The Masquerader Part 25

"I--I didn't notice it," he said; "but her eyes reminded me of a cat's eyes--and she walks like a cat. I never seemed to see it--until to-night."

Eve changed her position. "She was very artistic," she said, tentatively. "Don't you think the gold gown was beautiful with her pale-colored hair?"

Loder felt surprised. He was convinced that Eve disliked the other and he was not sufficiently versed in women to understand her praise. "I thought--" he began. Then he wisely stopped. "I didn't see the gown," he subst.i.tuted.

Eve looked out of the window. "How unappreciative men are!" she said.

But her tone was strangely free from censure.

After this there was silence until Grosvenor Square was reached. Having left the carriage and pa.s.sed into the house, Eve paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs to give an order to c.r.a.pham, who was still in attendance in the hall; and again Loder had an opportunity of studying her. As he looked, a sharp comparison rose to his mind.

"A fairy princess!" he had heard the red-haired man say as Lillian Astrupp came into view along the Bramfells' corridor, and the simile had seemed particularly apt. With her grace, her delicacy, her subtle attraction, she might well be the outcome of imagination. But with Eve it was different. She also was graceful and attractive--but it was grace and attraction of a different order. One was beautiful with the beauty of the white rose that springs from the hot-house and withers at the first touch of cold; the other with the beauty of the wild rose on the cliffs above the sea, that keeps its petals fine and transparent in face of salt spray and wet mist. Eve, too, had her realm, but it was the realm of real things. A great confidence, a feeling that here one might rely even if all other faiths were shaken, touched him suddenly. For a moment he stood irresolute, watching her mount the stairs with her easy, a.s.sured step. Then a determination came to him. Fate favored him to-night; he was in luck tonight. He would put his fortune to one more test. He swung across the hall and ran up the stairs.

His face was keen with interest as he reached her side. The hard outline of his features and the hard grayness of his eyes were softened as when he had paused to talk with Lakely. Action was the breath of his life, and his face changed under it as another's might change under the influence of stirring music or good wine.

Eve saw the look and again the uneasy expression of surprise crossed her eyes. She paused, her hand resting on the banister.

Loder looked at her directly. "Will you come into the study--as you came that other night? There's something I want to say." He spoke quietly. He felt master of himself and of her.

She hesitated, glanced at him, and then glanced away.

"Will you come?" he said again. And as he said it his eyes rested on the sweep of her thick eyelashes, the curve of the black hair.

At last her lashes lifted, and the perplexity and doubt in her blue eyes stirred him. Without waiting for her answer, he leaned forward.

"Say yes!" he urged. "I don't often ask for favors."

Still she hesitated; then her decision was made for her. With a new boldness he touched her arm, drawing her forward gently but decisively towards Chilcote's rooms.

In the study a fire burned brightly, the desk was laden with papers, the lights were nicely adjusted; even the chairs were in their accustomed places. Loder's senses responded to each suggestion. It seemed but a day since he had seen it last. It was precisely as he had left it--the niche needing but the man.

To hide his emotion he crossed the floor quickly and drew a chair forward. In less than six hours he had run up and down the scale of emotions. He had looked despair in the face, till the sudden sight of Chilcote had lifted him to the skies; since then, surprise had a.s.sailed him in its strongest form; he had known the full meaning of the word "risk"; and from every contingency he had come out conqueror. He bent over the chair as he pulled it forward, to hide the expression in his eyes.

"Sit down," he said, gently.

Eve moved towards him. She moved slowly, as if half afraid.

Many emotions stirred her--distrust, uncertainty, and a curious half-dominant, half-suppressed questioning that it was difficult to define. Loder remembered her shrinking coldness, her reluctant tolerance on the night of his first coming, and his individuality, his certainty of power, kindled afresh. Never had he been so vehemently himself; never had Chilcote seemed so complete a shadow.

As Eve seated herself, he moved forward and leaned over the back of her chair. The impulse that had filled him in his interview with Renwick, that had goaded him as he drove to the reception, was dominant again.

"I tried to say something as we drove to the Bramfells' to-night," he began. Like many men who possess eloquence for an impersonal cause, he was brusque, even blunt, in the stating of his own case. "May I hark back, and go on from where I broke off?"

Eve half turned. Her face was still puzzled and questioning. "Of course." She sat forward again, clasping her hands.

He looked thoughtfully at the back of her head, at the slim outline of her shoulders, the glitter of the diamonds about her neck.

