At Love's Cost Part 52

One great singer followed rapidly after another, and Ida, with slightly flushed face and eyes that were dim with unshed tears--for the exquisite music thrilled her to the core--leant back, with her hands tightly clasped in her lap, her thoughts flying back to Herondale and those summer evenings which, in some strange way, every song recalled.

She was unconscious of her surroundings, even of the objectionable Joseph, who sat beside her as closely as he could; and she started slightly as he whispered:

"Those seats are filled up now. I wonder who they are? They look cla.s.sy--particularly so."

Ida nodded mechanically, and paid no heed. Presently Joseph, who was one of those individuals who can never sit still or be silent for long at a theatre or concert, nudged Ida and said: "Look! there is one of them standing up! Why, I believe it is--" He borrowed an opera-gla.s.s from the man sitting in front of him and levelled it at the stalls. One of the new-comers, one of the gentlemen, had risen from his seat, and with his back to the platform, was scanning the house with a pleasant smile on his handsome face. "Yes, it is!" exclaimed Joseph, excitedly.

"It's Sir Stephen Orme! Here, take the gla.s.ses and look at him! That gentleman looking round the house, the one standing up with the white waistcoat, the one that came in with the other two! That's the great Sir Stephen himself! I saw him once in the city; besides, I've seen his portraits everywhere. That's the man who has created more excitement on the Stock Exchange than any man in our time."

Ida took the gla.s.ses which he had thrust into her hand and held it to her eyes; but her hand shook, and for a moment or two she could distinguish nothing; then, as the mist pa.s.sed away and her hand grew steadier, so that she could see Sir Stephen, he bent down and said something to the lady sitting beside him. She looked round, and Ida saw distinctly, and for the first time, though fas.h.i.+onable London was tolerably familiar with it now, the beautiful face of Maude Falconer.

With her heart beating painfully Ida looked at her, noting with a woman's quickness every detail of the handsome face with its wealth of bronze-gold hair. A presentiment flashed into her mind and weighed upon her heart as she looked, a presentiment which was quickly verified, for the man on the other side of the beautiful woman rose and looked round the house, and Ida saw that it was Stafford.

Her hand gripped the opera-gla.s.s tightly, for it was in danger of falling. She felt as if she were stifling, the great place, with its sea of faces and its rings of electric light, swam before her eyes, and she felt sick and giddy. It seemed to her that Stafford was looking straight at her, that he could not fail to see her, and she shrank back as far as the seat would allow, and a sigh that was a gasp for breath escaped her lips, which had grown almost as white as her face. In taking the gla.s.ses from her, Joseph noticed her pallor.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Do you feel ill? It's beastly hot.

Would you like to come outside?"

"No, no," she panted, with difficulty. "It is the heat--I am all right now--I beg of you not to move--not to speak to me."

She fought against the horrible faintness, against the shock which had overwhelmed her; she bit her lips to force the colour back to them, and tried to keep her eyes from the tall figure, the handsome face against which she had so often pressed her own; but she could not; it was as if they were drawn to it by a kind of fascination. She saw that he looked pale and haggard, and that the glance with which he swept the house was a wearied one, in strange contrast to the smiling, complacent, and even triumphant one of his father.

"Are you all right now?" asked Joseph. "I wish I'd brought a bottle of smelling-salts. Will you come out and get something to drink--water --brandy? No? Sure you're all right? Did you see Sir Stephen?

I wonder who the lady is beside him? Some swell or other, I'll be bound. The other man must be Sir Stephen's son, for he's like him.

He's almost as great a personage as Sir Stephen himself; you see his name amongst those of people of the highest rank in the fas.h.i.+onable columns in the newspapers. The lady's got beautiful 'air, hasn't she?"

he went on, after a pause. "Not that I admire that colour myself; I'm gone on black 'air." He glanced insinuatingly at Ida's.

When the interval expired, Sir Stephen and Stafford resumed their seat, and, with a sigh of relief, Ida tried to listen to the music; but she could hear Stafford's voice through it, and was obliged to shut her eyes that she might not see him. Instinctively, and from Jessie's description, she knew that the beautiful girl, with the complexion of a lily and the wealth of bronze-gold hair, was Maude Falconer. Why was she with Sir Stephen and Stafford? Was it, indeed, true that they were engaged? Up to the present moment she had cherished a doubt; but now it seemed impossible to doubt any longer. For how many minutes, hours, years would she have to sit with those two before her, her heart racked with the pangs of jealousy, with the memory of happier days, with the ghastly fact that he had gone from her life forever, and that she was sitting there a spectator of his faithlessness. Every song seemed to mock her wretchedness, and she had to battle with the mad desire to spring to her feet and cry aloud.

In a kind of dream she heard the strains of the national anthem, and saw Stafford rise with the rest of the audience, and watched him as he drew the costly cloak round Maude Falconer's white shoulders; in a dream allowed Joseph to draw her arm through his and lead her down the crowded staircase into the open air.

