of Me and TheeThere seem'd—and then no more of Thee and Me.'Omar Khayyám.'Numero Deus impare gaudet.'Virgil.
'There was a Door to which I found no Key:There was a Veil past which I could not see:Some little talk awhile of Me and TheeThere seem'd—and then no more of Thee and Me.'Omar Khayyám.'Numero Deus impare gaudet.'Virgil.
'There was a Door to which I found no Key:There was a Veil past which I could not see:Some little talk awhile of Me and TheeThere seem'd—and then no more of Thee and Me.'Omar Khayyám.
'There was a Door to which I found no Key:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seem'd—and then no more of Thee and Me.'
Omar Khayyám.
'Numero Deus impare gaudet.'Virgil.
'Numero Deus impare gaudet.'
Virgil.
When the man who remained in local story as the Popish Lord Wantley built Monk's Eype, he planned the arrangements of the lower floor of his villa in a way which was approved by neither his Neapolitan architect nor his English acquaintances.
From the broad terrace overhanging the sea, the row of high narrow windows on either side of the shallow stone steps giving access to the central hall, seemed strictly symmetrical. But there was nothing uniform behind the stately façade. Instead of a suite of reception-rooms opening the one out of the other on either side of the frescoed hall, the whole left side of the villa—excepting the wing, which stretched, as did its fellow, landward, and in which were the servants' quarters—was occupied by one vast apartment.
In this great room the creator of Monk's Eype had gathered together most of his treasures, including the paintings which he had acquired during a long sojourn in Italy; and his Victorian successor had added many beautiful works of art to the collection.
In the Picture Room, as it was called, Penelope's mother always sat when at Monk's Eype, sometimes working at delicate embroidery, oftener writing busilyat an inlaid ivory table close to one of the windows opening on to the terrace.
On the other side of the circular hall the Italian architect had had his way. Here there was a suite of lofty, well-proportioned rooms opening the one out of the other.
Of these rooms, the first was the dining-room, of which the painted ceiling harmonized with the panels of old Flemish tapestry added to the treasures of Monk's Eype by Penelope's parents. Then came another spacious room, of much the same proportions, which had now been for many years regarded as specially set apart for the use of young Lord Wantley, Mrs. Robinson's cousin and frequent guest. In this pleasant room Wantley read, painted, and smoked, and there also he would entertain those of Penelope's visitors whose sex made him perforce their host. Still, even his occupancy of what some of Mrs. Robinson's friends considered the most agreeable room in the villa was poisoned by a bitter memory. Not long after the death of the man whom he had been taught to call uncle, he had heard his plea for a billiard-table set aside by the new mistress of Monk's Eype with angry decision, and he had been made to feel that he had unwittingly offered an insult to her father's memory.
Beyond Lord Wantley's special quarters there was a third room, more narrow, less well lighted than the others. There were those, nevertheless, who would have regarded it as the most interesting apartment at Monk's Eype, for there the greatest of Victorian philanthropists had worked, spending long hours of his holiday at the large plain knee-table so placed as both to block and to command the one window. Here also hung a portrait which many would have come far to see. If vile as a work of art, it was almost startlingly like the late owner of the room, and this resemblance was the more striking because of the familiar attitude, the left hand supporting the chin,which had had for most of the sitter's fellow-countrymen the ridiculous associations of caricature.
Mrs. Robinson disliked both the room and the portrait. But mingled feelings of respect, of affection, and of fear, had caused her to leave the room as it had been during her father's occupancy, and it was only used by her on the rare occasions when she was compelled to have a personal interview with one of her tenants from neighbouring Wyke Regis.
On the evening of the day, a Saturday, when Miss Wake's and her niece's arrival had taken place, Lord Wantley had returned somewhat unexpectedly from a visit paid in the neighbourhood, which had been cut short by the sudden illness of the hostess.
After the cheerful, if commonplace, house and party he had just left, Monk's Eype struck him as strangely quiet and depressing, though, as always, the beauty of the villa impressed him anew as he passed through into the circular hall, now flooded with the light of the setting sun.
'I wonder who she has got here now,' he said to himself as he noticed a man's hat, roomy travelling-coat, and stick laid across the top of the Italian marriage-chest, the brilliancy of whose armorial ornaments and bright gilding had been dimmed by a hundred years of the salt wind and soft mists of the Dorset coast.
Mrs. Robinson was fond of entertaining those of her fellow-painters whose work attracted her fancy or excited her admiration, and Wantley's fastidious taste sometimes revolted from the associations into which she thrust him.
The young man's relations to his beautiful cousin were at once singular and natural—best, perhaps, explained by a word said in the frankness of griefduring the hours which had immediately followed his predecessor's death. 'You know, Penelope,' the heir had said in all good faith, if a little awkwardly—for at that time nothing was definitely known of the famous philanthropist's will, and none doubted that the new peer would find himself to have been treated fairly, if not generously, by the great Lord Wantley—'you know that now you must consider me as your brother; your father himself told me he hoped it would be so.'
The wilful girl had looked at him in silence for a moment, and then, very deliberately, had answered: 'What nonsense! Did my father ever treat you as a son? No, Ludovic, we will go on as we have always done. But if you like'—and she had smiled satirically—'I will look upon you as a kind and well-meaning stepbrother!' And it was with the eyes of a critical, but not unfriendly stepbrother that Wantley came in due course to regard her.
Concerning his cousin's—to his apprehension—extraordinary marriage, he had not been in any way consulted. Indeed, at the time the engagement and marriage took place he had been far away from England; but after Melancthon Robinson's tragic death Penelope for a moment had clung to him as if he had indeed been her brother, showing such real feeling, such acute pain, such bitter distress, that he had come to the conclusion that the tie between the oddly-assorted couple had been at any rate one worthy of respect.
When, somewhat later, Mrs. Robinson had begged Wantley to help her with the complicated business details connected with the Melancthon Settlement, he had drawn back, or rather he had advised her, not unkindly, to hand the work over to one of the great social philanthropic organizations already provided with suitable machinery.
As he had learnt to expect, his cousin entirelydisregarded his advice; instead, she found another to give her the help the head of her family refused her, and this other, as the young man sometimes remembered with an uneasy conscience, was one whom they should both have spared, partly because he was engaged in public affairs which took up what should have been the whole of his working time, partly because he had been the hero of Penelope's first romance, and had once been her accepted lover.
Wantley had watched the renewal of the link between the grave young statesman and his old love with a certain cynical interest.
Penelope had not cared to hide her annoyance and disappointment at her cousin's somewhat pusillanimous refusal of responsibility, and so he had not been asked to take any part in the conferences which were held between David Winfrith and the widow of the philanthropic millionaire; but weeks, months, and even the first years, of Penelope's widowhood wore themselves away, and to Wantley's astonishment the relations between Mrs. Robinson and her adviser and helper remained unchanged.
