The Master-Christian Part 20

He looked up with a curious air of surprise and mock penitence.

"Pardon! But there is no badinage at all about the very serious position in which I find myself," he said, "You, mademoiselle, as a woman, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety and trouble your charming s.e.x gives to ours. That is, of course, when you are charming--which is not always. Now Sylvie, your friend Sylvie--is so distinctly charming that she becomes provoking and irritating. I am sure she has told you I am a terrible villain . . ."

"She has never said so,--never spoken one word against you!" interposed Angela.

"No? That is curious--very curious! But then Sylvie is curious. You see the position is this;--I wish to give her all I am worth in the world, but she will not have it,--I wish to love her, but she will not be loved--"

"Perhaps," said Angela, gaining courage to speak plainly, "Perhaps your love is not linked with honour?"

"Honour?" echoed the Marquis, lifting his finely arched eyebrows, "You mean marriage? No--I confess I am not guilty of so much impudence. For why should the brilliant Sylvie become the Marquise Fontenelle? It would be a most unhappy fate for her, because if there WERE a Marquise Fontenelle, my principles would oblige me to detest her!"

"You would detest your own wife!" said Angela surprised.

"Naturally! It is the fas.h.i.+on. To love one's wife would be pet.i.te bourgoisie--nothing more absurd! It is the height of good form to neglect one's wife and adore one's mistress,--the arrangement works perfectly and keeps a man well balanced,--perpetual complaint on one side, perpetual delight on the other."

He laughed, and his eyes twinkled satirically.

"Are you serious?" asked Angela.

"I never was more serious in my life," declared the Marquis emphatically, "With all my heart I wish to make the delicious pink and white Sylvie happy,--I am sure I could succeed in my way. If I should ever allow myself to do such a dull thing as to marry,--imagine it!--such a dull and altogether prosy thing!--my gardener did it yesterday;--I should of course choose a person with a knowledge of housekeeping and small details,--her happiness it would be quite unnecessary to consider. The maintenance of the establishment, the servants, and the ever increasing train of milliners and dressmakers would be enough to satisfy Madame la Marquise's ambitions. But for Sylvie,--half-fairy, half-angel as she is,--there must be poetry and moonlight, flowers, and romance, and music, and tender nothings,--marriage does not consort with these delights. If you were a little school-girl, dear Donna Sovrani, I should not talk to you in this way,--it would not be proper,--it would savour of Lord Byron, and Maeterlinck, and Heinrich Heine, and various other wicked persons. It would give you what the dear governesses would call 'les idees folles', but being an artist, a great artist, you will understand me. Now, you yourself--you will not marry?"

"I am to be married next year if all is well, to Florian Varillo," said Angela, "Surely you know that?"

"I have heard it, but I will not believe it," said the Marquis airily, "No, no, you will never marry this Florian! Do not tell me of it! You yourself will regret it. It is impossible! You could not submit to matrimonial bondage. If you were plain and awkward I should say to you, marry, and marry quickly, it is the only thing for you!--but being what you are, charming and gifted, why should you be married? For protection? Every man who has once had the honour of meeting you will const.i.tute himself your defender by natural instinct. For respectability? Ah, but marriage is no longer respectable,--the whole estate of matrimony is as full of bribery and corruption as the French War Office."

He threw himself back in his chair and laughed, running one hand through his hair with a provoking manner of indifferent ease and incorrigible lightheartedness.

"I cannot argue with you on the matter," said Angela, rather vexedly, "Your ideas of life never will be mine,--women look at these things differently . . ."

"Poor dear women! Yes!--they do," said the Marquis, "And that is such a pity,--they spoil all the pleasure of their lives. Now, just think for a moment what your friend Sylvie is losing! A devoted, ardent and pa.s.sionate lover who would spare no pains to make her happy,--who would cherish her tenderly, and make her days a dream of romance! I had planned in my mind such a charming boudoir for Sylvie, all ivory and white satin,--flowers, and a soft warm light falling through the windows,--imagine Sylvie, with that delicate face of hers and white rose skin, a sylph clad in floating lace and drapery, seen in a faint pink hue as of a late sunset! You are an artist, mademoiselle, and you can picture the fairy-like effect! I certainly am not ashamed to say that this exquisite vision occupies my thoughts,--it is a suggestion of beauty and deliciousness in a particularly ugly and irksome world,--but to ask such a dainty creature as Sylvie to be my housekeeeper, and make up the tradesmen's books, I could not,--it would be sheer insolence on my part,--it would be like asking an angel just out of heaven to cut off her wings and go downstairs and cook my dinner!"