"Splendid concert!" he said, triumphantly. "But you look tired, Ida.

We'll have a cab to the station. But let's wait a minute and see the prince come out."

They stood in the crowd which had formed to stare at his royal highness; and as luck would have it, Stafford, with Maude Falconer on his arm, and followed by Sir Stephen, pa.s.sed in front of them, and so close that Ida shrank back in terror lest Stafford should see her. Some of the crowd, some Stock Exchange people probably, recognised Sir Stephen, and spoke his name aloud, and a cheer arose. He bowed and smiled and shook his head in a deprecatory way, and Ida saw Stafford's face darken with a frown, as if he were ashamed of the publicity, as he hurried Maude Falconer to the carriage. A moment or two after, the prince appeared, there was an excited and enthusiastic burst of cheering; and at last Joseph forced his way out of the crowd and found a cab.

They had some little time to wait for the train, and Joseph, after vainly pressing some refreshment on Ida, went into the refreshment-room and got a drink for himself and a cup of coffee for Isabel, while Ida sank back into a corner of the carriage and waited for them. Joseph talked during the whole of the journey in an excited fas.h.i.+on, darting glances every now and then from his small eyes at the white face in the corner. When they got out at the station, he offered Ida his arm and she took it half-unconsciously. The path was too narrow to permit of three to walk abreast, and Joseph sent Isabel on in front; and on some trivial excuse or another contrived to lag some little distance behind her. Every now and then he pressed Ida's arm more closely to his side, looking at her with sidelong and lingering glances, and at last he said, in a kind of whisper, so that Isabel should not hear:

"I hope you've enjoyed yourself, Ida, and that you're glad you came? I don't know when I've had such a jolly night, and I hope we may have many more of them. Of course you know why I'm so happy? It's because I've got you with me. Life's been a different thing for me since you came to live with us; but I dessay you've seen that, haven't you?" He laughed knowingly.

"I have seen--what?" asked Ida, trying to rouse herself and to pay attention to what he was saying.

"I say I suppose you've seen how it is with me, Ida, and why I am an haltered being? It is you who have done it; it's because I'm right down in love with you. There, I've said it now! I've been going to say it for days past; but, somehow, though I dessay you don't mean it, you seem so cold and standoffish, and quite different to other girls when a man pays them attention. But I dessay you understand now, and you'll treat me differently. I'm awfully in love with you, Ida, and I don't see why we shouldn't be engaged. I'm getting on at the office, and if I can squeeze some money out of the guv'nor, I shall set up for myself.

Of course, there'll be a pretty how-d'y-do over this at home, for they're always wanting me to marry money, and unfortunately you've lost yours. Not that I mind that, mind you. I believe in following the dictates of your 'eart, and I know what my 'eart says. And now what do _you_ say, Ida?"

And he pressed her arm and looked into her face with a confident smile.

Ida drew her disengaged hand across her brow and frowned, as if she were trying to grasp his meaning.

"I--I beg your pardon, Joseph," she said. "I didn't quite understand--I was thinking of something else. You were asking me--"

He reddened and pushed his thick lips out with an expression of resentment.

"Well, I like that!" he said, uneasily, but with an attempt at a laugh.

"I've just been proposing to you--asking you to be my wife; and you're going to, aren't you?"

Ida drew her arm from his, and regarded him with stony amazement. For the moment she really thought that either he had been drinking too much spirits at the refreshment-room at the station and that it was an elaborate joke on his part, or that she had lost her senses and was imagining a hideously ridiculous speech, too absurd and grotesque for even Joseph to have uttered. Then she saw by his face that he was sober and that he had actually proposed to her, and, in a kind of desperation, she laughed.

He had been going to take her arm again, but his hand fell to his side, and he looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and indignation, with such an expression of wounded vanity and resentment, that Ida felt almost forced to laugh again; but she checked the desire, and said, as gently and humbly as she could:

"I--I beg your pardon, Joseph. I thought it was a--a joke. I am very sorry. But though you didn't mean it as a jest, it is, of course, absurd. I don't think you quite know what you were saying; I am quite sure you don't mean it--"

"Oh, yes, but I do!" he broke in eagerly, and with a little air of relief. "I'm in earnest, 'pon my word, I am. I'm awfully in love with you; and if you'll say yes, I'll stand up to the guv'nor and make it all square for you."

"But I say 'No,'" said Ida, rather sternly, her lips setting tightly, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng in the darkness, which, fortunately for Joseph, hid them from his sight. "Please do not speak to me in this way again."

"But look here!" he stammered, his face red, his thick lips twisted in an ugly fas.h.i.+on, "do you know what you're doing--saying?"

"Yes," she said, more sternly than before. "I think it is you who do not know what you are saying. You cannot mean to insult me. I beg your pardon, Joseph. I do not mean to be angry, to hurt your feelings. I think you mean to pay me a great honour; and I--I thank you; but I cannot accept it. And please take this as my final answer, and never, never, speak to me again in this manner."

