CHAPTER XXIV.
“POOR KIND WILD EYES SO DASHED WITH LIGHT QUICK TEARS.”
Sophy arrived next day with portentous punctuality, in time for luncheon, intent on pleasure, and dressed in a style which she believed in as the very latest Parisian fashion; for this damsel credited herself with an occult power of knowing what was “in” and what was “out,” and, with no larger horizon than a country church and an occasional rustic garden-party, set up as an authority upon dress, and gave her instructions to the village dressmaker, who made up ladies’ own materials, and worked at ladies’ houses, with the air of a Kate Reilly directing an apprentice.
Eve had been very generous, and Sophy’s costume was a great advance upon those days when Lady Hartley had talked of the sisters as Colonel Marchant’s burlesque troupe. Eve had sent down a big parcel of materials from a West End draper’s, the newest and the best, and Sophy had exercised her fingers and her taste in the confection of stylish garments; yet it must be owned there was an unmistakable air of home dress-making—of fabrications suggested by answers to correspondents in a ladies’ newspaper—about those smart gowns, jackets, capes, and fichus which Sophy wore with such satisfaction. This showed itself most in an unconscious exaggeration of every fashion; just as a woman who rouges exceeds the bloom of natural carnations. Sophy’s Medici collars were higher than anybody else’s. The military collar of Sophy’s home-made tailor gown was an instrument of torture. Sophy’s waistcoats and sleeves were more mannish and sporting than anything the West End tailors had produced for Eve. In a word, there was a touch of Sophy’s personality about every garment; just as in every picture there is the individuality of the painter.
But Sophy, flushed with the delights of a London season, was quite pretty enough to be forgiven a little provincialism in her dress and manners, and she was well received by Eve’s friends.
It was good for Eve that she should be obliged to exert herself in order to amuse Sophy, and that the sweet solitude of two was no longer possible for her and Vansittart.
He said nothing further about his wife’s need of repose. He was glad to see her occupied from morning till long past midnight, showing Sophy what our ancestors used to call “the town;” but which now includes a wide range of the suburbs, and occasional garden-parties as far off as Marlow or Hatfield. He was glad of anything which could distract his wife’s thoughts from too deep a consideration of his relations with Signora Vivanti, and he encouraged Sophy in every form of dissipation, until he found, to his annoyance, that an evening had been allotted to the Apollo.
The fame ofHaroun Alraschidand of Signora Vivanti’s beauty and talent had penetrated beyond Haslemere, and Sophy had written to her sister imploring her to secure places for an evening during her visit. A box had been taken six weeks in advance, and Eve, who was always indulged in every theatrical fancy, had not thought it necessary to inform her husband of the fact.
To forbid the occupation of that box would have been too marked an exercise of authority; to absent himself from the party would have made Eve uneasy; so he went with his wife and sister-in-law, and saw Lisa on the stage for the first time since he had watched her in the chorus at Covent Garden.
The box was one of the best in the house, and very near thestage. Vansittart felt assured that Lisa would recognize his wife and would see him standing behind her chair; and with a young woman of Lisa’s temperament he knew not what form that recognition might assume.
Fortunately Lisa had now become too much of an artist to do anything which would take her “out of the picture.” She gave Vansittart one little look which told him he was seen in the shadow where he stood; and for the rest she was no longer Lisa, the Venetian, but Haroun’s devoted slave-girl, bought from a cruel master, during one of Haroun’s nocturnal explorations of the city, and following him ever after with a devoted love, watchful, ubiquitous, his guardian angel in every danger, his resource and protection in every serio-comic dilemma. Her singing, her acting, were alike instinct with passion and genius, a genius unspoiled by that higher culture which is too apt to bring self-consciousness and over-elaboration in its train, and so to miss all broad and spontaneous effects. Fiordelisa flung herself into herrôlewith a daring energy which always hit the mark.
Sefton was in the stalls, attentive, but not applauding. He left all noisy demonstration to the British public. It was enough for him to know that Lisa liked to see him there, tranquil and interested. The highest reward she had ever given him for his devotion was the confession that she missed him when he was absent, and found something wanting in her audience when his stall was empty. For the most part he went as regularly to hear Lisa sing as he took his coffee after dinner. The dinner-party must be something very much out of the common run of dinners which could draw him from his place at the Apollo; and people remarked that for the last two seasons Mr. Sefton was seldom to be met in society until late in the evening.
