CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LITTLE RIFT.
It was summer-time in London; the butterfly season, in which the metropolis of the world puts on such a splendour of gaiety and luxury that it is hard to remember the fog and damp and dreariness of a long winter; hard to believe that this stately West End London can ever be otherwise than beautiful. Are not her hotels palaces, and her parks paradises of foliage and flowers, fashion and beauty—with only an occasional incursion from the Processional Proletariat? Country cousins seeing the great city in this joyous season may be excused for thinking that life in London is always delectable; and, bored to death in their country quarters in the dull depth of an agricultural winter, or suffering under the discomforts of a ten-mile journey behind a pair of “boilers,” on a snow-bound road, to a third-rate ball, may not unnaturally envy the children of the city their January and February dances, and dinners, and theatres, all, as these rustics imagine, within a quarter of an hour’s drive.
Eve Vansittart thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of a London season; the jaunts and excitements by day; Hurlingham, Sandown, Ascot, Henley, Lord’s, Barn Elms; the ever-delightful morning ride, the evening drive in the Park, with its smiling flower-beds, ablaze with gaudy colour that rivalled the scarlet plumes and shining breast-plates flashing past now and again between the close ranks of carriages. Yes, London was brilliant, vivid, noisy, full of startling sights and sounds by day; and by night a city of enchantment, where one might wander from house to house to mingle in a mob of more or less beautiful women, and beautiful gowns, and diamonds that took one’s breath away by their magnificence. A city of fairyland, with awnings over stately doorways, and gardens and balconies aglitter with coloured lamps; and gorgeous reception-rooms where one heard all that there is of the most exquisite in modern music—violin and ’cello, tenor and soprano—the stars of opera and concert-hall, breathing their finer strains for the delight of these choicer assemblies.
There are circles and circles in London, as many as in the progressive After-life of Esoteric Buddhism, and it is not to be supposed that a small Hampshire squire, with a paltry three thousand a year, was in the uppermost and most sacred heaven; but the circles touch and mingle very often in the larger gatherings of the season, and though Eve Vansittart was not on intimate terms with duchesses, she often rubbed shoulders with them, and for an eveninglived the life they lived, and thrilled to the same melodious strains, and melted almost to tears to the same music of Wolff or Hollmann, till pleasure verged upon pain, and borne upon the long-drawn notes of violin or ’cello, came sad, sweet memories of the years that were gone. Vansittart knew plenty of people who were decidedly “nice,” and these included a sprinkling of the nobility, and a good many givers of fine parties. His wife’s beauty and charm of manner ensured her a prompt acceptance among people outside that circle of old friends who would have accepted her as a duty, even had she been neither lovely nor amiable.
The most enjoyable parties must at last produce satiety, if they come every night, and sometimes two or three in a night; and there came a time when Eve’s strength began to flag, and her spirits to droop a little in the midst of these pleasures, this paradise of music and Parisian comedy, of dances after midnight, and coaching meets at noon.
Vansittart noticed the pallid morning face and purple shadows under the dark grey eyes.
“We are doing too much, Eve,” he said anxiously. “I am letting you kill yourself.”
“It is a very pleasant kind of death,” answered Eve, smiling at him across the small breakfast-table, where a grilled chicken for him, a dish of strawberries for her, comprised the simple repast, a repast over which they always lingered as long as their engagements allowed, since it was the only confidential hour in the day. At luncheon people were always running in; or there was a snug little party invited for that friendly meal. Dinner was rarely eaten at home, except when they had a dinner-party. “It is a very delicious death, and I shall take a long time killing. Perhaps when I am as old as Honoria, Duchess of Boscastle, I shall begin to feel I have had enough.”
“My dearest, I love to see you happy and amused, but I mustn’t let you wear yourself out. We must have a quiet day now and then.”
“As many quiet days as you like, as long as they are spent with you. Shall we go to Haslemere and take the girls for a picnic—this very day? No, there is Maud’s dinner-party to-night. Fernhurst would be too far. We could not get home to dress, without a rush, if we took a really long day on Bexley Hill.”