"Do you mean to say--" he began angrily.

"Not another word, please," said Ida, and she hurried forward so that they came within hearing of Isabel.

Nothing more was said until they reached Laburnum Villa. Mrs. Heron was waiting up for them, and was expressing a hope that they had enjoyed themselves--she had a woollen shawl round her shoulders and spoke in an injured voice and with the expression of a long-suffering martyr--when she caught sight of Joseph's angry and sullen face as he flung himself into a chair and thrust his hands in his pockets, and she stopped short and looked from him to Ida, and sniffed suspiciously and aggressively.

"Oh, yes," said Joseph, with an ugly sneer and a scowl at Ida as she was leaving the room, "we have had a very happy time--some of us--a particularly happy time, I don't think!"

CHAPTER x.x.x.

It was hot at Woodgreen; but it was hotter still in Mayfair, where the season was drawing to a close with all the signs of a long-spun-out and exhausting dissolution. Women were waxing pale under the prolonged strain of entertainments which for the last week or two had been matters of duty rather than pleasure, and many a girl who had entered the lists of society a blus.h.i.+ng and hopeful _debutante_ with perhaps a ducal coronet in her mind's eye, was beginning to think that she would have to be content with, say, the simpler one of a viscountess; or even to wed with no coronet at all. Many of the men were down at Cowes or golfing at St. Andrews; and those unfortunates who were detained in attendance at the house which continued to sit, like a "broody hen," as Howard said, longed and sighed for the coming of the magic 12th of August, before which date they a.s.sured themselves the House _must_ rise and so bring about their long-delayed holiday.

But one man showed no sign of weariness or a desire for rest; Sir Stephen's step was light and buoyant as ever on the hot pavement of Pall Mall, and on the still hotter one of the city; his face was as cheery, his manner as gay, and his voice as bright and free from care as those of a young man.

There is no elixir like success; and Sir Stephen was drinking deeply of the delicious draught. He had been well known for years: he was famous now. You could not open a newspaper without coming upon his name in the city article, and in the fas.h.i.+onable intelligence. Now it was a report of the meeting of some great company, at which Sir Stephen had presided, at another time it occurred in a graphic account of a big party at the house he had rented at Grosvenor Square. It was a huge mansion, and the rent ran into many figures; but, as Howard remarked, it did not matter; Sir Stephen was rich enough to rent every house in the square. Sir Stephen had taken over the army of servants and lived in a state which was little short of princely: and lived alone; for Stafford, who was not fond of a big house and still less fond of a large retinue, begged permission to remain at his own by no means over-luxurious but rather modest rooms.

It is not improbable that he would have liked to have absented himself from the grand and lavish entertainments with which his father celebrated the success of his latest enterprise; but it was not possible, and Stafford was present at the dinners and luncheons, receptions and concerts which went on, apparently without a break, at Clarendon House.

Indeed, it was necessary that he should be present and in attendance on his _fiancee_ who appeared at every function. Maude was now almost as celebrated as Sir Stephen; for her beauty, her reputed wealth, and the fact that she was engaged to the son of Sir Stephen, had raised her to an exalted position in the fas.h.i.+onable world; and her name figured in the newspapers very nearly as often as that of the great financier.

She had stepped from obscurity into that notoriety, for which we all of us have such a morbid craving, almost in a single day; and she queened it with a languid grace and self-possession which established her position on a firm basis. Wherever she went she was the centre and object of a small crowd of courtiers; the men admired her, and the women envied her; for nowadays most women would rather marry wealth than rank, unless the latter were accompanied by a long rent roll--and in these hard times for landlords, too many English n.o.blemen, have no rent roll at all, short or long.

Excepting his father's, Stafford went to very few houses, and spent most of his time, when not in attendance on Maude, in the solitude of his own chambers, or in the smoking-room of one of the quietest of his clubs. Short as the time had been, the matter of a few weeks only since had parted from Ida, he had greatly changed; so changed that not seldom the bright and buoyant and overbright Sir Stephen seemed to be younger than his son. He was too busy, too absorbed in the pursuit of his ambition, the skilful steering of the enterprise he had so successfully launched to notice the change; but it was noticed by others, and especially by Howard. Often he watched Stafford moving moodily about his father's crowded rooms, with the impa.s.sive face which men wear when they have some secret trouble or anxiety which they conceal as the Spartan boy concealed the fox which was gnawing at his vitals; or Howard came upon him in the corner of a half-darkened smoking-room, with an expired cigar in his lips, and his eyes fixed on a newspaper which was never turned.

By that unwritten code by which we are all governed nowadays, Howard could not obtrude by questioning his friend, and Stafford showed no signs of making any voluntary statement or explanation. He suffered in a silence with which he kept at arm's-length even his closed friend; and Howard pondered and worried in a futile attempt to guess at the trouble which had changed Stafford from a light-hearted man, with an immense capacity for pleasure, to a moody individual to whom the pleasures of life seemed absolutely distasteful.