An Engagement of Convenience Part 24

"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, vainly attempting to control her breath. She gave him the address, and off they went.

At the end of the journey she paid him profusely, and he thanked her with as profuse a civility. She let herself in with her key, went up at once to her room, and threw herself across her bed. Her sobs broke out afresh. "Darling," she called; "I want you back again to be mine, and mine only."

XXV

Lady Betty did not let go the hand which she had clutched in terror, and her companion responded with a touch of caressing rea.s.surance.

"My heart is still beating," she said, as they turned off the river bank into t.i.te Street. "Suppose we had crushed that poor creature. What a terrible memory it would have left with us!"

"Happily she wasn't in the least hurt," he replied. "She must have been in a fit of abstraction."

"I caught sight of her face," said Lady Betty; "and I shall not easily forget it. Such a wild, haggard look I have seldom seen. She must have been labouring under some terrible stress of emotion." She gently withdrew her hand, and appeared lost in thought. "I hope, dear," she exclaimed suddenly, "that there is nothing horrible happening."

"No, indeed! The thing has got a little bit on your nerves."

"You did not see her," she insisted. "She came full into the light of our lamp, though it was barely for an instant. My face was turned that way and yours away from hers."

"Naturally she was startled at the moment!" he ventured. He was certain Lady Betty's nervous imagination had deceived her, and that her alarm was groundless.

"It was not a startled look. It was a set look, something like the desperation of a hunted animal. Some man has treated her badly. Darling, you don't think she was going to throw herself into the river?"

"Seriously--I don't think anything of the kind. If she had wanted to take her life, would she have stepped back so promptly?" he argued.

"I daresay you are right," she conceded, though her tone was not wholly one of conviction.

The hansom pulled up, and he helped her down. They mounted the house-steps in silence, she unusually engrossed in thought, and with an unmistakable air of sadness, as if her mind still lingered on this woman's figure that had flashed on them out of the darkness.

They entered the hall, and after some searching and fumbling he lighted one of the lamps. His companion shook herself out of her abstraction, and surveyed the place with affectionate interest. He was anxious she should take away with her a very definite impression of his future home, and threw open the various rooms, and led the way into them, as he held the lamp aloft. They went, too, below stairs, and here Lady Betty's eyes beheld the many evidences of domestic comfort and foresight that the Robinsons had established in these regions where they had reigned supreme. Her face lighted in comprehension, though her thought remained unexpressed. At last, after they had completely explored the rest of the house, he led the way up to the studio, and soon had it brilliantly illuminated. Lady Betty refused the chair he wheeled forward for her.

She preferred to be moving about, to be examining everything at leisure--his bureau, his great oak worm-eaten armoires, his long, low chests on whose panels Gothic Church dignitaries stood solemnly in high relief, his wonderful easels, his model's throne, his draperies and costumes, and, so far as it was possible by this lamp-light, his old canva.s.ses. She did not ask for Miss Robinson's portrait, as she knew it was at the house in Hampstead, and would remain there till its despatch to the Academy. She saw, however, the large picture; and although she did not love it (for she knew at what a cost it had been brought up to its present pitch, and felt, moreover, that it was too sensational a bid for public attention), she yet recognised that there was much excellence in it, and that it would probably bring him the actual success which was of importance even to genius. Her ideal for him, she repeated, would have been the most absolute "no compromise." "But I agree that we must take a strictly practical view of the situation. It is not really compromise," she added, "but only a surer grasping of the ideal in the future. The idealist who does not know when to make his concessions in practice is just the one who loses his ideal altogether, and never comes down from the realm of abstractions."

He seized a favourable moment, whilst her attention was otherwise engaged, to fetch her own portrait from behind the screen and arrange it on one of the smaller easels. Then she turned with some curiosity to see what he had prepared for her, and gave a little cry of delight.

"You are pleased with it?" he asked, gratified.

"And touched--deeply," she answered. "You have chosen the setting with excellent judgment. But what pleases me most is the absolutely fresh impression I now get of the picture itself. Though I have seen it grow, and have lived with it every day, I am really seeing it for the first time. It is a beautiful piece of work--I speak for the moment as if I were entirely unconnected with it." She stood examining it in silence, and he watched her face and every shade of expression that declared itself.

"And this truly is your personal impression of me?" she asked, with a new flash of the joyous, eager comrade.

"My everyday impression of you! I have another which I keep for Sundays--something with more of the stateliness of an olden time, with a far graver outlook and a deeper thoughtfulness."

"But this one is thoughtful and dignified, too, is it not?"

"Most decidedly. But it is a real warm human being as well. To tell the truth, I stand a little bit in awe of the other one."

"Poor me!" she laughed. She stood yet a moment contemplating the portrait, then turned her eyes away. "Oh, well," she said. "It will be a happiness to possess it, but a greater one to feel that, in some measure, it has helped to gain you the recognition that must be yours--a little sooner, a little later, signifies nothing. But I leave you in perfect confidence as to your career."

He bowed his head. "I shall not dare to disappoint your confidence. To justify it is what I shall live for before all things."

"I am content," she said. "I ask for nothing better than that our hopes shall be realised. I am glad you have chosen so charming a home for your labours. I hope you will be happy here."

He did not reply at once, not trusting himself to speak. Lady Betty, too, looked sadly down.

"Ah, yes," he conceded at last. "It is an ideal home for an artist!"

There were bitter implications in his tone, and she made no pretence of not perceiving them.

