Red Hair Part 19

There was a strange look in his face as a great lamp threw a light on it.

"Evangeline," he said, in a voice I have not yet heard, "when are you going to finish playing with me? I am growing to love you, you know."

"I am very sorry to hear it," I said, gently. "I don't want you to. Oh, please _don't_!" as he took my hand. "I--I--if you only knew how I _hate_ being touched!"

He leaned back and looked at me. There is something which goes to the head a little about being in a brougham with nice fur rugs alone with some one at night. The lights flas.h.i.+ng in at the windows, and that faint scent of a very good cigar. I felt fearfully excited. If it had been Lord Robert, I believe--well----

He leaned over very close to me. It seemed in another moment he would kiss me, and what could I do then? I couldn't scream, or jump out in Leicester Square, could I?

"Why do you call me Evangeline?" I said, by way of putting him off. "I never said you might."

"Foolish child!--I shall call you what I please. You drive me mad. I don't know what you were born for. Do you always have this effect on people?"

"What effect?" I said, to gain time; we had got nearly into Long Acre.

"An effect that causes one to lose all discretion. I feel I would give my soul to hold you in my arms."

I told him I did not think it was at all nice or respectful of him to talk so--that I found such love revolting.

"You tell me in your sane moments I am most unsuitable to you--you try to keep away from me--and then when you get close you begin to talk this stuff! I think it is an insult!" I said, angry and disdainful. "When I arouse devotion and tenderness in some one, then I shall listen, but to you and to this--never!"

"Go on," he said. "Even in the dim light you look beautiful when cross."

"I am not cross," I answered. "Only absolutely disgusted."

By that time, thank goodness, we had got into the stream of carriages close to the opera-house. Mr. Carruthers, however, seemed hardly to notice this.

"Darling," he said, "I will try not to annoy you; but you are so fearfully provoking. I--tell you truly, no man would find it easy to keep cool with you."

"Oh, I don't know what it is, being cool, or not cool," I said, wearily.

"I am tired of every one. Even as tiny a thing as Malcolm Montgomerie gets odd like this!"

He leaned back and laughed, and then said, angrily: "Impertinence! I will wring his neck!"

"Thank Heaven we have arrived!" I exclaimed, as we drove under the portico. I gave a great sigh of relief.

Really, men are very trying and tiresome, and if I shall always have to put up with these scenes through having red hair, I almost wish it were mouse-colored, like Cicely Parker's. Mrs. Carruthers often said, "You need not suppose, Evangeline, that you are going to have a quiet life with your coloring; the only thing one can hope for is that you will screw on your head."

Lady Ver and Lord Robert were already in the hall waiting for us, but the second I saw them I knew she had been saying something to Lord Robert. His face, so gay and _debonnaire_ all through dinner, now looked set and stern, and he took not the slightest notice of me as we walked to the box--the big one next the stage on the pit tier.

Lady Ver appeared triumphant--her eyes were s.h.i.+ning with big blacks in the middle, and such bright spots of pink in her cheeks--she looked lovely; and I can't think why, but I suddenly felt I hated her. It was horrid of me, for she was so kind, and settled me in the corner behind the curtain where I could see and not be seen, rather far back, while she and Lord Robert were quite in the front. It was "Carmen"--the opera. I had never seen it before.

Music has such an effect--every note seems to touch some emotion in me. I feel wicked, or good, or exalted, or--or--oh, some queer feeling that I don't know what it is--a kind of electric current down my back, and as if--as if I would like to love some one and have them to kiss me. Oh, it sounds perfectly dreadful what I have written, but I can't help it--that is what some music does to me, and I said always I should tell the truth here.

From the very beginning note to the end I was feeling--feeling--Oh, how I understand her--Carmen!--_fruit defendu_ attracted her so--the beautiful, wicked, fascinating snake. I also wanted to dance, and to move like that, and I unconsciously quivered perhaps. I was cold as ice, and fearfully excited. The back of Lord Robert's beautifully set head impeded my view at times. How exquisitely groomed he is! And one could see at a glance _his_ mother had not been a housemaid! I never have seen anything look so well bred as he does.

Lady Ver was talking to him in a cooing, low voice after the first act, and the second act, and indeed even when the third act had begun. He seemed much more _empresse_ with her than he generally does. It--it hurt me, that and the music and the dancing, and Mr. Carruthers whispering pa.s.sionate little words at intervals, even though I paid no attention to them; but altogether I, too, felt a kind of madness.

Suddenly Lord Robert turned round, and for five seconds looked at me, his lovely, expressive blue eyes swimming with wrath and reproach and--oh, how it hurt me!--contempt. Christopher was leaning over the back of my chair, quite close, in a devoted att.i.tude.

Lord Robert did not speak, but if a look could wither I must have turned into a dead oak-leaf. It awoke some devil in me. What had _I_ done to be annihilated so! _I_ was playing perfectly fair--keeping my word to Lady Ver, and--oh, I felt as if it were breaking my heart.

But that look of Lord Robert's! It drove me to distraction, and every instinct to be wicked and attractive that I possess came up in me. I leaned over to Lady Ver, so that I must be close to him, and I said little things to her, never one word to him; but I moved my seat, making it certain the corner of his eye must catch sight of me, and I allowed my shoulders to undulate the faintest bit to that Spanish music. Oh, I can dance as Carmen, too! Mrs. Carruthers had me taught every time we went to Paris. She loved to see it herself.

I could hear Christopher breathing very quickly. "My G.o.d!" he whispered, "a man would go to h.e.l.l for you."

Lord Robert got up abruptly and went out of the box.

Then it was as if Don Jose's dagger plunged into my heart, not Carmen's.

That sounds high-flown, but I mean it--a sudden, sick, cold sensation, as if everything was numb. Lady Ver turned round pettishly to Christopher.

"What on earth is the matter with Robert?" she said.

"There is a Persian proverb which a.s.serts a devil slips in between two winds," said Christopher. "Perhaps that is what has happened in this box to-night."

Lady Ver laughed harshly, and I sat there still as death. And all the time the music and the movement on the stage went on. I am glad she is murdered in the end--glad! Only I would like to have seen the blood gush out. I am fierce--fierce--sometimes.

300 PARK STREET,

Friday morning, _November 25th._

I know just the meaning of dust and ashes, for that is what I felt I had had for breakfast this morning, the day after "Carmen."

Lady Ver had given orders she was not to be disturbed, so I did not go near her, and crept down to the dining-room, quite forgetting the master of the house had arrived. There he was, a strange, tall, lean man with fair hair, and sad, cross, brown eyes, and a nose inclined to pink at the tip--a look of indigestion about him, I feel sure. He was sitting in front of a _Daily Telegraph_ propped up on the teapot, and some cold, untasted sole on his plate.

I came forward. He looked very surprised.

"I--I'm Evangeline Travers," I announced.

He said "How d'you do?" awkwardly. One could see without a notion what that meant.

"I'm staying here," I continued. "Did you not know?"

"Then won't you have some breakfast? Beastly cold, I fear," politeness forced him to utter. "No, Ianthe never writes to me. I had not heard any news for a fortnight, and I have not seen her yet."

Manners have been drummed into me from early youth, so I said, politely, "You only arrived from Paris late last night, did you not?"

"I got in about seven o'clock, I think," he replied.

"We had to leave so early--we were going to the opera," I said.

"A Wagner that begins at unearthly hours, I suppose?" he murmured, absently.

"No, it was 'Carmen,' but we dined first with my--my--guardian, Mr.

Carruthers."