The Melancthon Settlement went on its way, nominally under the management of its founder's widow, in reality owing everything in it that was practical and worthy of respect to the mind and to the tireless industry of the man who had come to regard this work of supererogation as the principal relaxation of a somewhat austere existence. But Winfrith was not able to conceal from himself the fact that the necessary interviews with his old love were the salt of what was otherwise a laborious and often thankless task.
Of course at one time his marriage with Mrs. Robinson had been regarded as a certainty, but, as the years had gone on, the gossips admitted their mistake, and, according to their fancy, declared either the lovely widow or Winfrith disappointed.
Alone, Wantley arrived very near the truth. He was sure that there had been no renewal of the offer made and accepted so ardently in the days when the two had been boy and girl; but a subtle instinct warned him that Winfrith still regarded Penelope as nearer to himself than had been, or could ever be, any other woman; and of the many things which he envied his cousin, the young peer counted nothing more precious than the chivalrous interest and affection of the man who most realized his own ideal of the public-spirited Englishman who, born to pleasant fortune, is content to work, both for his country and for his countrymen, for what most would consider an inadequate reward.
David Winfrith's existence formed a contrast to his own life of which Wantley was ashamed. He was well aware that had the other been in his place, even burdened with all his own early disadvantages, Winfrith would by now have made for himself a position in every way befitting that of the successor of such a man as had been Penelope's father.
On the evening of his unexpected return to the villa, an evening long to be remembered by him, Wantley dressed early and made his way into the Picture Room. He went expecting to find an ill-assorted party, for Mrs. Robinson was one of those women whose own personal relationship to those whom they gather about them is the only matter of moment, and whose guests are therefore rarely in sympathy one with another.
All that Wantley knew concerning those strangers he was about to meet was that he would be called upon to make himself pleasant to an elderly Roman Catholic spinster, and to her niece, a girl closely associated with the work of the MelancthonSettlement; and the double prospect was far from being agreeable to him.
He was therefore relieved to find the Picture Room empty, save for the immobile presence of Lady Wantley. She was sitting gazing out of the window, her hands clasped together, absorbed in meditation. As he came in she turned and smiled, but said no word of welcome; and he respected her mood, knowing well that she was one of those who feel the invisible world to be very near, and who believe themselves surrounded by unseen presences.
Lady Wantley's personality had always interested and fascinated the young man. Even as a child he had never sympathized with his mother's dislike of her, for he had early discerned how very different she was from most of the people he knew; and to-night, fresh as he was from the company of cheerful dowagers who were of the earth earthy, this difference was even more apparent to him than usual.
Penelope's mother doubtless owed something of her aloofness of appearance to her singular and picturesque dress, of which the mode had never varied for twenty years and more. The long sweeping skirts of black silk or wool, the cross-over bodice and the lace coif, which almost wholly concealed her banded hair, while not hiding the beautiful shape of her head, had originally been designed for her by the painter to whom, as a younger woman, she had so often sat. Since the great artist had first brought her the drawing of the dress in which he wished once more to paint her, she had never given a thought to the vagaries of fashion, so it came to pass that those about her would have found it impossible to think of her in any other garments than those composing the singular, stately costume which accentuated the mingled severity and mildness of her pale cameo-like face.
After Melancthon Robinson's death, his widow hadat once made it clear that she had no intention of returning to her mother; but every winter saw the two ladies spending some weeks together in London, and each summer Lady Wantley became her daughter's guest at Monk's Eype.
The rest of the year was spent by the elder woman at Marston Lydiate, the great Somersetshire country-seat to which she had been brought as a bride, and for which she now paid rent to her husband's successor. To Wantley the arrangement had been a painful one. He would have much preferred to let the place to strangers, and he had always refused to go there as Lady Wantley's guest.
As he stood, silent, by one of the high windows of the Picture Room, he remembered suddenly that the next day, August 8th, was his birthday, and that no human being, save a woman who had been his mother's servant for many years, was likely to remember the fact, or to offer him those congratulations which, if futile, always give pleasure. The bitterness of the thought was perhaps the outcome of foolish sentimentality, but it lent a sudden appearance of sternness and of purpose to his face.
Mrs. Robinson, coming into the room at that moment, was struck, for a moment felt disconcerted, by the look on her cousin's face. She was surprised and annoyed that he had returned so soon from the visit which, of course unknown to him, she had herself arranged he should make, in order that he might be absent at the time of the assembling of her ill-assorted guests.
Penelope feared the young man's dispassionate powers of observation; and as she walked down the long room, at the other end of which she saw first her mother's seated figure, and then, standing by one of the long, uncurtained windows, the unwelcome form of her cousin, her heart beat fast, for the little scene with Cecily Wake, added to other matters of moremoment, had set her nerves jarring. She dreaded the evening before her, feared the betrayal of a secret which she wished to keep profoundly hidden. Still, as was her wont, she met danger halfway.
'I am glad you are back to-night,' she said, addressing Wantley, 'for now you will be able to play host to Sir George Downing. I met him abroad this spring, and he has come here for a few days.'
'The Persian man?' She quickly noted that the young man's voice was full of amused interest and curiosity, nothing more; and, as she nodded her head, assurance and confidence came back.
'Well, you are certainly a wonderful woman.' He turned, smiling, to Lady Wantley, who was gazing at her daughter with her usual almost painful tenderness of expression. 'Penelope's romantic encounters,' he said gaily, 'would fill a book. Such adventures never befall me on my travels. In Spain a fascinating stranger turns out to be Don Carlos in disguise! In Germany she knocks up against Bismarck!'
'I knew the son!' she cried, protesting, but not ill-pleased, for she was proud of the good fortune that often befell her during her frequent journeys, of coming across, if not always famous, at least generally interesting and noteworthy people.
'And now,' concluded Wantley, 'the lion whom most people—unofficial people of course I mean'—he spoke significantly—'are all longing to see and to entertain, is bound to her chariot wheels!'
'Ah!' she cried eagerly, 'but that's just the point: he has a horror of being lionized. He's promised to write a report, and I suggested that he should come and do it here, where there's no fear of his being run to earth by the wrong kind of people. I don't suppose Theresa Wake knows there's such a person in the world as "Persian Downing."'
'And the niece, the young lady who is to be my special charge?' Wantley was still smiling. 'She'ssure to know something about him—that is, if you take in a daily paper at the Settlement.'
'Cecily?' Mrs. Robinson's voice softened. 'Dear little Cecily won't trouble her head about him at all.' She turned away quickly as Lady Wantley's gentle, insistent voice floated across the room to where the two cousins were standing.
