Robert Elsmere
a romantic passion for the woman whom she had last seen when she was a
child of five, and actuated partly by this hungry affection, partly by
her own longing wish to become an actress, she escaped from home and
joined Madame Desforets in the South of France. Madame Desforets seems
at first to have been pleased to have her. The girl's adoration pleased
her vanity. Her presence with her gave her new opportunities of posing.
I believe,' and Langham gave a little dry laugh, 'they were photographed
together at Marseilles with their arms round each other's necks, and the
photograph had an immense success. However, on the way to St.
Petersburg, difficulties arose. Elise was pretty, in a _blonde_ childish
way, and she caught the attention of the _jeune premier_ of the company,
a man'--the speaker became somewhat embarrassed--'whom Madame Desforets
seems to have regarded as her particular property. There were scenes at
different towns on the journey. Elise became frightened--wanted to go
home. But the elder sister, having begun tormenting her, seems to have
determined to keep her hold on her, as a cat keeps and tortures a
mouse--mainly for the sake of annoying the man of whom she was jealous.
They arrived at St. Petersburg in the depth of winter. The girl was worn
out with travelling, unhappy, and ill. One night in Madame Desforets's
apartment there was a supper party, and after it a horrible quarrel. No
one exactly knows what happened. But towards twelve o'clock that night
Madame Desforets turned her young sister in evening dress, a light shawl
round her, out into the snowy streets of St. Petersburg, barred the door
behind her, and revolver in hand dared the wretched man who had caused
the _fracas_ to follow her.'
Rose sat immovable. She had grown pale, but the firelight was not
revealing.
Langham turned away from her towards the blaze, holding out his hands to
it mechanically.
'The poor child,' he said, after a pause, in a lower voice, 'wandered
about for some hours. It was a frightful night--the great capital was
quite strange to her. She was insulted--fled this way and that--grew
benumbed with cold and terror, and was found unconscious in the early
morning under the archway of a house some two miles from her sister's
lodgings.'
There was a dead silence. Then Rose drew a long quivering breath.
'I do not believe it!' she said passionately. 'I cannot believe it!'
'It was amply proved at the time,' said Langham drily, 'though of course
Madame Desforets tried to put her own colour on it. But I told you I had
private information. On one of the floors of the house where Elise Romey
was picked up, lived a young university professor. He is editing an
important Greek text, and has lately had business at the Museum. I made
friends with him there. He walked home with me this afternoon, saw the
announcement of Madame Desforets's coming, and poured out the story. He
and his wife nursed the unfortunate girl with devotion. She lived just a
week, and died of inflammation of the lungs. I never in my life heard
anything so pitiful as his description of her delirium, her terror, her
appeals, her shivering misery of cold.'
There was a pause.
'She is not a woman,' he said presently, between his teeth. 'She is a
wild beast.'
Still there was silence, and still he held out his hand to the flame
which Rose too was staring at. At last he turned round.
'I have told you a shocking story,' he said hurriedly. 'Perhaps I ought
not to have done it. But, as you sat there talking so lightly, so gaily,
it suddenly became to me utterly intolerable that that woman should ever
sit here in this room--talk to you--call you by your name--laugh with
you--touch your hand! Not even your wilfulness shall carry you so
far--you _shall_ not do it!'
He hardly knew what he said. He was driven on by a passionate sense of
physical repulsion to the notion of any contact between her pure fair
youth and something malodorous and corrupt. And there was besides a wild
unique excitement in claiming for once to stay--to control her.
Rose lifted her head slowly. The fire was bright. He saw the tears in
her eyes, tears of intolerable pity for another girl's awful story. But
through the tears something gleamed--a kind of exultation--the
exultation which the magician feels when he has called spirits from the
vasty deep, and after long doubt and difficult invocation they rise at
last before his eyes.
'I will never see her again,' she said in a low wavering voice, but she
too was hardly conscious of her own words. Their looks were on each
other; the ruddy capricious light touched her glowing cheeks, her
straight-lined grace, her white hand. Suddenly from the gulf of
another's misery into which they had both been looking there had sprung
up, by the strange contrariety of human things, a heat and intoxication
of feeling, wrapping them round, blotting out the rest of the world from
them like a golden mist. 'Be always thus!' her parted lips, her liquid
eyes were saying to him. His breath seemed to fail him; he was lost in
bewilderment.
There were sounds outside--Catherine's voice. He roused himself with a
supreme effort.
'To-night--at Lady Charlotte's?'
'To-night,' she said, and held out her hand.
A sudden madness seized him--he stooped--his lips touched it--it was
hastily drawn away, and the door opened.
CHAPTER XXXV
'In the first place, my dear aunt,' said Mr. Flaxman, throwing himself
back in his chair in front of Lady Charlotte's drawing-room fire, 'you
may spare your admonitions, because it is becoming more and more clear
to me that, whatever my sentiments may be, Miss Leyburn never gives a
serious thought to me.'
He turned to look at his companion over his shoulder. His tone and
manner were perfectly gay, and Lady Charlotte was puzzled by him.
'Stuff and nonsense!' replied the lady with her usual emphasis; 'I never
flatter you, Hugh, and I don't mean to begin now, but it would be mere
folly not to recognise that you have advantages which must tell on the
mind of any girl in Miss Leyburns position.'
