The Powers and Maxine Part 19

But Lisa is different--different from everyone else in the world. I have never expected anything from her, as I have from others. All I've wanted was to make her as happy as such a poor, little, piteous creature could be, and to teach myself never to mind anything that she might say or do.

But Ivor--to be disappointed in him, to be made miserable by him! I didn't know it was possible to suffer as I suffered that day he went off and left me standing in the railway-station. I didn't dream then of going to Paris. If anybody had told me I would go, I should have said, "No, no, I will not." And yet I did. I allowed myself to be persuaded. I tried to make myself think that it was to please Aunt Lilian; but down underneath I knew all the time it wasn't that, really. It was because I couldn't bear to do the things I'm accustomed to doing every day. I felt as if I should cry, or scream, or do something ridiculous and awful unless there were a change of some sort--any change, but if possible some novelty and excitement, with people talking to me every minute.

Perhaps, too, there was an attraction for me in the thought that I would be in Paris while Ivor was there. I kept reminding myself on the boat and the train that nothing good could happen; that Ivor and I could never be as we had been before; that it was all over between us for ever and ever, and through his fault. But, there at the bottom was the thought that I _might_ have done him an injustice, because he had begged me to trust him, and I wouldn't. Just suppose--something in myself kept on saying--that we should by mere chance meet in Paris, and he should be able to prove that he hadn't come for Maxine de Renzie's sake! It would be too glorious. I should begin to live again--for already I'd found out that life without loving and trusting Ivor wasn't life at all.

He couldn't think I had followed him, even if he did see me in Paris, because I would be with my Aunt and Uncle, and Lord Robert West; and I made up my mind to be very nice to Lord Bob, much nicer than I ever had been, if Ivor happened to run across us anywhere.

Then that very thing did happen, in the strangest and most unexpected way, but instead of being happier for seeing him, I was ten times more unhappy than before--for now the misery had no gleam of hope shining through its blackness.

That was what I told myself at first. But after we had met in the hall of the hotel, and Ivor had seemed confused, and wouldn't give up his mysterious engagement, or say what it was, though Lisa chaffed him and he _must_ have known what I thought, I suddenly forgot the slight he had put upon me. Instead of being angry with him, I was _afraid_ for him, I couldn't have explained why, unless it was the look on his face when he turned away from me.

No man would look like that who was going of his own free will to a woman with whom he was in love, that same queer something whispered in my ear. Instead of feeling sick and sorry for myself and desperately angry with him, it was Ivor I felt sorry for.

I pretended not to care whether he stayed or went, and talked to Lord Robert West as if I'd forgotten that there was such a person as Ivor Dundas. I even turned my back on him before he was gone. Still I seemed to see the tragic look in his eyes, and the dogged set of his jaw. It was just as if he were going away from me to his death; and his face was like that of the man in Millais' picture of the Huguenot Lovers. I wondered if that girl had been broken-hearted because he wouldn't let her tie round his arm the white scarf that might have saved him.

It is strange how one's mood can change in a moment--but perhaps it is like that only with women. A minute before I'd been trying to despise Ivor, and to argue, just as if I'd been a match-making mamma, to myself that it would be a very good thing if I could make up my mind to marry Lord Bob; that it would be rather nice being a d.u.c.h.ess some day; and that besides, perhaps Ivor would be sorry when he heard that I was engaged to somebody else.

But then, as I said, quite suddenly it was as if a sharp knife had been stuck into my heart and turned round and round. I would have given anything to run after Ivor to tell him that I loved him dreadfully and would trust him in spite of all.

"You look as pale as if you were going to faint," said Lisa, in her little high-keyed voice, which, though she doesn't speak loudly, always reaches to the farthest corners of the biggest rooms.

I did think it was unkind of her to call everyone's attention to me just then, for even strangers heard, and turned to throw a glance at me as they pa.s.sed.

"It must be the light," I said, "for I don't feel in the least faint."

That was a fib, because when you are as miserable as I was at that minute your heart feels cold and heavy, as though it could hardly go on beating. But I felt that if ever a fib were excusable, that one was.

"I'm a little tired, though," I went on. "None of us got to bed till after three last night; and this day, though very nice of course, has been rather long. I think, if you don't mind, Aunt Lil, I'll go straight to my room when we get upstairs."

We all went up together in the lift, but I said good-night to the others at the door of the pretty drawing-room at the end of Uncle Eric's suite.

"Shan't I come with you?" asked Lisa, but I said "no." It was something new for her to offer to help me, for she isn't very strong, and has always been the one to be petted and watched over by me, though she's a few years older than I am.

Aunt Lilian had brought her maid, without whom she can't get on even for a single night, but Lisa and I had left ours at home, and Aunt Lil had offered to let Morton help us as much as we liked. I hadn't been shut up in my room for two minutes, therefore, when Morton knocked to ask if she could do anything. But I thanked her, and sent her away.

I had not yet begun to undress, but was standing in the window, looking along the Champs elysees, brilliant still with electric lights, and full of carriages and motor-cars bringing people home from theatres and dinner-parties, or taking them to restaurants for supper.

Down there somewhere was Ivor, going farther away from me every moment, though last night at about this time he had been telling me how he loved me, how I was the One Girl in the world for him, and always, always would be. Here was I, remembering in spite of myself every word he had said, hearing again the sound of his voice and seeing the look in his eyes as he said it. There was he, going to the woman for whose sake he had been willing to break with me.

But was he going to her? I asked myself. If not, when they had chaffed him he might easily have mentioned what his engagement really was, knowing, as he must have known, exactly how he made me suffer.

