Fenwick's Career Part 31

So the pettish voice rambled on, the others tenderly and sadly listening, till presently Lord Findon shook his gaunt shoulders.

'Upon my word, it begins to get cold. With your leave, Elsie, I could do with a little more sun! Arthur, shall we take a brisk walk round the ca.n.a.l before tea?'

Welby looked anxiously at his wife. She had closed her eyes, and her pale lips, tightly shut, made no movement.

'I think I promised Elsie to stay with her,' he said, uncertainly.

'Let _me_ stay with Elsie, please,' said Eugenie.

The blue eyes unclosed.

'Don't be more than an hour, Arthur,' said the young wife, ungraciously. 'You know I asked Mrs. Westmacott to tea.'

The gentlemen walked off, and a sharp sensation impressed upon Madame de Pastourelles that Arthur was only allowed to go with Lord Findon, because _she_ was not of the party.

A sudden colour rose into her cheeks. For the hour that followed, she devoted herself to her cousin. But Mrs. Welby was difficult and querulous. Amongst other complaints she expressed herself bitterly as to the appearance of Mr. Fenwick at Versailles. Arthur had been so taken aback--Mr. Fenwick was always so atrociously rude to him! Arthur would have never come to Versailles had he known; but of course, as Uncle Findon and Eugenie liked Mr. Fenwick, as he was their friend, Arthur couldn't now avoid meeting him. It was extremely disagreeable.

'I think they needn't meet very much,' said Eugenie, soothingly--'and papa and I will do our best to keep Mr. Fenwick in order.'

'I wonder why he came,' said Elsie, fretfully.

'He has some work to do for the production of this play on Marie Antoinette. And I suppose he wanted to meet us. You see, we didn't know about Arthur.'

'I can't think why you like him so much.'

'He is an old friend, my dear!--and just now very unhappy, and out of spirits.'

'All his own fault, Arthur says. He had the ball at his feet.'

'I know,' said Eugenie, smiling sadly. 'That's the tragedy of it!'

There was silence. Mrs. Welby still observed her companion. A variety of expressions, all irritable or hostile, pa.s.sed through the large, languid eyes.

The afternoon faded--on the blue surface of the distant 'ca.n.a.l,' the great poplars that stand sentinel at the western edge of the Park, one to right, and one to left--last _gardes du corps_ of the House of France!--threw long shadows on the water; and across the opening which they marked, drifted the smoke of burning weeds, the only but sufficient symbol, amid the splendid scene, of that peasant France which destroyed Versailles. It was four o'clock, and to their left, as they sat sheltered on the southern side of the chateau, the visitors of the day were pouring out into the gardens. The shutters of the lower rooms, in the apartments of the Dauphin and of Mesdames, were being closed one by one, by the _gardiens_ within. Eugenie peered through the window beside her. She saw before her a long vista of darkened and solitary rooms, dim portraits of the marshals of France just visible on their walls. Suddenly--under a gleam of light from a shutter not yet fastened--there shone out amid the shadows a bust of Louis Seize! The Bourbon face, with its receding brow, its heavy, good-natured lips, its smiling incapacity, held--dominated--the palace.

Eugenie watched, holding her breath. Slowly the light died; the marble withdrew into the dark; and Louis Seize was once more with the ghosts.

Eugenie's fancy pursued him. She thought of the night of the 20th of January, 1793, when Madame Royale, in the darkness of the Temple, heard her mother turning miserably on her bed, sleepless with grief and cold, waiting for that last rendezvous of seven o'clock which the King had promised her--waiting--waiting--till the great bell of Notre Dame told her that Louis had pa.s.sed to another meeting, more urgent, more peremptory still.

'Oh, poor soul!--poor soul!' she said, aloud, pressing her hands on her eyes.

'What on earth do you mean!' said Mrs. Welby's voice beside her--startled--stiff--a little suspicious.

Eugenie looked up and blushed.

'I beg your pardon!--I was thinking of Marie Antoinette.'