He went to Mrs. Vansittart’s box between the acts, and made himself particularly agreeable to Sophy, whom he had not seen since her sister’s marriage.
“This is your first season, ain’t it, Miss Marchant?” he said. “What a large reserve fund of enjoyment you must have to spend!”
Sophy was not going to accept compliments upon her ignorance.
“Fernhurst is so near town,” she said. “One sees everybody, and one breathes the town atmosphere.”
“Ah, but you only see people on their rustic side. They wear tailor gowns and talk about fox-hunting and sick cottagers. They leave their London intellect in Mayfair, like the table-knives rolled up in mutton fat, to come out sharp and bright next season. You don’t know what we are like in town if you see us only in the country.”
“I don’t find a remarkable difference inyou,” said Sophy, pertly. “You always try to be epigrammatic.”
“Oh, I am no one—a poor follower of the fashion of the hour, whatever it may be. How do you like the music?”
“For music to hear and forget I think it is absolutely delightful.”
“There are some numbers which the piano-organs and the fashionable bands won’t allow you to forget—Zuleika’s song, for instance, and the quartette.”
“I rather hate all but classical music,” replied Sophy, with her fine air, “and I find your famous Signora Vivanti odiously vulgar.”
“Deliciously vulgar, you should have said. Her vulgarity is one of her attractions. To be so pretty, and so graceful, and so clever, and at the same time a peasant to the tips of her fingers—there is the charm.”
“I hate peasants, even when they are as clever as Thomas Carlyle.”
Sefton looked at the pert little face meditatively. She was like Eve, but without Eve’s exceptional loveliness—the loveliness that consists chiefly in delicacy and refinement, an ethereal beauty which makes a woman like a flower. She had Eve’s transparent complexion and changeful colouring. There was the same type, but less beautifully developed. She was quite pretty enough for Sefton to find amusement in teasing her, although all his stronger feelings were given to Signora Vivanti. He called in Charles Street on the following afternoon. It was Mrs. Vansittart’s afternoon at home; and she could not shut her door even against her worst enemy.
Sefton found the usual feminine gossips—mothers and daughters, maiden aunts, and cousins from the country, with fresh-coloured cheeks, and unremarkable faces—the usual sprinkling of well-dressed young men. Among so many people he could secure a few confidential words with Eve, while she poured out the tea, a duty she always performed with her own hands. It was the one thing that reminded her of the old life at Fernhurst, and those jovial teas which had stood in the place of dinner.
She spoke frankly enough of the performance at the Apollo, praised the music and the libretto, declared she had enjoyed it more than any serio-comic opera she had heard during the season; yet Sefton detected a certain constraint when she spoke of Signora Vivanti, which told him that the meeting of the two boats was not forgotten, and that the little scene had left almost as angry a spot upon her memory as that which burnt in his.
“And had you really never seen her on the stage before last night?” he asked.
“Never!”
“How very odd. I think you and Vansittart must have been about the only people at the West End who have not seenHaroun Alraschid—and yet you are playgoers.”
“I was saving the Apollo for my sister,” she answered, perfectly understanding his drift.
She knew that he was trying to give her pain, that he wanted to make her distrust her husband. Lisa’s conduct had impressed him as it had impressed her, and now he was gloating over her jealous agony.
She turned from him to talk to an aristocratic matron, a large and grand-looking woman, who would have looked better in peplum and chiton than in a flimsy pongee confection which she called her “frock.” The matron had heard the word Apollo, and had a good deal to say about Signora Vivanti, whose performance she deprecated as too realistic.
“Dramatic passion is all very well in a classic opera like Gluck’sOrphée,” she said authoritatively, “but that mixture of passion with broad comedy is too bizarre for my taste.”
“My dear Lady Oriphane, that is just what we want nowadays. We all languish for the bizarre. If we travel we want Africa and pigmy blackamoors. If we go to the play we want to be startled by the outrageous, rather that awed by the sublime. The stories we read must have some strange background, or be dotted about with unknown tongues. An author can interest us in a footman if he will only call him a Kitmutghar. With us the worship of the bizarre marks the highest point of culture.”
