The Rubicon Part 33

Mimi was startled. The question had been very irrelevant. But she answered with a laugh,--

"No; but I am told I should not like her. They say she is too like me.

But why do you ask?"

"Reggie wrote to me about her this morning. He says she is delightful."

"Oh! I don't say she isn't," said the other, "but you see there isn't room or time for two people like me in one place. I never have time to say all I want, and if there was somebody else like that, we shouldn't get on at all."

"Oh! but Lady Hayes is usually very silent, I believe," said Gertrude.

"Yes; but you have to listen to the silence of some people, just as you have to listen to the talk of others. It takes just as much time. I expect she is one of those."

The Princess looked at the figure beside her.

"How happy you must be," she said with something like envy; "and I think you will continue to be happy. And Mr. Davenport is coming here, is he?

You must introduce me at once, and I will give you both my blessing.

That's something to look forward to. Come, we must go down, the others will be waiting."

Mimi was rather less noisy on the way home than usual. Prince Villari remarked it, and supposed that the fit of rusticity was not yet over.

She bid a very affectionate good-night to Gertrude at the door of her hotel, and asked her to come and see her in the morning, and then altered the terms of the visit, and said she would come down to their hotel herself, and hoped to find Gertrude ready for a stroll before lunch.

She remained silent at dinner, and afterwards, when she and her husband were sitting in their room by the window, to let in the cool evening breeze, he felt enough curiosity to ask,--

"What is the matter with my charming wife that she is so silent?"

"I was thinking about Gertrude Carston," said Mimi. "She is engaged to be married."

Prince Villari puffed his cigar in silence for a few moments.

"Ah! that is interesting," he said at length. "I shall come with you to-morrow to offer my felicitations. How very handsome she is."

"I wish you would do nothing of the sort, Villari," said his wife.

"Flirt with somebody else, if you must flirt with somebody. Flirt with me, if you like."

"That is a most original idea," he said. "I never heard of a husband flirting with his wife before."

"It's no manner of use trying to flirt with Gertrude Carston, my dear boy; so I warn you solemnly. She is awfully in love with her intended, and, in any case, she wouldn't flirt. She will only get angry with you."

"She would look splendid when she was angry," said the Prince meditatively.

Mimi got up from her seat.

"Look here, Villari," she said, "I don't often ask a favour of you, and I am not particular in general as to how you conduct yourself. I am never jealous, you know, and we have ceased to be lovers--we are excellent friends, which I think is better. As a friend, I ask you to leave her alone."

"I never suspected you of jealousy," he said; "but you ought to explain to me exactly why you wish this, if you want me to do as you ask."

"Benevolent motives, pure and simple," said Mimi at once. "You won't get any amus.e.m.e.nt out of it."

"Never mind me," murmured he.

"Very good," continued Mimi. "I cancel that--and she will hate it. Just leave her alone. Flirt with Mrs. Riviere. She would enjoy it. You were rude to her to-day; you never spoke a word to her--good, bad or indifferent."

"Mimi, you are inimitable," said the Prince, looking at her with satisfaction. "Really, you never disappoint one. I expected to find all sorts of surprises in you; but it seems I haven't got to the end of them yet. To discover such a spring of benevolence in you now is charming. Do you know I feel like your lover still."

"Then will you do what I ask?"

"Yes; I think I will," said he. "After all, I shall flirt with my wife a little longer."

He rose up from his chair, and took her hand in his, and raised it, lover-like, to his lips.

"You're a very good old boy, Villari," she said. "We've never yet come near the edge of a quarrel, and we've been married, oh! ever so long.

How wise we are, aren't we? Let me go, please. I want to write some letters. You told Mrs. Riviere you'd go to the Casino with her. It's time you were off. Be awfully charming to her, will you?"

"I'll let her show me to all her acquaintances, and be introduced to them all, if that will do," said the Prince.

"That's a dear," remarked Mimi. "That'll do beautifully. Trot along!"

CHAPTER II.

Gertrude's pleasure at receiving the telegram announcing Reggie's immediate arrival was not untouched by surprise. The vague thoughts, which for very loyalty she would not allow to take shape in her mind, in connection with Lady Hayes, formed themselves into a dark cloud on the horizon, distant but potentially formidable. But when she came downstairs on the morning of his arrival, and saw him standing in the hall, with the early morning sunlight falling on his tall, well-made form and towering, sunny head, there was no room in her mind for more than one feeling, and she was content. He had not seen her coming downstairs, and on the bottom step she paused, held out her hands, and said,--

"Reggie!"

That moment was one of pure and simple happiness to them both. He turned and saw her, the girl to whom he had given his heart and his young love, and for him, as for her, at that moment none but the other existed.

Gertrude felt that the thoughts of that golden future, which had so filled her mind one morning, as she walked down to the lake, were now beginning to be fulfilled. As for him, the chief feeling in his mind was one of pa.s.sionate, unutterable relief; the long nightmare was over, for the moment he felt that childish, pure happiness of waking from a bad dream and finding morning come, and the sun shining into a dear, familiar room.

He had not had a very pleasant journey. The anger which Mrs. Davenport had seen in his face, and from which she had taken comfort, burned itself out and left him face to face with blankness. His pa.s.sionate desire to see Eva rekindled itself, but that was impossible, and the sight of Gertrude he felt, in another sense, was impossible too. Several times he had been on the point of turning back, but the essential weakness of his character forbade so determined a step. But certainly, at that first moment of meeting her, he felt, with that unquestioning irresponsibility, that in natures not so sweet creates egoism, that the solution was here, and the relief was great.

"Ah, it is good to see you, Gerty," he said, when the first silent greeting was over. "I didn't know how much I wanted to get to you, until I saw you standing there."

"It was nice of you to come so soon," she said, drawing her arm through his, and leading him out on to the verandah; "but why did you come so suddenly? Nothing is wrong, I hope?"

Reggie had foreseen and dreaded this question, and he had devoted some thought to it. But Gertrude had given it a form more easy of reply than that he had antic.i.p.ated.

He looked at her affectionately.

"Nothing is wrong," he said with emphasis, and, to do him justice, he believed at that moment with truth.

"Everything is as right as it can be now," he went on; "now I am here with you, and oh, Gerty, nothing else matters."

"No," she said softly; "nothing else matters."

They stood there looking at each other, silent, almost grave--for happiness is no laughing matter--until a waiter came out with a tray on which was Gertrude's breakfast. Reggie went upstairs to his room to get rid of his travel stains, and Gertrude ordered breakfast for him to be served at the table on the verandah where she had her own. But it was not to be expected that the change in Reggie which Mrs. Davenport had noticed would escape her, and though, in the grave, silent joy of that first meeting, she had not consciously noticed it, she remembered it now, and it struck her exactly as it had struck Mrs. Davenport.