_ PART III CHAPTER I. AT MADAME MIREBEAU'S, OXFORD STREET
Half-past four of a delightful June afternoon, and two young ladies sit at two large, lace-draped windows, overlooking a fashionable Mayfair street, alternately glancing over the books they hold, and listlessly watching the passers-by. The house was one of those big black West-End houses, whose outward darkness and dismalness is in direct ratio to their inward brilliance and splendor. This particular room is lofty and long, luxurious with softest carpet, satin upholstery, pictures, flowers, and lace draperies. The two young ladies are, with the exception of their bonnets, in elegant carriage costume.
Young ladies, I have said; and being unmarried, they are young ladies, of course. One of them, however, is three-and-thirty, counting by actual years--the peerage gives it in cold blood. It is the Lady Gwendoline Drexel. Her companion is the Honorable Mary Howard, just nineteen, and just "out."
Lady Gwendoline yawns drearily over her book--Algernon Swineburne's latest--and pulls out her watch impatiently every few minutes.
"What can keep Portia?" she exclaims, with irritation. "We should have been gone the last half-hour."
The Honorable Mary looks up from her Parisian fashion-book, and glances from the window with a smile.
"Restrain your impatience, Gwendoline," she answers. "Here comes Lady Portia now."
A minute later the door is flung wide by a tall gentleman in plush, and Lady Portia Hampton sweeps in. She is a tall, slender lady, very like her sister: the same dully fair complexion, the same coiffure of copper-gold, the same light, inane blue eyes. The dull complexion wears at this moment an absolute flush; the light, lack-lustre eyes an absolute sparkle. There is something in her look as she sails forward, that makes them both look up expectantly from their books.
"Well?" Lady Gwendoline says.
"Gwen!" her sister exclaims--absolutely exclaims--"
whom do you suppose I have met?"
"The Czarina of all the Russias, Pio Nino, Her Majesty back from Osborne, or the Man in the Moon, perhaps," retorts Lady Gwendoline.
"Neither," laughs Lady Portia. "Somebody a great deal more mysterious and interesting than any of them. You never will guess whom."
"Being five o'clock of a sultry summer day, I don't intend to try. Tell us at once, Portia, and let us go."
"Then--prepare to be surprised! Sir Victor Catheron!"
"Portia!"
"Ah! I thought the name would interest you. Sir Victor Catheron, my dear, alive and in the flesh, though, upon my word, at first sight I almost took him to be his own ghost. Look at her, Mary," laughs her sister derisively. "I have managed to interest her after all, have I not?"
For Lady Gwendoline sat erect, her turquoise eyes open to their widest extent, a look akin to excitement in her apathetic face.
"But, Portia--Sir Victor! I thought it was an understood thing he did
not come to England?"
"He does, it appears. I certainly had the honor and happiness of shaking hands with him not fifteen minutes ago. I was driving up St. James Street, and caught a glimpse of him on the steps of Fenton's Hotel. At first sight I could not credit my eyes. I had to look again to see whether it were a wraith or a mortal man. Such a pallid shadow of his former self. You used to think him rather handsome, Gwen--you should see him now! He has grown ten years older in as many months--his hair is absolutely streaked with gray, his eyes are sunken, his cheeks are hollow. He looks miserably, wretchedly out of health. If men ever do break their hearts," said Lady Portia, going over to a large mirror and surveying herself, "then that misguided young man broke his on his wedding-day."
"It serves him right," said Lady Gwendoline, her pale eyes kindling. "I am almost glad to hear it."
Her faded face wore a strangely sombre and vindictive look. Lady Portia, with her head on one side, set her bonnet-strings geometrically straight, and smiled maliciously.
"Ah, no doubt--perfectly natural, all things considered. And yet, even you might pity the poor fellow to-day, Gwendoline, if you saw him. Mary, dear, is all this Greek and Hebrew to you? You were in your Parisian pensionnat, I remember, when it all happened.
You don't know the romantic and mysterious story of Sir Victor Catheron, Bart."
"I never heard the name before, that I recall," answered Miss Howard.