Hugh Flaxman rose, and, standing before the fire with his hands in his
pockets, made what seemed to be a close inspection of his irreproachable
trouser-knees.
'I am sorry for your theory, Aunt Charlotte,' he said, still stooping,
'but Miss Leyburn doesn't care twopence about my advantages.'
'Very proper of you to say so,' returned Lady Charlotte sharply; 'the
remark, however, my good sir, does more credit to your heart than your
head.'
'In the next place,' he went on undisturbed, 'why you should have done
your best this whole winter to throw Miss Leyburn and me together, if
you meant in the end to oppose my marrying her, I don't quite see.'
He looked up smiling. Lady Charlotte reddened ever so slightly.
'You know my weaknesses,' she said presently, with an effrontery which
delighted her nephew. 'She is my latest novelty, she excites me, I can't
do without her. As to you, I can't remember that you wanted much
encouragement, but, I acknowledge, after all these years of
resistance--resistance to my most legitimate efforts to dispose of
you--there was a certain piquancy in seeing you caught at last!'
'Upon my word!' he said, throwing back his head with a not very cordial
laugh, in which, however, his aunt joined. She was sitting opposite to
him, her powerful loosely-gloved hands crossed over the rich velvet of
her dress, her fair large face and grayish hair surmounted by a mighty
cap, as vigorous, shrewd, and individual a type of English middle age as
could be found. The room behind her and the second and third
drawing-rooms were brilliantly lighted. Mr. Wynnstay was enjoying a
cigar in peace in the smoking-room, while his wife and nephew were
awaiting the arrival of the evening's guests upstairs.
Lady Charlotte's mind had been evidently much perturbed by the
conversation with her nephew of which we are merely describing the
latter half. She was labouring under an uncomfortable sense of being
hoist with her own petard--an uncomfortable memory of a certain warning
of her husband's, delivered at Murewell.
'And now,' said Mr. Flaxman, 'having confessed in so many words that you
have done your best to bring me up to the fence, will you kindly
recapitulate the arguments why in your opinion I should not jump it?'
'Society, amusement, flirtation, are one thing,' she replied with
judicial imperativeness, 'marriage is another. In these democratic days
we must know everybody; we should only marry our equals.'
The instant, however, the words were out of her mouth, she regretted
them. Mr. Flaxman's expression changed.
'I do not agree with you,' he said calmly, 'and you know I do not. You
could not, I imagine, have relied much upon _that_ argument.'
'Good gracious, Hugh!' cried Lady Charlotte crossly; 'you talk as if I
were really the old campaigner some people suppose me to be. I have been
amusing myself--I have liked to see you amused. And it is only the last
few weeks since you have begun to devote yourself so tremendously, that
I have come to take the thing seriously at all. I confess, if you like,
that I have got you into the scrape--now I want to get you out of it! I
am not thin-skinned, but I hate family unpleasantnesses--and you know
what the duke will say.'
'The duke be--translated!' said Flaxman coolly. 'Nothing of what you
have said or could say on this point, my dear aunt, has the smallest
weight with me. But Providence has been kinder to you and the duke than
you deserve. Miss Leyburn does not care for me, and she does care--or I
am very much mistaken--for somebody else.'
He pronounced the words deliberately, watching their effect upon her.
'What, that Oxford nonentity, Mr. Langham, the Elsmeres' friend?
Ridiculous! What attraction could a man of that type have for a girl of
hers?'
'I am not bound to supply an answer to that question,' replied her
nephew. 'However, he is not a nonentity. Far from it! Ten years ago,
when I was leaving Cambridge, he was certainly one of the most
distinguished of the young Oxford tutors.
'Another instance of what university reputation is worth!' said Lady
Charlotte scornfully. It was clear that even in the case of a beauty
whom she thought it beneath him to marry, she was not pleased to see her
nephew ousted by the _force majeure_ of a rival--and that a rival whom
she regarded as an utter nobody, having neither marketable eccentricity,
nor family, nor social brilliance to recommend him.
Flaxman understood her perplexity and watched her with critical amused
eyes.
'I should like to know,' he said presently, with a curious slowness and
suavity, 'I should greatly like to know why you asked him here
to-night?'
'You know perfectly well that I should ask anybody--a convict, a
crossing-sweeper--if I happened to be half an hour in the same room with
him!'
Flaxman laughed.
'Well, it may be convenient to-night,' he said reflectively. 'What are
we to do--some thought-reading?'
'Yes. It isn't a crush. I have only asked about thirty or forty people.
Mr. Denman is to manage it.'
She mentioned an amateur thought-reader greatly in request at the
moment.
Flaxman cogitated for a while and then propounded a little plan to his
aunt, to which she, after some demur, agreed.
'I want to make a few notes,' he said drily, when it was arranged; 'I
should be glad to satisfy myself.'
When the Misses Leyburn were announced, Rose, though the younger, came
in first. She always took the lead by a sort of natural right, and
Agnes never dreamt of protesting. To-night the sisters were in white.
Some soft creamy stuff was folded and draped about Rose's slim shapely
figure in such a way as to bring out all its charming roundness and