The Crown of Life Part 50

"What do you mean, Mr. Florio?"

The man was raging with jealous anger; trying to smile, he showed his teeth in a mere grin, and sputtered his words.

"The door was shut with the key! Why was that?"

"You mustn't speak to me in this way," said Olga, with troubled remonstrance rather than indignation. "When I visit my friend, we don't always care to be disturbed-----"

"Ha! Your friend--Miss Bonnicastle--was _not_ there! I have seen her in Oxford Street! She said no one was there this morning, but I doubted--I came!"

Whilst speaking, he kept a look turned in the direction of the house from which Olga had come. And of a sudden his eyes lit with fierce emotion.

"See! Something told me! _That_ is your friend!"

Piers Otway had come out. Olga could not have recognised him at this distance, but she knew the Italian's eyes would not be deceived.

Instantly she took to flight, along a cross-street leading eastward.

Florio kept at her side, and neither spoke until breathlessness stopped her as she entered Fitzroy Square.

"You are safe," said her pursuer, or companion. "He is gone the other way. Ah! you are pale! You are suffering! Why did you run--run--run?

There was no need."

His voice had turned soothing, caressing; his eyes melted in compa.s.sion as they bent upon her.

"I have given you no right to hunt me like this," said Olga, panting, timid, her look raised for a moment to his.

"I take the right," he laughed musically. "It is the right of the man who loves you."

She cast a frightened glance about the square, which was almost deserted, and began to walk slowly on.

"Why was the door shut with the key?" asked Florio, his head near to hers. "I thought I would break it open And I wish I had done so," he added, suddenly fierce again.

"I have given you no right," stammered Olga, who seemed to suffer under a sort of fascination, which dulled her mind.

"I take it!--Has _he_ a right? Tell me that! You are not good to me; you are not honest to me; you deceive--deceive! Why was the door shut with the key? I am astonished! I did not think this was done in England--a lady--a young lady!"

"Oh, what do you mean?" Olga exclaimed, with a face of misery. "There was no harm. It wasn't _I_ who wished it to be locked!"

Florio gazed at her long and searchingly, till the blood burned in her face.

"Enough!" he said with decision, waving his arm. "I have learnt something. One always learns something new in England. The English are wonderful--yes, they are wonderful. _Basta_! and _addio_!"

He raised his hat, turned, moved away. As if drawn irresistibly, Olga followed. Head down, arms hanging in the limpness of shame, she followed, but without drawing nearer. At the corner of the square, Florio, as if accidentally, turned his head; in an instant, he stood before her.

"Then you do not wish good-bye?"

"You are very cruel! How can I let you think such things? You _know_ it's false!"

"But there must be explanation!"

"I can easily explain. But not here--one can't talk in the street----"

"Naturally!--Listen! It is twelve o'clock. You go home; you eat: you repose. At three o'clock, I pay you a visit. Why not? You said it yourself the other day, but I could not decide. Now I have decided. I pay you a visit; you receive me privately--can you not? We talk, and all is settled!"

Olga thought for a moment, and a.s.sented. A few minutes afterwards, she was roiling in a cab towards Bryanston Square.

On Monday evening, Piers received a note from Olga. It ran thus:

"I warned you not to trust me. It is all over now; I have, in your own words, 'put an end to it.' We could have given no happiness to each other. Miss Bonnicastle will explain. Good-bye!"

He went at once to Great Portland Street. Miss Bonnicastle knew nothing, but looked anxious when she had seen the note and heard its explanation.

"We must wait till the morning," she said. "Don't worry. It's just what one might have expected."

Don't worry! Piers had no wink of sleep that night. At post-time in the morning he was at Miss Bonnicastle's, but no news arrived. He went to business; the day pa.s.sed without news; he returned to Great Portland Street, and there waited for the last postal delivery. It brought the expected letter; Olga announced her marriage that morning to Mr. Florio.

"It's better than I feared," said Miss Bonnicastle. "Now go home to bed, and sleep like a philosopher."

Good advice, but not of much profit to one racked and distraught with amorous frenzy, with disappointment sharp as death. Through the warm spring night, Piers raved and agonised. The business hour found him lying upon his bed, sunk in dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

Again it was springtime--the spring of 1894. Two years had gone by since that April night when Piers Otway suffered things unspeakable in flesh and spirit, thinking that for him the heavens had no more radiance, life no morrow. The memory was faint; he found it hard to imagine that the loss of a woman he did not love could so have afflicted him. Olga Hannaford--Mrs. Florio--was matter for a smile; he hoped that he might some day meet her again, and take her hand with the old friendliness, and wish her well.

He had spent the winter in St. Petersburg, and was making arrangements for a visit to England, when one morning there came to him a letter which made his eyes sparkle and his heart beat high with joy. In the afternoon, having given more than wonted care to his dress, he set forth from the lodging he occupied at the lower end of the Nevski Prospect, and walked to the Hotel de France, near the Winter Palace, where he inquired for Mrs. Borisoff. After a little delay, he was conducted to a private sitting-room, where again he waited. On a table lay two periodicals, at which he glanced, recognising with a smile recent numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Vyestnik Evropy_.

There entered a lady with a bright English face, a lady in the years between youth and middle age, frank, gracious, her look of interest speaking a compliment which Otway found more than agreeable.

"I have kept you waiting," she said, in a tone that dispensed with formalities, "because I was on the point of going out when they brought your card----"

"Oh, I am sorry----"

"But I am not. Instead of twaddle and boredom round somebody or other's samovar, I am going to have honest talk under the chaperonage of an English teapot--my own teapot, which I carry everywhere. But don't be afraid; I shall not give you English tea. What a shame that I have been here for two months without our meeting! I have talked about you--wanted to know you. Look!"

She pointed to the periodicals which Piers had already noticed.

"No," she went on, checking him as he was about to sit down, "_that_ is your chair. If you sat on the other, you would be polite and grave and--like everybody else; I know the influence of chairs. That is the chair my husband selects when he wishes to make me understand some point of etiquette. Miss Derwent warned you, no doubt, of my shortcomings in etiquette?"

"All she said to me," replied Piers, laughing, "was that you are very much her friend."

"Well, that is true, I hope. Tell me, please; is the article in the _Vyestnik_ your own Russian?"

"Not entirely. I have a friend named Korolevitch, who went through it for me."

"Korolevitch? I seem to know that name. Is he, by chance, connected with some religious movement, some heresy?"

"I was going to say I am sorry he is; yet I can't be sorry for what honours the man. He has joined the Dukhobortsi; has sold his large estate, and is devoting all the money to their cause. I'm afraid he'll go to some new-world colony, and I shall see little of him henceforth.

A great loss to me."