Robert Elsmere

He still stood frowning, a glow of indignant energy showing itself in his att.i.tude, his glance. She could not know that he was at that moment vividly realising the drunken scene that might have taken place in her presence if he had not succeeded in getting that man safely out of the house. But she felt that he was angry, and mostly angry with her, and there was something so piquant and unexpected in his anger!

'I am afraid,' she said, with a queer sudden submissiveness, 'you have been going through something very disagreeable. I am very sorry. Is it my fault?' she added, with a whimsical flash of eye, half fun, half serious.

He could hardly believe his ears.

'Yes, it is your fault, I think!' he answered her, amazed at his own boldness. 'Not that _I_ was annoyed--Heavens! what does that matter?--but that you and your mother and sister were very near an unpleasant scene. You will not take advice, Miss Leyburn,--you will take your own way in spite of what any one else can say or hint to you, and some day you will expose yourself to annoyance when there is no one near to protect you!'

'Well, if so, it won't be for want of a mentor,' she said, dropping him a mock curtsey. But her lip trembled under its smile, and her tone had not lost its gentleness.

At this moment Mr. Flaxman, who had gradually established himself as the joint leader of these musical afternoons, came forward to summon Rose to a quartette. He looked from one to the other, a little surprise penetrating through his suavity of manner.

'Am I interrupting you?'

'Not at all,' said Rose; then, turning back to Langham, she said in a hurried whisper: 'Don't say anything about the wretched man; it would make mamma nervous. He shan't come here again.'

Mr. Flaxman waited till the whisper was over, and then led her off, with a change of manner which she immediately perceived, and which lasted for the rest of the evening.

Langham went home, and sat brooding over the fire. Her voice had not been so kind, her look so womanly, for months. Had she been reading _s.h.i.+rley_, and would she have liked him to play Louis Moore? He went into a fit of silent convulsive laughter as the idea occurred to him.

Some secret instinct made him keep away from her for a time. At last, one Friday afternoon, as he emerged from the Museum, where he had been collating the MSS. of some obscure Alexandrian, the old craving returned with added strength, and he turned involuntarily westward.

An acquaintance of his, recently made in the course of work at the Museum, a young Russian professor, ran after him, and walked with him.

Presently they pa.s.sed a poster on the wall, which contained in enormous letters the announcement of Madame Desforets's approaching visit to London, a list of plays, and the dates of performances.

The young Russian suddenly stopped and stood pointing at the advertis.e.m.e.nt, with shaking derisive finger, his eyes aflame, the whole man quivering with what looked like antagonism and hate.

Then he broke into a fierce flood of French. Langham listened till they had pa.s.sed Piccadilly, pa.s.sed the Park, and till the young _savant_ turned southwards towards his Brompton lodgings.

Then Langham slowly climbed Campden Hill, meditating. His thoughts were an odd mixture of the things he had just heard, and of a scene at Murewell long ago when a girl had denounced him for 'calumny.'

At the door of Lerwick Gardens he was informed that Mrs. Leyburn was upstairs with an attack of bronchitis. But the servant thought the young ladies were at home. Would he come in? He stood irresolute a moment, then went in on a pretext of 'inquiry.'

The maid threw open the drawing-room door, and there was Rose sitting well into the fire--for it was a raw February afternoon--with a book.

She received him with all her old hard brightness. He was, indeed, instantly sorry that he had made his way in. Tyrant! was she displeased because he had slipped his chain for rather longer than usual?

However, he sat down, delivered his book, and they talked first about her mother's illness. They had been anxious, she said, but the doctor, who had just taken

'Then you will be able probably after all to put in an appearance at Lady Charlotte's this evening?' he asked her.

The omnivorous Lady Charlotte of course had made acquaintance with him in the Leyburns' drawing-room, as she did with everybody who crossed her path, and three days before he had received a card from her for this evening.

'Oh yes! But I have had to miss a rehearsal this afternoon. That concert at Searle House is becoming a great nuisance.'

'It will be a brilliant affair, I suppose. Princes on one side of you--and Albani on the other. I see they have given you the most conspicuous part as violinist.'

'Yes,' she said with a little satirical tightening of the lip. 'Yes--I suppose I ought to be much flattered.'

'Of course,' he said, smiling, but embarra.s.sed. 'To many people you must be at this moment one of the most enviable persons in the world. A delightful art--and every opportunity to make it tell!'

There was a pause. She looked into the fire.