'I'm so tired of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly memorials of her they sell here!--and the sentimental talk about her!

Arthur, of course, now--with his picture--thinks of nothing else.'

'Naturally!'

'I don't know. People are bored with Marie Antoinette. I wish he'd taken another subject. And as to her beauty--how could she have been beautiful, with those staring eyes, and that lower lip! I say so to Arthur--and he raves--and quotes Horace Walpole--and all sorts of people. But one can see for one's self. People are much prettier now than they ever were then! We should think nothing of their beauties.'

And the delicate lips of this once lovely child, this flower withered before its time, made a cold gesture of contempt.

In Eugenie's eyes, as they rested upon her companion, there was a flash--was it of horror?

Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?--no less than of his living friends?

Eugenie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tucked the shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chatting and caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame de Pastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the chateau, to see if the gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welby called her back.

'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is really _too_ cold!'

'She won't let me go to meet them,' thought Eugenie, involuntarily; sharply reproaching herself, a moment afterwards, for the mere thought.

But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugenie slipped back through the darkening streets, taking good care that her path should not lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.

She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran down the vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lake beyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of s.p.a.ce and light enwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory, with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance the voices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upper terrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bent forward--eager--her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, the arrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour; and beside her, a nymph, daughter of G.o.ds, turned to the palace with a free, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the more intently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of 'Le Roi Soleil.'

'Oh, poor Arthur--poor Arthur! And I did it!--I did it!'

It was the cry of Eugenie's inmost life.

And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories that rolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been before she would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage she had herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness that things dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp and piteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications, waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since the physical collapse, the inner motives and pa.s.sions had stood up bare and black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And as Eugenie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had worked upon her own mind as a silent, yet ever-growing accusation, against which she defended herself in vain.

Surely, surely she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go on binding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been a crime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed?

Home, wifely love, and children--it was to these dear enwrapping powers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared for herself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?--the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?

On her part she could proudly answer for herself. Never since Welby's marriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife the smallest just cause of offence. Eugenie's was often an anxious and a troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect. She knew herself true.

But from Elsie's point of view? Had she in truth sacrificed an ignorant child to her impetuous wish for Arthur's happiness, a too scrupulous care for her own peace? How 'sacrifice'? She had given the child her heart's desire. Arthur was not in love; but Elsie Bligh would have accepted him as a husband on any terms. Tenderly, in good faith, trusting to the girl's beauty, and Arthur's rich and loving nature, Eugenie had joined their hands.

Was that in reality her offence? In spite of all the delicacy with which it had been done, had the girl's pa.s.sion guessed the truth? And having guessed it, had she then failed--and failed consciously--to make the gift her own?

Eugenie had watched--often with a sinking spirit--the development of a nature, masked by youth and happiness, but essentially narrow and poor, full of mean ambitions and small antipathies. Arthur had played his part bravely, with all the chivalry and the conscience that might have been expected of him. And there had been moments--intervals--of apparent happiness, when Eugenie's own conscience had been laid to sleep.

Was there anything she might have done for those two people, that she had not done? And Elsie had seemed--she sadly remembered--to love her, to trust her--till this tragic breakdown. Indeed, so long as she could dress, dance, dine, and chatter as much as she pleased, with her husband in constant attendance, Mrs. Welby had shown no open discontent with her lot; and if her caresses often hurt Eugenie more than they pleased, there had been no outward dearth of them.

Alack!--Eugenie's heart was wrung with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugenie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed to a long and fluctuating case--to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur, and complaining misery for his wife.

Years! Eugenie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men--such a man as John Fenwick, for instance--of a reputation and a success they thought overdone and undeserved. But Arthur himself! She seemed to be looking into his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragically silent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious of ideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellows will ever know--of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to 'speak out,'

blighted, and in pain.

'_Arthur--Arthur_!' She leaned her head against the pedestal of a marble vase--wrestling with herself.