"Then pine in ignorance no longer. This young hero, Sir Victor Catheron of Catheron Royals, Cheshire, is our next-door neighbor, down at home, and one year ago the handsome, happy, honored representative of one of the oldest families in the county. His income was large, his estates unincumbered, his manners charming, his morals unexceptionable, and half the young ladies in Cheshire"--with another malicious glance at her sister--"at daggers-drawn for him. There was the slight drawback of insanity in the family--his father died insane, and in his infancy his mother was murdered. But these were only trifling spots on the sun, not worth a second thought. Our young sultan had but to throw the handkerchief, and his obedient Circassians would have flown on the wings of love and joy to pick it up. I grow quite eloquent, don't I? In an evil hour, however, poor young Sir Victor--he was but twenty-three--went over to America. There, in New York, he fell in with a family named Stuart, common rich people, of course, as they all are over there. In the Stuart family there was a young person, a sort of cousin, a Miss Edith Darrell, very poor, kept by them out of charity; and, lamentable to relate, with this young person poor Sir Victor fell in love. Fell in love, my dear, in the most approved old-fashioned style--absurdly and insanely in love--brought the whole family over to Cheshire, proposed to little missy, and, as a matter of course, was eagerly accepted. She was an extremely pretty girl, that I will say for her"--with a third sidelong glance of malice at her
passee sister--"and her manners, considering her station, or, rather, her entire lack of station, her poverty, and her nationality, were something quite extraordinary. I declare to you, she positively held her own with the best of us--except for a certain
brusquerie and outspoken way about her, you might have thought her an English girl of our own class. He
would marry her, and the wedding-day was fixed, and Gwendoline named as chief of the bridemaids."
"It is fifteen minutes past five, Portia," the cold voice of Gwendoline broke in. "If we are to drive at all today--"
"Patience, Gwen! patience one moment longer! Mary most hear the whole story now. In the Stuart family, I forgot to mention, there was a young man, a cousin of the bride-elect, with whom--it was patent to the dullest apprehension--this young person was in love. She accepted Sir Victor, you understand, while this Mr. Stuart was her lover; a common case enough, and not worthy of mention except for what came after. His manners were rarely perfect too. He was, I think, without exception, the very handsomest and most fascinating man I ever met. You would never dream--never!--that he was an American. Gwendoline will tell you the same. The sister was thoroughly trans-Atlantic, talked slang, said 'I guess,' spoke with an accent, and looked you through and through with an American girl's broad stare. The father and mother were common, to a degree; but the son--well, Gwen and I both came very near losing our hearts to him--didn't we, dear?"
"Speak for yourself," was Gwen's ungracious answer. "And, oh! for pity's sake, Portia, cut it short!"
"Pray go on, Lady Portia!" said Miss Howard, looking interested.
"I am going on," said Lady Portia. "The nice part is to come. The Stuart family, a month or more before the wedding, left Cheshire and came up to London--why, we can only surmise--to keep the lovers apart. Immediately after their departure, the bride-elect was taken ill, and had to be carried off to Torquay for change of air and all that. The wedding-day was postponed until some time in October; but at last it came. She looked very beautiful, I must say, that morning, and perfectly self-possessed; but poor Sir Victor! He was ghastly. Whether even then he suspected something I do not know; he looked a picture of abject misery at the altar and the breakfast. Something was wrong; we all saw that; but no explanation took place there. The happy pair started on their wedding-journey down into Wales, and that was the last we ever saw of them. What followed, we know; but until to-day I have never set eyes on the bridegroom. The bride, I suppose, none of us will ever set eyes on more."
"Why?" the Honorable Mary asked.
"This, my dear: An hour after their arrival in Carnarvon, Sir Victor deserted his bride forever! What passed between them, what scene ensued, nobody knows, only this--he positively left her forever. That the handsome and fascinating American cousin had something to do with it, there can be no doubt. Sir Victor took the next train from Wales to London; she remained overnight. Next day she had the audacity to return to Powyss Place and present herself to his aunt, Lady Helena Powyss. She remained there one day and two nights. On the first night, muffled and disguised, Sir Victor came down from town, had an interview with his aunt, no doubt told her all, and departed again without seeing the girl he had married. The bride next day had an interview with Lady Helena--her last--and next morning, before any one was stirring, stole out of the house like the guilty creature she was, and never was heard of more. The story, though they tried to hush it up, got in all the papers--'Romance in High Life,' they called it. Everybody talked of it--it was the nine-days' wonder of town and country. The actors in it, one by one, disappeared. Lady Helena shut up Powyss Place and went abroad; Sir Victor vanished from the world's ken; the heroine of the piece no doubt went back to her native land. That, in brief, is the story, my dear, of the interesting spectre I met to-day on the steps of Fenton's. Now, young ladies, put on your bonnets and come. I wish to call at Madame Mirebeau's, Oxford Street, before going to the park, and personally inspect my dress for the duchess' ball to-night."
Ten minutes later and the elegant barouche of Lady Portia Hampton was bowling along to Oxford Street.
"What did you say to Sir Victor, Portia?" her sister deigned to ask. "What did he say to you?"