'George Downing? I remember your father bringing a youth called by that name to our house, many years ago, when you were a child, my love.' She hesitated, as if seeking to remember something which only half lingered in her memory.
Her daughter waited in painful silence. 'Would the ghost of that old story of disgrace and pain never be laid?' she asked herself rebelliously.
But Lady Wantley was not the woman to recall a scandal, even had she been wont to recall such things, of one who was now under her daughter's roof. Her next words were, however, if a surprise, even less welcome to one of her listeners than would have been those she expected to hear.
'There was an American Mrs. Downing, a lady who came with an introduction to see your father. She wished to consult him about a home for emigrant children, and I heard—now what did I hear?' Again Lady Wantley paused.
Mrs. Robinson straightened her well-poised head.
'You probably heard, mamma, what is, I believe, true: that Lady Downing, as she is of course now, is not on good terms with her husband. They parted almost immediately after their marriage, and I believe that they have not met for years.'
Wantley looked at his cousin with some surprise; she spoke impetuously, a note of deep feeling in her voice, and as if challenging contradiction. Then, suddenly, she held up her hand with a quick warning gesture.
Her ears had caught the sound of footsteps forwhose measured tread she had learnt to listen, and a moment later the door opened, and the man of whom they had been speaking, advancing into the great room, stood before them.
Few of us realize how very differently our physical appearance and peculiarities strike each one of any new circle of persons to whose notice we are introduced; and, according to whether we are humble-minded or the reverse, the results of such inspection, were they suddenly revealed, would surprise or amaze us.
When Sir George Downing came forward to greet his hostess, and to be introduced to her mother and to her cousin, his outer man impressed each of them with direct and almost startling vividness. But in each case the impression produced was a very different one.
The first point which struck Lady Wantley in the tall, loosely-built figure was its remaining look of youth, of strength of will, and of purpose. This woman, to whom the things of the body were of such little moment, yet saw how noteworthy was the brown sun-burnt face, with its sharply-outlined features, and she gathered a very clear impression of the distinction and power of the man who bowed over her hand with old-fashioned courtesy and deference; more, she felt that there had been a time in her life when her daughter's guest would have attracted and interested her to a singular degree.
As he raised his head, their eyes met—deep-sunk, rather light-grey eyes, in some ways singularly alike, as Penelope had perceived with a certain shock of surprise, very soon after her first meeting with Sir George Downing. As these eyes, so curiously similar, met for a moment, fixedly, Downing, with a tightening of the heart, said to himself: 'She I must count an enemy.'
Lord Wantley, as he came forward to meet the distinguished stranger to whom he had just been told he must play host, observed him at once more superficially, and yet more narrowly and in greater detail, than Penelope's mother had done.
In the pleasant country-house—of the world worldly—from which Wantley had come, the man before him had been the subject of eager, amused discussion.
One of the talkers had known him as a youth, and had some recollection (of which he made the most) of the romantic circumstances which had attended his disgrace. His return was generally approved, all hoped to meet him, and even, vaguely, to benefit in purse by so doing; but it had been agreed that the recent change of Government lessened Downing's chances of persuading the Foreign Office to carry out the policy which he was known to have much at heart, and on which so many moneyed interests depended. It was said that the Prime Minister had refused to see him, that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had left town to avoid him! On the other hand, a lady present had heard, 'on the best authority,' that he had not been in England two days before he had been sent for by the Sovereign, with whom he had had a long private talk.
It was further declared that 'the city,' that mysterious potentate, more powerful nowadays than any Sovereign, held him in high esteem, regarding him as a benefactor to that race of investors who like to think that they have Imperial as well as personal interests at heart. And even those who deprecated the fact that one holding no official post should be allowed to influence the policy of their country, admitted that, in the past, England had owed much to such men as Persian Downing. 'Yes, but in these days the soldier of fortune has been replaced by the banker of fortune,' an ex-diplomatist had observed,and themothad been allowed to pass without challenge.
'And so,' thought Wantley, remembering the things which had been said, 'this is Persian Downing!'
The lean, powerful figure, habited in old-fashioned dress-clothes, looked older than he had imagined the famous man could be. The bushy, dark-brown moustache, streaked with strands of white hair, and the luminous grey eyes, penthoused under singularly straight eyebrows, gave a worn and melancholy cast to the whole countenance.
The younger man also noticed that Downing's hands and feet were exceptionally small, considering his great height. 'I wonder if he will like me,' he said to himself, and this, it must be admitted, was generally Wantley's first thought; but he no longer felt as he had done but a few moments before, listless and discontented with life—indeed, so keenly interested had he, in these few moments, become in Penelope's famous guest that he scarcely noticed the entrance into the room of the young girl of whom his cousin had spoken, and whom she had specially commended to his good offices.
Dressed in a plain white muslin frock, presenting her aunt's excuses in a low, even voice, Cecily Wake suggested to Lady Wantley, who had never seen her before, the comparison, when standing by Penelope, of a snowdrop with a rose. Perhaps this thought passed in some subtle way to Wantley's mind, for it was not till he happened to glance at the girl, across the round table which formed an oasis in the tapestry-hung dining-room, that he became aware that there was something attractive, and even unusual, in the round childish face and sincere, unquestioning eyes.
None of the party, save perhaps Wantley himself, possessed the art of small-talk. Penelope was strangely silent. 'Even she,' her cousin thought with a certainsatisfaction, 'is impressed by this remarkable man, who has done her the honour of coming here.'
Then he asked himself, none too soon, what had brought Persian Downing to Monk's Eype? The obvious explanation, that Downing had been attracted by the personality of one who was universally admitted to have an almost uncannily compelling charm, when she cared to exercise it, he rejected as too evident to be true.
Wantley thought he knew his beautiful cousin through and through; yet in truth there were many chambers of her heart where any sympathetic stranger might have easy access, but the doors of which were tightly locked when Wantley passed that way. Like most men, he found it difficult to believe that a woman lacking all subtle attraction for himself could possibly attract those of his own sex whom he favoured with his particular regard. David Winfrith was the exception which always proves a rule, and Wantley admitted unwillingly that in that case there was some excuse; for here, at any rate, had been on Penelope's part a moment of response. But to-night, and for many days to come, he was strangely, and, as he often reminded himself in later life, foolishly, culpably blind.
Gradually the conversation turned on that still so secret and mysterious country with which Sir George Downing was now intimately connected. His slow voice, even, toneless, as is so often that of those who have lived long in the East, acted, Wantley soon found, as a complete screen, when he chose that it should be so, to his thoughts.
Suddenly, and, as it appeared, in no connection with what had just been said at the moment, Lady Wantley, turning to Downing, observed, 'I perceive that you have a number-led mind?'