Mr. Tivett was there, and chimed in at this stage of the conversation with his pretty little lady-like voice.
“It all means the same thing,” he said; “Neo-paganism. We are the children of a decadent age. We have come to the top of the ladder of life—life meaning civilization and culture—and there is nothing left for us but to climb down again. All the strongest spirits are harking back to the uncivilized. That is at the bottom of the strong man’s passion for Africa. The strong men will all go to Africa, and in a few generations Europe will be peopled by weaklings and hereditary imbeciles. Then the strong men will come back and pour themselves over the civilized world, as the Vandals poured themselves over Italy, and London and Paris will be the spoil of the Anglo-African.”
“Why not the Dutch-African, or the Portuguese-African?” asked Sefton, when everybody had laughed at little Mr. Tivett’s gloomy outlook.
“Oh, the Anglo-Saxon race will prevail on the Dark Continent, just as they have prevailed in the East. Our future kings will style themselves Emperor of India and Africa. No other race can stand against us in the game of colonization. We have the courage which conquers, and the dogged patience which can keep what boldness has won.”
Mr. Tivett was not allowed to indulge in any further prophecies, for Sophy absorbed him in a discussion about the plays she ought to see, and the music she ought to hear while she was in town.
“You are too late for Sarasate,” he said tragically. “Last Saturday was his final performance. He leaves us in the flood-tide of the season, leaves us lamenting. But there are plenty of good things left. Clifford Harrison gives some of his delicious recitations next Saturday. Be sure you hear him. Hollmann and Wolff are to be heard almost daily. And then there is the opera three nights a week. I hope you have no horrid dinner-parties to prevent your enjoying yourself.”
“Only one this week, I am thankful to say,” said Sophy, who was dying to see what London dinners were like, and was deeply grateful to that one generous hostess who, hearing of her expected visit, had sent her a card for the stately feast to which the Vansittarts were bidden.
Eve had refused other dinner invitations during her sister’s visit. She made all engagements subservient to Sophy’s pleasure. Vansittart was not rich enough to give his wife an opera-box for the season, but he had taken a box for four evenings in the fortnight that Sophy was to spend in Charles Street, and four operas, with different sets of artists, for a young woman who had never heard an opera in her life, was an almost overpowering prospect. It needed all Sophy’s aplomb to talk of operas of which she only knew the overtures, and an occasional hackneyed scena, as if every page of the score were familiar to her; but Sophy was equal to the occasion, and discussed the merits of sopranos, tenors, and baritones with as critical an air as if her opinions were the growth of years of experience, rather than the result of a careful study ofTruthandThe World, sent her regularly by Eve, so soon as they had been read in Charles Street.
Sefton joined in the conversation between Sophy and Mr. Tivett, and had a good deal of advice to offer as to the things that were worthy of the young lady’s attention; the result of which advice appeared to be that there was really very little to be heard worth hearing, or to be seen worth seeing.
While tea and gossip occupied Eve and her friends in Charles Street, Vansittart had taken advantage of his wife’s “afternoon,” an occasion which he rarely honoured with his presence, and had driven to Chelsea to see Lisa and her aunt, and to impart that warning which he had resolved upon giving, at any hazard to himself. It was dangerous perhaps, in his position, to renew any relations with the Venetian; yet on the other hand it might be needful to assure himself of her loyalty, now that she had been brought suddenly into the foreground of his life, and might, at any hour, reveal his fatal secret to her from whom he would have it for ever hidden.
All things considered, after two days and nights of anxious thought, it seemed to him best, for his own sake, as well as for Lisa’s, that he should have some serious talk with her.
He heard the prattle of the child as la Zia opened the door to him, and the mother’s voice telling him to be quiet. La Zia received him with open arms, and praised his kindness in coming to see them after such a long absence.
“If it had not been for the discovery that the rent was paid when we took our money to the agent on Our Lady’s Day, we should have thought you had forgotten us,” said la Zia.