"He said very little to me--the answers he gave were the most vague. I naturally inquired concerning his health first, he really looked so wretchedly broken down; and he said there was nothing the matter that he had been a little out of sorts lately, that was all. My conviction is," said Lady Portia, who, like the rest of her sex, and the world, put the worst possible construction on everything, "that he has become dissipated. Purple circles and hollow eyes always tell of late hours and hard drinking. I asked him next where he had been all those ages, and he answered briefly and gloomily, in one word, 'Abroad.' I asked him thirdly, where, and how was Lady Helena; he replied that Lady Helena was tolerably well, and at present in London. 'In London!' I exclaimed, in a shocked tone, 'my dear Sir Victor, and
I not know it!' He explained that his aunt was living in the closest retirement, at the house of a friend in the neighborhood of St. John's Wood, and went nowhere. Then he lifted his hat, smiled horribly a ghastly smile, turned his back upon me, and walked away. Never asked for you, Gwendoline, or Colonel Hampton, or my health, or anything."
Lady Gwendoline did not reply. They had just entered Oxford Street, and amid the moving throng of well-dressed people on the pavement, her eye had singled out one figure--the figure of a tall, slender, fair-haired man.
"Portia!" she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice, "look there! Is not that Sir Victor Catheron now?"
"Where? Oh, I see. Positively it is, and--yes--he sees us. Tell John to draw up, Gwendoline. Now, Mary, you shall see a live hero of romance for once in your life. He shall take a seat, whether he likes it or not--My
dear Sir Victor, what a happy second rencontre, and Gwendoline dying to see you. Pray let us take you up--oh, we will have no refusal. We have an unoccupied seat here, you see, and we all insist upon your occupying it. Miss Howard, let me present our nearest neighbor at home, and particular friend everywhere, Sir Victor Catheron. The Honorable Miss Howard, Sir Victor."
They had drawn up close to the curbstone. The gentleman had doffed his hat, and would have passed on, had he not been taken possession of in this summary manner. Lady Gwendoline's primrose-kidded hand was extended to him, Lady Gwendoline's smiling face beamed upon him from the most exquisite of Parisian bonnets. Miss Howard bowed and scanned him curiously. Lady Portia was not to be refused--he knew that of old. Of two bores, it was the lesser bore to yield than resist. Another instant, and the barouche was rolling away to Madame Mirebeau's, and Sir Victor Catheron was within it. He sat by Lady Gwendoline's side, and under the shadow of her rose-silk and point-lace parasol she could see for herself how shockingly he was changed. Her sister had not exaggerated. He was worn to a shadow; his fair hair was streaked with gray; his lips were set in a tense expression of suffering--either physical or mental--perhaps both. His blue eyes looked sunken and lustreless. It was scarcely to be believed that ten short months could have wrought such wreck. He talked little--his responses to their questions were monosyllabic. His eyes constantly wandered away from their faces to the passers-by. He had the look of a man ever on the alert, ever on the watch--waiting and watching for some one he could not see. Miss Howard had never seen him before, but from the depths of her heart she pitied him. Sorrow, such as rarely falls to the lot of man, had fallen to this man, she knew.
He was discouragingly absent and
distrait. It came out by chance that the chief part of the past ten months had been spent by him in America.
In America! The sisters exchanged glances.
She was there, no doubt. Had they met? was the thought of both. They reached the fashionable modiste's.
"You will come in with us, Sir Victor," Lady Portia commanded gayly. "We all have business here, but we will only detain you a moment."
He gave her his arm to the shop. It was large and elegant, and three or four deferential shop-women came forward to wait upon them and place seats. The victimized baronet, still listless and bored, sat down to wait and escort them back to the carriage before taking his departure. To be exhibited in the park was the farthest possible from his intention.
Lady Portia's, dress was displayed--a rose velvet, with point-lace trimmings--and found fault with, of course. Lady Gwendoline and the Hon. Mary transacted their affairs at a little distance. For her elder ladyship the train did not suit her, the bodice did not please her; she gave her orders for altering sharply and concisely. The deferential shop-girl listened and wrote the directions down on a card. When her patroness had finished she carried robe and card down the long room and called:
"Miss Stuart!"
A voice answered--only one word, "Yes," softly spoken, but Sir Victor Catheron started as if he had been shot. The long show-room lay in semi-twilight--the gas not yet lit. In this twilight another girl advanced, took the rose-velvet robe and written card. The light flashed upon her figure and hair for one instant--then she disappeared.
And Sir Victor?
He sat like a man suddenly aroused from a deep, long sleep. He had not seen the face; he had caught but a glimpse of the figure and head; he had heard the voice speak but one little word, "Yes;"
but--
Was he asleep or awake? Was it only a delusion, as so many other fancied resemblances had been, or was it after all--after all--
He rose to his feet, that dazed look of a sleep-walker, suddenly aroused, on his face.
"Now, then, Sir Victor," the sharp, clear voice of Lady Portia said, at his side, "your martyrdom is ended. We are ready to go."
He led her to the carriage, assisted her and the young ladies in. How he excused himself--what incoherent words he said--he never knew. He was only conscious after a minute that the carriage had rolled away, and that he was still standing, hat in hand, on the sidewalk in front of Madame Mirebeau's; that the passers-by were staring at him, and that he was alone.
