Lady Rose's Daughter Part 33

"Nearly ten o'clock!" he cried, looking at his watch. "I must be off this moment. So you are going to the house in Heribert Street? I remember Lady Mary Leicester perfectly. As soon as you are settled, tell me, and I will present myself. Meanwhile "--he smiled and bent his black head towards her--"look in to-morrow's papers for some interesting news."

He sprang into his hansom and was gone.

Julie went slowly up-stairs. Of course she understood. The long intrigue had reached its goal, and within twelve hours the _Times_ would announce the appointment of Captain Warkworth, D.S.O., to the command of the Mokembe military mission. He would have obtained his heart's desire--through her.

How true were those last words, perhaps only Julie knew. She looked back upon all the manoeuvres and influences she had brought to bear--flattery here, interest or reciprocity there, the lures of Crowborough House, the prestige of Lady Henry's drawing-room. Wheel by wheel she had built up her cunning machine, and the machine had worked. No doubt the last completing touch had been given the night before. Her culminating offence against Lady Henry--the occasion of her disgrace and banishment--had been to Warkworth the stepping-stone of fortune.

What "gossamer girl" could have done so much? She threw back her head proudly and heard the beating of her heart.

Lady Henry was fiercely forgotten. She opened the drawing-room door, absorbed in a counting of the hours till she and Warkworth should meet.

Then, amid the lights and shadows of the d.u.c.h.ess's drawing-room, Jacob Delafield rose and came towards her. Her exaltation dropped in a moment.

Some testing, penetrating influence seemed to breathe from this man, which filled her with a moral discomfort, a curious restlessness. Did he guess the nature of her feeling for Warkworth? Was he acquainted with the efforts she had been making for the young soldier? She could not be sure; he had never given her the smallest sign. Yet she divined that few things escaped him where the persons who touched his feelings were concerned. And Evelyn--the dear chatterbox--certainly suspected.

"How tired you are!" he said to her, gently. "What a day it has been for you! Evelyn is writing letters. Let me bring you the papers--and please don't talk."

She submitted to a sofa, to an adjusted light, to the papers on her knee. Then Delafield withdrew and took up a book.

She could not rest, however; visions of the morrow and of Warkworth's triumphant looks kept flas.h.i.+ng through her. Yet all the while Delafield's presence haunted her--she could not forget him, and presently she addressed him.

"Mr. Delafield!"

He heard the low voice and came.

"I have never thanked you for your goodness last night. I do thank you now--most earnestly."

"You needn't. You know very well what I would do to serve you if I could."

"Even when you think me in the wrong?" said Julie, with a little, hysterical laugh.

Her conscience smote her. Why provoke this intimate talk--wantonly--with the man she had made suffer? Yet her restlessness, which was partly nervous fatigue, drove her on.

Delafield flushed at her words.

"How have I given you cause to say that?"

"Oh, you are very transparent. One sees that you are always troubling yourself about the right and wrong of things."

"All very well for one's self," said Delafield, trying to laugh. "I hope I don't seem to you to be setting up as a judge of other people's right and wrong?"

"Yes, yes, you do!" she said, pa.s.sionately. Then, as he winced, "No, I don't mean that. But you do judge--it is in your nature--and other people feel it."

"I didn't know I was such a prig," said Delafield, humbly. "It is true I am always puzzling over things."

Julie was silent. She was indeed secretly convinced that he no more approved the escapade of the night before than did Sir Wilfrid Bury.

Through the whole evening she had been conscious of a watchful anxiety and resistance on his part. Yet he had stood by her to the end--so warmly, so faithfully.

He sat down beside her, and Julie felt a fresh pang of remorse, perhaps of alarm. Why had she called him to her? What had they to do with each other? But he soon rea.s.sured her. He began to talk of Meredith, and the work before her--the important and glorious work, as he navely termed it, of the writer.

And presently he turned upon her with sudden feeling.

"You accused me, just now, of judging what I have no business to judge.

If you think that I regret the severance of your relation with Lady Henry, you are quite, quite mistaken. It has been the dream of my life this last year to see you free--mistress of your own life. It--it made me mad that you should be ordered about like a child--dependent upon another person's will."

She looked at him curiously.

"I know. That revolts you always--any form of command? Evelyn tells me that you carry it to curious lengths with your servants and laborers."

He drew back, evidently disconcerted.

"Oh, I try some experiments. They generally break down."

"You try to do without servants, Evelyn says, as much as possible."

"Well, if I do try, I don't succeed," he said, laughing. "But"--his eyes kindled--"isn't it worth while, during a bit of one's life, to escape, if one can, from some of the paraphernalia in which we are all smothered? Look there! What right have I to turn my fellow-creatures into bedizened automata like that?"

And he threw out an accusing hand towards the two powdered footmen, who were removing the coffee-cups and making up the fire in the next room, while the magnificent groom of the chambers stood like a statue, receiving some orders from the d.u.c.h.ess.

Julie, however, showed no sympathy.

"They are only automata in the drawing-room. Down-stairs they are as much alive as you or I."

"Well, let us put it that I prefer other kinds of luxury," said Delafield. "However, as I appear to have none of the qualities necessary to carry out my notions, they don't get very far."

"You would like to shake hands with the butler?" said Julie, musing. "I knew a case of that kind. But the butler gave warning."

Delafield laughed.

"Perhaps the simpler thing would be to do without the butler."

"I am curious," she said, smiling--"very curious. Sir Wilfrid, for instance, talks of going down to stay with you?"

"Why not? He'd come off extremely well. There's an ex-butler, and an ex-cook of Chudleigh's settled in the village. When I have a visitor, they come in and take possession. We live like fighting-c.o.c.ks."

"So n.o.body knows that, in general, you live like a workman?"

Delafield looked impatient.

"Somebody seems to have been cramming Evelyn with ridiculous tales, and she's been spreading them. I must have it out with her."

"I expect there is a good deal in them," said Julie. Then, unexpectedly, she raised her eyes and gave him a long and rather strange look. "Why do you dislike having servants and being waited upon so much, I wonder?

Is it--you won't be angry?--that you have such a strong will, and you do these things to tame it?"

Delafield made a sudden movement, and Julie had no sooner spoken the words than she regretted them.

"So you think I should have made a jolly tyrannical slave-owner?" said Delafield, after a moment's pause.

Julie bent towards him with a charming look of appeal--almost of penitence. "On the contrary, I think you would have been as good to your slaves as you are to your friends."