Demos Part 63

'Did the loss of her child affect her deeply?'

'I cannot say. She has never spoken of it.'

'Poor child!'

Stella made no reply to the exclamation.

The next day Adela went to call on Mrs. Rodman. It was a house in Bayswater, not large, but richly furnished. Adela chose a morning hour, hoping to find her sister-in-law alone, but in this she was disappointed. Four visitors were in the drawing-room, three ladies and a man of horsey appearance, who talked loudly as he leaned back with his legs crossed, a walking-stick held over his knee, his hat on the ground before him. The ladies were all apparently middle-aged; one of them had a great quant.i.ty of astonis.h.i.+ngly yellow hair, and the others made up for deficiency in that respect with toilets in very striking taste.

The subject under discussion was a recent murder. The gentleman had the happiness of being personally acquainted with the murderer, at all events had frequently met him at certain resorts of the male population.

When Mrs. Rodman had briefly welcomed Adela, the discussion continued.

Its tone was vulgar, but perhaps not more so than the average tone among middle-cla.s.s people who are on familiar terms with each other. The gentleman, still leading the conversation, kept his eyes fixed on Adela, greatly to her discomfort.

In less than half an hour these four took their departure.

'So d.i.c.k came a cropper!' was Alice's first remark, when alone with her sister-in-law.

Adela tried in vain to understand.

'At the election, you know. I don't see what he wanted to go making himself so ridiculous. Is he much cut up?'

'I don't think it troubles him much,' Adela said; 'he really had no expectation of being elected. It was just to draw attention to Socialism.'

'Of course he'll put it in that way. But I'd no idea you were in London.

Where are you living?'

Alice had suffered, had suffered distinctly, in her manners, and probably in her character. It was not only that she affected a fastness of tone, and betrayed an ill-bred pleasure in receiving Adela in her fine drawing-room; her face no longer expressed the idle good-nature which used to make it pleasant to contemplate, it was thinner, less wholesome in colour, rather acid about the lips. Her manner was hurried, she seemed to be living in a whirl of frivolous excitements. Her taste in dress had deteriorated; she wore a lot of jewellery of a common kind, and her headgear was fantastic.

'We have a few friends to-morrow night,' she said when the conversation had with difficulty dragged itself over ten minutes. 'Will you come to dinner? I'm sure Willis will be very glad to see you.'

Adela heard the invitation with distress. Fortunately it was given in a way which all but presupposed refusal.

'I am afraid I cannot,' she answered. 'My health is not good; I never see people. Thank you very much.'

'Oh, of course I wouldn't put you out,' said Alice, inspecting her relative's face curiously. And she added, rather more in her old voice, 'I'm sorry you lost your baby. I believe you're fond of children? I don't care anything about them myself; I hope I shan't have any.'

Adela could not make any reply; she shook hands with Alice and took her leave, only breathing freely when once more in the street. All the way back to St. John's Wood she was afflicted by the thought that it would be impossible to advise a meeting between Stella and Mrs. Rodman. Yet she had promised Richard to do so. Once more she found herself sundered from him in sympathies. Affection between Alice and her there could be none, yet Alice was the one person in the world whom Richard held greatly dear.

The enchanted life of those first weeks at Exmouth was now resumed. The golden mornings pa.s.sed with poetry and music; in the afternoon visits were paid to museums and galleries, or to the studios of artists who were Mrs. Westlake's friends, and who, as Adela was pleased to see, always received Stella with reverential homage. The evening, save when a concert called them forth, was generally a time of peaceful reading and talking, the presence of friends making no difference in the simple arrangements of the home. If a man came to dine at this house, it was greatly preferred that he should not present himself in the costume of a waiter, and only those came who were sufficiently intimate with the Westlakes to know their habits. One evening weekly saw a purely Socialist gathering; three or four artisans were always among the guests. On that occasion Adela was sorely tempted to plead a headache, but for several reasons she resisted. It was a trial to her, for she was naturally expected to talk a good deal with the visitors, several of whom she herself had entertained at Wanley. Watching Stella, she had a feeling which she could not quite explain or justify; she was pained to see her G.o.ddess in this company, and felt indignant with some of the men who seemed to make themselves too much at their ease. There was no talk of poetry.

Among the studios to which Stella took her was that of Mr. Boscobel.

Mrs. Boscobel made much of them, and insisted on Adela's coming to dine with her. An evening was appointed. Adela felt reproofs of conscience, remembering the excuse she had offered to Alice, but in this case it was impossible to decline. Stella a.s.sured her that the party would be small, and would be sure to comprise none but really interesting people. It was so, in fact. Two men whom, on arriving, they found in the drawing-room Adela knew by fame, and the next to enter was a lady whose singing she had heard with rapture at a concert on the evening before. She was talking with this lady when a new announcement fell upon her ear, a name which caused her to start and gaze towards the door. Impossible for her to guard against this display of emotion; the name she heard so distinctly seemed an unreal utterance, a fancy of her brain, or else it belonged to another than the one she knew. But there was no such illusion; he whom she saw enter was a.s.suredly Hubert Eldon.

