The Halo Part 20

To-morrow might bring what it would. That one evening was hers, and she would use it. Joyselle should see her with his own eyes, as a man sees a woman, not as a father sees a daughter. And he should see her as a man sees a marvellously beautiful woman!

Satisfied with the conclusion to which she had come, she lay down and slept for an hour, after which, the enigmatic smile on her lips bringing into predominance the resemblance to the portrait in the Luxembourg, she dressed, with more care than she had ever devoted to that process in all her five-and-twenty years of life.

When she arrived at Charles Street and had shaken hands with the d.u.c.h.ess, who had had influenza and looked very old, the first person she saw was Gerald Carron.

"Will you speak to me, Brigit?" he said diffidently, "please do."

He, too, looked ill, and moistened his lips nervously as he spoke. She shook hands with him without answering, and he hurried on, "Haven't I been good? I knew where you were, and--I might easily have come----"

"You would not have had a flattering reception," she suggested drily.

"Or written. And I did neither. I was glad you went, though G.o.d knows----"

"How do you do, Mrs. Talboys," she cut him short ruthlessly, "when are we to have another book?"

It was a very large dinner, and Brigit, placed between two men who dined out for reasons dietetic and economic, and did not talk, was free to pursue her own thoughts at leisure. She had wired Theo before leaving the de Lenskys', that she was leaving for home, and before starting for the dinner she had sent another wire, addressed simply "Joyselle," to say that she was dining out, but would come to Golden Square after dinner.

She knew that Joyselle, recognising her prompt appearance as an answer to his letter, would be at home late in the evening, no matter where he might have dined. "He has such strong family feelings," she reflected, with a menacing curve of her upper lip.

So deeply was she buried in her thoughts that she was amazed to find suddenly that the d.u.c.h.ess was trying to gather her flock's eye, preparatory to herding it upstairs. Both her hungry neighbours made spasmodic attempts to eradicate from her mind the memory of their fanatical devotion to the rites of the table, and she smiled absently at them, wondering what they would have thought if she had politely thanked them for their silence!

"My dear," said the d.u.c.h.ess, a few minutes later, sitting down in her favourite corner by the fire, "come and tell me about Pam."

"She is well, d.u.c.h.ess."

"Didn't she send me any messages?"

"She did. Much love and some kodaks of the children. Your G.o.d-child is a love."

"H'm. And how is the horrid little adopted one?"

"Poor Pammy!"

"Now _will_ you look at Lady Agnes Blundell spilling coffee all over my carpet. She did the same thing the other night at the Beaufoys'! I really believe the woman drinks, or something. What were you saying, my dear? Oh, how is your young man?"

Brigit did not smile. To-morrow was coming.

"I--I haven't seen any young men since I got back, d.u.c.h.ess."

"Oh, well, you tell him from me that his father is a wretch. Is there a wife? I think someone said there was--well, she probably doesn't know all _I_ know." The old woman pulled down her mouth in comic disapproval.

"What--is it?" queried Brigit.

"Oh, nothing, only--a very beautiful foreign actress, a lady famous for her--plastic beauties. Voisin, my hairdresser--you know Voisin?

Delightful person, and the most indiscreet man in London--tells me they dined together every evening at a little French place near Leicester Square, where _he_ dines. And it appears your future papa-in-law was furiously _epris_, or still is--possibly! You will have to keep him in order. What is it, Bishop?"

The butler, whose name, the d.u.c.h.ess had been known to declare, explained why no Anglican or other prelate ever dined or lunched with her--"It is so confusing, my dear; suppose I should say 'Bishop, see if Mrs.

Snooks' carriage has come'"--came quietly up to the sofa. "Her ladys.h.i.+p's carriage, your Grace."

Brigit rose. "Yes, I fear I must run away. Thanks so much for having me----"

And when the men came in she had gone.