Penelope looked up apprehensively, but her brow cleared as the man to whom had been addressedthis singular remark replied simply and deferentially:
'If you mean that certain days are marked in my life, it is certainly so. Matters of moment are connected in my mind with the number seven.'
Wantley and Cecily Wake both looked at the speaker with extreme astonishment. 'I felt sure that it was so!' exclaimed Lady Wantley. 'Seven has also always been my number, but the knowledge inspires me with no fear or horror. It simply makes me aware that my times are in our Father's hands.' She added, in a lower voice: 'All predestination is centralized in God's elect, and all concurrent wills of the creature are thereunto subordinated.'
'He may be odd, but he must certainly think us odder,' thought Wantley, not without enjoyment.
But a cloud had come over Penelope's face. 'Mamma!' she said anxiously, and then again, 'Mamma!'
'I think he knows what I mean,' said Lady Wantley, fixing the grey eyes which seemed to see at once so much and so little on the face of her daughter's guest.
Again, to Wantley's surprise, Downing answered at once, and gravely enough: 'Yes, I think I do know what you mean, and on the whole I agree.'
Mrs. Robinson, glancing at her cousin with what he thought a look of appeal, threw a pebble, very deliberately, into the deep pool where they all suddenly found themselves. 'Do you really believe in lucky numbers?' she asked flippantly.
Downing looked at her fixedly for a moment. 'Yes,' he replied, 'and also in unlucky numbers.'
'I hope,' she cried—and as she spoke she reddened deeply—'that your first meeting with David Winfrith will take place on one of your lucky days. He is believed to have more influence concerning the matter you are interested in just now than anyone else, for he claims to have studied the question on the spot.'
'Ah!' thought Wantley, pleased as a man always is to receive what he believes to be the answer to a riddle; 'I know now what has brought Persian Downing to Monk's Eype!' and he also took up the ball.
'Winfrith claims,' he said, 'to have made Persia his special study. I believe he once spent six weeks there, on the strength of which he wrote a book. You probably came across him when he was in Teheran.'
But as he spoke he was aware that in Winfrith's book there was no mention of Downing, and that though at the time of the writer's sojourn in Persia no other Englishman had wielded there so great a power, or so counteracted influences inimical to his country's interests.
'No, I did not see him there. At the time of Mr. Winfrith's stay in Teheran'—Downing spoke with an indifference the other thought studied—'I was in America, where I have to go from time to time to see my partners.' He added, with a smile: 'I think you are mistaken in saying that Mr. Winfrith only spent six weeks in Persia. In any case, his book is good—very good.'
'I suppose,' said Wantley, turning to his cousin, 'that you have arranged for Winfrith to come over to-morrow, or Monday?'
'Oh no,' she answered hurriedly. 'He is going to be away for the next few days; after that, perhaps, Sir George Downing will meet him.' She spoke awkwardly, and Wantley felt he had been clumsy. But he thought that now he thoroughly understood what had happened. Winfrith had evidently no wish to meet informally the man whom his chief had not been willing to receive. Doubtless Penelope had done her best to bring her important new friend in contact with her old friend. She had failed, hence her awkward, hesitating answer to his question. But the young man knew his cousin, and the potency of herspell over obstinate Winfrith; he had no doubt that within a week the two men would have met under her roof, 'though whether the meeting will lead to anything,' he said to himself, 'remains to be seen.'
Wantley was, however, quite wrong. During the hours which Mrs. Robinson had spent that day riding with the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the name of Persian Downing had not once been mentioned, and at this very moment David Winfrith, playing, after an early dinner, a game of chess with his old father, saw in imagination his lovely friend acting as kind hostess to her mother, for whom he himself had never felt any particular liking, and to Miss Wake and her niece, against both of whom he had an unreasonable prejudice. Lord Wantley he believed to be still away; and, as he allowed his father to checkmate him, he felt a pang of annoyance at the thought that he himself was going to be absent during days of holiday which might have been so much better employed, in part at least, in Penelope's company. Not for many months, not, when he came to think of it, for some two years, had Mrs. Robinson been at once so joyously high-spirited and yet so submissive, so intimately confidential while yet so willing to take advice—in a word, so enchantingly near to himself, as she had been that day, riding along the narrow lanes which lay in close network behind the bare cliffs and hills bounding the coast.
But to Wantley, doing the honours of his smoking room to Sir George Downing, and later when taking him out to the terrace where Mrs. Robinson and Cecily were pacing up and down in the twilight, the presence of this distinguished visitor at Monk's Eype was fully explained by the fact that Winfrith was not only the near neighbour, but also the very good friend, of Mrs. Robinson, and, the young man ventured to think, of himself.
'Qui, la moitié et la plus belle moitié de la vie est cachée à l'homme qui n'a pas aimé avec passion.'—Stendhal.
'Qui, la moitié et la plus belle moitié de la vie est cachée à l'homme qui n'a pas aimé avec passion.'—Stendhal.
'Madrid la antesala del cielo.'Spanish Saying.
'Madrid la antesala del cielo.'Spanish Saying.
'Madrid la antesala del cielo.'Spanish Saying.
'Madrid la antesala del cielo.'
Spanish Saying.
Above, close to the window of a high narrow room which had once been the Catholic Lord Wantley's oratory, and which was next to the bedroom always occupied by Penelope herself, sat in the darkness Mrs. Mote.
The window directly overlooked the flagged terrace, the leafy scented gardens, and the sea, and there were members of Mrs. Robinson's household who considered it highly unfitting that an apartment so pleasantly situated should be the 'own room' of the plain, sturdy little woman who, after having been Penelope Wantley's devoted and skilful nurse for close on twenty years, had been promoted on her nursling's marriage to be her less skilful but equally devoted maid.
Mrs. Mote had never been what we are wont to call a pleasant woman. She was over thirty when she had first entered Lord and Lady Wantley's service as nurse to their only child, and as the years had gone on her temper had not improved, and her manner had not become more conciliating. Even in the days when Penelope had been a nervous, highly-strung little girl, Lady Wantley had had much to bear from 'Motey,' as the nurse had been early named by the child. Very feminine, under a hard, unprepossessingexterior which recalled that of Noah's wife in Penelope's old-fashioned Noah's ark, Motey instinctively disliked all those women—and, alas! there were many such, below and above stairs—who were more attractive than herself.