She had her bonnet on, ready to take Paolo to Battersea Park, where she took him nearly every afternoon, while Lisa practised, or slept, or yawned over an English story-book. She would read nothing but English, in her determination to master that language; but history was too dull, novels were too long, and she cared only for short stories in which there was much sentimental love-making, generally by lords and ladies with high-sounding titles. These she read with rapture, picturing herself as the heroine, Vansittart as the high-born lover. She could not understand how so grand a gentleman could have missed a title. In Italy he would have been a Marquis or a Prince, she told herself.
She started up at the sound of his voice, and welcomed him joyously, pale but radiant.
“Why would you not come near me the other night?” she asked. “I was in your sister’s house—Mr. Sefton told me that the gracious lady is your sister—and you were there, and you hid yourself from me.”
“I was afraid, Si’ora,” he answered, coming to the point at once. “You know what lies between you and me—a secret the telling of which would blight my life—and you are so reckless, so impetuous. How could I tell what you might say?”
She looked at him with mournful reproachfulness.
“Do you know me so little as that?” she said. “Don’t you know that I would cut my tongue out—that I would die on the rack, as tortured prisoners died in Venice hundreds of years ago—rather than I would speak one word that could hurt you?”
“Forgive me, Si’ora. Yes, yes, I know that you would not willingly injure me—but you might ruin my life by a careless speech. You have aroused my wife’s suspicions already—suspicious of she knows not what—vague jealousies that have made her unhappy. She could not understand your impulsive greeting; and I could not tell her how much you were my friend, without telling her the why and the wherefore. I am hemmed round with difficulty when I am questioned about you. If you were old and ugly it would be different—but I dare not avow my interest in a young and beautiful womanwithout revealing the claim she has upon my friendship—and in that claim lies the secret of my crime. Do you understand, Lisa?”
“Yes, I understand,” she answered moodily.
Her aunt lingered on the threshold of the door, the boy tugging at her skirts, and urging her to go out. Battersea Park was his favourite playground. He carried a wooden horse with a fine development of head, but with only a stick and a wheel to represent his body, which equine compromise he bestrode and galloped upon in the course of his airing. La Zia carried his pail and the shovel with which he was wont to scrape up the loose gravel in the roadway as blissfully as if he had been disporting himself beside the waves that roll gaily in to splash the children at play on the sands.
La Zia looked at her niece interrogatively, and the niece nodded “go,” whereupon aunt and boy vanished. She was always bidden to stop when Sefton was the visitor.
“You need not be frightened,” said Lisa. “We are not likely to meet again, as we met on the river. It was so long since I had seen you! I was taken by surprise, and forgot everything except that it was you, whom I thought I should never see again. I shall be wiser in future, now that I know more about you, and now that I have seen your wife.”
“That is my own good Lisa! She is a sweet wife, is she not? Worthy that a man should love her?”
“Yes, she is worthy; and she is fair and beautiful, like the Mary-lilies. I don’t wonder that you love her. And she has never done any evil thing in her life, has she? If a young man had said to her, ‘Come with me to Venice, and be my little wife,’ she would not have believed him, as I did. She would have said, ‘You must marry me first in the church.’ She would have believed in nothing but the church and the priest. She was not ignorant and poor, like me.”
“Lisa, do you suppose that I was making any unkind comparisons? I said only that she is worthy to be loved—that all men and women must love and honour her, and that her husband must needs adore her. And now, Si’ora, promise me that you will respect her jealousy, which is only the shadow cast by her love, and that you will do or say nothing that can make her unhappy.”
“I will do or say nothing to hurt you,” Lisa answered, somewhat sullenly. “She has little need to be unhappy, having all your love. But she is very sweet, as you say. She spoke to me graciously the other night, although she had a curious look, as if she were half afraid of me. Yes, she is beautiful. Did you know her and love her long before that day on the Lido, when you were so friendly with my aunt and me?”
“No, Si’ora.”
“What! your heart was free then?”
“Free as air.”
“And afterwards—when I saw you at the opera? When you came to our lodgings?”
“Ah, then I had seen her, I was captive. I loved her at first sight, but went about foolishly hiding my chains, trying not to love her. And now that we understand each other fully upon one point—now that I can trust my happiness in your hands, I want to talk to you about yourself, Lisa. I am not over-fond of that Mr. Sefton with whom you are so friendly.”