When she reached Golden Square she found the house in a blaze of light, and smiled. It was like Joyselle to celebrate her return by illuminating his every window; it would have been like him to put up a triumphal arch; to have a big supper awaiting her; these things belonged to the side of his nature that clamoured for expression in white satin ties.

For a moment she sat still in the motor, while the footman held the door open.

"Come back at half-past eleven, Jarvis," she told the man, and got out.

The door was opened by Toinon, somewhat to Brigit's surprise--for it would have been more like Joyselle to rush downstairs on hearing her motor stop, but the reason was soon plainly comprehensible, for Joyselle was playing. It was evidently earlier than they had expected her.

Slipping off her cloak and with a finger to her lips, she went quietly upstairs and stood leaning against the side of the door.

It was wild music that she heard; music that made the blood in her temples and throat pulse harder than ever. Breathing deep, she waited for the climax, and when it came, quietly opened the door.

She had chosen her moment well, and as the door faced a long mirror between the windows she saw, as she stood on the threshold, not only Joyselle, who, alone in the room, stood staring in amazement, but also that at which he stared--herself. Clad in a dress made apparently entirely of flexible dull gold scales, the long lines of her figure unbroken by any belt or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, the woman in the gla.s.s stood smiling like a witch of old, a deep colour in her cheeks, the palms of her hands held down by her side, the fingers outspread and slightly lifted as if in water. Quite silently she stood and smiled until the man before her dropped his violin--for the first time, she knew instinctively, in his life.

Then she spoke, saying his name, the name by which the world knew him: "_Joyselle._"

"_Mon Dieu!_" he returned softly. Coming slowly forward he caught her hand with clumsy haste and kissed it. Her heart stopped its mad beating, for she had won. Here was no Beau-papa. Here was the man, Victor Joyselle.

CHAPTER FOUR

"I did not know you," he said. "I thought--_juste ciel_, how do I know what I thought? You are so beautiful, I----"

She laughed gently. "Beau-papa! Beau-papa! Where is Theo?"

For she knew now that she would not break her engagement to-night. The end was not yet. And by the strange laws that govern things emotional between men and women, her self-control, hitherto utterly lamed by his presence, was now, in face of his involuntary, as yet evidently unconscious awakening, restored to her tenfold strong. She could have spent weeks alone with the man without betraying her secret, now that she had established her power over him. It had been his acceptance of the fact of her future relations.h.i.+p to him, his unexpressed feeling that she was a being of another generation, his tacit refusal to see in her the woman _per se_, that had beaten her. Now she had, by the plain a.s.sertion of her beauty, the enforcing of the appreciation of it as a thing appertaining to her as a woman, not a daughter, got the reins--and the whip--into her own hands.

"Where," she repeated, still smiling, "is Theo?"

"He is in his room; he will come--ah, _mon Dieu_!" Kneeling by his violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit, "you and your golden dress! _Mon pauvre_ Amati."

She continued to look at him in silence, her instinct telling her that the strange smile she had seen on the face of the woman in the gla.s.s could not be beaten for purposes of subjugation. She continued to look and smile, but she was sorry for him, even while every fibre in her thrilled with triumph.

He realised her now; if she wanted him to love her, he would.

"Will you call Theo?" she asked as he rose. Without a word he left the room, and a few moments later Theo's arms were around her, his fresh lips on hers.

The boy was so happy, so incoherently, innocently jubilant, that if she had in her room for another feeling, it would have been one of pity for him. But there was no room. She was filled with triumph, and a full vessel can contain not one drop more of however precious a liquid.

"_Ma Brigitte--mon adoree--que je t'ai desiree!_" stammered the boy.

"Why did you stay so long? Why was it so long? But, now, it is over and you are here. You have come to me--you, a queen to her slave!"

His delightful face was wet with unconscious tears as they sat together, and his voice trembled. For a moment she wished she could love him. It would be so much more fitting, so much better--and then the demon in her laughed. No. It was his father she loved, and who, if she chose, should love her.