CHAPTER XX"The old place is just the same, isn't it?" says one tall bearded man to another, as they stand at the window of the Naval and Military Club, and look out at the lighted streets in the grey November dusk.The man addressed turns his keen dark eyes on his companion's face. "The same—yes, I suppose it is. It's only people who change, you know. Places and things haven't their excuse.""Well, changed or not, I'm glad to be back again," says Major Trentermain of the Twelfth. He and his friend, Colonel Carlisle, have just returned from Burmah, and are enjoying the comforts of club-life, the reunion with old friends, the hundred-and-one things that, familiar enough once, have become of double value since sacrificed for the exigencies of foreign service, and lost through years of hard work and fierce warfare, and the myriad discomforts of climate and life abroad."London is the best place in the world to enjoy life in," continues Trentermain. "I've been looking up old friends to-day. Such welcomes! Didn't expect to find so many in town. But the country's beastly just now; even the hunting's spoilt by the weather.""Old friends," echoes his companion drearily. "I wonder if I've got any left. I feel like a Methuselah come back; it seems a lifetime since I went abroad."He passes his hand over his short-cut iron-grey hair, and half sighs. He is a splendid-looking man. Tall, erect, powerful, with keen dark eyes and a heavy drooping moustache, dark still in contrast to his hair—a man who carries his forty-five years lightly enough, despite hard service and trying climate. His eyes gaze out on the darkening streets, where the lamps are shining, and his thoughts go back to some thirteen years before, to a time of fierce joy and fiercer suffering."I wonder wheresheis now?" he thinks to himself. "Pshaw! married, of course, long ago. I wonder I have not forgotten her. Thirteen years of such a life as mine ought to knock all memories and romance out of one."He laughs a little bitterly and impatiently, and then plunges into a discussion with his friend, which resolves itself into an arrangement to dine and go to the theatre together afterwards."I have promised to look in at Vane's rooms," says Major Trentermain. "You'll come too, won't you? He is full of some new craze—æstheticism, he calls it. All his people have gone in for it extensively, and he seems to be bitten with the same mania. You really should see his rooms. Quite a study.""Oh, yes; I'll come," answers Carlisle indifferently. He is rarely anything else but indifferent now. Nothing rouses or interests him except, perhaps, "big game" or hard fighting.They go to the Gaiety. To Carlisle the performance seems idiotic in the extreme."Do come away. I can't stand this trash," he mutters impatiently."But that's Belle Burton singing," remonstrates Trentermain, who is more "up" to the goings on of London as it is, than his friend."What of that?" demands Carlisle."Every one's talking of her. She's——" (Then comes a mysterious whisper.) Colonel Carlisle frowns and tugs his heavy moustache."Vice idealized as 'celebrity.' Umph! That's a modern definition? Suppose I'm old-fashioned enough to look upon it as it is. Come, you can't really care for such rubbish, Trent. It's an insult to common sense, I think. And look at that row of vapid idiots grinning from ear to ear—boys with theblaséfaces of men, and limbs like thread-paper. Fine stuff for soldiers there!""That's a detachment of the Crutch and Toothpick Brigade," laughs Trentermain; "also a new importation of society since we bade farewell to Albion's shores. British youth don't seem to have much backbone, eh?"They laugh and rise and go out, to the intense disgust of a bevy of fair ones who have been directing Parthian glances at the two magnificent-looking men in the stalls, and drawing comparisons between them and the "Brigade" in no way complimentary to the latter.Once free of the theatre, they hail a hansom and are driven to the rooms of Valentine Vane, an old comrade of their own who has retired from the service, and is cultivating artistic tastes with praiseworthy assiduity.But Valentine Vane, or V.V., as his friends call him, is in a state of pleasant excitement. He has been invited to a reception at the house of one of the most famous leaders of the new school, and he insists upon carrying the two officers off with him despite their remonstrances."She bade me bring any friend I pleased," he says enthusiastically. "Ah, when you see her! Such grace, such languor, such divine indolence! Every attitude a poem; every look a revelation of subtle meaning! Ah!""Sounds serpentine, I think," says Carlisle,sotto voce. "Gives you the impression of a snake gliding about. Can't say I appreciate the prospect.""Of course you are as yet Philistines," continues V.V., pouring some scent over his handkerchief as he speaks, and gently waving the delicate cambric to disperse the fragrance. "Ah, you have much to learn!""My dear fellow," says Carlisle good-humouredly, "do shut up that nonsense, and talk rationally.""Rational?" echoes Vane, in surprise. "Am I not that? What is there irrational in finding delight in all that is beautiful, in wishing to be surrounded by sweet sounds and fair objects, in