Robert Orange Part 9

Sir Piers Harding was the last to arrive. He was a thick-set, livid man with an unyielding smile and the yellow eyes of one whom rich diet rather than an angry G.o.d had rendered melancholy.

"You haven't changed in the least," he said, considering Lord Garrow with some resentment.

"Ah, well!" replied his lordship, "eleven years do not make much difference at my time of life. You, however, are decidedly greyer. Where have you been hiding yourself? I think you were foolish to leave England. Gladstone was remarking but the other day, 'Harding was always so c.o.c.ksure.' 'And wasn't he right?' said I. 'Of course,' said he; 'and that was the worst of him. He _was_ right. Who could stand it?' That's the world. It's devilish unappreciative of the truth."

Reckage, much bored by the old men, stood by Pensee's chair, where he could watch Sara and angle for her glance. When it happened that she smiled at him a little--either in mere friendship or mockery--he felt a kind of fire steal through his veins, and he told himself that she was a dangerous woman--a woman who could get her own way in the long run. That she was a girl--and, with all her shortcomings, a very innocent one--made her odd powers of fascination but the more insidious. She wore a dress of wine-coloured silk which fitted plainly over her breast and shoulders and fell in graceful flounces from the waist. The warm, olive lines of her cheek and throat appeared the darker in contrast with a twist of white lace which she wore round her neck; and her black hair, dressed higher than usual, was held in place by a large ruby comb which caught the fire-light as she moved. Reckage was conscious, for the first time in his life, of a real embarra.s.sment. He could not talk to her; he felt tongue-tied when she addressed him. Ill at ease, yet not unhappy, he struggled to maintain some coherence in his conversation; but, at each moment, his own ideas grew less certain and Sara's voice more enchanting. It seemed to convey the lulling powers of an anodyne. When he tried to rouse himself, the effort was as painful as the attempt to wake from a dream within a dream.

"You were at the wedding this morning?" she asked lightly.

"No.... What a fool I am! Yes, of course. You mean Robert's wedding?"

She gave a little smile, and murmured, dropping her voice, "I meant Robert's wedding."

Luncheon was then announced: the sliding doors which separated the dining-room from Lord Garrow's library were rolled back. They all walked in--Pensee and Sara leading the way.

"A sweet creature!" whispered his lordship behind their backs, indicating Lady Fitz Rewes. He sighed as he spoke. He could never feel that there was not something deplorable in Sara's physical brilliancy.

Her upper-lip that day had a certain curl which he had learnt to regard as a danger-signal. What would she do next? As he sat down at the table and observed the sweep of her eyelashes toward Reckage, a presentiment of trouble clouded the new hopes he had formed for her career.

"Who are your strong men now?" asked Harding suddenly, after a moment's contemplation of Reckage, who sat opposite.

"Our strong men?" faltered Lord Garrow.

"Aren't most of 'em place-hunters and self-seekers?"

"You must meet Robert Orange," said Pensee; "Mr. Disraeli believes in Robert Orange."

"I never heard of him," observed Sir Piers. "Who is he?"

"You may well ask," said Lord Garrow. "He claims to be a de Hausee--on his father's side. Reckage can tell you about him. Many have a high opinion of the fellow, and say that if he will stick to one branch of politics, he may become useful. Personally, I don't call him a man of the world."

"Not of our world, perhaps, papa. But there are so many other worlds!"

"Sara likes him. A lot of women like him," said his lordship. He was annoyed at her interruption and took his revenge by a feminine thrust.

"The hero," said he, "married some mysterious person this very morning.

We may not hear so much about him in the future!"

"Dear Lord Garrow," said Pensee, "his wife is a friend of mine--she is the most charming person."

Sara put out her hand and touched Reckage on the arm.

"Do you think," she asked, "that the wife will be an obstacle in his way?"

"Who can tell? Of course she has means, and he likes to do everything well."

"Speaking for myself," said Harding, "I have always held that a man's career rests rather on his genius than his marriage."

"But you, my dear fellow," put in Lord Garrow, testily, "you retired from political life because your theories could find no ill.u.s.tration there."

"Pardon me," said Sir Piers, with a grim laugh. "I retired because I had a faultless wife but unfortunately no genius. I shall therefore watch your friend's triumph or failure--for his position would seem to be precisely the reverse of my own--with peculiar sympathy."

"Ah! I fear you are rather heartless," exclaimed Sara. "For a man to have gone so far as Orange, and to know that perhaps--I say, perhaps--he can hope no higher because he made a fool of himself about a woman!"

"You speak as though it were a romantic marriage--a question of love."

"Of course," said the young lady softly. "It is a great pa.s.sion."

"Well, after all," observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to Sara's delightfulness, "the British public is absurdly fond of a love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man.

These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His elopement with Lady Caroline Lennox."

"To be sure," said Reckage--"to be sure. That's a point."

"It is a compliment to the s.e.x," continued Harding, "when a great man is taken captive by a pretty face. Men, too, rally round a Lochinvar. Such an evidence of heart--or folly, if you prefer to call it so--is also an evidence of disinterestedness. So, on the whole, I cannot follow your objections to the new Mrs. Orange."

"You have been away so long," said Garrow fussily, "that you have forgotten our prejudices. Orange himself, to begin with, has something mysterious in his origin. They say he is French--related to the old French aristocracy; but the less one says in England about foreign pedigrees the better. All that of itself is against him, and Mrs.

Orange, it seems, is more or less French, or Austrian, too. We can't help regarding them as foreigners, and I always distrust foreigners in politics. Why should they care for England? I ask myself."

"Why, indeed?" said Harding, with irony.

"Have I made myself clearer?" asked Garrow. "I can afford to speak. My own wife was a Russian. But I was not in political life, and she was an Amba.s.sador's daughter."

"You think you would feel more sure of Orange's patriotic instinct if he had chosen an Englishwoman?" said Reckage.

"I am bound to say that he would have shown discretion in settling down with one of our simple-hearted Saxon girls."

"And who was Mrs. Orange before she married Orange?" asked Harding.

"A widow--a Mrs. Parflete," said Garrow.

"Parflete!" exclaimed Harding. "Mrs. Parflete! But I have met her. She married Wrexham Parflete, an extraordinary creature. He lived for years with the Archduke Charles of Alberia. People used to say that Mrs.

Parflete was the Archduke's daughter. I ran across Parflete the other day in Sicily."

"But he is dead," said Pensee, much agitated; "he drowned himself."

"I cannot help that," repeated Sir Piers. "I met him last week, and he beat me at ecarte."

"Then it is not the same man," said Reckage, "quite obviously."

"Wrexham Parflete had a wife; I heard her sing at a dinner-party in Madrid. She was living with the Countess Des Escas; there was a row and a duel on her account. I never forget names or faces."

"But this looks serious," said Reckage. "Do you quite understand? It's the sort of thing one hardly dares to think. That is to say if you mean what I mean. The marriage can't be legal."

The two women turned pale and looked away from each other.

"I mean as much or as little as you like," said Harding. "But Parflete was alive last Monday."

"But bigamy is so vulgar," observed Lord Garrow. "You must be mistaken.

It is too dreadful!"

"Dreadful, indeed! And a great piece of folly into the bargain. It is selling the bear's skin before you have killed the bear."