“Fernhurst and the sisters will keep till the autumn, especially as you will be having Sophy here to-morrow.”
“Yes, I shall be having Sophy”—with a faint sigh. “We shall have no more cosy little breakfasts like this for a whole week.”
“Nonsense. We can send Sophy’s breakfast up to her room, with strict injunctions not to get up till eleven. People who ain’tused to parties always want a lot of sleep in the morning. Sophy shall be made to sleep. But, for to-day, now? What should you say to a long, lazy day on the river? We can take the train to Moulsey, and row down to Richmond.”
“Too delicious for words. But there is a tea-party in Berkeley Square, and another at Hyde Park Gardens. I promised to go to both.”
“Then you will go to neither. You can send telegrams from Moulsey to say you are seedy, and your doctor ordered a quiet day in the country—I being your doctor for the nonce. We’ll steep ourselves in the mild beauty of Old Father Thames, a poor little river when one remembers Danube and Rhine; but he will serve for our holiday.”
He rang for a time-table, found a train that was to leave Waterloo at eleven, and ordered the victoria to take them to the station.
“Now, Eve, your coolest frock, and your favourite poet to read in your luxurious seat in the stern, while I toil at the oar. Be sure you will not read a page during the whole afternoon! The willows and rushes, the villa gardens dipping to the water’s edge, the people in the passing boats, the patient horses on the tow-path—those will be your books, living, moving, changing things, compared with which Keats and Musset are trash, Endymion colourless, La Carmago a phantom.”
“I’ll take Musset,” said Eve, pouncing upon a vellum-bound duodecimo—achef d’œuvreof Zaehnsdorf’s, which was one of Vansittart’s latest gifts. “He has opened a new world to me.”
“A very wicked world for your young innocence to explore; a world of midnight rendezvous and early morning assassinations; a world of unholy loves and savage revenges—the dagger, the bowl, the suicide’s despair, the satiated worldling’s vacuity. Yet he is a poet—ain’t he, Eve?—the greatest France ever produced. Compared with that fiery genius Hugo is but a rhetorician.”
They were at Hampton before noon, and on the river in the fierce golden sunlight, when Hampton Church clock struck the hour, Eve leaning back in her cushioned seat, gazing dreamily at the lazy rower midships. They had the current to help them, so there was no need for strenuous toil. The oars dipped gently; the church and village, Garrick’s Temple, the gaily decked house-boats with gardens on their roofs and bright striped awnings, barracks, bridge, old Tudor Palace, drifted by like shadows in a dream. Eve did not open De Musset, though the ribbon marked a page where passion hung suspended in tragic possibilities; a crisis which might well have stimulated curiosity. She was too happy to be curious about anything. It was her first holiday on the river, they two alone.
“If this is your idea of resting let us rest very often,” said Eve.
She would not hear of landing at Kingston for luncheon. She wanted nothing but the river, and the sunshine, and his company, all to herself. She would have some tea, if he liked, later; and seeing an open-air tea-house a little lower down the river, and a garden where at this early hour there were no visitors, Vansittart pushed the nozzle of his skiff in among the reeds, and they landed, and ordered tea and eggs and bread and butter to be served in a rustic arbour close by the glancing tide.
“I dare say there are water-rats about,” said Eve, gathering her pale pink frock daintily round her ankles, “but I feel as if I should hardly mind one to-day.”
They both enjoyed this humble substitute for their customary luncheon. It was a relief to escape the conventional menu—the everlasting mayonnaise, the cutlets hot or cold, the too familiar chicken and lamb. The tea and eggs in this vine-curtained bower had the most exquisite of all flavours—novelty.
“I am so happy,” cried Eve, “that I think, like Miss de Bourgh in ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I could sing—if I had learnt.”
“Your face is my music,” said her husband, his face reflecting her happy smile; “your laughter is better than singing.”