striving to revive the glories of the Hellenic age in worshipping Art as the glorious and ennobling thing it is?""I am not going to say anything against art," answers Colonel Carlisle; "but I don't think there is anything of the Greek type about Englishmen, either physically or intellectually, leaving out of the question the depressing influences of climate.""Ah!" sighs Vane pityingly. "It is all new and strange to you. Æstheticism, as interpreted by modern hierophants, is, of course, essentially different from the Hellenic school; but its aim and object is the same—to beautify the common things of life, to ennoble the soul, as well as please the eye and elevate the senses.""Well, I am not sufficiently up in the subject to understand or argue about it," laughed the Colonel. "Perhaps after to-night——""Ah, yes! Wait till you seeher!" cries Vane enthusiastically. "She who has converts by the hundred, whose intellect is as beautiful as the body which is its temple; to whom not only the worship but the perception of art is a natural and exquisite impulse; whose grace, whose mind, whose movements——""Oh, for Heaven's sake spare me any more 'serpentine' descriptions!" entreats Carlisle. "I am quite ready to believe in this wonderful high priestess of yours. Is she anything like Ellen Terry?""Ellen Terry is sublime also," says Vane rebukingly. "There's not another actress on the stage could walk in those clinging draperies of hers. Is she not a poem?""Sheactedone," says the Colonel dryly. "I saw her in 'The Cup.' I am not educated up to the appreciation of subtleties yet.""I have met at least a dozen fair-haired girls who have all told me they were considered 'so like Ellen Terry,'" puts in Trentermain. "I began to think she must be a 'priestess' also.""Ah, there are a good many changes since I was in London last," says the Colonel. "But there, I see you are impatient to be off. You—you don't mean to say you are going to wearthatflower, Vane?"He points to a gardenia in his button-hole as he speaks."Yes; why not?" demands his friend in surprise."Oh! I thought the sunflower or the lily was only admissible," says Carlisle gravely. "I was going to ask if it would be possible to procure one each for Trent and myself before entering the Temple of Art and æstheticism."It is simply out of idle curiosity that Carlisle has accompanied Vane and Trentermain. He expects to be terribly bored; but when they alight at the famous house in Kensington, and everywhere he sees the delicate subdued hues, the softly-shaded lights, the gracefully-arranged ferns and shrubs and hot-house blossoms, the artistic yet suitable dresses of the attendants, who move about so unobtrusively (there is not a man-servant anywhere), the strange hush and quietude, broken by no loud voices or discordant laughter, he begins to think the new school is not so bad after all."And now for the priestess," he says in a whisper to Trent, as they follow their friend from the tea-room, which is simply a gem. His tall figure passes through the curtained doorway. A light like moonlight fills all the room into which he enters. His head towers above Vane's, and straight before him he sees a woman with a halo of golden hair loose about her brow, with a soft, languid, serious smile, with——Their eyes meet. After thirteen long years of absence and separation, Cyril Carlisle finds himself once again in the presence of the only woman he has ever really loved."Colonel Carlisle, Lady Etwynde Fitz-Herbert."He bends over her hand as she gives it. In that moment she is calmer, more self-possessed than himself."I—I hope—I beg," he stammers confusedly. "I mean, I had no idea when Vane asked me to come here that I should find myself inyourhouse.""You are very welcome," she says, and the low, tender music of her voice thrills him with an exquisite pain. "I—I saw your regiment had returned. You have been away a great many years.""A great many," he answers, his eyes sweeping over the lovely face and figure of the queenly woman, who is so like and yet so different to the radiant, happy girl he had left."You—you are very little altered," she says presently, and the great fan of peacock's feathers in her hand trembles as she meets his glance."Am I?" he says bitterly. "I should have thought the reverse; I feel changed enough, Heaven knows."She is silent. Her heart is beating fast, the colour comes and goes in her face. She is thinking how glad she is she did not put on that terra-cotta gown with its huge puffs and frills, but discarded it at the last moment for this soft creamy robe of Indian silk, that seems to float about her like a mist, and show all the lovely curves of her perfect figure as she moves or stands. Cyril Carlisle thinks her more lovely than ever. The old pain so long buried and fought against comes back all too vividly. He knows he has never forgotten, never ceased to love this woman; but she—how calm, how changed she is! Again, as in the past, comes back the thought of all his love for her had meant, of all they might have been but for his own folly, his own sin."A man's passions are ever their own Nemesis," he thinks wearily, and then her voice falls on his ear again. She is introducing him to some one. A limp and lack-lustre "damosel," as