“No more am I over-fond of him. He is kind to us. He brings toys for Paolo; and he takes us on the river. He is the only friend little Zinco has allowed me to have.”
“He gives Paolo toys? And he gave you that diamond necklace, did he not?”
“Gave me my necklace! I should think not! Do you suppose I would be beholden to him, or to any one? Do you know how many bracelets and brooches I have sent back to the fools who bought them for me? Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires—all the colours of the rainbow. I just look at them and laugh, and carry them off to little Zinco, and he packs them up and sends them back to the giver, with his compliments, and his assurance that Signora Vivanti is not in the habit of accepting gifts. Mr. Sefton give me my necklace! Why, my necklace is my fortune!”
And then she told him how she and la Zia had scraped and saved, and lived upon pasta and Swiss cheese, in order to buy that necklace from Mr. Attenborough, who had allowed her to pay a considerable part of the price by weekly instalments. It was a bankrupt Contessa’s necklace—a Contessa who had run away from her husband.
“I am very glad to hear that,” said Vansittart. “I was afraid all was not well when I saw my little Si’ora blazing in diamonds.”
“Did they blaze?” she cried, delighted. “You thought that I was like some of the singers who spend all their salary on a carriage, and grand dinners, and fine silk gowns—a hundred pounds for a single gown! I wanted to buy something that would last, something that I could turn into money whenever I liked.”
“But your diamonds yield no interest, Si’ora, so they are hardly a wise investment.”
“I don’t want interest; I want something that is pretty to look at. Did my diamonds blaze? Your sister’s is the only grand house I have sung at. I sing for Mrs. Hawberk, but her house is not grand, and I take no money for singing at her parties. But I had ten guineas for singing at Lady Hartley’s—ten guineas for two little songs.”
“Bravissima, Si’ora! There are plenty of drawing-rooms inLondon where you may pick up gold and silver. There is a freshness about you and your singing that people will like, as a pleasant relief, after a grand opera. But now, Cara, I would earnestly warn you to have very little to do with Mr. Sefton, to keep him at the furthest possible distance. Believe me, he is a dangerous acquaintance.”
“Not to me,” said Lisa, snapping her fingers. “He is nothing to me, niente, niente, niente! My heart has never beat any faster for his coming. I am never sorry when he goes. He is kind to Paolo, and my aunt thinks him a delightful gentleman. He tells us stories about the lords and ladies he knows, and he helps me with my English. He makes me read to him. He tells me the meaning of words, and teaches me how to pronounce them. I should not have got on nearly so fast without his help.”
“Dangerous help, Si’ora. You are encouraging a traitor. Be sure his kindness springs from no good motive. He doesn’t want to marry you.”
“Do you think I want him for a husband?” exclaimed Lisa, with supreme contempt. “I shall never marry. No one will ever have the right to question me about Paolo’s father.”
There was a dignity in this assertion which showed that the unsophisticated daughter of the Isles had made some progress in social science. She knew at least that a husband was a person who might call her to account for her past life.
“I tell you that I don’t care for Mr. Sefton; but he amuses la Zia and me, and our lives would be very dull without him.”
“Better dulness than danger. The man is bad, Lisa, bad to the core. Some men are made so. In the county where he was born, among the neighbours who respected his father and mother, and who tolerate him for his name’s sake, he is neither trusted nor liked. Before he left the University, when he had only just come of age, there was a village tragedy in which he was known to be implicated, a tenant-farmer’s pretty daughter drowned in the mill-dam with her nameless child. The girl’s father was a tenant on the Sefton estate, as his father and grandfather had been before him. A connection of that kind with most young men would be sacred—but Wilfrid Sefton had no compunction. He was saved from exposure, for the love that the sufferers bore to his people; but the scandal became pretty well known in the neighbourhood, and the friends of his family who might have pitied him for the awful consequences of his sin, were disgusted by the indifference with which he treated the tragedy—living it down with a brazen front, and later, when he was owner of the estate, turning the girl’s father out of his holding, on the flimsiest excuse. Do you think such a man as that is worthy to be admitted to the home of an unprotected woman on a footing of friendship?”