“Oh, you mustn’t, you really mustn’t talk like that; at least, not till our silver wedding,” protested Eve. “You will have to make a speech, perhaps, on that anniversary, and you might incorporate that idea in it. ‘What, ladies and gentlemen, in returning thanks for your kind compliments and this truly magnificent epergne, can I say of my wife of five and twenty blissful years, except that I love her, I love her, I love her? Her face is my music; her laughter is better than singing.’ How would that do, Jack?”
Her clear laugh rang out in the still summer air. No female of the great Bounder tribe could have enjoyed herself more frankly. Vansittart would hardly have been surprised if she had offered to exchange hats with him.
“Five and twenty years! A quarter of a century,” she said musingly. “I wonder what we shall be like, three and twenty years hence—what the world will be like—what kind of frocks will be worn?”
“Will the cylinder hat be abolished?”
“Shall we still travel by steam, or only by electricity?”
“What gun-maker will be in vogue?”
“What kind of lap-dog will be the rage?”
In this wise they dawdled an hour away, having garden and arbour all to themselves, till after three o’clock, when a couple of Bounder-laden boats came noisily to the reedy bank, and their human cargo landed, scrambling upon shore, hilarious, exploding into joyous cockney jests, with the true South London twang.
“Come,” said Vansittart, “it is time we were off.”
“Are you sure you have rested?”
“From my Herculean labours? Yes.”
They drifted down the river, praising or dispraising the villas on the Middlesex shore, inhaling the sweetness of flowering clover from the Surrey fields; he leaning lazily on his sculls, she prattling to him, as much lovers as in the outset of their wooing; and so to Teddington Lock, where they had to wait for a boat to come out, before their boat went in.
It was the laziest hour of the day, and scarcely a leaf stirred among the willows on the eyot hard by. There was only the sound of the water, and the voices of the rowers, muffled by the heavy wooden gates and high walls of the smaller lock. Suddenly the doors opened. A skiff with four passengers slowly emerged from the yawning darkness, and a voice, strong, yet silvery sweet, broke upon the quiet of the scene, a voice at whose first word Vansittart started as if he had been shot.
The speaker started too, and gave a cry of surprise that was almost rapture. A girl, hatless, with dark hair heaped carelessly on the top of her small head, a girl with the loveliest Italian eyes Eve had ever seen, leaned forward over the gunwale, stretching out both her gloveless hands to Vansittart.
“It is you,” she cried in Italian; “I thought I should never see you again;” and then, with a quick glance at Eve, and in almost a whisper, “Is that your wife?”
“Si, Si’ora.”
The girl looked at Eve with bold unfriendly eyes, and from her looked back again to Vansittart, as his boat passed into the lock. Her manner had been so absorbing, her beauty was so startling, that it was only in this last moment that Eve recognized the man rowing as Sefton, and saw that the other two passengers were a stout middle-aged woman and a little boy, both of them dark eyed and foreign looking, like the girl.
When Eve and Vansittart looked at each other in the gloom of the lock both were deadly pale.
“Who is that girl?” she asked huskily.
“An Italian singer—Signora Vivanti. You must have heard of her; she is the rage at the Apollo.”
“But she knows you—intimately. She was enraptured at seeing you. Her whole face lighted up.”
“That is the southern manner; an organ-grinder will do as much for you if you fling him a penny.”
“How did you come to know her?”
“In Italy, years ago, before she began to be famous.”
They were out of the lock by this time, and in the broad sunshine.Eve could see that her husband’s pallor was not an illusive effect of the green gloom in that deep well they had just left.
He was white to the lips.
Sefton! Sefton and Fiordelisa hand in glove with each other! That was a perilous alliance. And Lisa’s manner, claiming him so impulsively, darting that evil look at his wife! He saw himself hemmed round with dangers, saw the menace of his domestic peace from two most formidable influences: on the one hand Lisa’s slighted love; on the other Sefton’s hatred of a successful rival. The fear of untoward complications, coming suddenly upon the happy security of his wedded life, was so absorbing that he was unconscious of Eve’s pallor and of her suppressed agitation while questioning him.