she loves to be called, attired in pale sage-green that makes him bilious to contemplate; and he is fain to give this maiden his arm, and conduct her through the rooms, and listen to her monotonous tattle of art jargon, which seems to him the most idiotic compound of nonsense and ignorance ever filtered through the lips of a woman—and he has heard a good deal.His thoughts will go back to this strange meeting.She is not married, she is free still. Was it faithfulness to him, or—— He thrusts the thought aside contemptuously. What folly it seems! What womancouldremember for thirteen years? Besides, had they not parted in anger? Had she not cast him aside with contempt and fierce scorn, and bitter words that had stabbed him to the heart?He roams about the beautiful rooms. He hears her name on every tongue. He knows that men of science and learning are here—men of note in the highest circles of art and literature. He is glad that her tastes are so pure and elevated, glad that he does not find her a mere woman of fashion, a frivolous nonentity. Again and again he finds himself watching that fair, serene face, that exquisite figure, which is a living embodiment of grace that may well drive all women desperate with envy.How calm she is! How passionless, how changed! Men speak of her beauty, the beauty that lends itself so perfectly to this fantastic fashion of which all her guests seem devotees, and the words turn his blood to fire. Yet, after all, why should he mind? She is nothing to him—nothing. He is beside her again. She does not appear to notice his presence, but she is well enough aware of it. It lends warmth and colour and animation to her face, it lights her great grey eyes, and brings smiles to her lips. His heart grows bitter within him. She must have long ago grown callous and forgotten. Does she really forget how passionately she loved him once! Does she think of him no more than if he were the veriest stranger in her crowded rooms? Has she ever wept, prayed, suffered for him?God help us, men and women both, if we could not in some way mask our faces and conceal our feelings! Because the world sees no tears in our eyes it does not follow they are never shed; because there are smiles on our lips it is not a necessity that our hearts are without suffering. When the curtain is down, when the theatre is empty and dark, then, perhaps, the real play begins; the play that no audience sees, that is only acted out to our own breaking, beating hearts, unsuspected and unknown to the world around!
"The old place is just the same, isn't it?" says one tall bearded man to another, as they stand at the window of the Naval and Military Club, and look out at the lighted streets in the grey November dusk.
The man addressed turns his keen dark eyes on his companion's face. "The same—yes, I suppose it is. It's only people who change, you know. Places and things haven't their excuse."
"Well, changed or not, I'm glad to be back again," says Major Trentermain of the Twelfth. He and his friend, Colonel Carlisle, have just returned from Burmah, and are enjoying the comforts of club-life, the reunion with old friends, the hundred-and-one things that, familiar enough once, have become of double value since sacrificed for the exigencies of foreign service, and lost through years of hard work and fierce warfare, and the myriad discomforts of climate and life abroad.
"London is the best place in the world to enjoy life in," continues Trentermain. "I've been looking up old friends to-day. Such welcomes! Didn't expect to find so many in town. But the country's beastly just now; even the hunting's spoilt by the weather."
"Old friends," echoes his companion drearily. "I wonder if I've got any left. I feel like a Methuselah come back; it seems a lifetime since I went abroad."
He passes his hand over his short-cut iron-grey hair, and half sighs. He is a splendid-looking man. Tall, erect, powerful, with keen dark eyes and a heavy drooping moustache, dark still in contrast to his hair—a man who carries his forty-five years lightly enough, despite hard service and trying climate. His eyes gaze out on the darkening streets, where the lamps are shining, and his thoughts go back to some thirteen years before, to a time of fierce joy and fiercer suffering.
"I wonder wheresheis now?" he thinks to himself. "Pshaw! married, of course, long ago. I wonder I have not forgotten her. Thirteen years of such a life as mine ought to knock all memories and romance out of one."
He laughs a little bitterly and impatiently, and then plunges into a discussion with his friend, which resolves itself into an arrangement to dine and go to the theatre together afterwards.
"I have promised to look in at Vane's rooms," says Major Trentermain. "You'll come too, won't you? He is full of some new craze—æstheticism, he calls it. All his people have gone in for it extensively, and he seems to be bitten with the same mania. You really should see his rooms. Quite a study."
"Oh, yes; I'll come," answers Carlisle indifferently. He is rarely anything else but indifferent now. Nothing rouses or interests him except, perhaps, "big game" or hard fighting.
They go to the Gaiety. To Carlisle the performance seems idiotic in the extreme.
