The Marquis of Lossie Part 24

"Why do you tell me?" interrupted his mistress, with absolute composure, and hard, questioning eyes.

But she had drawn herself up in the saddle. Then, before he could reply, a flash of thought seemed to cross her face with a quick single motion of her eyebrows, and it was instantly altered and thoughtful. She seemed to have suddenly perceived some cause for taking a mild interest in his communication.

"But it cannot be, Malcolm," she said, in quite a changed tone. "You must have taken some one else for her. She never left the studio all the time I was there."

"It was immediately after her arrival, my lady. She went in about two minutes after your ladys.h.i.+p, and could not have had much more than time to go upstairs when I saw her come to the window. I felt bound to tell your ladys.h.i.+p."

"Thank you, Malcolm," returned Florimel kindly. "You did right to tell me,--but--it's of no consequence. Mr Lenorme's housekeeper and she must have been talking about something."

But her eyebrows were now thoughtfully contracted over her eyes.

"There had been no time for that, I think, my lady," said Malcolm.

Florimel turned again and rode on, saying no more about the handkerchief. Malcolm saw that he had succeeded in warning her, and was glad. But had he foreseen to what it would lead, he would hardly have done it.

Florimel was indeed very uneasy. She could not help strongly suspecting that she had betrayed herself to one who, if not an intentional spy, would yet be ready enough to make a spy's use of anything she might have picked up. What was to be done? It was now too late to think of getting rid of her: that would be but her signal to disclose whatever she had seen, and so not merely enjoy a sweet revenge, but account with clear satisfactoriness for her dismissal. What would not Florimel now have given for some one who could sympathise with her and yet counsel her! She was afraid to venture another meeting with Lenorme, and besides was not a little shy of the advantage the discovery would give him in pressing her to marry him. And now first she began to feel as if her sins were going to find her out.

A day or two pa.s.sed in alternating psychical flaws and fogs-- with poor glints of suns.h.i.+ne between. She watched her maid, but her maid knew it, and discovered no change in her manner or behaviour.

Weary of observation she was gradually settling into her former security, when Caley began to drop hints that alarmed her. Might it not be altogether the safest thing to take her into confidence?

It would be such a relief, she thought, to have a woman she could talk to! The result was that she began to lift a corner of the veil that hid her trouble; the woman encouraged her, and at length the silly girl threw her arms round the scaly one's neck, much to that person's satisfaction, and told her that she loved Mr Lenorme. She knew of course, she said, that she could not marry him. She was only waiting a fit opportunity to free herself from a connection which, however delightful, she was unable to justify. How the maid interpreted her confession, I do not care to enquire very closely, but anyhow it was in a manner that promised much to her after influence. I hasten over this part of Florimel's history, for that confession to Caley was perhaps the one thing in her life she had most reason to be ashamed of, for she was therein false to the being she thought she loved best in the world. Could Lenorme have known her capable of unbosoming herself to such a woman, it would almost have slain the love he bore her. The notions of that odd and end sort of person, who made his livelihood by spreading paint, would have been too hideously shocked by the shadow of an intimacy between his love and such as she.

Caley first comforted the weeping girl, and then began to insinuate encouragement. She must indeed give him up--there was no help for that; but neither was there any necessity for doing so all at once. Mr Lenorme was a beautiful man, and any woman might be proud to be loved by him. She must take her time to it. She might trust her. And so on and on--for she was as vulgar minded as the worst of those whom ladies endure about their persons, handling their hair, and having access to more of their lock fast places than they would willingly imagine.

The first result was that, on the pretext of bidding him farewell, and convincing him that he and she must meet no more, fate and fortune, society and duty being all alike against their happiness --I mean on that pretext to herself, the only one to be deceived by it--Florimel arranged with her woman one evening to go the next morning to the studio: she knew the painter to be an early riser, and always at his work before eight o'clock. But although she tried to imagine she had persuaded herself to say farewell, certainly she had not yet brought her mind to any ripeness of resolve in the matter.

At seven o'clock in the morning, the marchioness habited like a housemaid, they slipped out by the front door, turned the corners of two streets, found a hackney coach waiting for them, and arrived in due time at the painter's abode.

CHAPTER x.x.x: A QUARREL

When the door opened and Florimel glided in, the painter sprang to his feet to welcome her, and she flew softly, soundless as a moth, into his arms; for the study being large and full of things, she was not aware of the presence of Malcolm. From behind a picture on an easel, he saw them meet, but shrinking from being an open witness to their secret, and also from being discovered in his father's clothes by the sister who knew him only as a servant, he instantly sought escape. Nor was it hard to find, for near where he stood was a door opening into a small intermediate chamber, communicating with the drawing room, and by it he fled, intending to pa.s.s through to Lenorme's bedroom, and change his clothes.

With noiseless stride he hurried away, but could not help hearing a few pa.s.sionate words that escaped his sister's lips before Lenorme could warn her that they were not alone--words which, it seemed to him, could come only from a heart whose very pulse was devotion.

"How can I live without you, Raoul?" said the girl as she clung to him.

Lenorme gave an uneasy glance behind him, saw Malcolm disappear, and answered,

"I hope you will never try, my darling."

"Oh, but you know this can't last," she returned, with playfully affected authority. "It must come to an end. They will interfere."

"Who can? Who will dare?" said the painter with confidence.

"People will. We had better stop it ourselves--before it all comes out, and we are shamed," said Florimel, now with perfect seriousness.