“You knew her in Italy,” said Eve, her head bent a little, one listless hand dabbling in the sunlit water that reflected the vivid colouring of the boat in gleams of lapis and malachite. “In what part of Italy? Tell me all about her. I am dying of curiosity. There was such odious familiarity in her manner.”
“Again I must refer you to any organ-grinder as an example of southern exuberance.”
“Yes, yes, that is all very fine, but Signora Vivanti must belong to a higher grade than the organ-grinder. She is not to be judged by his standard.”
“There you are wrong. She is of peasant birth.”
“Indeed. She certainly looks common; beautiful, but essentially common. Well, Jack, where and when did you meet her?”
“Years ago, as I told you. Where?” hesitatingly, as if trying to fix a vague memory, while lurid before his mental vision there rose the scene at Florian’s, the lights, the crowd, the Babel of music from brass and strings, mandoline and flute, every stone of the city resonant with varied melodies. “Where?” he repeated, seeing her looking at him impatiently. “Why, I think it was in Verona.”
“You think. She had a very distinct memory of meeting you, at any rate”—with a little scornful laugh. “If you were her bosom friend her greeting could not have been warmer.”
“Mere Celtic impulsiveness. One meets with as much warmth in the south of Ireland. Hotel waiters have the air of clansmen, who would shed their blood for us. Hotel acquaintances seem as old friends.”
“How did you come to know this girl—peasant born, as you say?”
“She was in a factory, and I was going over the factory, and I talked to her, and she told me her troubles, and I was interested and——The same sort of thing happens a dozen times on a Continental tour. You don’t want chapter and verse, I hope. That memory is immeshed in a tangle of other memories. I should only deceive you if I went into particulars.”
He had recovered himself by this time, and the colour had come slowly back to his face. Eve sat dumbly watching him as he bent over the sculls, rowing faster than he need have done, much faster than on the other side of the lock. He was ready to lie with an appalling recklessness if he could by so doing set up a barrier of falsehood between his wife and the true story of that night in Venice. He looked at her presently, and saw that she was troubled. He smiled, but there was no answering smile.
“My darling, you are not by way of being jealous, I hope,” he said gaily. “You are not unhappy because a peasant girl held out her hands to me.”
“Signora Vivanti has been long enough in England to know that a woman does not behave in that way to an almost stranger,” said Eve. “Why did you look frightened at the sound of her voice when the boat came out of the lock? Why did you turn pale when she spoke to you?”
“Did I really turn pale? I suppose I was a little scared at her demonstrative address, fearing lest it should offend you. One has time to think of so many contingencies in a few moments. But I did not imagine you would take the matter so very seriously. Come, dearest, I think you know I have but one divinity below the stars, and worship at only one shrine.”
“Now, perhaps—but what do I know of the past?”
“If in the past I have admired and even fancied I loved women less admirable than yourself, be sure this woman was not one of them. No ghost of a dead love looks out of her eyes, beautiful as they are.”
“I must believe you,” sighed Eve. “I want to believe you, and to be happy again.”
“Foolish Eve. Can it be that an irrepressible young woman’s greeting could interfere with your happiness?”
“It was foolish, no doubt. Women are very foolish when they love their husbands as I love you. There are scores of women I meet who think of their husbands as lightly as of their dressmakers. Would you like me to be that kind of wife—to be lunching and gadding, and driving and dancing in one direction, while you are betting and dining and card-playing somewhere else? I should be nearer being a woman of fashion than I am now.”
“Be ever what you are now. Be jealous, even, if jealousy be a proof of love.”
“There was a child in the boat—a handsome black-eyed boy. Is he her child, do you think?”
Having affected ignorance at the outset, Vansittart was forced to maintain his attitude.
“Chi lo sa?” he said, with a careless shrug.
“Was it not odd that Mr. Sefton should be escorting her?”
“Not especially odd. She is a public character, and has troops of admirers, no doubt. Why should not Sefton be among them?”
“I never heard him mention her when he was talking of the theatres.”
“Men seldom speak of the woman they admire—especially if the lady is not in society—and Sefton is reticent about a good many things.”