Lady Wantley, beautiful, beloved, and enjoying, even among many of the servant's own sort, a reputation for austere goodness and spiritual perfection, was for long years the object of poor Motey's special aversion. Singularly reticent, and taking pride in 'keeping herself to herself,' the woman never betrayed her feelings, or rather she did so in such small and intangible ways as were never suspected by the person most closely concerned. Lady Wantley recognised the woman's undoubted devotion to the child to whom she was herself so devoted, and she simply regarded Mrs. Mote's sullen though never disrespectful behaviour to herself as one of those unfortunate peculiarities of manner and temper which often accompany sterling worth. Lord Wantley had been so far old-fashioned that he disliked going anywhere without his wife, and the mother had felt great solace to leave her daughter in such sure hands; but she had sacrificed excellent maids of her own, and innumerable under-servants, to the nurse's peculiar temper and irritability.
There had been a moment, Penelope being then about seventeen, when Mrs. Mote's supremacy had trembled in the balance. The trusted nurse had played a certain part in the girl's first love affair, acting with a secretiveness, a lack of proper confidence in her master and mistress, which had made them both extremely displeased and angry, and there had been some question as to whether she should remain in their service. Mrs. Mote never forgot having overheard a short conversation between the headstrong girl and her mother. 'If you tell me it must be so, I will give up David Winfrith,' Penelope haddeclared, sobbing bitterly the while; 'but if you send Motey away I will throw myself into the sea!'
All this was now, however, ancient history. Mrs. Mote had been forgiven her plunge into vicarious romance, and a day had come, not, however, till after Lord Wantley's death, when Penelope's mother had admitted to herself that perhaps Motey had been more clear-sighted than herself. In any case, the old nurse had firmly established her position as a member of the family. She and Lady Wantley had grown old together, and even before Penelope's marriage the servant had learnt to regard her mistress not only with a certain affection, but with what she had before been unwilling to give her—namely, real respect. To her master she had always been warmly attached, and she mourned him sincerely, being pathetically moved when she learnt that he had left her, as 'a token of regard and gratitude,' the sum of five hundred pounds.
The phrase had touched her more than the money had done. Motey, as are so many servants, was lavishly generous, and she had helped with her legacy several worthless relations of her own to start small businesses which invariably failed. These losses, however, she bore with great philosophy. Her home was wherever her darling, her 'young lady,' her 'ma'am,' happened to be, and her circle that of the family with whose fortunes hers had now been bound up for so many years.
Mrs. Robinson's faithful affection for this old servant was one of the best traits in a somewhat capricious if generous character, the more so that the maid by no means always approved of even her mistress's most innocent actions and associates. Thus, she had first felt a rough contempt, and later a fierce dislike, of poor Melancthon Robinson.
There were two people, both men, whom Motey would have been willing to see more often with her mistress.
The one was David Winfrith, who, if now a successful, almost it might be said a famous man, had played a rather inglorious part in Penelope's first love affair. The other was young Lord Wantley, of whom the old nurse had constituted herself the champion in the days when her master and mistress had merely regarded the presence of the nervous, sensitive boy as an unpleasant duty.
Mrs. Mote's liking for these two young men was completely subordinate to her love for her nursling; she would cheerfully have seen either of them undergo the most unpleasant ordeal had Penelope thereby been saved the smallest pain or hurt. In fact, it was because she well knew how stanch a friend Winfrith could be, and how useful, in perhaps a slightly whimsical way, Lord Wantley had more than once proved himself in his cousin's service, that she would have preferred to see more of these two and less of certain others.
Ah, those others! There had always been a side of Mrs. Robinson's nature which thirsted for sentimental adventure, and yet of the three women who in their several ways loved her supremely—her mother, Cecily Wake, and the old nurse—only the last was really aware of this craving for romantic encounter. Mrs. Mote had too often found herself compelled to stand inactive in the wings of the stage on which her mistress was wont to take part in mimic, but none the less dangerous, combat, for her to remain ignorant of many things, not only unsuspected, but in a sense unthinkable, by either the austere mother or the girl friend.
Perhaps this blindness in those who yet loved her well was owing to the fact that, in the ordinary sense of the term, Penelope was no flirt. Indeed, those among her friends who belonged to a society which, if over-civilized, is perhaps the more ready to extend a large measure of sympathy to those of its number who feel an overmastering impulse to revert, in affairs of theheart, to primitive nature, regarded the beautiful widow as singularly free from the temptations with which they were themselves so sorely beset.
Doubtless because she was herself so physically perfect, physical perfection held for Penelope none of that potent, beckoning appeal it so often holds for even the most refined and intelligent women. Rather had she always been attracted, tempted, in a certain sense conquered, by the souls of those with whom her passion for romance brought her into temporary relation. Even as a girl she had disdained easy conquest, and at all times she had been, when dealing with men, as a skilful musician who only cares to play on the finest instruments. Often she was surprised and disturbed, even made indignant, both by the harmonies and by the discords she thus produced; and sometimes, again, she made a mistake concerning the quality of the human instrument under her hand.
As Mrs. Mote sat by her open window, her eyes seeking to distinguish among those walking on the terrace below the upright, graceful form of her mistress, she deliberately let her thoughts wander back to certain passages in her own and Mrs. Robinson's joint lives. In moments of danger we recall our hairbreadth escapes with a certain complacency; they induce a sense of sometimes false security, and just now this old woman, who loved Penelope so dearly, felt very much afraid.
The memory of two episodes came to still her fears. Though both long past, perhaps forgotten by Penelope, to Mrs. Mote they returned to-night with strange, uncomfortable vividness.
The hero of the one had been a Frenchman, of the other a Spaniard.
As for the Frenchman, Motey thought of him with acertain kindness, and even with regret, though he, too, as she put it to herself, had 'given her a good fright.' The meeting between the Comte de Lucque and Mrs. Robinson had taken place not very long after Melancthon Robinson's death, in that enchanted borderland which seems at once Switzerland and Italy.
The French lad—he was little more—was stranded there in search of health, and Penelope had soon felt for him that pity which, while so little akin to love, so often induces love in the creature pitied. She allowed, nay, encouraged, him to be her companion on long painting expeditions, and he soon made his way through, as others had done before him, to the outer ramparts of her heart.
For a while she had found him charming, at once so full of surprising naïvetés and of strange, ardent enthusiasms; so utterly unlike the younger Englishman of her acquaintance and differing also greatly from the Frenchmen she had known.
Brought up between a widowed mother and a monk tutor, the young Count was in some ways as ignorant and as enthusiastic as must have been that ancestor of his who started with St. Louis from Aiguesmortes, bound for Jerusalem. His father had been killed in the great charge of the Cuirassiers at the Battle of Reichofen, and Penelope discovered that he above all things wished to live and to become strong, in order that he might take a part in 'La Revanche,' that fantasy which played so great a rôle in the imagination of those Frenchmen belonging to his generation.
