Lady Rose's Daughter Part 45

"You won't forget Wednesday?" she said to him, as she followed him into the hall.

"No. Is there anything else that you wish--that I could do?"

"No, nothing. But if there is I will ask."

Then, looking up, she shrank from something in his face--something accusing, pa.s.sionate, profound.

He wrung her hand.

"Promise that you will ask."

She murmured something, and he turned away.

She came back alone into the drawing-room.

"Oh, what a good man!" she said, sighing. "What a good man!"

And then, all in a moment, she was thankful that he was gone--that she was alone with and mistress of her pain.

The pa.s.sion and misery which his visit had interrupted swept back upon her in a rus.h.i.+ng swirl, blinding and choking every sense. Ah, what a scene, to which his coming had put an end--scene of bitterness, of recrimination, not restrained even by this impending anguish of parting!

It came as a close to a week during which she and Warkworth had been playing the game which they had chosen to play, according to its appointed rules--the delicacies and restraints of friends.h.i.+p masking, and at the same time inflaming, a most unhappy, poisonous, and growing love. And, finally, there had risen upon them a storm-wave of feeling--tyrannous, tempestuous--bursting in reproach and agitation, leaving behind it, bare and menacing, the old, ugly facts, unaltered and unalterable.

Warkworth was little less miserable than herself. That she knew. He loved her, as it were, to his own anger and surprise. And he suffered in deserting her, more than he had ever suffered yet through any human affection.

But his purpose through it all remained stubbornly fixed; that, also, she knew. For nearly a year Aileen Moffatt's fortune and Aileen Moffatt's family connections had entered into all his calculations of the future. Only a few more years in the army, then retirement with ample means, a charming wife, and a seat in Parliament. To jeopardize a plan so manifestly desirable, so easy to carry out, so far-reaching in its favorable effects upon his life, for the sake of those hard and doubtful alternatives in which a marriage with Julie would involve him, never seriously entered his mind. When he suffered he merely said to himself, steadily, that time would heal the smart for both of them.

"Only one thing would be absolutely fatal for all of us--that I should break with Aileen."

Julie read these obscure processes in Warkworth's mind with perfect clearness. She was powerless to change them; but that afternoon she had, at any rate, beaten her wings against the bars, and the exhaustion and anguish of her revolt, her reproaches, were still upon her.

The spring night had fallen. The room was hot, and she threw a window open. Some thorns in the garden beneath had thickened into leaf. They rose in a dark ma.s.s beneath the window. Overhead, beyond the haze of the great city, a few stars twinkled, and the dim roar of London life beat from all sides upon this quiet corner which still held Lady Mary's old house.

Julie's eyes strained into the darkness; her head swam with weakness and weariness. Suddenly she gave a cry--she pressed her hands to her heart.

Upon the darkness outside there rose a face, so sharply drawn, so life-like, that it printed itself forever upon the quivering tissues of the brain. It was Warkworth's face, not as she had seen it last, but in some strange extremity of physical ill--drawn, haggard, in a cold sweat--the eyes glazed, the hair matted, the parched lips open as though they cried for help. She stood gazing. Then the eyes turned, and the agony in them looked out upon her.

Her whole sense was absorbed by the phantom; her being hung upon it.

Then, as it faded on the quiet trees, she tottered to a chair and hid her face. Common sense told her that she was the victim of her own tired nerves and tortured fancy. But the memory of Cousin Mary Leicester's second sight, of her "visions" in this very room, crept upon her and gripped her heart. A ghostly horror seized her of the room, the house, and her own tempestuous nature. She groped her way out, in blind and hurrying panic--glad of the lamp in the hall, glad of the sounds in the house, glad, above all, of Therese's thin hands as they once more stole lovingly round her own.

XVII

The d.u.c.h.ess and Julie were in the large room of Burlington House. They had paused before a magnificent Turner of the middle period, hitherto unseen by the public, and the d.u.c.h.ess was reading from the catalogue in Julie's ear.

She had found Julie alone in Heribert Street, surrounded by books and proofs, endeavoring, as she reported, to finish a piece of work for Dr.

