A House-Party Part 18

Brandolin strays into the small library, takes down a book, and stretches himself on a couch. He half expects that Madame Sabaroff will come down before luncheon and also seek a book, as she did last Sunday.

He lights a cigarette and waits, lazily watching the peac.o.c.ks drawing their trains over the velvety turf without. It is a lovely dewy morning, very fresh and fragrant after rains in the night. He thinks he will persuade her to go for a walk: there is a charming walk near, under deep trees by a little brown brook, full of forget-me-nots.

He hears a step, and looks up: he does not see her, but the Russian secretary, Gregor Litroff, always called "Toffy" by his female friends in England.

"_Dieu de Dieu!_ What an inst.i.tution your English Sunday is!" says Litroff, with a yawn. "I looked out of my window an hour ago, and beheld Usk in a tall hat, with his little boy on one side and miladi Waverley on the other, solemnly going to church. How droll! He would not do it in London."

"It is not more ridiculous to go to church in a tall hat than to prostrate yourself and kiss a wooden cross, as you would do if you were at home," says Brandolin, contemptuously, eying the intruder with irritation.

"That may be," says the secretary, good-humoredly. "We do it from habit, to set an example, not to make a fuss. So, I suppose, does he."

"Precisely," says Brandolin, wondering how he shall get rid of this man.

"And he takes Lady Waverley for an example, too?" asks Litroff, with a laugh.

"Religion enjoins us," replies Brandolin, curtly, "to offer what we have most precious to the Lord."

The secretary laughs again.

"That is very good," he says, with enjoyment.

Mr. Wootton comes in at that instant. He has been away, but has returned: the cooks at Surrenden are admirable. Brandolin sees his hopes of a _tete-a-tete_ and a walk in the home wood fading farther and farther from view. Mr. Wootton has several telegram-papers in his hand.

"All bad news, from all the departments," he remarks.

"There is nothing but bad news," says Brandolin. "It is painful to die by driblets. We shall all be glad when we have got the thing over,--seen Windsor burnt, London sacked, Ireland admitted to the American Union, and Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone crowned at Westminster."

Mr. Wootton coughs: he does not like unseemly jests, nor to have the gravity and exclusiveness of the private intelligence he receives doubted. He turns to Litroff, talks of Russian politics, and brings the conversation round to the Princess Sabaroff.

Brandolin, appearing absorbed in his book, lies on his couch wondering whether he should meet her anywhere about the gardens if he went out. He listens angrily when he hears her name.

"Was she ever talked about?" asks Mr. Wootton, searching the book-shelves.

"What charming woman is not?" returns Litroff, gallantly.

"My dear count," replies Mr. Wootton, with grave rebuke, "we have thousands of n.o.ble wives and mothers in England before whom Satan himself would be obliged to bow in reverence."

"Ah, truly," says Litroff: "so have we, I dare say: I have never asked."

"No doubt you have," says Mr. Wootton, kindly. "The virtue of its women is the great safeguard of a nation."

"One understands why England is losing her nice equipoise, then, now,"

murmurs Brandolin.

Mr. Wootton disregards him.

"But Madame Sabaroff _was_ talked about, I think,--unjustly, no doubt?"

he insists.

Mr. Wootton always insists.

"Ach!" says Litroff, apologetically, "Sabaroff was such a great brute.

It was very natural----"

"What was natural?"

"That she should console herself."

"Ah! she did console herself?"

Litroff smiles. "Ask Lord Gervase: he was Lord Baird at that time. We all expected he would have married her when Sabaroff was shot."

"But it was l.u.s.toff who shot Sabaroff in a duel about her?"

"Not about her. l.u.s.toff quarrelled with him about a gambling affair, not about her at all, though people have said so. Lord Baird--Gervase--was, I am certain, her first lover, and has been her only one, as yet."

Brandolin flings his book with some violence on the floor, gets up, and walks to the window. Mr. Wootton looks after him.

"No one could blame her," says Litroff, who is a good-natured man. "She was married when she was scarcely sixteen to a brute; she was immensely admired; she was alone in the midst of a society both loose and brilliant; Gervase laid siege to her sans treve, and she was hardly more than a child."

"Where there is no principle early implanted," begins Mr. Wootton----

But Litroff is not patient under preaching. "My dear sir," he says, impatiently, "principle (of that kind) is more easily implanted in plain women than in handsomer ones. Madame Sabaroff is a proud woman, which comes to nearly the same thing as a high-principled one. She has lived like a saint since Sabaroff was shot, and if she take up matters with her early lover again it will only be, I imagine, this time, _pour le bon motif_. Anyhow, I don't see why we should blame her for the past, when the present shows us such an admirable and edifying spectacle as miladi Waverley and miladi Usk going to sit in church with George Usk between them!"

Whereon the Russian secretary takes a "Figaro" off the newspaper-table, and rudely opens it and flourishes it between Mr. Wootton and himself, in sign that the conversation is ended.

Mr. Wootton has never been so treated in his life.

CHAPTER XI.

Brandolin walks down the opening between the gla.s.s doors into the garden. He paces impatiently the green shady walks where he has seen her on other mornings than this. It is lovely weather, and the innumerable roses fill the warm moist air with fragrance. There is a sea-breeze blowing from the sea-coast some thirty miles away; his schooner is in harbor there; he thinks that it would be wisest to go to it and sail away again for as many thousand miles as he has just left behind him.

Xenia Sabaroff has a great and growing influence over him, and he does not wish her to exercise it and increase it if this thing be true: perhaps, after all, she may be that kind of sorceress of which Mary Stuart is the eternal type,--cold only that others may burn, _reculant pour mieux sauter_, exquisitely feminine only to be more dangerously powerful. He does not wish to play the _role_ of Chastelard, or of Douglas, or of Henry Darnley. He is stung to the quick by what he has heard said.

It is not new: since the arrival of Gervase the same thing has been hinted more or less clearly, more or less obscurely, within his hearing more than once; but the matter-of-fact words of Litroff have given the tale a kind of circ.u.mstantiality and substance which the vague uncertain suggestions of others did not do. Litroff has, obviously, no feeling against her; he even speaks of her with reluctance and admiration: therefore his testimony has a truthfulness about it which would be lacking in any mere malicious scandal.

It is intensely painful to him to believe, or even to admit to himself as possible, that it may be thus true. She seems to him a very queen among women: all the romance of his temperament clothes her with ideal qualities. He walks on unconsciously till he has left the west garden and entered the wood which joins it, and the gra.s.sy seats made underneath the boughs. As he goes, his heart thrills, his pulse quickens: he sees Madame Sabaroff. She is seated on one of the turf banks, reading, the dog of the house at her feet. He has almost walked on to her before he has perceived her.

"I beg your pardon," he murmurs, and pauses, undecided whether to go or stay.

She looks at him a little surprised at the ceremony of his manner.

"For what do you beg my pardon? You are as free of the wood as I," she replies, with a smile. "I promised the children to keep their dogs quiet, and to await them here as they return from their church."

"You are too good to the children," says Brandolin, still with restraint. Her eyes open with increased surprise. She has never seen his manner, usually so easy, nonchalant, and unstudied, altered before.

"He must have heard bad news," she thinks, but says nothing, and keeps her book open.