But when one evening Mrs. Robinson asked suddenly, 'Motey, how would you like to see me become a French Countess?' the nurse had not taken the question as put seriously, as, indeed, it had not been. Still, even the old servant, who regarded the fact of any man's being made what she quaintly called 'uncomfortable' by her mistress as a small,well-merited revenge for all the indignities heaped by his sex on hers—even Motey felt sorry for the Count when the inevitable day of parting came.
At first, Penelope read with some attention the long, closely-written letters which reached her day by day with faithful regularity, but there came a time when she was absorbed in the details of a small exhibition of the very latest manifestations of French art, and the Count's letters were scarcely looked at before they were thrown aside. Then, suddenly he made abrupt and most unlooked-for intrusion into Mrs. Robinson's life, at a time when the old nurse was accustomed to expect freedom from Penelope's studies in sentiment—that is, during the few weeks of the years which were always spent by Mrs. Robinson working hard in the studio of some great Paris artist.
Penelope had known how to organize her working life very intelligently; she so timed her visits to Paris as to arrange with a French painter, who was, like herself, what the unkind would call a wealthy amateur, to take over his flat, his studio, and his servants.
During nine happy weeks each spring Mrs. Robinson lived the busy Bohemian life which she loved, and which, she thought, suited her so well; but Mrs. Mote was never neglected, or, at least, never allowed herself to feel so, and occasionally her mistress found her a useful, if over-vigilant, chaperon. Mrs. Mote was on very good terms with the French servants with whom she was thus each year thrown into contact. Their easy gaiety beguiled even her grim ill-temper, and, fortunately, she never conceived the dimmest suspicion of the fact that they were all firmly persuaded that she was the humble, but none the less authentic, 'mère de madame'!
Now in the spring following her stay in Switzerland, not many days after she had settled down to workin Paris, Mrs. Robinson desired the excellentmaître d'hôtelto inform Mrs. Mote that she was awaited in the studio. 'Motey, you remember the French count we met in Switzerland last year?' Before giving the maid time to answer, she continued: 'Well, I heard from him this morning. He asks me to go and see him. He says he is very ill, and I want you to come with me.' Penelope spoke in the hurried way usual to her when moved by real feeling.
Then, when the two were seated side by side in one of the comfortable, shabby, open French cabs, of which even Mrs. Mote recognized the charm, Penelope added suddenly: 'Motey—you don't think—do you doubt he is really ill? It would be a shabby trick——'
'All gentlemen, as far as I'm aware, ma'am, do shabby tricks sometimes. There's that saying, "All's fair in love and war"; it's very advantageous to them. I don't suppose the Count's heard it, though; he knew very little English, poor young fellow!' But Motey might have spoken more strongly had she realized how very passive was to be on this occasion her rôle of duenna.
At last the fiacre stopped opposite a narrow door let into a high blank wall forming the side of one of those lonely quiet streets, almost ghostly in their sunny stillness, which may yet be found in certain quarters of modern Paris. Penelope gave her companion the choice of waiting for her in the carriage or of walking up and down. Mrs. Mote did not remonstrate with her mistress; she simply and sulkily expressed great distrust of Paris cabmen in general, and her preference for the pavement in particular. Then, with some misgiving, she saw Mrs. Robinson ring the bell. The door in the wall swung back, framing a green lawn, edged with bushes of blossoming lilac, against which Penelope's white serge gown was silhouetted for a brief moment, before the bright vision was shut out.
First walking, then standing, on the other side ofthe street, finally actually sitting on the edge of the pavement, but not before she had assured herself even in the midst of her perturbation of spirit that it was spotlessly clean, the old nurse waited during what seemed to her an eternity of time, and went through what was certainly an agony of fright.
The worst kind of fear is unreasoning. Mrs. Mote's imagination conjured up every horror; and nothing but the curious lack of initiative which seems common to those who have lived in servitude held her back from doing something undoubtedly foolish.
At last, when she was making up her mind to something very desperate indeed, though what form this desperate something should take she could not determine, there fell on her ears, coming nearer and nearer, the sound of deep sobbing. A few moments later the little green door, opening slowly, revealed two figures, that of Mrs. Robinson, pale and moved, but otherwise looking much as usual, and that of a stout, middle-aged woman, dressed in black, who, crying bitterly, clung to her, seeming loth to let her go.
Very gently, and not till they were actually standing on the pavement outside the open door, did Penelope disengage herself from the trembling hands which sought to keep her. Motey did not understand the words, 'Mon pauvre enfant, il vous aime tant! Vous reviendrez demain, n'est ce pas, madame?' but she understood enough to say no word of her long waiting, to give voice to no grumbling, as she and her mistress walked slowly down the sunny street, after having seen the little green door shut behind the short, homely figure, lacking all dignity save that of grief.
In those days, as Mrs. Mote, sitting up there remembering in the darkness, recalled with bitterness, Mrs. Robinson had had no confidante but her old nurse, and Penelope had instantly begun pouring out, as was her wont, the tale of all that had happened in the hour she had been away.
'Oh, Motey, that is his poor mother! It is so horribly sad. He is her only child. Her husband was killed in the Franco-Prussian War when she was quite a young woman, and she has given up her whole life to him. Now the poor fellow is dying'—Penelope shuddered—'and I have promised to go and see him every day till he does die.'
It was with no feeling of pity that Mrs. Mote now turned in her own mind to the second episode.
A journey to Madrid in search of pictured dons and high hidalgos had led Mrs. Robinson to make the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman, a certain Don José Moricada; and the old Englishwoman, with her healthy contempt of extravagance of behaviour and language, could now smile grimly as she evoked the striking individuality of the man who had given her the worst quarter of an hour she had ever known.
At the time of their first meeting Don José had seemed to Penelope to embody in his single person all the qualities which may be supposed to have animated the noble models whose good fortune it was to be immortalized by Velasquez; indeed, he ultimately proved himself possessed to quite an inconvenient degree of the passion and living fervour which the great artist, who was of all painters Penelope's most admired master, could so subtly convey.
With restrained ardour the Don had placed himself, almost at their first meeting, at the beautiful Englishwoman's disposal, and Penelope had seldom met with a more intelligent and unobtrusive cicerone. At his bidding the heavy doors of old Madrid mansions, embowered in gardens, and hidden behind gates which had never opened even to the most courteous of strangers, swung back, revealing treasures hithertojealously hidden from the foreign lover of Spanish art. Together they had journeyed to the Escurial in leisurely old-world fashion, driving along the arid roads and stony tracks so often traversed at mule gallop by Philip of Arragon; and the mouldering courts of the great death-haunted palace through which her Spanish gallant led Mrs. Robinson had rarely seen the passage of a better contrasted couple.