"Shamed!" cried Lenorme. "--Well, if you can't help being ashamed of me--and perhaps, as you have been brought up, you can't-- do you not then love me enough to encounter a little shame for my sake? I should welcome worlds of such for yours!"

Florimel was silent. She kept her face hidden on his shoulder, but was already halfway to a quarrel.

"You don't love me, Florimel!" he said, after a pause, little thinking how nearly true were the words.

"Well, suppose I don't!" she cried, half defiantly, half merrily; and drawing herself from him, she stepped back two paces, and looked at him with saucy eyes, in which burned two little flames of displeasure, that seemed to shoot up from the red spots glowing upon her cheeks. Lenorme looked at her. He had often seen her like this before, and knew that the sh.e.l.l was charged and the fuse lighted.

But within lay a mixture even more explosive than he suspected; for not merely was there more of shame and fear and perplexity mingled with her love than he understood, but she was conscious of having now been false to him, and that rendered her temper dangerous.

Lenorme had already suffered severely from the fluctuations of her moods. They had been almost too much for him. He could endure them, he thought, to all eternity, if he had her to himself, safe and sure; but the confidence to which he rose every now and then that she would one day be his, just as often failed him, rudely shaken by some new symptom of what almost seemed like cherished inconstancy. If after all she should forsake him! It was impossible, but she might. If even that should come, he was too much of a man to imagine anything but a stern encounter of the inevitable, and he knew he would survive it; but he knew also that life could never be the same again; that for a season work would be impossible-- the kind of work he had hitherto believed his own rendered for ever impossible perhaps, and his art degraded to the mere earning of a living. At best he would have to die and be buried and rise again before existence could become endurable under the new squalid condition of life without her. It was no wonder then if her behaviour sometimes angered him; for even against a Will o' the Wisp that has enticed us into a swamp, a glow of foolish indignation will spring up. And now a black fire in his eyes answered the blue flash in hers; and the difference suggests the diversity of their loves: hers might vanish in fierce explosion, his would go on burning like a coal mine. A word of indignant expostulation rose to his lips, but a thought came that repressed it. He took her hand, and led her--the wonder was that she yielded, for she had seen the glow in his eyes, and the fuse of her own anger burned faster; but she did yield, partly from curiosity, and followed where he pleased --her hand lying dead in his. It was but to the other end of the room he led her, to the picture of her father, now all but finished.

Why he did so, he would have found it hard to say. Perhaps the Genius that lies under the consciousness forefelt a catastrophe, and urged him to give his gift ere giving should be impossible.

Malcolm stepped into the drawing room, where the table was laid as usual for breakfast: there stood Caley, helping herself to a spoonful of honey from Hymettus. At his entrance she started violently, and her sallow face grew earthy. For some seconds she stood motionless, unable to take her eyes off the apparition, as it seemed to her, of the late marquis, in wrath at her encouragement of his daughter in disgraceful courses. Malcolm, supposing only she was ashamed of herself, took no farther notice of her, and walked deliberately towards the other door. Ere he reached it she knew him. Burning with the combined ires of fright and shame, conscious also that, by the one little contemptible act of greed in which he had surprised her, she had justified the aversion which her woman instinct had from the first recognized in him, she darted to the door, stood with her back against it, and faced him flaming.

"So!" she cried, "this is how my lady's kindness is abused! The insolence! Her groom goes and sits for his portrait in her father's court dress!"

As she ceased, all the latent vulgarity of her nature broke loose, and with a contracted pff she seized her thin nose between her thumb and forefinger, to the indication that an evil odour of fish interpenetrated her atmosphere, and must at the moment be defiling the garments of the dead marquis.

"My lady shall know of this," she concluded, with a vicious clenching of her teeth, and two or three nods of her neat head.

Malcolm stood regarding her with a coolness that yet inflamed her wrath. He could not help smiling at the reaction of shame in indignation. Had her anger been but a pa.s.sing flame, that smile would have turned it into enduring hate. She hissed in his face.

"Go and have the first word," he said; "only leave the door and let me pa.s.s."

"Let you pa.s.s indeed! What would you pa.s.s for?--The b.a.s.t.a.r.d of old Lord James and a married woman!--I don't care that for you."

And she snapped her fingers in his face.

Malcolm turned from her and went to the window, taking a. newspaper from the breakfast table as he pa.s.sed, and there sat down to read until the way should be clear. Carried beyond herself by his utter indifference, Caley darted from the room and went straight into the study.

Lenorme led Florimel in front of the picture. She gave a great start, and turned and stared pallid at the painter. The effect upon her was such as he had not foreseen, and the words she uttered were not such as he could have hoped to hear.

"What would he think of me if he knew?" she cried, clasping her hands in agony.

That moment Caley burst into the room, her eyes lamping like a cat's.

"My lady!" she shrieked, "there's MacPhail, the groom, my lady, dressed up in your honoured father's bee-utiful clo'es as he always wore when he went to dine with the Prince! And, please, my lady, he's that rude I could 'ardly keep my 'ands off him."

Florimel flashed a dagger of question in Lenorme's eyes. The painter drew himself up.

"It was at my request, Lady Lossie," he said.

"Indeed!" returned Florimel, in high scorn, and glanced again at the picture.

"I see!" she went on. "How could I be such an idiot! It was my groom's, not my father's likeness you meant to surprise me with!"

Her eyes flashed as if she would annihilate him.

"I have worked hard in the hope of giving you pleasure, Lady Lossie,"

said the painter, with wounded dignity.

"And you have failed," she adjoined cruelly.