After this they talked of trifles, lightly, but with a somewhat studied lightness. Eve seemed again content; but her gaiety was gone, as if her spirits had drooped with the vanishing of the sun, which now at five o’clock was hidden by threatening clouds.
At Richmond Bridge they left their boat, to be taken back by a waterman, and walked through the busy town to the station. An express took them to London in good time for dressing and dining at Lady Hartley’s state dinner. She had a large house in Hill Street this year, and was entertaining a good deal.
“My dear Eve, you are looking utterly washed out,” she said to her sister-in-law in the drawing-room after dinner. “You must come to us at Redwold directly after Goodwood—you could come straight from Goodwood, don’t you know—and let me nurse you.”
“You are too kind. I think, though, it would be a greater rest if I were to go to Fernhurst for a few days, and let the sisters and Nancy take care of me. A taste of the old poverty, the whitewashed attics, and the tea-dinners would act as a tonic. I am debilitated by pleasures and luxuries.”
“You were looking bright enough last night at Mrs. Cameron’s French play.”
“Was I? Perhaps I laughed too much at Coquelin cadet, or eat too many strawberries.”
Lady Hartley had an evening party after the dinner, and it was a shock for Vansittart on coming into the drawing-room at half-past ten, after a long-drawn-out political discussion with a big-wig of Sir Hubert’s party, to find Sefton and Eve sitting side by side in a flowery nook near the piano, where at this moment Oscar de Lampion, the Belgian tenor, was casting his fine eyes up towards the ceiling, preparatory to the melting strains of his favourite serenade—
“And them canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawnThy lover watches for thy passing shadeAcross the blind, and sobs and sighs till dawnGlows o’er the vale and creeps along the glade.And thou canst sleep—thou heedest not his sighing;And thou canst sleep—thou wouldst if he were dying;Yes, thou canst sleep—canst sleep—sleep.”
“And them canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawnThy lover watches for thy passing shadeAcross the blind, and sobs and sighs till dawnGlows o’er the vale and creeps along the glade.And thou canst sleep—thou heedest not his sighing;And thou canst sleep—thou wouldst if he were dying;Yes, thou canst sleep—canst sleep—sleep.”
“And them canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawnThy lover watches for thy passing shadeAcross the blind, and sobs and sighs till dawnGlows o’er the vale and creeps along the glade.And thou canst sleep—thou heedest not his sighing;And thou canst sleep—thou wouldst if he were dying;Yes, thou canst sleep—canst sleep—sleep.”
“And them canst sleep, while from the rain-washed lawn
Thy lover watches for thy passing shade
Across the blind, and sobs and sighs till dawn
Glows o’er the vale and creeps along the glade.
And thou canst sleep—thou heedest not his sighing;
And thou canst sleep—thou wouldst if he were dying;
Yes, thou canst sleep—canst sleep—sleep.”
There was a second verse to the same effect, exquisitely sung, butworn threadbare by familiarity, which Vansittart heard impatiently, watching Eve and her companion, and longing to break in upon their seclusion. They were silent now, since they could not with decency talk while De Lampion was singing.
There were only two verses. De Lampion was too much an artist to sing lengthy songs, although too lazy to extend his repertoire. He liked people to be sorry when he left off.
Vansittart dropped into a chair near his wife. The rooms had not filled yet, so there was a possibility of sitting down, and this quiet corner, screened by an arrangement of palms and tall golden lilies, was a pleasant haven for conversation in the brief intervals between the music, which was of that superior order which is heard in respectful silence by everybody within earshot, though the people outside the room talk to their hearts’ content, a buzz of multitudinous voices breaking in upon the silence whenever a door is opened.
Sefton and Vansittart shook hands directly the song was over.
“I was told you were to dine here,” said Vansittart, as an obvious opening.
“Lady Hartley was kind enough to ask me, but I had an earlier engagement in Chelsea. I have been dining with the Hawberks—the composer, don’t you know. Sweet little woman, Mrs. Hawberk—so sympathetic. You know them, of course.”