Softer hours were spent in the deserted scented gardens of Buen Retiro, and not once did the Spaniard imply by word or gesture that he expected his companion's assent to the significant Spanish proverb,Dame ye darte he(Give to me, and I will give to thee).
Penelope had never enjoyed a more delicate and inconsequent romance, or a more delightful interlude in what was then a life overfull of unsought pleasures and of interests sprung upon it. In those days Mrs. Robinson had not found herself. She was even then still tasting, with a certain tearfulness, the joys of complete freedom, and those who always lie in wait, even if innocently, to profit by such freedoms, soon called her insistently back to England.
They had an abettor in Mrs. Mote, whose long-suffering love of her mistress had seldom been more tried than during the sojourn in Spain, spent by the maid in gloomy hotel solitude, or, more unpleasing still, in company where she felt herself regarded by the Spaniard as an intolerable and somewhat grotesque duenna, and by her mistress as a bore, to be endured for kindness' sake. But the boredom of her old nurse's companionship was not one which Penelope often felt called upon to share with her indefatigable cavalier, and, as there came a time when Don José and Mrs. Robinson seemed to the old nurse to be scarcely ever apart, Mrs. Mote often felt both angry and lonely.
Suddenly Penelope grew tired, not of Spain, but of Madrid, perhaps also of her Spanish friend, especially when she discovered, with annoyance, that he hadarranged, if not to accompany her, at least to travel on the same days as herself first to Toledo, and thence to Seville. Also something else had happened which had proved very distasteful to Mrs. Robinson.
The English Ambassador, an old friend of her parents, and a man who, as he had begun by reminding Penelope at the outset of their detestable conversation, was almost old enough to be her grandfather, had called on Mrs. Robinson and said a word of caution.
The word was carefully chosen; for the old gentleman was not only a diplomatist, but he had lived in Spain so many years that he had caught some of the Spanish elusiveness of language and courtesy of phrase. Penelope, with reddening cheek, had at first made the mistake of affecting to misunderstand him. Then, with British bluntness, he had spoken out. 'Spaniards are not Englishmen, my dear young lady. You met your new friend at my house, and so I feel a certain added responsibility. Of course, I know you have been absolutely discreet; still, I feel the time has come when I should warn you. These Spanish fellows when in love sometimes give a lot of trouble.' He had jerked the sentence out, angry with her, angrier perhaps with himself.
The day before Mrs. Robinson was leaving Madrid, and not, as she somewhat coldly informed Don José Moricada, for Toledo, there was a question of one last expedition.
On the outskirts of the town, in an old house reputed to have been at one time the country residence of that French Ambassador, Monsieur de Villars, whose wife had left so vivid an account of seventeenth-century Madrid, were to be seen a magnificent collection of paintings and studies by Goya. According to tradition, they had been painted during the enchanted period of the Don Juanesque artist's love passages with the Duchess of Alba, and very early in heracquaintance with the Spaniard Penelope had expressed a strong desire to see work done by the great painter under such romantic and unusual circumstances. And Don José had been at considerable pains to obtain the absent owner's permission. His request had been acceded to only after a long delay, and at a moment when Mrs. Robinson had become weary both of Madrid and of her Spanish gallant's company.
It seemed, however, churlish to refuse to avail herself of a favour obtained with so much difficulty. For awhile she had hesitated; not only did the warning of the old Ambassador still sound most unpleasantly in her ears, but of late there had come something less restrained, more ardent, in the attitude of the Spaniard, proving only too significantly how right the old Englishman had been. But even were she to return another year to Madrid, the opportunity of visiting this curious old house and its, to her, most notable contents, was not likely to recur.
The appointment for the visit to Los Francias was therefore made and kept; but when Don José, himself driving the splendid English horses of which he was so proud, called at the hotel for Mrs. Robinson, he found, to his angry astonishment, that her old nurse, the maid he so disliked, was to be of the company.
During the drive, Mrs. Mote, in high good-humour at her approaching release from Madrid, noticed with satisfaction that her mistress's Spanish friend seemed preoccupied and gloomy, though Mrs. Robinson's high spirits and apparent pleasure in the picturesque streets and byways they passed through might well have proved infectious.
At last Los Francias was reached; and after walking through deserted, scented gardens, where Nature was disregarding, with triumphant success, the Bourbon formality of myrtle hedges, marble fountains, and sunk parterres, the ill-assorted trio found themselvesbeing ushered by a man-servant, with great ceremony, into a large vestibule situated in the centre of a house recalling rather a French château than a Spanish country-house.
In answer to a muttered word from the Spaniard, Mrs. Mote heard her mistress answer decidedly: 'My maid would much prefer to come with us than to stay here with a man of whose language she doesn't know a word. Besides, this isnotthe last time. I hope to come back some day, and you will surely visit England.'
On hearing these words Don José had turned and looked at his beautiful companion with a curious gleam in his small, narrow-lidded eyes, and a foreboding had come to the old servant.
The high rooms, opening the one into the other, still contained shabby pieces of fine old French furniture, of which the faded gilding and moth-eaten tapestries contrasted oddly with the vivid, strangely living paintings which seemed ready to leap from the walls above them. The heavy stillness, the utter emptiness, of the great salons oddly affected the old Englishwoman, walking behind the other two; she felt a vague misgiving, and was more than ever glad to remember that in a few days Mrs. Robinson would have left Madrid.
Suddenly, when strolling through the largest, and apparently the last of the whole suite of rooms, Mrs. Mote missed her mistress and Don José.
Had they gone forward or turned back? She looked round her, utterly bewildered, then spied in the wall a narrow aperture to which admission was apparently given by a hinged panel, hung, as was the rest of the salon, with red brocade.
This, then, was where and how the other two had disappeared. She felt relieved, even a little ashamed of her unreasoning fear.
For a moment she hesitated, then stepped through the aperture into a narrow corridor, shaped like an S,and characteristic—but Motey knew nothing of this—of French château architecture; for these curiously narrow passages, tucked away in the thickness of the wall, form a link between the state rooms of many a great palace and the 'little apartments' arranged for their owner's daily and familiar use.
The inner twist of the S-shaped corridor was quite dark, but very soon Mrs. Mote found that the passage terminated with an ordinary door, through which, the upper half being glazed, she saw her mistress and the Spaniard engaged in an apparently very animated conversation.
The room in which stood the two she sought was almost ludicrously unlike those to which it was so closely linked by the passage in which the onlooker was standing. Perhaps the present owner of the old house, or more probably his wife, had found the Goyas oppressive company, for here no pictures hung on brocaded walls; instead, the round, domed room, lighted only from above, was lined with a gay modern wall-paper, of which the design simulated a fruitful vine, trained against green trellis-work. Modern French basket furniture, the worse for wear, was arranged about a circular marble fountain, which, let into the tiled floor, must have afforded coolness on the hottest day.