"Do come away. I can't stand this trash," he mutters impatiently.
"But that's Belle Burton singing," remonstrates Trentermain, who is more "up" to the goings on of London as it is, than his friend.
"What of that?" demands Carlisle.
"Every one's talking of her. She's——" (Then comes a mysterious whisper.) Colonel Carlisle frowns and tugs his heavy moustache.
"Vice idealized as 'celebrity.' Umph! That's a modern definition? Suppose I'm old-fashioned enough to look upon it as it is. Come, you can't really care for such rubbish, Trent. It's an insult to common sense, I think. And look at that row of vapid idiots grinning from ear to ear—boys with theblaséfaces of men, and limbs like thread-paper. Fine stuff for soldiers there!"
"That's a detachment of the Crutch and Toothpick Brigade," laughs Trentermain; "also a new importation of society since we bade farewell to Albion's shores. British youth don't seem to have much backbone, eh?"
They laugh and rise and go out, to the intense disgust of a bevy of fair ones who have been directing Parthian glances at the two magnificent-looking men in the stalls, and drawing comparisons between them and the "Brigade" in no way complimentary to the latter.
Once free of the theatre, they hail a hansom and are driven to the rooms of Valentine Vane, an old comrade of their own who has retired from the service, and is cultivating artistic tastes with praiseworthy assiduity.
But Valentine Vane, or V.V., as his friends call him, is in a state of pleasant excitement. He has been invited to a reception at the house of one of the most famous leaders of the new school, and he insists upon carrying the two officers off with him despite their remonstrances.
"She bade me bring any friend I pleased," he says enthusiastically. "Ah, when you see her! Such grace, such languor, such divine indolence! Every attitude a poem; every look a revelation of subtle meaning! Ah!"
"Sounds serpentine, I think," says Carlisle,sotto voce. "Gives you the impression of a snake gliding about. Can't say I appreciate the prospect."
"Of course you are as yet Philistines," continues V.V., pouring some scent over his handkerchief as he speaks, and gently waving the delicate cambric to disperse the fragrance. "Ah, you have much to learn!"
"My dear fellow," says Carlisle good-humouredly, "do shut up that nonsense, and talk rationally."
"Rational?" echoes Vane, in surprise. "Am I not that? What is there irrational in finding delight in all that is beautiful, in wishing to be surrounded by sweet sounds and fair objects, in striving to revive the glories of the Hellenic age in worshipping Art as the glorious and ennobling thing it is?"
"I am not going to say anything against art," answers Colonel Carlisle; "but I don't think there is anything of the Greek type about Englishmen, either physically or intellectually, leaving out of the question the depressing influences of climate."
"Ah!" sighs Vane pityingly. "It is all new and strange to you. Æstheticism, as interpreted by modern hierophants, is, of course, essentially different from the Hellenic school; but its aim and object is the same—to beautify the common things of life, to ennoble the soul, as well as please the eye and elevate the senses."
"Well, I am not sufficiently up in the subject to understand or argue about it," laughed the Colonel. "Perhaps after to-night——"
"Ah, yes! Wait till you seeher!" cries Vane enthusiastically. "She who has converts by the hundred, whose intellect is as beautiful as the body which is its temple; to whom not only the worship but the perception of art is a natural and exquisite impulse; whose grace, whose mind, whose movements——"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake spare me any more 'serpentine' descriptions!" entreats Carlisle. "I am quite ready to believe in this wonderful high priestess of yours. Is she anything like Ellen Terry?"
"Ellen Terry is sublime also," says Vane rebukingly. "There's not another actress on the stage could walk in those clinging draperies of hers. Is she not a poem?"
"Sheactedone," says the Colonel dryly. "I saw her in 'The Cup.' I am not educated up to the appreciation of subtleties yet."
"I have met at least a dozen fair-haired girls who have all told me they were considered 'so like Ellen Terry,'" puts in Trentermain. "I began to think she must be a 'priestess' also."
"Ah, there are a good many changes since I was in London last," says the Colonel. "But there, I see you are impatient to be off. You—you don't mean to say you are going to wearthatflower, Vane?"
He points to a gardenia in his button-hole as he speaks.
"Yes; why not?" demands his friend in surprise.
"Oh! I thought the sunflower or the lily was only admissible," says Carlisle gravely. "I was going to ask if it would be possible to procure one each for Trent and myself before entering the Temple of Art and æstheticism."