“No, no, he is not worthy. If you tell me to shut my door against him, the door shall be shut. But is it true? Did this poor girl really drown herself because she could not bear to live disgraced? Are there women in England like that?”
“Yes, Lisa. There have been many such women. This girl belonged to the yeoman class—her forefathers had been settled in the land for two hundred years, sons of the soil, respected by their neighbours, and as proud of their good name as if it had been a patent of nobility; and this girl was young and sensitive. I have heard her story from those who saw her grow up from infancy to womanhood—gentle, yielding, guileless—an easy prey for an unscrupulous young man with a handsome face and a winning manner. He won her, blighted her, murdered her. Yes, Lisa, his crime came nearer murder than that dagger-thrust at Florian’s.”
“Don’t speak of that,” she cried, putting her fingers on his lips. “We must forget it. There never was such a thing—or at least you had nothing to do with it. It was Fate, not your will, that he should die like that. It was to be. Non si muove foglia che Iddio non voglia. I am glad you have told me about that girl. I never liked Mr. Sefton—never really liked him. However pleasant he was I had always a feeling that he was hiding something. There is a light in his eyes as if he were laughing at one. He is like Mephistopheles in the opera. It is not in his nature to be sorry for any one.”
“And you will give him hiscongé?”
“Yes; he shall come here no more. I shall not let him know that you have told me that poor girl’s story. He might want to fight a duel with you, if he knew what you have said of him.”
“I don’t think he would, Lisa; but it is wiser to tell him nothing. You can say you have been told you are compromising yourself by receiving his visits.”
“Little Zinco does not love him,” said Lisa; “he will be pleased to see him dismissed. He says I should have no friend but him and my piano.”
“Zinco is a worthy soul.”
“Is he not? He pretends to be very proud of my success. For the first year of my engagement at the Apollo I used to give him a quarter of my salary; but now I only pay him for my lessons. He goes on teaching me grand opera. It broadens and refines my style, he tells me—but Mr. Hawberk implores me never to leave off being vulgar. It would be my ruin, he says.”
“Be yourself. Lisa—bright, candid, and original. Your transparent nature will always pass for genius, from its rarity. And now good-bye. I must not come here any more. I came to-day because I felt I had a duty to do as your friend, but my wife would not liketo hear of me as your visitor. She and I love each other too well not to be easily jealous.”
“It has been sweet to see you,” answered Lisa, gravely, “but I will not ask you to come again. Yes, yes,” she added musingly. “I understand! Love is always jealous.”
She gave him her hand, and bade him good-bye, with a gentle resignation which touched him more deeply than her passionate moods had ever done. The beautiful dark eyes looked into his, and said, “I love you still—shall love you always,” in language which a man need not be a coxcomb to understand. And so they parted, each believing that this might be a final parting.
Vansittart looked at his watch as he ran downstairs. It was nearly six o’clock. At the bottom of the last flight he met Sefton, who was entering with an easy air and self-satisfied smile, which changed to a frown as he recognized Lisa’s departing visitor.
“I have just come from Charles Street,” he said, recovering himself instantly, “where I expected to find you. But I dare say you have been more amused here than you would have been there. The narrow footpaths and shady woodland walks are generally pleasanter than the broad high-road.”
“Is that a truism, or an allegory? If the latter, it bears no application to my visit here.”
“Doesn’t it really? You don’t mean that you, Mrs. Vansittart’s husband, call upon Signora Vivanti in the beaten way of friendship?”
“In friendship, at least, if not in the beaten way; but whatever my motive in visiting that lady, I don’t admit your right to question me about it; or”—with a laugh—“to resort to allegory. Good day to you.”
He ran down the steps to his hansom, and Sefton went slowly up the three flights of stone stairs which led to Signora Vivanti’s bower, brooding angrily upon his encounter with Vansittart. He had never been able to extort any admissions from Lisa about this man. She had been secret as the grave; yet he was convinced that her past history was the history of an intrigue with Vansittart; and after that effusive greeting from the boat, and remembering the expression of her face more than two years ago, as she hung upon his arm on the Embankment, he was convinced that she loved him still, and that this passion was the cause of her coldness to him, Wilfred Sefton.