"You please yourself and your own fanciful temperament by those arguments," said Angela,--"but they are totally without principle. Oh, why," and raising her eyes, she fixed them on him with an earnest look, "Why will you not understand? Sylvie is good and pure,--why would you persuade her to be otherwise?"

Fontenelle rose and took one or two turns up and down the room before replying.

"I expect you will never comprehend me," he said at last, stopping before Angela, "In fact, I confess sometimes I do not comprehend myself. Of course Sylvie is good and pure--I know that;--I should not be so violently in love with her if she were not--but I do not see that her acceptance of me as a lover would make her anything else than good and pure. Because I know that she would be faithful to me."

"Faithful to you--yes!--while you were faithless to her!" said Angela, with a generous indignation in her voice, "You would expect her to be true while you amused yourself with other women. A one-sided arrangement truly!"

The Marquis seemed unmoved.

"Every relation between the s.e.xes is one-sided," he declared, "It is not my fault! The woman gives all to one,--the man gives a little to many. I really am not to blame for falling in with this general course of things. You look very angry with me, Donna Sovrani, and your eyes positively abash me;--you are very loyal to your friend and I admire you for it; but after all, why should you be so hard upon me? I am no worse than Varillo."

Angela started, and her cheeks crimsoned.

"Than Varillo? What do you mean?"

"Well, Varillo has Pon-Pon,--of course she is useful--what he would do without her I am sure I cannot imagine,--still she IS Pon-Pon."

He paused, checked by Angela's expression.

"Please explain yourself, Marquis," she said in cold, calm accents, "I am at a loss to understand you."

Fontenelle glanced at her and saw that her face had grown as pale as it was recently flushed, and that her lips were tightly set; and in a vague way he was sorry to have spoken. But he was secretly chafing at everything,--he was angry that Sylvie had escaped him,--and angrier still that Donna Sovrani should imply by her manner, if not by her words, that she considered him an exceptional villain, when he himself was aware that nearly all the men of his "Cercle" resembled him.

"Pon-Pon is Signor Varillo's model," he said curtly, "I thought you were aware of it. She appears in nearly all his pictures."

Angela breathed again.

"Oh, is that all!" she murmured, and laughed.

Fontenelle opened his eyes a little, amazed at her indifference. What a confiding, unsuspecting creature was this "woman of genius"! This time, however, he was discreet, and kept his thoughts to himself.

"That is all," he said, "But . . . artists have been known to admire their models in more ways than one."

"Yes," said Angela tranquilly, "But Florian is entirely different to most men."

The Marquis was moved to smile, but did not. He merely bowed with a deep and reverential courtesy.

"You have reason to know him best," he said, "and no doubt he deserves your entire confidence. For me--I willingly confess myself a vaurien--but I a.s.sure you I am not as bad as I seem. Your friend Sylvie is safe from me."

Angela's eyes lightened,--her mind was greatly relieved.

"You will leave her to herself--" she began.

"Certainly I will leave her to herself. She will not like it, but I will do it! She is going away to-morrow,--I found that out from her maid. Why will you beautiful ladies keep maids? They are always ready to tell a man everything for twenty or forty francs. So simple!--so cheap!--Sylvie's maid is my devoted adherent,--and why?--not only on account of the francs, but because I have been careful to secure her sweetheart as my valet, and he depends upon me to set him up in business. So you see how easy it is for me to be kept aware of all my fair lady's movements. This is how I learned that she is going away to-morrow--and this is why I came here to-day. She has given me the slip--she has avoided me and now I will avoid her. We shall see the result. I think it will end in a victory for me."