“Only from meeting them at other people’s houses.”
“Ah, you should know Hawberk. He’s a glorious fellow. You must spare me an hour or two to meet him at breakfast some Sunday morning, when Mrs. Vansittart doesn’t want you to go to church with her.”
“I always want him,” said Eve, with a decisive air.
“And does he always go?”
“Always.”
“A model husband. I put down the husbands who attend the morning service among the great army of hen-pecked, together with the husbands who belong to only one rather fogeyish club. But that comes of my demoralized attitude towards the respectabilities. Well, it shall not be a Sunday, but you must meet Hawberken petit comitébefore the season is over. He is a very remarkable man. It was he who invented Signora Vivanti, the lady who claimed your acquaintance so effusively to-day.”
“Indeed!” said Vansittart, with a scowl which did not invite further comment; but Sefton was not to be silenced by black looks.
“Did Mr. Hawberk bring Signora Vivanti from Italy?” asked Eve; and Sefton could see that she paled at the mere mention of the singer’s name.
“I think not. She was established in very comfortable quarters at Chelsea when Hawberk first heard of her. Some good friendbrought her to London and paid for her training. The rest of her career is history. Hawberk finished her artistic education, and had the courage to trust the fate of a new opera to an untried singer. The result justified his audacity, and the Vivanti is the rage. She is original, you see; and a grain of originality is worth a bushel of imitative excellence!”
“I should like to hear her sing,” said Eve.
“Then you are in a fair way of being gratified. She is to sing to-night. Lady Hartley has engaged her.”
“Really! How odd that Lady Hartley never mentioned her when she was telling me about her programme.”
“The engagement was made only two or three days ago, after I met Lady Hartley at Lady Belle Teddington’s evening party. It was my suggestion. Musical evenings are apt to be so dismal—Mendelssohn, de Beriot, Spohr, relieved by a portentous Scotch ballad of nine and twenty verses by a fashionable baritone. Vivanti has sentiment and humour, chic and fire. She will be the bouquet, and send people away in good spirits.”
A duet for violin and ’cello began at this stage of conversation, and when it was over Vansittart moved away to another part of the room, and talked to other people. It was past eleven. He knew not how soon the Venetian might appear upon the scene; but he was determined to keep out of her way. He would not risk another effusive greeting; and with a woman of her type there was no reliance upon the restraints of society. She might be as demonstrative in a crowded drawing-room as on the river Thames. Of all irritating chances what could be more exasperating than this young woman’s appearance at his sister’s house, even as a paid entertainer? And it was Sefton’s doing; Sefton, who had seen him with Fiordelisa two years ago on the Embankment, and who doubtless remembered that meeting; Sefton, who had admired Eve and had been scorned by her, and who doubtless hated Eve’s husband.
Nothing could be more disquieting for Vansittart than that Sefton should have made himself the friend and patron of Fiordelisa—even if he were no more than friend or patron. If he were pursuing the Venetian girl with evil meaning it would be Vansittart’s duty to warn her. He had urged her to lead a good life—to redeem the error of her girlhood by a virtuous and reputable womanhood. It would be the act of a coward to stand aside and keep silence, while her reputation was being blighted by Sefton’s patronage. True that her aunt and son had been the companions of to-day’s river excursion; true that their presence had given respectability to the jaunt; yet with his knowledge of Sefton’s character Vansittart could hardly believe that his intentions towards this daughter of the people could be altogether free from guile. He hated the ideaof an interview with Lisa; but he told himself that it was his duty to give her fair warning of Sefton’s character. She might have been Harold Marchant’s wife, perhaps, with a legitimate protector, but for his—Vansittart’s—evil passions. This gave her an indisputable claim upon his care and kindness—a claim not to be ignored because it involved unpleasantness or risk for himself.
He went back to Eve presently, and asked her to come into the inner drawing-room, where there were people who wanted to see her; an excuse for getting her away from Sefton, who still held his ground by her chair.
“I shall lose my place if I stir,” she said; “and I want to hear Signora Vivanti.”