It is simply out of idle curiosity that Carlisle has accompanied Vane and Trentermain. He expects to be terribly bored; but when they alight at the famous house in Kensington, and everywhere he sees the delicate subdued hues, the softly-shaded lights, the gracefully-arranged ferns and shrubs and hot-house blossoms, the artistic yet suitable dresses of the attendants, who move about so unobtrusively (there is not a man-servant anywhere), the strange hush and quietude, broken by no loud voices or discordant laughter, he begins to think the new school is not so bad after all.
"And now for the priestess," he says in a whisper to Trent, as they follow their friend from the tea-room, which is simply a gem. His tall figure passes through the curtained doorway. A light like moonlight fills all the room into which he enters. His head towers above Vane's, and straight before him he sees a woman with a halo of golden hair loose about her brow, with a soft, languid, serious smile, with——
Their eyes meet. After thirteen long years of absence and separation, Cyril Carlisle finds himself once again in the presence of the only woman he has ever really loved.
"Colonel Carlisle, Lady Etwynde Fitz-Herbert."
He bends over her hand as she gives it. In that moment she is calmer, more self-possessed than himself.
"I—I hope—I beg," he stammers confusedly. "I mean, I had no idea when Vane asked me to come here that I should find myself inyourhouse."
"You are very welcome," she says, and the low, tender music of her voice thrills him with an exquisite pain. "I—I saw your regiment had returned. You have been away a great many years."
"A great many," he answers, his eyes sweeping over the lovely face and figure of the queenly woman, who is so like and yet so different to the radiant, happy girl he had left.
"You—you are very little altered," she says presently, and the great fan of peacock's feathers in her hand trembles as she meets his glance.
"Am I?" he says bitterly. "I should have thought the reverse; I feel changed enough, Heaven knows."
She is silent. Her heart is beating fast, the colour comes and goes in her face. She is thinking how glad she is she did not put on that terra-cotta gown with its huge puffs and frills, but discarded it at the last moment for this soft creamy robe of Indian silk, that seems to float about her like a mist, and show all the lovely curves of her perfect figure as she moves or stands. Cyril Carlisle thinks her more lovely than ever. The old pain so long buried and fought against comes back all too vividly. He knows he has never forgotten, never ceased to love this woman; but she—how calm, how changed she is! Again, as in the past, comes back the thought of all his love for her had meant, of all they might have been but for his own folly, his own sin.
"A man's passions are ever their own Nemesis," he thinks wearily, and then her voice falls on his ear again. She is introducing him to some one. A limp and lack-lustre "damosel," as she loves to be called, attired in pale sage-green that makes him bilious to contemplate; and he is fain to give this maiden his arm, and conduct her through the rooms, and listen to her monotonous tattle of art jargon, which seems to him the most idiotic compound of nonsense and ignorance ever filtered through the lips of a woman—and he has heard a good deal.
His thoughts will go back to this strange meeting.
She is not married, she is free still. Was it faithfulness to him, or—— He thrusts the thought aside contemptuously. What folly it seems! What womancouldremember for thirteen years? Besides, had they not parted in anger? Had she not cast him aside with contempt and fierce scorn, and bitter words that had stabbed him to the heart?
He roams about the beautiful rooms. He hears her name on every tongue. He knows that men of science and learning are here—men of note in the highest circles of art and literature. He is glad that her tastes are so pure and elevated, glad that he does not find her a mere woman of fashion, a frivolous nonentity. Again and again he finds himself watching that fair, serene face, that exquisite figure, which is a living embodiment of grace that may well drive all women desperate with envy.
How calm she is! How passionless, how changed! Men speak of her beauty, the beauty that lends itself so perfectly to this fantastic fashion of which all her guests seem devotees, and the words turn his blood to fire. Yet, after all, why should he mind? She is nothing to him—nothing. He is beside her again. She does not appear to notice his presence, but she is well enough aware of it. It lends warmth and colour and animation to her face, it lights her great grey eyes, and brings smiles to her lips. His heart grows bitter within him. She must have long ago grown callous and forgotten. Does she really forget how passionately she loved him once! Does she think of him no more than if he were the veriest stranger in her crowded rooms? Has she ever wept, prayed, suffered for him?
God help us, men and women both, if we could not in some way mask our faces and conceal our feelings! Because the world sees no tears in our eyes it does not follow they are never shed; because there are smiles on our lips it is not a necessity that our hearts are without suffering. When the curtain is down, when the theatre is empty and dark, then, perhaps, the real play begins; the play that no audience sees, that is only acted out to our own breaking, beating hearts, unsuspected and unknown to the world around!