A House-Party Part 12

Then she drops the subject decidedly, by approaching the other ladies.

Brandolin has a faint sense of discomfiture and sadness: he is accustomed to very facile conquests; and yet he is not a c.o.xcomb, like Lawrence Hamilton; he did not precisely antic.i.p.ate one here, but habit is second nature, and it has been his habit to succeed with women with rapidity and ease. That sense of mystery which there is also for him in the Princess Xenia oppresses whilst it allures him. He is English enough to think that he dislikes mystery, yet as an element of romance it has always an irresistible fascination for romantic temperaments.

Gervase meanwhile has sunk into a chair by the side of Nina Curzon, and is saying, in a whisper, "Who is that lady? The one with her back to us, to whom Lord Brandolin is so _empresse_? I thought that I knew all the Usks' people."

"Look in your Russian memories, and you will probably find that you know her too," replies Mrs. Curzon.

"Oh, she is Russian?" says Gervase, then adds, negligently, "I think, now you tell me that, I have seen her before. Is she not the Princess Sabaroff?"

"Why did you pretend not to know her?" thinks Nina Curzon as she answers, "Yes, that is her name. You must have met her in Petersburg."

"Petersburg is very dim in my memories," he replies, evasively. "Its baccarat is what made the deepest impression on my remembrance and my fortunes. Now I think of it, however, I recollect her quite well: her husband was Anatole Sabaroff, and l.u.s.toff shot him in a duel about her?

Am I right?"

"So charming for her!" says Nina Curzon. "Englishwomen never have anything happen for them picturesque like that: our men always die of indigestion, or going after a fox."

"It is very curious."

"What is? Dyspepsia? Hunting?"

"How one comes across people."

"'After long years,'" quotes Mrs. Curzon, with mock romance in her tones. "Generally, I think," she adds, with a little yawn, "we can never get rid of our people, the world is so small, and there is really only one set in it that is decent, so we can't ever get out of it. It must have been very nice in Romeo and Juliet's days, when a little drive to Mantua took you into realms wholly inaccessible to your Verona acquaintances. Nowadays, if you run away from anybody in London you are sure to run against them in Yeddo or Yucatan."

"Constancy made easy, like the three R's," says Gervase. "Unfortunately, despite our improved facilities, we are not constant."

"He means to imply that he threw over the Sabaroff," thinks Mrs. Curzon; "but he is such a boaster of his _bonnes fortunes_ that one can never know whether he is lying."

"Pray let me make you known to Madame Sabaroff," says Lady Usk to him, a little later. "She is such a very dear friend of mine, and I see you have been looking at her ever since she entered the room."

"She is a very handsome person: any one would look at her," replies her cousin. Were he not so perfectly well-bred and impa.s.sive, it might almost be said that the suggested presentation fills him with some vague nervousness.

Nina Curzon watches him inquisitively as he is led up and presented to Madame Sabaroff.

"I think I have had the honor before now, in Petersburg," murmurs Gervase. She looks at him very coldly.

"I think not," she replies. The words are of the simplest, but _c'est le ton qui fait la musique_, and, for the solitary time in his existence, Lord Gervase is embarra.s.sed.

Brandolin, playing with the colley dog near at hand, listens and observes.

Lady Usk is not so observant. "It is a long time since he was in Russia," she says to her friend, "I dare say you have forgotten. His father was alive, and his name was Baird then, you know."

Xenia Sabaroff makes a little polite gesture expressive of entire indifference to the change in these t.i.tles. With an action which would be rude in any woman less high-bred, she turns away her head and speaks to Brandolin, ignoring the acquaintance and the presence of Gervase.

Across the good-natured and busy brain of her hostess there flashes an electric and odious thought: is it possible that Usk may be right, and that there may be something wrong, after all, in this her latest and most adored friend? She feels that she will die of suffocated curiosity if she do not speedily get her cousin alone and learn all he has ever known or heard of the Princess Sabaroff.

"A snub direct!" whispers Lawrence Hamilton to Mr. Wootton.

"Or a cut direct: which?" says that far-sighted gentleman.

"Anyhow, it's delightful to see him let in for it," reflects Usk, who has also observed the incident from where he stands by the liqueurs.

Gervase, who has never been known to be at a loss in any position, however difficult, colors and looks at once annoyed and confused. He stands before Xenia Sabaroff for a few moments hesitating and irresolute, conscious that every one is looking at him; then he takes refuge with Lady Dawlish, whom he detests, because she is the nearest person to him.

"Madame Sabaroff is eclipsing the black women," says that lady.

"What black women?" asks Gervase, very inattentive and bored. She tells him the story of the Hindoo harem, and he hears no word of it.

"Brandolin is always so odd," he says, indifferently, watching the hand of Xenia Sabaroff as it rests on the shoulder of the Babe, who is leaning against her knees gazing at her adoringly.

Gervase is angered; irritated, interested, and mortified all at once. He has never been in an absurd position before, and he is aware that he was in one a moment ago, and that the whole house-party of Surrenden Court saw him in it. "What a fool Dolly was not to tell me she was here!" he thinks, forgetting that his cousin and hostess has not the remotest suspicion that he and the Princess Xenia have ever met each other before.

"Seven years!" he thinks. "Good heavens! what an eternity! And she is handsomer than she was then; very handsome; wonderfully handsome."

He looks at her all the while from under his half-closed eyelids, whilst he talks he knows not what kind of rubbish to Lady Dawlish.

Xenia Sabaroff does not once look his way. The moment which she had dreaded has pa.s.sed, and it has made no impression whatever upon her: her indifference reconciles her to herself. Is it possible, she wonders, that she ever loved, or ever thought that she loved, this man?

"Why will you always treat me as a stranger, Madame Sabaroff?" murmurs Gervase to her that night when for a moment he is alone near her, while the cotillion overture commences.

"You are a stranger--to me," replies Xenia Sabaroff; and as she speaks she looks full at him.

He colors with discomfiture. "Because in the due course of nature I have succeeded to my father's t.i.tle, you seem to consider that I have changed my whole ident.i.ty," he says, with great irritation.

She is silent; she looks down on the white ostrich-feathers of her fan.

He is vaguely encouraged by that silence. "Strangers! That is surely a very cold and cruel word between those who once were friends?"

The direct appeal to her makes her look up once more, with great _hauteur_ in the coldness of her face.

"Sir, I think when people have forgotten that each other exist, it is as though they had never met. They are perhaps something more distant still than strangers, for to strangers friendship in the future is possible; but those who have been separated by oblivion on the one hand and by contempt on the other are parted as surely and eternally as though death had divided them."

Gervase gathers some solace from the very strength of the words. She would not, he thinks, feel so strongly unless she felt more than he allows: he gazes at her with feigned humility and unfeigned admiration and regret.

"If Madame Sabaroff," he murmurs, "can doubt her own powers of compelling remembrance, she is the one person on earth only who can do so."

She is stung to anger.

"I am really at loss to decide whether you are intentionally insolent or unintentionally insincere. You are possibly both."

"I am neither. I am only a man who pa.s.sionately and uselessly rebels against his fate."

"Who regrets his own actions, you mean to say. That is nothing uncommon."

"Well, who regrets the past, if you will put it so, and who would atone for it would you allow him."

"Atone! Do you suppose that you owe me reparation? It is I who owe you thanks for a momentary oblivion which did me immeasurable service."

"That is a very harsh doctrine. The Princess Xenia whom I knew was neither so stern nor so sceptical."