A few hot seconds only seemed to intervene before she was called upon to acknowledge him, for Mrs. Boscobel was presenting him to her.

'I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Mutimer before,' Hubert said as soon as he saw that Adela in voice and look recognised their acquaintance.

Mrs. Boscobel was evidently surprised. She herself had met Hubert at the house of an artist in Rome more than a year ago, but the details of his life were unknown to her. Subsequently, in London, she happened once to get on the subject of Socialism with him, and told him, as an interesting story, what she heard from the Westlakes about Richard Mutimer. Hubert admitted knowledge of the facts, and made the remark about the valley of Wanley which Mrs. Boscobel repeated at Exmouth, but he revealed nothing more. Having no marriageable daughter, Mrs. Boscobel was under no necessity of searching into his antecedents. He was one of ten or a dozen young men of possible future whom she liked to have about her.

Hubert seated himself by Adela, and there was a moment of inevitable silence.

'I saw you as soon as I got into the room,' he said, in the desperate necessity for speech of some kind. 'I thought I must have been mistaken; I was so unprepared to meet you here.'

Adela replied that she was staying with Mrs. Westlake.

'I don't know her,' said Hubert, 'and am very anxious to Boscobel's portrait of her--I saw it in the studio just before it went away--was a wonderful thing.'

This was necessarily said in a low tone; it seemed to establish confidence between them.

Adela experienced a sudden and strange calm; in a world so entirely new to her, was it not to be expected that things would happen of which she had never dreamt? The tremor with which she had faced this her first evening in general society had allayed itself almost as soon as she entered the room, giving place to a kind of pleasure for which she was not at all prepared, a pleasure inconsistent with the mood which governed her life. Perhaps, had she been brought into this world in those sunny days before her marriage, just such pleasure as this, only in a more p.r.o.nounced degree, would have awoke in her and have been fearlessly indulged. The first shock of the meeting with Hubert having pa.s.sed, she was surprised at her self-control, at the ease with which she found she could converse. Hubert took her down to dinner; on the stairs he twice turned to look at her face, yet she felt sure that her hand had betrayed no agitation as it lay on his arm. At table he talked freely; did he know--she asked herself--that this would relieve her? And his conversation was altogether unlike what it had been two years and a half ago--so long it was since she had talked with him under ordinary conditions. There was still animation, and the note of intellectual impatience was touched occasionally, but the world had ripened him, his judgments were based on sounder knowledge, he was more polished, more considerate--'gentler,' Adela afterwards said to herself. And decidedly he had gained in personal appearance; a good deal of the bright, eager boy had remained with him in his days of storm and stress, but now his features had the repose of maturity and their refinement had fixed itself in lines of strength.

He talked solely of the present, discussed with her the season's pictures, the books, the idle business of the town. At length she found herself able to meet his glance without fear, even to try and read its character. She thought of the day when her mother told her of his wickedness. Since then she had made acquaintance with wickedness in various forms, and now she marvelled at the way in which she had regarded him. 'I was a child, a child,' she repeated to herself.

Thinking thus, she lost none of his words. He spoke of the things which interested her most deeply; how much he could teach her, were such teaching possible!

At last she ventured upon a personal question.

'How is Mrs. Eldon?'

She thought he looked at her gratefully; certainly there was a deep kindness in his eyes, a look which was one of the new things she noted in him.

'Very much as when you knew her,' he replied. 'Weaker, I fear. I have just spent a few days at Agworth.'

Doubtless he had often been at Agworth; perchance he was there, so close by, in some of the worst hours of her misery.

When the ladies withdrew Mrs. Boscobel seated herself by Adela for a moment.

'So you really knew Mr. Eldon?'

'Yes, but it is some time since I saw him,' Adela replied simply, smiling in the joy of being so entirely mistress of herself.

'You were talking pictures, I heard. You can trust him there; his criticism is admirable. You know he did the Grosvenor for the--?'

She mentioned a weekly paper.

'There are so many things I don't know,' Adela replied laughingly, 'and that is one of them.'

Hubert shortly after had his wish in being presented to Mrs. Westlake.

Adela observed them as they talked together. Gladness she could hardly bear possessed her when she saw on Stella's face the expression of interest which not everyone could call forth. She did not ask why she was so glad; for this one evening it might be allowed her to rest and forget and enjoy.

There was singing, and the sweetest of the songs went home with her and lived in her heart all through a night which was too voiceful for sleep.

Might she think of him henceforth as a friend? Would she meet him again before her return to--to the darkness of that ravaged valley? Her mood was a strange one; conscience gave her no trouble, appeared suspended.

And why should conscience have interfered with her? Her happiness was as apart from past and future as if by some magic she had been granted an intermezzo of life wholly distinct from her real one. These people with whom she found living so pleasant did not really enter her existence; it was as though she played parts to give her pleasure; she merely looked on for the permitted hour.

But Stella was real, real as that glorious star whose name she knew not, the brightest she could see from her chamber window. To Stella her soul clung with pa.s.sion and wors.h.i.+p. Stella's kiss had power to make her all but faint with ecstasy; it was the kiss which woke her from her dream, the kiss which would for ever be to her a terror and a mystery.

CHAPTER XXII