Red Masquerade Part 32

"I am not so sure. Perhaps a gla.s.s of wine might do you good."

"Oh, no!" the girl protested--"I don't need it, really."

But Victor wouldn't listen; and disappearing into shadowed distances, returned presently with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g goblet.

"Drink this, dear. It will make you feel quite fit again."

Obediently, Sofia raised the goblet to her lips.

"You have never tasted a wine like that," Victor insisted, smiling down at her.

It was true enough, what he claimed; though it had something of character of a sound old Madeira, this wine had more, a surpa.s.sing richness, a fruitiness in no way cloying, a peculiarly aromatic taste and fragrance, elusive and provoking, with a hint of bitterness never to be a.n.a.lyzed by the most experienced palate.

"What is it?" Sofia asked after her first sip.

"You like it, eh? An old wine of China, unknown to Western Europe." Victor gave it a musical name in what Sofia took to be Chinese. "Outside my cellars, I'll wager there's not another bottle of it this side of Constantinople. Drink it all. It will do you good."

He seated himself. "And now my reason for wishing to talk with you to-night.... A note came by the last delivery from Lady Randolph West. You met her, I understand, through Sybil Waring, a few days ago. She was apparently much taken with you."

"She is very kind."

Victor had found a sheet of notepaper and, bending to the light, was searching its scrawled lines with narrowed eyes.

"'Too lovely,' she calls you--and quite justly, my dear. Yes; here it is: 'Too lovely for words.' And she wants me to bring my 'charming daughter'

down to Frampton Court for this week-end."

Sofia said nothing, but put her half-empty gla.s.s aside. The wine had done her good, she thought. She felt better, stronger, mentally more alert, and at the same time curiously soothed.

Victor refolded the note and tapped the table with it, holding Sofia with speculative eyes.

"It should be amusing," he said, thoughtfully, "a new experience for you.

Elaine--I mean Lady Randolph West, of course--is a charming hostess, and never fails to fill Frampton Court with delightful people."

"I'm sure I should love it."

"I am sure you would. And yet ... I may have been a little premature, since I have already written accepting the invitation." He indicated an addressed envelope face up on the table. "But on second thoughts, it seemed perhaps wiser to consult you first."

"But if it is your wish, I must go," Sofia replied, mindful of Karslake's injunction not to oppose Victor. "What have I to say--?"

"Everything about whether we accept or do not--or if not everything, at least the final word. I must abide by your decision."

"But I shall be only too glad--"

"Think a moment. It might be wiser not to go. You alone can say."

"I don't quite understand ..."

Victor sighed. "It is a painful subject," he said, slowly--"one I hesitate to reopen. But we can never profit by closing our minds to facts; I mean, to the reality of the danger which is always with us, since it is within us."

"What danger?" Sofia enquired, sullenly, knowing the answer too well before it was spoken.

"The danger of sudden temptation to indulge the lawless appet.i.tes with which heredity has endued us--me from the nameless forebears whom I never knew, you directly from parents both of whom boasted criminal records."

"I don't believe it!" Sofia declared, pa.s.sionately--"I can't believe it, I won't! Even if you are--"

She was going on to say "if you are my father," but caught herself in time.

Had not Karslake warned her in his note: "_Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious._" She continued in a tempest of expostulation whose fury covered her break:

"Even if you were once a thief and my mother--my mother!--everything vile, as you persist in trying to make me believe--G.o.d knows why!--it is possible I may still have failed to inherit your criminal tendencies; and not only possible, but true, if I know myself at all. For I have never felt the temptation to steal that you insist I must have inherited from you--nor any other inclination toward things as mean, contemptible, and dishonourable as they are dishonest!"

With only his slow, forbearing smile by way of comment, Victor heard her out, but when she paused to rea.s.sort her thoughts, lifted a temporizing hand.

"Not yet, perhaps," he said, gently. "There is always the first time with every rebel against man-made laws. But, where the predisposition so indubitably exists, it is inevitable, soon or late it must come to you, my dear--the time when the will is too weak, temptation too strong. Against it we must be forever on our guard."

"I am not afraid," Sofia contended.

"Naturally; you will not be before the hour of ordeal which shall prove your strength or your weakness, your confidence in yourself, or my loving fears for you."

Sofia gave a gesture of weariness and confusion. What did it matter? If he would have it so, let him: it couldn't affect the issue in any way, what he believed, or for his own purposes pretended to believe. Had not Karslake promised ...

She tried to recall precisely what it was that Karslake had promised, but found her memory of a sudden singularly sluggish. In fact, her mind seemed to have lost its marvellous clarity of those first moments after tasting the wine of China. Small wonder, when one remembered the emotional strain she had experienced since early evening!

"Still," she argued, stubbornly, "I don't see what all this has to do with Lady Randolph West's invitation."

"Only that to accept means to expose you to the greatest temptation one can well imagine."

Sofia stared blankly. Her wits were working even more slowly and heavily than before. And the glare in her eyes from the luminous sphere of crystal was irritating. Almost without thinking, she lifted her gla.s.s again; when she put it down it was empty.

"The jewels of Lady Randolph West," Victor went on to explain without her prompting, "are considered the most wonderful in England; always excepting, of course, the Crown jewels."

"What is that to me?"

Resentment sounded in her tone. She was thinking more readily once more, thanks to that second magical draught, but was nevertheless conscious of a general failing of powers drained by her great fatigue. She wished devoutly that Victor would have done and let her go....

"Elaine is very careless, leaves her jewels scattered about, hardly troubles to put them away securely at night. If you should be tempted to appropriate anything, she might not discover her loss for days; and then, again, she might. And if you were caught--consider what shame and disgrace!"

"I think I see," the girl said, slowly, after some difficult thinking. "You don't want me to go."

"To the contrary, I do--but I want more than anything else in the world that my daughter should be sure of herself and fall into no irreparable error."

"But I am sure of myself--I have told you that."

"Then let us fret no more about it, but accept, and go prepared to enjoy ourselves. I will send the letter."

Victor rang, and Shaik Tsin presented himself so quickly that Sofia wondered dully where he could have been waiting. In the room with them, perhaps? It wasn't impossible. The Chinaman's thick soles of felt enabled him to move about without making the least noise.

"Have this posted immediately."

Shaik Tsin bowed deeply, and backed away with the letter. Unless she turned to watch him, Sofia could not say whether he left the room or not.