Memories of former occupants, and of another age, were conjured up by a First Empire table, pushed back against the wall; and opposite the door behind which the old nurse stood peering was the entrance, wide open, to a darkened room, while just inside this room Mrs. Mote was surprised to see a curious sign of actual occupancy—a small, spider-legged table, on which stood a decanter of white wine, a plate of chocolate cakes, and a gold bowl full of roses.
But these things were rather remembered later, for at the time the old woman's whole attention was centred on her mistress and the latter's companion.Mrs. Robinson, her back turned to the darkened room beyond, was standing by a slender marble pillar, rimmed at the top with a tarnished gilt railing; a long grey silk cloak and boat-shaped hat, covered with white ostrich feathers, accentuated her tall slenderness, for in these early days of widowhood Penelope was exquisitely, miraculously slender. With head bent and eyes cast down, she seemed to be listening, embarrassed and ashamed, to Don José Moricada. One arm and hand, the latter holding a glove, rested on the marble pillar, and her whole figure, if instinct with proud submissiveness, breathed angry, embarrassed endurance.
As for the Spaniard, always sober of gesture, his arms folded across his breast in the dignified fashion first taught to short men by Napoleon, he seemed to be pouring out a torrent of eager, impassioned words, every sentence emphasized by an imperious glance from the bright dark eyes, which, as Mrs. Mote did not fail to remind herself, had always inspired her with distrust.
The unseen spectator of the singular scene also divined the protestations, the entreaties, the reproaches, which were being uttered in a language of which she could not understand one word.
For a few moments she felt pity, even a certain measure of sympathy for the man. To her thinking—and Mrs. Mote had her own ideas about most matters—Penelope had brought this torrent of words and reproaches on herself; but when the old nurse heard the voice of the Spaniard become more threatening and less appealing, when she saw Mrs. Robinson suddenly turn and face him, her head thrown back, her blue eyes wide open with something even Motey had never seen in them before—for till that day Penelope and Fear had never met—then the onlooker felt the lesson had indeed lasted long enough, and that, even at the risk of angering her mistress, thetime had come when she should interfere. Her hand sought and found the handle of the door. She turned and twisted it this way and that, but the door remained fast, and suddenly she realized that Penelope was a prisoner.
In this primitive, but none the less potent, way had the Spaniard made himself, in one sense at least, master of the situation—the old eternal situation between the man pursuing and the woman fleeing.
Caring little whether she was now seen or not, Mrs. Mote pressed her face closely to the glass pane. She looked at the lithe sinewy figure of Penelope's companion with a curiously altered feeling; a great sinking of the heart had taken the place of the pity and contempt of only a moment before.
For awhile neither Penelope nor Don José saw the face behind the door. Mrs. Robinson had turned away, and had begun walking slowly round the domed hall, her companion following her, but keeping his distance. At last, when passing for the second time the open door leading to the darkened room beyond, she had looked up, uttered an exclamation of angry disgust, and had slackened her footsteps, while he, quickening his, had decreased the space between them....
When, in later life, Penelope unwillingly recalled the scene, her memory preferred to dwell on the grotesque rather than on the sinister side of the episode. But at the moment of ordeal—ah, then her whole being became very literally absorbed in supplication to the dead two who when living had never failed her: her father and Melancthon Robinson.
They may have been permitted to respond, or perhaps a more explicable cause may have brought about a revival of pride and good feeling in the Spanish gentleman; for when there came release it seemed as if Mrs. Mote was the unwittingdea ex machina.
The two, moving within panther and doe wise, both saw, simultaneously, the plain, homely face of Mrs. Robinson's old nurse staring in upon them, and the sight, affording the woman infinite comfort and courage, seemed to withdraw all power from the man, for very slowly, with apparent reluctance, Don José Moricada turned on his heel, and unlocked the door.
The maid did not reply to the rebuke, uttered in a low tone, 'Oh, Motey, we've been waiting for you such a long time.' Instead, she turned to the Spaniard. 'My lady is tired, sir. Surely you've showed her enough by now.'
He bent his head, silently opening again the glazed door and waiting for them to pass through, as his only answer.
But Penelope's nerve had gone. She was clutching her old nurse's arm with desperate tightening fingers. 'I can't go through there, Motey, unless'—she spoke almost inaudibly—'unless you can make him walk through first.'
Mrs. Mote was quite equal to the occasion. 'Will you please go on, sir? My mistress is nervous of the dark passage.'
Again the Spaniard silently obeyed the old servant, and Penelope never saw the look, full of passionate humiliation and dumb craving for forgiveness, with which he uttered the words—though they brought vague relief—explaining that he was leaving his groom to drive her and her maid back to the hotel alone.
During the moments which followed, Mrs. Robinson, looking straight before her, spoke much of indifferent matters, and pointed out to Mrs. Mote many an interesting and characteristic sight by the roadside; but both the speaker's knee and the hands clasped across it trembled violently the while, and when they were at last safely back again in the hotel, after Mrs. Robinson had said some gracious words to Don José Moricada's English groom, and had given himmore substantial tokens of her gratitude for the many pleasant drives she had taken with his noble master, a curious thing happened.
Having prepared the bath which had been her mistress's first order when they found themselves in their own rooms, Motey, now quite her stolid self again, on opening the sitting-room door, found her mistress engaged in a strange occupation. Mrs. Robinson, still standing, was cutting the long grey silk cloak, which she had been wearing but a moment before, into a thousand narrow strips. The maid's work-basket, a survival of Penelope's childhood—for it had been the little girl's first birthday-gift to her nurse—had evidently provided the sharp cutting-out scissors for the sacrifice.
To a woman who has done much needlework there is something dreadful, unnatural, in the wanton destruction of a faithful garment, and Mrs. Mote stood looking on, silent indeed, but breathing protest in every line of her short figure. But Penelope, after a short glance, had at once averted her eyes, and completed her task with what seemed to the other a dreadful thoroughness.
Then the relentless scissors attacked the charming hat. Each long white plume was quickly reduced to a heap of feathery atoms, and the exquisitely plaited straw was slashed through and through. 'You can give all the other things I have worn to-day to the chambermaid,' Mrs. Robinson said quickly, 'and Motey—never, never speak of—of—our stay here, in Madrid I mean, to me again. We shall leave to-night, not to-morrow morning.'
And now, looking down below, seeing the moving figures pacing slowly all together, then watching two of the shadowy forms detach themselves from the rest, and wander off into the pine-wood, then back again, down the steps which led to the lower moonlit terracesand so to the darker sea-shore, Mrs. Mote felt full of vague fears and suspicions.