Meredith. Distressed by her friend's pale cheeks, the d.u.c.h.ess had insisted on dragging her from the prison-house and changing the current of her thoughts. Julie, laughing, hesitating, indignant, had at last yielded--probably in order to avoid another _tete-a-tete_ and another scene with the little, impetuous lady, and now the d.u.c.h.ess had her safe and was endeavoring to amuse her.

But it was not easy. Julie, generally so instructed and sympathetic, so well skilled in the difficult art of seeing pictures with a friend, might, to-day, never have turned a phrase upon a Constable or a Romney before. She tried, indeed, to turn them as usual; but the d.u.c.h.ess, sharply critical and attentive where her beloved Julie was concerned, perceived the difference acutely! Alack, what languor, what fatigue!

Evelyn became more and more conscious of an inward consternation.

"But, thank goodness, he goes to-morrow--the villain! And when that's over, it will be all right."

Julie, meanwhile, knew that she was observed, divined, and pitied. Her pride revolted, but it could wring from her nothing better than a pa.s.sive resistance. She could prevent Evelyn from expressing her thoughts; she could not so command her own bodily frame that the d.u.c.h.ess should not think. Days of moral and mental struggle, nights of waking, combined with the serious and sustained effort of a new profession, had left their mark. There are, moreover, certain wounds to self-love and self-respect which poison the whole being.

"Julie! you _must_ have a holiday!" cried the d.u.c.h.ess, presently, as they sat down to rest.

Julie replied that she, Madame Bornier, and the child were going to Bruges for a week.

"Oh, but that won't be comfortable enough! I'm sure I could arrange something. Think of all our tiresome houses--eating their heads off!"

Julie firmly refused. She was going to renew old friends.h.i.+ps at Bruges; she would be made much of; and the prospect was as pleasant as any one need wish.

"Well, of course, if you have made up your mind. When do you go?"

"In three or four days--just before the Easter rush. And you?"

"Oh, we go to Scotland to fish. We must, of course, be killing something. How long, darling, will you be away?"

"About ten days." Julie pressed the d.u.c.h.ess's little hand in acknowledgment of the caressing word and look.

"By-the-way, didn't Lord Lackington invite you? Ah, there he is!"

And suddenly, Lord Lackington, examining with fury a picture of his own which some rascally critic had that morning p.r.o.nounced to be "Venetian school" and not the divine Giorgione himself, lifted an angry countenance to find the d.u.c.h.ess and Julie beside him.

The start which pa.s.sed through him betrayed itself. He could not yet see Julie with composure. But when he had pressed her hand and inquired after her health, he went back to his grievance, being indeed rejoiced to have secured a pair of listeners.

"Really, the insolence of these fellows in the press! I shall let the Academy know what I think of it. Not a rag of mine shall they ever see here again. Ears and little fingers, indeed! Idiots and owls!"

Julie smiled. But it had to be explained to the d.u.c.h.ess that a wise man, half Italian, half German, had lately arisen who proposed to judge the authenticity of a picture by its ears, a.s.sisted by any peculiarities of treatment in the little fingers.

"What nonsense!" said the d.u.c.h.ess, with a yawn. "If I were an artist, I should always draw them different ways."

"Well, not exactly," said Lord Lackington, who, as an artist himself, was unfortunately debarred from statements of this simplicity. "But the _ludicrous_ way in which these fools overdo their little discoveries!"

And he walked on, fuming, till the open and unmeasured admiration of the two ladies for his great Rembrandt, the gem of his collection, now occupying the place of honor in the large room of the Academy, restored him to himself.

"Ah, even the biggest a.s.s among them holds his tongue about that!" he said, exultantly. "But, hallo! What does that call itself?" He looked at a picture in front of him, then at the catalogue, then at the d.u.c.h.ess.

"That picture is ours," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "Isn't it a dear? It's a Leonardo da Vinci."

"Leonardo fiddlesticks!" cried Lord Lackington. "Leonardo, indeed! What absurdity! Really, d.u.c.h.ess, you should tell Crowborough to be more careful about his things. We mustn't give handles to these fellows."

"What do you mean?" said the d.u.c.h.ess, offended. "If it isn't a Leonardo, pray what is it?"

"Why, a bad school copy, of course!" said Lord Lackington, hotly. "Look at the eyes"--he took out a pencil and pointed--"look at the neck, look at the fingers!"