The Crown of Life Part 55

His impulse was to refuse, at all costs to refuse. The voice, the glance, the phrases jarred upon him, shocked him. Already he had begun "I am afraid"--when a hurried, vehement whisper broke upon his excuse.

"Don't be unkind to me! I beg you to come! I entreat you!"

"I will come with pleasure," he said in a loud voice of ordinary civility.

At once she turned, and he followed. Without speaking, they descended the great staircase; a brougham drove up; they rolled away westward.

Never had Piers felt such thorough moral discomfort; the heavily perfumed air of the carriage depressed and all but nauseated him; the inevitable touch of Olga's garments made him shrink. She had begun to talk, and talked incessantly throughout the homeward drive; not much of herself, or of him, but about the pleasures and excitements of the idle-busy world. It was meant, he supposed, to convey to him an idea of her prosperous and fas.h.i.+onable life. Her husband, she let fall, was for the moment in Italy; affairs of importance sometimes required his presence there; but they both preferred England. The intellectual atmosphere of London--where else could one live on so high a level?

The carriage stopped in a street beyond Edgware Road, at a house of more modest appearance than Otway had looked for. Just as they alighted, a nursemaid with a perambulator was approaching the door; Piers caught sight of a very pale little face shadowed by the hood, but his companion, without heeding, ran up the steps, and knocked violently. They entered.

Still the oppressive atmosphere of perfumes. Left for a few minutes in a little drawing-room, or boudoir, Piers stood marvelling at the ingenuity which had packed so much furniture and bric-tate-brac, so many pictures, so much drapery, into so small a s.p.a.ce. He longed to throw open the window; he could not sit still in this odour-laden hothouse, where the very flowers were burdensome by excess. When Olga reappeared, she was gorgeous in flowing tea-gown; her tawny hair hung low in artful profusion; her neck and arms were bare, her feet brilliantly slippered.

"Ah! How good, how good, it is to sit down and talk to you once more!--Do you like my room?"

"You have made yourself very comfortable," replied Otway, striking a note as much as possible in contrast to that of his hostess. "Some of these drawings are your own work, no doubt?"

"Yes, some of them," she answered languidly. "Do you remember that pastel? Ah, surely you do--from the old days at Ewell!"

"Of course!--That is a portrait of your husband?" he added, indicating a head on a little easel.

"Yes--idealised!"

She laughed and put the subject away. Then tea was brought in, and after pouring it, Olga grew silent. Resolute to talk, Piers had the utmost difficulty in finding topics, but he kept up an everyday sort of chat, postponing as long as possible the conversation foreboded by his companion's face. When he was weary, Olga's opportunity came.

"There is something I _must_ say to you----"

Her arms hung lax, her head drooped forward, she looked at him from under her brows.

"I have suffered so much--oh, I have suffered! I have longed for this moment. Will you say--that you forgive me?"

"My dear Mrs. Florio"--Piers began with good-natured expostulation, a sort of forced bluffness; but she would not hear him.

"Not that name! Not from _you_. There's no harm; you won't--you can't misunderstand me, such old friends as we are. I want you to call me by my own name, and to make me feel that we are friends still--that you can really forgive me."

"There is nothing in the world to forgive," he insisted, in the same tone. "Of course we are friends! How could we be anything else?"

"I behaved infamously to you! I can't think how I had the heart to do it!"

Piers was tortured with nervousness. Had her voice and manner declared insincerity, posing, anything of that kind, he would have found the situation much more endurable; but Olga had tears in her eyes, and not the tears of an actress; her tones had recovered something of their old quality, and reminded him painfully of the time when Mrs. Hannaford was dying. She held a hand to him, her pale face besought his compa.s.sion.

"Come now, let us talk in the old way, as you wish," he said, just pressing her fingers. "Of course I felt it--but then I was myself altogether to blame. I importuned you for what you couldn't give.

Remembering that, wasn't your action the most sensible, and really the kindest?"

"I don't know," Olga murmured, in a voice just audible.

"Of course it was! There now, we've done with all that. Tell me more about your life this last year or two. You are such a brilliant person.

I felt rather overcome----"

"Nonsense!" But Olga brightened a little. "What of your own brilliancy?

I read somewhere that you are a famous man in Russia----"

Piers laughed, spontaneously this time, and, finding it a way of escape, gossiped about his own achievements with mirthful exaggeration.

"Do you see the Derwents?" Mrs. Florio asked of a sudden, with a sidelong look.

So vexed was Otway at the embarra.s.sment he could not wholly hide, and which delayed his answer, that he spoke the truth with excessive bluntness.

"I have met Miss Derwent in society."

"I don't often see them," said Olga, in a tone of weariness. "I suppose we belong to different worlds."

At the earliest possible moment, Piers rose with decision. He felt that he had not pleased Mrs. Florio, that perhaps he had offended her, and in leaving her he tried to atone for involuntary unkindness.

"But we shall see each other again, of course!" she exclaimed, retaining his hand. "You will come again soon?"

"Certainly I will."

"And your address--let me have your address----"

He breathed deeply in the open air. Glancing back at the house when he had crossed the street, he saw a white hand waved to him at a window; it hurried his step.

On the following day, Mrs. Florio visited her friend Miss Bonnicastle, who had some time since exchanged the old quarters in Great Portland Street for a house in Pimlico, where there was a larger studio (workshop, as she preferred to call it), hung about with her own and other people's designs. The artist of the poster was full as ever of vitality and of good-nature, but her humour had not quite the old spice; a stickler for decorum would have said that she was decidedly improved, that she had grown more womanly; and something of this change appeared also in her work, which tended now to the graceful rather than the grotesque. She received her fas.h.i.+onable visitant with off-hand friendliness, not altogether with cordiality.

"Oh, I've something to show you. Do you know that name?"

Olga took a business-card, and read upon it: "Alexander Otway, Dramatic & Musical Agent."

"It's his brother," she said, in a voice of quiet surprise.

"I thought so. The man called yesterday--wants a fetching thing to boom an Irish girl at the halls. There's her photo."

It represented a piquant person in short skirts; a face neither very pretty nor very young, but likely to be deemed attractive by the public in question. They amused themselves over it for a moment.

"He used to be a journalist," said Olga. "Does he seem to be doing well?"

"Couldn't say. A great talker, and a furious Jingo."

"Jingo?"

"This woman is to sing a song of his composition, all about the Empire.

Not the hall; the British. Glorifies the Flag, that blessed rag--a rhyme I suggested to him, and asked him to pay me for. It's a taking tune, and we shall have it everywhere, no doubt. He sang a verse--I wish you could have heard him. A queer fis.h.!.+"

Olga walked about, seeming to inspect the pictures, but in reality much occupied with her thoughts.

"Well," she said presently, "I only looked in, dear, to say how-do-you-do."

Miss Bonnicastle was drawing; she turned, as if to shake hands, but looked her friend in the face with a peculiar expression, far more earnest than was commonly seen in her.