“I’ll bring you back.”
“There’ll be no getting back through the crowd. Please let me stay till she has sung.”
“As you please.”
He turned and left her, offended that she should refuse him; vexed at her desire to hear the woman who had already been a bone of contention between them. He went back to the inner drawing-room, as far as possible from the piano and the clever German pianist who had arranged the programme for Lady Hartley, and who was to accompany—somewhat reluctantly—the lady from the Apollo, whose performance might pass the boundary line of thecomme il faut, he thought.
Vansittart stood where he could just see Lisa, by looking over the heads of the crowd. She took her stand a little way from the piano, with admirable aplomb, though this was her first society performance. She was in yellow—a yellow crape gown, very simply made, with a baby bodice and short puffed sleeves; and on the clear olive of her finely moulded neck there flashed the collet necklace which represented the firstfruits of her success. Vansittart shuddered as he noted the jewels, for he had the accepted idea of actress’s diamonds, and he began to fear that Lisa had already taken the wrong road.
She sang a ballad from the new serio-comic opera,Haroun Alraschid, a ballad which all the street organs and all the smart bands were playing, and which was as familiar in the remotest slums of the east as in the gardens of the west.
“I am not fair, I am not wise,But I would die for thee;My only merit in thine eyesIs my fidelity.Oh, couldst thou kill me with thy frown,That death I’d meekly meet,For it were joy to lay me downAnd perish at thy feet.”
“I am not fair, I am not wise,But I would die for thee;My only merit in thine eyesIs my fidelity.Oh, couldst thou kill me with thy frown,That death I’d meekly meet,For it were joy to lay me downAnd perish at thy feet.”
“I am not fair, I am not wise,But I would die for thee;My only merit in thine eyesIs my fidelity.Oh, couldst thou kill me with thy frown,That death I’d meekly meet,For it were joy to lay me downAnd perish at thy feet.”
“I am not fair, I am not wise,
But I would die for thee;
My only merit in thine eyes
Is my fidelity.
Oh, couldst thou kill me with thy frown,
That death I’d meekly meet,
For it were joy to lay me down
And perish at thy feet.”
It was the song of a slave to her Sultan, and glanced from the supreme of sentiment to the absurdity of burlesque. The song was the rage, but it was the power and passion of the singer that made it so. The sudden silvery laugh with which she finished the second verse, changing instantaneously from pathos to mocking gaiety—with a sudden change of metre—was a touch of originality that delighted her audience, and the song was applauded to the echo. Vansittart had moved into the music-room while she sang, as if drawn irresistibly by the power of song, and he was near enough to see his wife and Sefton talking to the singer; praising her, no doubt; uttering only the idle nothings which are spoken upon such occasions; but the idea that Eve should get to know this woman’s name, that they should talk together familiarly, and above all, that Lisa should know his name, and be able to approach wife or husband whenever some wild impulse urged her attack, was dreadful to him. How could he be sure henceforward that his secret would remain a secret? Was the Venetian a person to be trusted with the power of life or death?
He went back to the inner room, and was speedily absorbed in the duty of attending two colossal dowagers with monumental necks and shoulders, and diamonds as large as chandelier drops, to steer whom down a London staircase, past a stream of people who were ascending, was no trifling work. In the dining-room the débris of dessert and the ashes of cigarettes had given place to old Derby china, peaches, grapes, and strawberries, chicken salad, andfoie grassandwiches, and to this light refreshment people were crowding as eagerly as if dinner were an obsolete custom among the upper classes. Blocked in between two great ladies, pouring out champagne for one, and peeling a peach for another, Vansittart was secure from being pounced upon by Fiordelisa. He saw Sefton sitting with her at a little table in a corner, as he piloted his aristocratic three-deckers to the door. Sefton was plying her with champagne and lobster salad, and her joyous laugh rang out above society’s languid jabber.
He hated Sefton with all his heart that night; and he was too angry with Eve to speak to her, either as they waited in the hall for their carriage, or during the short drive home.
