Woman and Artist Part 19

"Yes," continued Gabrielle, not listening to her sister, "a husband who has given you a place in his heart which one only gives to G.o.d. Ah, do not attempt to contradict me. Your love for Philip is dying, if not already dead. Take care, Dora; Philip still loves you. He knows nothing of what is going on. It is not too late. Forbid your door to this man before harm comes of it. I beseech you, put a stop to General Sabaroff's too evident attentions to you."

This was more than Dora could stand. This woman, whose pride would not allow her to confide her sorrow to another soul, was roused to her very depths, and, seizing her sister's arms, she said to her--

"My loving husband, who gives me a place in his heart which should be reserved for G.o.d alone, is ready to sell my smiles for five hundred thousand roubles--do you hear what I tell you? After having been false to Art, that mistress of whom I should have been proud to be jealous, he does not seek to be false to me--that would be nothing compared to the crime he is about to commit. A husband! ah, faugh! There, I have unloaded my heart, I feel better."

"Dora, what are you saying? You are mad."

"I tell you that he knows everything and that you know nothing. It is Philip who forces me to receive this man in our intimate circle. It is he who throws open to General Sabaroff my dining-room, my drawing-room, and who, one of these days, will lend him the key of my bedroom. It was he who invited him to dine here to-night, certainly not I."

"But," said Gabrielle, "why is Philip not here?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Dora, "well you may ask--that is just what I should like to know."

Dora looked at Gabrielle, who stood dumfounded. "Never mind, don't listen to me, I scarcely know what I am talking about," she added, pa.s.sing her hand over her forehead; "I am losing my head. No, no, my suppositions are impossible. He must have met with an accident. There can be no other explanation."

Dora succeeded in mastering her emotion, and fixing Gabrielle with a strange, half-haggard gaze, she said--

"You must not believe a word of what I have said; you don't, do you? And now, I must go to Eva. The dear child will be so delighted to know you are here."

She threw herself into her sister's arms and kissed her tenderly several times.

Gabrielle stood petrified. She had long guessed that there was no more happiness in her sister's home, but she had not had the least idea that things had gone so far as to lead Dora to despise Philip. Gabrielle had always felt a mixture of love and admiring respect for her sister; in her estimation, Dora was the ideal woman; so much superior to all the other women she had known, that she could not believe that the pedestal upon which she had placed her could possibly crumble to atoms.

Dora returned after a few minutes. She seemed uneasy, still more upset than she had been when she left the drawing-room.

"Eva is asking for you," she said to Gabrielle; "she complains of sore throat now, and appears to be feverish, but I hope it is nothing worse than a cold coming. Go and sit with the dear child. If she should grow worse during the evening, send for the doctor at once. I trust her to your hands."

Kissing Gabrielle once more, she tried to smile, and added--

"Don't distress yourself about me. I shall be able to join you presently. General Sabaroff has, I hope, enough tact to make him feel the awkwardness of the situation. He will retire at once. There, go now, dear."

Dora, as soon as Gabrielle had left the drawing-room, was seized with an intangible terror. Doubt and uncertainty had undermined her spirits. She no longer felt her usual dauntless courage. She was afraid of being alone, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the man who, at any moment, might enter the room; but, above all, was her thought for the child. "My poor little treasure! going to be ill perhaps!" A horrible thought flashed across her mind and wrung a cry from her lips. "Oh, no, no, my G.o.d, not _that_! no, not if there is justice in heaven!" Calming herself with an effort, she went on, "Ah, if it was not for the child, I would leave this house to-day, I would go no matter where, take a few brushes, and earn my bread with them. It would be hard if I could not turn my work to some account and lead a life independent of everyone. Oh to live anywhere, to live anyhow, dear Heaven, rather than go on with this existence which revolts me and is crushing me! Oh, how lonely it is! how silent the house is! The very air chokes me--where is Philip now? What has happened that he is not here? What is he doing? Oh, my head burns so! I will send up for Gabrielle--no, she must stay with Eva. What to do? Send a telegram to Lorimer, and ask him to come quickly?--no, I should have to give explanations. Beg the General to excuse me; tell him I am not well and am obliged to retire."

She was interrupted in her reflections by the entrance of a servant who brought a telegram. Feverishly she broke open the envelope and read: "Missed nine o'clock train, started at noon, and will be with you at eight o'clock."

She looked at the timepiece. It was ten o'clock, and Philip had not yet arrived. The telegram was from Dover. What could have happened since?

"Then, Philip may perhaps not be here at all to-night," she said to herself; "I shall be forced to pa.s.s the rest of the evening with General Sabaroff. Is it an accident ... or a diabolical plot? No, no, the thought is too horrible. I must, I will chase it out of my mind. And yet--oh, there is only one thing to be done. Yes, yes, no more hesitation; I will finish with the General, and to-night. No more shall Philip accuse me of not helping him. I will get Sabaroff's signature, if power of mine can do it. I will be extra amiable to him--repulsive task!

Philip shall have his beloved money, for which he has broken my heart, and then--then I have done with him for ever."

When she lifted her eyes, Sabaroff stood before her. Immersed in her own thoughts, she had not seen him come in. At once rising, she collected her ideas rapidly and scarcely showed sign of embarra.s.sment.

"I must apologise again to you for my husband, General," she said; "I have just had a wire from him saying he missed the nine o'clock train in Paris, but that he had left at noon and would be here at eight. I am very alarmed. It is ten o'clock. I fear there must have been an accident, for I can explain his absence in no other way. It is really most unfortunate, and I don't know how to apologise enough. I feel quite confused."