"Darling," she said, "you know it would be the dream of my life to help you. That is the only meaning happiness would have for me--to live by your side and help your work and your life. Before everything else, I am not the solemn, dignified being--the thought of me you keep for Sunday,"

she interposed smilingly--"but a mere human being, a simple woman, for whom the love of the right man, once she has found him, is the princ.i.p.al thing in life."

"I can't realise that you are going away," he broke out. "I want to keep you with me always. Don't leave me, darling! Let us begin our life anew--now, this minute! An ideal home here! I hate and loathe it. Let us make a home together--a home of our very own--far away from all these a.s.sociations. Let us laugh at all else. I am strong enough to throw over everything, to fight!"

She read the pa.s.sion in his vivid face, in his terrible movement towards her. She stepped back, and held up her hands to check him.

"It cannot be," she said. "Perhaps we are to blame for delaying our parting. Believe me, I thought and thought about it after our first meeting till I feared I should go mad. I felt I had already made my great blunder--I had revealed the awful secret of my life. I had till then nursed it all alone, but when I saw you again, after those miserable years, I had to pour it out. I did so recklessly, unthinkingly; it was such a joy to feel there was one friend in the world to whom such things could be said, and I put no curb on myself.

And afterwards I was bitterly sorry."

"No, no, darling," he interposed. "You hurt me."

"Don't misunderstand, please. It was splendid to think that you shared my confidence; above all that you had cared for me as I had cared for you in the old days. But yet I was tortured incessantly. You had contracted other ties; there were your duties to others, and the tangle was horrible! After I left you on that first day I was determined that, if I was to be an influence in your life at all, I must be the first to keep you true to your duties. You and I are enlightened, you see. We have the advantage over these simpler souls. Therefore we must efface ourselves to leave them their simple rights."

He stood humbly; silent before her gentle and unanswerable rebuke.

"I struggled terribly with myself. I felt it would hardly be right to see you even a second time, and I was almost on the point of leaving London at once, perhaps without sending you a single line of adieu. But then the thought came to me that that perhaps would be a worse blunder than the first. My intrusion into your life might in that case have disturbed it to no purpose. I thought my sudden departure might leave a bitter memory for years. So I determined to stay long enough to soften the parting for both of us--for me as well as for you. And during all the time I meant to influence you to be loyal to your engagements. I had made the first mistake; on me lay the obligation of mending things. I stayed only to mend them! That was my sincere motive in asking you to do the sketch. I know I have had my moments of weakness; it is hard to live with one's hand in the fire without flinching now and again. Darling, I must go--far away from you, and you must not follow me. Your honour, dearest, is precious to me. The thought of your perfect loyalty to Alice will help me. I only ask you to remember the high standard I have set for you. Strive for the best; let your watchword be 'No compromise!' You will let me go now, darling. Say you understand my motives, and forgive me if they were mistaken. Perhaps, instead of mending things, I have only added mischief to mischief. I throw myself on your generosity and magnanimity. Promise me you will be the truest husband to her, that you will do everything in your power to promote her happiness."

He seized her hands; his flesh burnt hers. "I love you, darling, I love you," he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "I cannot let you go."

She looked him frankly and firmly in the face. "Don't break my heart, dear," she said gently. "It is as hard for me as it is for you. Think, darling, what it might be, if you gave her up. If she were to kill herself, our love would be a curse to us. Dearest, the face of that woman we saw on the Embankment still haunts me. It was the face of a woman whose heart had been broken. I tell you, dear, that if I had not of myself the strength to part from you to-night, the awful glimpse I had of her face would have given it to me. I have always seen where our duty lay; yet I read it in that poor face a thousand times more.

Darling, it must now be goodbye. I shall often think of you here, and of this evening--and of our whole glorious day," she added, smiling. "Come, you do promise all that I ask of you?"

Her smile and her cheerful note won his surrender. "I promise," he said slowly and solemnly, yet with distinct decision. "All that you have urged on me shall be sacred, shall be the principle of my life."

"Thank you, darling," she said simply. "I believe you, and I trust you absolutely."

They gripped hands, looking each other full in the face. The neighbouring church clock sounded its preliminary change, then struck two sonorous notes. It recalled them to the sense of the night and the silent world without. "Come," he said at last. "I will escort you back."

They went down, and out into the street again. "The clouds and the rain have vanished. It is a beautiful night again," she said. "Even that helps to soften the moment."

He strolled along by her side; they spoke now of matter-of-fact points.

If the picture were accepted by the Salon he was to send it eventually to her father's country-house in the North. She hoped, too, he would not entirely forget her father, but that he and his wife would call and see him at Grosvenor Place--they could count on finding him there most years during the height of the London season. And, by the way, she was curious to know how the picture would fare when it got to Paris. Was the Salon so considerate to foreigners that it took the trouble to open packing-cases and take care of them? Wyndham gravely explained that pictures were usually consigned to the good offices of a French frame-maker who unpacked and delivered them to the Salon, afterwards collecting them and sending them back to England when the show was over.

Some of these people had a large foreign clientele, and put only a moderate value on their services. Thus chatting in this trivial fas.h.i.+on, they were fortunate to meet a hansom, though they had abandoned the hope of one at that hour, and were prepared to stroll all the way.

"Let us say goodbye here," she insisted. "It is simpler, and perhaps easier. We part just as two friends who have met casually."

"Goodbye, then," he said huskily. "I wish you many happy days and dreams in your wanderings in the sun-lands."