"Mad!" Lady Portia said, shrugging her shoulders and touching her forehead. "Mad as a March hare!"
"Mad?" Miss Howard repeated softly. "No, I don't think so. Not mad, only very--very miserable."
He replaced his hat and walked back to the shop-door. There reason, memory returned. What was he going in for? What should he say? He stood still suddenly, as though gazing at the wax women in elegant ball costume, swinging slowly and smirkingly round and round. He had heard a voice--he had seen a shapely head crowned with dark, silken hair--a tall, slender girl's figure--that was all. He had seen and heard such a hundred times since that fatal wedding evening, and when he had hunted them down, the illusion had vanished, and his lost love was as lost as ever. His lost Edith--his bride, his darling, the wife he had loved and left--for whom all those weary, endless months he had been searching and searching in vain. Was she living or dead? Was she in London--in England--
where? He did not know--no one knew. Since that dark, cold autumn morning when she had fled from Powyss Place she had never been seen or heard of. She had kept her word--she had taken nothing that was his--not a farthing. Wherever she was, she might be starving to-day. He clenched his hands and teeth as he thought of it.
"Oh!" his passionate, despairing heart cried, "let me find her--let me save her, and--let me die!"
He had searched for her everywhere, by night and by day. Money flowed like water--all in vain. He went to New York--he found the people there he had once known, but none of them could tell him anything of her or the Stuarts. The Stuarts had failed, were utterly ruined--it was understood that Mr. Stuart was dead--of the others they knew nothing. He went to Sandypoint in search of her father. Mr. Darrell and his family had months ago sold out and gone West. He could find none of them; he gave it up at length and returned to England. Ten months had passed; many resemblances had beguiled him, but to-day Edith was as far off, as lost as ever.
The voice he had heard, the likeness he had seen, would they prove false and empty too, and leave his heart more bitter than ever? What he would do
when he found her he did not consider. He only wanted to find her. His whole heart, and life, and soul were bound up in that.
He paced up and down in front of the shop; the day's work would be over presently and the work-women would come forth. Then he would see again this particular work-woman who had set his heart beating with a hope that turned him dizzy and sick. Six o'clock! seven o'clock! Would they never come? Yes; even as he thought it, half mad with impatience, the door opened, and nearly a dozen girls filed forth. He drew his hat over his eyes, he kept a little in the shadow and watched them one by one with wildly eager eyes as they appeared. Four, five, six, seven--she came at last, the eighth. The tall, slender figure, the waving, dark hair, he knew them at once. The gaslight fell full upon her as she drew her veil over her face and walked rapidly away. Not before he had seen it, not before he had recognized it--no shadow, no myth, no illusion this time. His wife--Edith.
He caught the wall for support. For a moment the pavement beneath his feet heaved, the starry sky spun round. Then he started up, steadied himself by a mighty effort, and hurried in pursuit.
She had gained upon him over thirty yards. She was always a rapid walker, and he was ailing and weak. His heart throbbed now, so thick and fast, that every breath was a pain. He did not gain upon her, he only kept her in sight. He would have known that quick, decided walk, the poise of the head and shoulders, anywhere. He followed her as fast as his strength and the throng of passers-by would let him, yet doing no more than keeping her well in sight.
Where Oxford Street nears Tottenham Court Road she suddenly diverged and crossed over, turning into the latter crowded thoroughfare. Still he followed. The throng was even more dense here than in Oxford Street, to keep her in sight more difficult. For nearly ten minutes he did it, then suddenly all strength left him. For a minute or two he felt as though he must fall. There was a spasm of the heart that was like a knife-thrust. He caught at a lamp-post. He beckoned a passing hansom by a sort of expiring effort. The cab whirled up beside him; he got in somehow, and fell back, blinded and dizzy, in the seat.
"Where to, sir?" Cabby called twice before he received an answer; then "Fenton's Hotel" came faintly to him from his ghostly looking fare. The little aperture at the top was slammed down and the hansom rattled off.
"Blessed if I don't think the young swell's drunk, or 'aving a fit," thought the Cad, as he speeded his horse down Tottenham Court Road.
To look for her further in his present state, Sir Victor felt would be useless. He must get to his lodgings, get some brandy, and half-an-hour's time to think what to do next. He had found her; she was alive, she was well, thank Heaven! thank Heaven for that! To-morrow would find her again at Madame Mirebeau's at work with the rest.
At work--her daily toil! He covered his wasted face with his wasted hands, and tears that were like a woman's fell from him. He had been weak and worn out for a long time--he gave way utterly, body and mind, now.
"My darling," he sobbed; "my darling whom I would die to make happy--whose life I have so utterly ruined. To think that while I spend wealth like water,
you should toil for a crust of bread--alone, poor, friendless, in this great city. How will I answer to God and man for what I have done?" _