"Never!" said Angela, "You will never win Sylvie to your way of thinking, but it is quite possible she may win you!"

"That would be strange indeed," said the Marquis lightly, "The world is full of wonders, but that would be the most wonderful thing that ever happened in it! Commend me to the fair Comtesse, Mademoiselle, and tell her it is _I_ who am about to leave Paris."

"Where are you going?" asked Angela impulsively.

"Ah, feminine curiosity!" said the Marquis laughing, "How it leaps out like a lightning flash, even through the most rigid virtue! Chere Mademoiselle, where I am going is my own secret, and not even your appealing looks will drag it out of me! But I am in no hurry to go away; I shall not fly off by the midnight train, or the very early one in the morning, as your romantic friend the Comtesse Sylvie will probably do,--I have promised the Abbe Vergniaud to hear him preach on Sunday. I shall listen to a farewell sermon and try to benefit by it,--after that I take a long adieu of France;--be good enough to say to the Countesse with my humblest salutations!"

He bowed low over Angela's hand, and with a few more light parting words took his graceful presence out of the room, and went down the stairs humming a tune as he departed.

After he had gone Angela sat for some minutes in silence thinking. Then she went to her desk and wrote a brief note to the Comtesse as follows:--

"Dear Sylvie: Dismiss your maid. She is in the employ of Fontenelle and details to him all your movements. He has been here for half an hour and tells me that he takes a long adieu of France after Sunday, and he has promised me to LEAVE YOU TO YOURSELF. I am sure you are glad of this. My uncle and I go to Rome next week.

"ANGELA."

She sealed and marked the envelope "private", and ringing the bell for her man-servant requested him to deliver it himself into the hands of the Comtesse Hermenstein. This matter dismissed from her mind she went to a portfolio full of sketches, and turned them over and over till she came to one dainty, small picture ent.i.tled, "Phillida et les Roses". It was a study of a woman's nude figure set among branching roses, and was signed "Florian Varillo". Angela looked at it long and earnestly,--all the delicate flesh tints contrasting with the exquisite hues of red and white roses were delineated with wonderful delicacy and precision of touch, and there was a nymph-like grace and modesty about the woman's form and the drooping poise of her head, which was effective yet subtle in suggestion. Was it a portrait of Pon-Pon? Angry with herself Angela tried to put the hateful but insinuating thought away from her,--it was the first slight shadow on the fairness of her love-dream,--and it was like one of those sudden clouds crossing a bright sky which throws a chill and depression over the erstwhile smiling landscape. To doubt Florian seemed like doubting her own existence. She put the "Phillida"

picture back in the portfolio and paced slowly to and fro in her studio, considering deeply. Love and Fame--Fame and Love! She had both,--and yet Aubrey Leigh had said such fortune seldom fell to the lot of a woman as to possess the two things together. Might it not be her destiny to lose one of them? If so, which would she prefer to keep?

Her whole heart, her whole impulses cried out, "Love"! Her intellect and her ambitious inward soul said, "Fame"! And something higher and greater than either heart, intellect, or soul whispered to her inmost self, "Work!--G.o.d bids you do what is in you as completely as you can without asking for a reward of either Love or Fame." "But," she argued with herself, "for a woman Love is so necessary to the completion of life." And the inward monitor replied, "What kind of Love? Ephemeral or immortal? Art is s.e.xless;--good work is eternal, no matter whether it is man or woman who has accomplished it." And then a great sigh broke from Angela's lips as she thought, "Ah, but the world will never own woman's work to be great even if it be so, because men give the verdict, and man's praise is for himself and his own achievements always." "Man's praise," went on the interior voice, "And what of G.o.d's final justice? Have you not patience to wait for that, and faith to work for it?" Again Angela sighed; then happening to look up; in the direction of the music-gallery which occupied one end of her studio where the organ was fitted, she saw a fair young face peering down at her over the carved oak railing, and recognised Manuel. She smiled;--her two or three days' knowledge of him had been more than sufficient to win her affection and interest.

"So you are up there!" she said, "Is my uncle sleeping?"