The smile which crossed Sabaroff's face at these words was particularly offensive to Dora.

The General was not long coming to the point. When he had entered the drawing-room and found Dora alone, he had instantly taken his resolution. Here was his opportunity.

"As far as I am concerned," he said, "there is nothing unfortunate in the situation--I should rather call it fortunate for me. So, please, do not apologise. I can never get enough of your society. Every day on which I do not see you is dull, weary, wasted. To be allowed to see you is my sweetest privilege, to see you alone my dearest joy."

"Really, General, spare me, please," said Dora, striving to smile naturally.

"Ah, do not stop me, do not turn away your face. Remember the time when I first met you in the lovely South, and you gave me the happiness of feeling that my society was not displeasing to you. These were golden days! Your fresh young beauty, your clear young eyes and voice made the world new again for me, a travel-worn soldier, already beginning to find the world a tinsel-trimmed hearth with little warmth, and a great deal of ashes. Weary of the nomadic life of a Russian soldier, I fell to dreaming of another kind of existence, a sweet, peaceful life at your side. I would have consecrated the rest of my days to the dear task of making you happy. Ambition and glory, I would have said good-bye to all that, for my n.o.blest ambition would have been to reign supreme in your heart. You judged me unworthy, and I have never ceased to mourn the fading of my beloved dream--nay, I mourn it to-day more than ever. If only I had found you happy," he added insinuatingly.

"You are unwise, General, to talk to me of that winter," rejoined Dora.

"Can I ever forget that, thanks to you, one single day, one single hour of it turned me from a light-hearted, innocent, ignorant girl into a woman?--innocent still, but no longer ignorant of the sad and degrading side of existence. Ah, in those few moments, I had pa.s.sed out for ever from the sweet calm garden of girlhood into the dusty crowded highway of the world, and there I saw one of the saddest sides of life--the humiliation and despair of a woman dismissed, cast off by the man who should have pa.s.sed the rest of his days in shielding her."

"It was not my fault that you overheard my wretched secret; but a foolish liaison, which seemed to a strictly nurtured girl so vile a thing, can it, must it make me for ever odious to a sweet and gracious woman who knows the world? How many men have succeeded in keeping on virtue's path altogether? The members of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation are not recruited from among the ranks of our society."

"Does wrong become right by multiplication?" said Dora, who was not sorry to see the turn that the conversation had taken, a turn which would give her the opportunity of making a little sermon that should cool down the ardour of the General. "I shall never be able to understand why the men who belong to what is called Society should not be expected to conduct themselves as honourably as those of the modest middle cla.s.ses. It is from above that example should come, and, believe me, it will have to come from above, or society will disappear for want of having fulfilled its mission."

"Well, well, you may be right," said Sabaroff; "but listen to my story.

For months, for years, I could not bear to think of all that I had lost in losing you. Was it any wonder that I went half mad and ran into all kind of excesses? The light of your pure eyes was turned away from me. I tossed about like a rudderless ship, and only my ambition saved me from wreckage of body and soul."

"Does it not seem to you a little cowardly," said Dora, glad to recover the thread of her little sermon, "for a man to lay the blame for such a life at a woman's door, because he would not exercise the self-control that thousands of women have to exercise almost all their lives? Do you think it is only men who feel? Ah, believe me, there are few women who have not had, at some period of their lives, to suffer and be silent, to hold a bursting heart, and go about the daily task, with its cruel, half-mechanical routine, which leaves the mind free to dwell on all the misery that stirring scenes might help it to forget. Those who give way to their despair, society mocks at; those who abandon themselves to their pa.s.sions, society puts outside the pale."

Dora began to feel that she was putting too much heat into her reply.

With an attempt at a tone of indifference, she went on--

"But tell me more about that saving grace of ambition, General. It has made you a great and powerful man."

"Great, no; powerful, yes," replied Sabaroff, and he laid an insinuating stress on the word _yes_, which did not escape Dora's notice. "But, of all the satisfaction which my present position of confidence with my imperial master has brought me, nothing is so sweet as the power of doing what I am going to do for you."

"I am so proud you approve of the sh.e.l.l--then you will have it taken up by the Russian Government?

"Yes," said Sabaroff, "I have the paper here ready to sign, and am only waiting for a telegram from St. Petersburg, which I have ordered to be brought to me here if it should happen to arrive before ten o'clock" ...

"My husband will be so glad!"

"Ah, 'my husband will be glad,'" repeated Sabaroff, in a half-mocking tone; "Mrs. Grantham, will _you_ be glad?--Dora," said he, warming as he proceeded, "do you not realise that what I am going to do is for your sake, and not for the man who has won the only woman I ever loved?"

On hearing herself called by her Christian name, Dora was indignant.

"General, once more I beg of you, I'm afraid you forget yourself."

At this moment a servant entered the room.

"A telegram for his Excellency," said he. Then he handed the telegram to the General, and retired after receiving Dora's order to bring tea.

Sabaroff read the despatch to Dora: "Approved by Council of War. Final decision left to you. If you yourself approve, offer five hundred thousand roubles."

Dora was standing at the fireplace, with one foot on the fender.

Sabaroff, with the telegram in his hand, gave her a look which seemed to say: "When I said _powerful_, you see I was right."

The servant brought the tea, which he placed on a table near Dora, and retired.

Dora poured out two cups.

"No milk, I think--a little rum and some lemon, _a la Russe_?"