"Do you remember the day, three weeks ago, that we talked together in this room? The day a great many things seemed possible?"

This time she did not look round. She kept her gaze upon the fire.

"Do you remember?" he persisted, quietly. In his college days men who heard that tone of quiet persistence had been wont to lose heart. Eve heard it now for the first time, and, without being aware, answered to it.

"Yes, I remember," she said.

"On that day you believed in me--" In his earnestness he no longer simulated Chilcote; he spoke with his own steady reliance. He saw Eve stir, unclasp and clasp her hands, but he went steadily on. "On that day you saw me in a new light. You acknowledged me." He emphasized the slightly peculiar word. "But since that day"--his voice quickened "since that day your feelings have changed--your faith in me has fallen away."

He watched her closely; but she made no sign, save to lean still nearer to the fire. He crossed his arms over the back of her chair. "You were justified," he said, suddenly. "I've not been--myself since that day."

As he said the words his coolness forsook him slightly. He loathed the necessary lie, yet his egotism clamored for vindication. "All men have their lapses," he went on; "there are times--there are days and weeks when I--when my--" The word "nerves" touched his tongue, hung upon it, then died away unspoken.

Very quietly, almost without a sound, Eve had risen and turned towards him. She was standing very straight, her face a little pale, the hand that rested on the arm of her chair trembling slightly.

"John," she said, quickly, "don't say that word? Don't say that hideous word `nerves'! I don't feel that I can bear it to-night--not just to-night. Can you understand?"

Loder stepped back. Without comprehending, he felt suddenly and strangely at a loss. Something in her face struck him silent and perplexed. It seemed that without preparation he had stepped upon dangerous ground. With an undefined apprehension he waited, looking at her.

"I can't explain it," she went on with nervous haste, "I can't give any reasons, but quite suddenly the--the farce has grown unbearable. I used not to think--used not even to care--but suddenly things have changed--or I have changed." She paused, confused and distressed. "Why should it be? Why should things change?" She asked the question sharp.

ly, as if in appeal against her own incredulity.

Loder turned aside. He was afraid of the triumph, volcanic and irrepressible, that her admission roused.

"Why?" she said again.

He turned slowly back. "You forget that I'm not a magician," he said, gently. "I hardly know what you are speaking of."

For a moment she was silent, but in that moment her eyes spoke. Pain, distress, pride, all strove for expression; then at last her lips parted.

"Do you say that in seriousness?" she asked.

It was no moment for fencing, and Loder knew it. "In seriousness," he replied, shortly.

"Then I shall speak seriously, too." Her voice shook slightly and the color came back into her face, but the hand on the arm of the chair ceased to tremble. "For more than four years I have known that you take drugs--for more than four years I have acquiesced in your deceptions--in your meannesses--"

There was an instant's silence. Then Loder stepped forward.

"You knew--for four years?" he said, very slowly. For the first time that night he remembered Chilcote and forgot himself.

Eve lifted her head with a quick gesture--as if, in flinging off discretion and silence, she appreciated to the full the new relief of speech.

"Yes, I knew. Perhaps I should have spoken when I first surprised the secret, but it's all so past that it's useless to speculate now. It was fate, I suppose. I was very young, you were very unapproachable, and--and we had no love to make the way easy." For a second her glance faltered and she looked away. "A woman's--a girl's--disillusioning is a very sad comedy--it should never have an audience." She laughed a little bitterly as she looked back again. "I saw all the deceits, all the subterfuges, all the--lies." She said the word deliberately, meeting his eyes.

Again he thought of Chilcote, but his face paled.

"I saw it all. I lived with it all till I grew hard and indifferent--till I acquiesced in your 'nerves' as readily as the rest of the world that hadn't suspected and didn't know." Again she laughed nervously. "And I thought the indifference would last forever. If one lives in a groove for years, one gets frozen up; I never felt more frozen than on the night Mr. Fraide spoke to me of you--asked me to use my influence; then, on that night--"

"Yes. On that night?" Loder's voice was tense.

But her excitement had suddenly fallen. Whether his glance had quelled it or whether the force of her feelings had worked itself out it was impossible to say, but her eyes had lost their resolution. She stood hesitating for a moment, then she turned and moved to the mantel-piece.

"That night you found me--changed?" Loder was insistent.

"Changed--and yet not changed." She spoke reluctantly, with averted head.