Never before had he treated her with this sullen rudeness. She followed him into his den, where he went for a final smoke before going upstairs. She stood by his chair for a few minutes in silence, watching him as he lighted his cigar, and then she said gently—
“What is the matter with you to-night, Jack? Have I vexed you?”
“I don’t know that you have vexed me—but I know that I am vexed.”
“About what?”
“I didn’t like to see you so civil to Signora Vivanti. It is all very well for dowagers and fussy matrons to take notice of a public singer, but it is a new departure for you.”
“I could hardly help myself. She sang so delightfully, and I was pleased with her, and then Mr. Sefton introduced her to me. What could I do but praise her, when I really admired her?”
“No, you were blameless. It was Sefton’s fault. He had no right to introduce her to you.”
“But is she not respectable?”
“I cannot answer for her respectability. I know nothing of what kind of life she has led since she made herdébut. She wears diamonds, and that is not a good sign.”
“She does not look like a disreputable person,” said Eve, very thoughtfully. “There is something frank and simple about her. That boy must be hers, he is so like her. Do you know if she was ever married—if the boy’s father was her husband?”
“I know very little about her, as I told you to-day; but I should say not.”
“Poor thing! I am very sorry for her.”
“Don’t waste your pity upon her. She seems perfectly happy. A peasant girl, reared upon polenta, does not consider these things so tragically as they are considered in Mayfair.”
“How scornfully you speak of her. I am sure she is a good girl at heart. She remembered seeing me in the boat to-day, and she asked me if I was your wife. She repeated my name curiously, as if she had never heard it before. Did not she know your name when you met her in Verona, or wherever it was?”
“Very likely not. I was an Englishman. That might have been a sufficient distinction in her mind.”
“I hope she is not leading a wicked life,” said Eve, with a sigh. “She has a good face.”
“Do not let us trouble about her any more,” said Vansittart, looking earnestly up at the thoughtful face that was looking down at him. “She has almost brought dissension between us—for the first time.”
“Only almost. We could not be angry with each other long, could we, Jack? But you must own it was enough to take any wife by surprise. A beautiful Italian girl stretching out both her hands in eager greeting, almost throwing herself out of her boat into ours. Any wife caring very much for her husband would have felt as I did—a sudden pang of jealousy.”
“Any wife must be a foolish wife if she felt that pang, knowing herself beloved as you do.”
“Yes, I think that now you are honestly fond of me. Ah, howcan I think otherwise when you have been so indulgent, so dear? Yet in the past you might have loved that dark-eyed girl. You never pretended I was your first love. And if you did care for her, do please be candid and tell me. I should be happier if I knew the worst. It could not matter much to me, you see, Jack, that you should have been fond of her—once. Dearest, dearest,” she repeated coaxingly, with her head bent down till her soft cheek leaned against his own, “tell me the worst.”
“Eve, how often must I protest that I never cared for this girl—that she was never anything to me but a friendless woman—friendless except for an aunt as poor and as ignorant as herself. She was never anything to me—never. Are you satisfied now? As far as Fiordelisa is concerned you know the worst.”
“I am satisfied. But if you did not care for her she cared for you. She could not have looked as she looked to-day—her whole face lighting up with rapture—if she had not loved you. Only love can smile like that. But I won’t tease you. The thought of her shall never again come between us.”
“So be it, Eve. We have had our much ado about nothing. We will give Signora Vivanti a holiday. Sophy will be with you to-morrow, and will want no end of amusement—exhibitions all day and a theatre every night, with an evening party afterwards. I know what country cousins—or country sisters are. Besides, it will be Sophy’sdébut, and she will expect to make an impression.”
“I hope she will not be too fine,” said Eve, remembering Sophy’s strivings to be smart under difficulties.
“She will be as fine as the finest, be sure of that. She will expect matrimonial offers—to be a success in her first season. Why don’t you marry her to Sefton?”
“I don’t like Mr. Sefton.”
“But Sophy might like him, and he is rich and well born. If he is not a gentleman that is his own fault—not any flaw in his pedigree.”