Still--why had he looked so miserable, if he didn't care what I thought, and was really ready to throw me over at a call from her? The whole thing began to appear more complicated, more mysterious than I had felt it to be at first, when I was smarting with my disappointment in Ivor, and tingling all over with the humiliation he seemed to have put upon me.

"Oh, to know, to _know_, what he's doing at this minute!" I whispered, half aloud, because it was comforting in my loneliness to hear the sound of my own voice. "To _know_ whether I'm doing him the most awful injustice--or not!"

Just then, at the door between my room and Lisa's, next to mine, came a tapping, and instantly after the handle was tried. But I had turned the key, thinking that perhaps this very thing might happen--that Lisa might wish to come, and not wait till I'd given her permission. She does that sort of thing sometimes, for she is rather curious and impish (Ivor calls her "Imp"), and if she thinks people don't want her that is the very time when she most wants them.

"Oh, Di, do let me in!" she exclaimed.

For a second or two I didn't answer. Never in my life had I liked poor Lisa less than I'd liked her for the last four and twenty hours, though I'd told myself over and over again that she meant well, that she was acting for my good, and that some day I would be grateful instead of longing to slap her, as I couldn't help doing now. But always before, when she has irritated me until I've nearly forgotten my promise to her father (my step-father) always to be gentle with her in thought and deed, I have felt such pangs of remorse that I've tried to atone, even when there wasn't really anything to atone for, except in my mind. I was afraid that, if I refused to let her come in, she would go to bed angry with me. And when Lisa is angry she generally has a heart attack and is ill next day. "Di, are you there?" she called again.

Without answering, I went to the door and unlocked it. She came in with a rush. "I feel perfectly wild, as if I must do something desperate,"

she said.

So did I, but I didn't mean to let her know that.

"I'm going out," she went on. "If I don't, I shall have a fit."

"Out!" I repeated. "You can't. It's midnight."

"Can't? There's no such word for me as 'can't,' when I want to do anything, and you ought to know that," said she. "It's only being ill that ever stops me, and I'm not ill to-night. I feel as if electricity were flowing all through me, making my nerves jump, and I believe you feel exactly the same way. Your eyes are as big as half-crowns, and as black as ink."

"I _am_ a little nervous," I confessed. And I couldn't help thinking it odd that Lisa and I should both be feeling that electrical sensation at the same time. "Perhaps it's in the air. Maybe there's going to be a thunder-storm. There are clouds over the stars, and a wind coming up."

"Maybe it's partly that, maybe not," said she. "But there's one thing I'm sure of. _Something's going to happen._"

"Do you feel that, too?" I broke out before I'd stopped to think. Then I wished I hadn't. But it was too late to wish. Lisa caught me up quickly.

"Ah, I _knew_ you did!" she cried, looking as eerie and almost as haggard as a witch. "Something _is_ going to happen. Come. Go with me and be in it, whatever it is."

"No," I said. "And you mustn't go either." But she was weird. She seemed to lure me, like a strange little siren, with all a siren's witchery, though without her beauty. My voice sounded undecided, and I knew it.

"Of course I'm not asking you to wander with me in the night, hand in hand through the streets of Paris, like the Two Orphans," said Lisa.

"I'm going to have a closed carriage--a motor-brougham, one belonging to the hotel, so it's quite safe. It's ordered already, and I shall first drive and drive until my nerves stop jerking and my head throbbing. If you won't drive with me I shall drive alone. But there'll be no harm in it, either way. I didn't know you were so conventional as to think there could be. Where's your brave, independent American spirit?"

"I'm not conventional," I said.

"Yes, you are. Living in England has spoiled you. You're afraid of things you never used to be afraid of."

"I'm not afraid of things, and I'm not a bit changed," I said. "You only want to 'dare' me."

"I want you to go with me. It would be so much nicer than going alone,"

she begged. "Supposing I got ill in a hired cab? I might, you know; but I _can't_ stay indoors, whatever happens. If we were together it would be an adventure worth remembering."

"Very well," I said, "I'll go with you, not for the adventure, but rather than have you make a fuss because I try to keep you in, and rather than you should go alone."

"Good girl!" exclaimed Lisa, quite pleasant and purring, now that she had got her way; though if I'd refused she would probably have cried.

She is terrifying when she cries. Great, deep sobs seem almost to tear her frail little body to pieces. She goes deadly white, and sometimes ends up by a fit of trembling as if she were in an ague.

"Have you really ordered a motor cab?" I asked.

"Yes," said she. "I rang for a waiter, and sent him down to tell the big porter at the front door to get me one. Then I gave him five francs, and said I did not want anybody to know, because I must visit a poor, sick friend who had written to say she was in great trouble, but wished to tell no one except me that she'd come to Paris."

"I shouldn't have thought such an elaborate story necessary to a waiter," I remarked, tossing up my chin a little, for I don't like Lisa's subterranean ways. But this time she didn't even try to defend herself.

"Let's get ready at once," she said. "I'm going to put on my long travelling cloak, to cover up this dress, and wear my black toque, with a veil. I suppose you'll do the same? Then we can slip out, and down the 'service' stairs. The carriage is to wait for us at the side entrance."

I looked at her, trying to read her secretive little face. "Lisa, are you planning to go somewhere in particular, do something you want to 'spring' on me when it's too late for me to get out of it?"

"How horrid of you to be so suspicious of me! You _do_ hurt my feelings!

I haven't had an inspiration yet, so I can't make a plan. But it will come; I know it will. I shall _feel_ where we ought to go, to be in the midst of an adventure--oh, without being mixed up in it, so don't look horrified! I told you that something was going to happen, and that I wanted to be in it. Well, I mean to be, when the inspiration comes."