'I don't know whether it is a delightful art,' she said presently, stifling a little yawn. 'I believe I am getting very tired of London.

Sometimes I think I shouldn't be very sorry to find myself suddenly spirited back to Burwood!'

Langham gave vent to some incredulous interjection. He had apparently surprised her in a fit of _ennui_ which was rare with her.

'Oh no, not yet!' she said suddenly, with a return of animation. 'Madame Desforets comes next week, and I am to see her.' She drew herself up and turned a beaming face upon him. Was there a shaft of mischief in her eye? He could not tell. The firelight was perplexing.

'You are to see her?' he said slowly. 'Is she coming here?'

'I hope so. Mrs. Pierson is to bring her. I want mamma to have the amus.e.m.e.nt of seeing her. My artistic friends are a kind of tonic to her--they excite her so much. She regards them as a sort of show--much as you do, in fact, only in a more charitable fas.h.i.+on.'

But he took no notice of what she was saying.

'Madame Desforets is coming here?' he sharply repeated, bending forward, a curious accent in his tone.

'Yes!' she replied, with apparent surprise. Then with a careless smile: 'Oh, I remember when we were at Murewell, you were exercised that we should know her. Well, Mr. Langham, I told you then that you were only echoing unworthy gossip. I am in the same mind still. I have seen her, and you haven't. To me she is the greatest actress in the world, and an ill-used woman to boot!'

Her tone had warmed with every sentence. It struck him that she had wilfully brought up the topic--that it gave her pleasure to quarrel with him.

He put down his hat deliberately, got up, and stood with his back to the fire. She looked up at him curiously. But the dark regular face was almost hidden from her.

'It is strange,' he said slowly, 'very strange--that you should have told me this at this moment! Miss Leyburn, a great deal of the truth about Madame Desforets I could neither tell, nor could you hear. There are charges against her proved in open court, again and again, which I could not even mention in your presence. But one thing I can speak of.

Do you know the story of the sister at St. Petersburg?'

'I know no stories against Madame Desforets,' said Rose loftily, her quickened breath responding to the energy of his tone. 'I have always chosen not to know them.'

'The newspapers were full of this particular story just before Christmas. I should have thought it must have reached you.'

'I did not see it,' she replied stiffly; 'and I cannot see what good purpose is to be served by your repeating it to me, Mr. Langham.'

Langham could have smiled at her petulance, if he had not for once been determined and in earnest.

'You will let me tell it, I hope?' he said quietly. 'I will tell it so that it shall not offend your ears. As it happens, I myself thought it incredible at the time. But, by an odd coincidence, it has just this afternoon been repeated to me by a man who was an eyewitness of part of it.'

Rose was silent. Her att.i.tude was _hauteur_ itself, but she made no further active opposition.

'Three months ago,' he began, speaking with some difficulty, but still with a suppressed force of feeling which amazed his hearer, 'Madame Desforets was acting in St. Petersburg. She had with her a large company, and amongst them her own young sister, Elise Romey, a girl of eighteen. This girl had been always kept away from Madame Desforets by her parents, who had never been sufficiently consoled by their eldest daughter's artistic success for the infamy of her life.'

Rose started indignantly. Langham gave her no time to speak.

'Elise Romey, however, had developed a pa.s.sion for the stage. Her parents were respectable--and you know young girls in France are brought up strictly. She knew next to nothing of her sister's escapades. But she knew that she was held to be the greatest actress in Europe--the photographs in the shops told her that she was beautiful. She conceived a romantic pa.s.sion for the woman whom she had last seen when she was a child of five, and actuated partly by this hungry affection, partly by her own longing wish to become an actress, she escaped from home and joined Madame Desforets in the South of France. Madame Desforets seems at first to have been pleased to have her. The girl's adoration pleased her vanity. Her presence with her gave her new opportunities of posing.

I believe,' and Langham gave a little dry laugh, 'they were photographed together at Ma.r.s.eilles with their arms round each other's necks, and the photograph had an immense success. However, on the way to St.

Petersburg, difficulties arose. Elise was pretty, in a _blonde_ childish way, and she caught the attention of the _jeune premier_ of the company, a man'--the speaker became somewhat embarra.s.sed--'whom Madame Desforets seems to have regarded as her particular property. There were scenes at different towns on the journey. Elise became frightened--wanted to go home. But the elder sister, having begun tormenting her, seems to have determined to keep her hold on her, as a cat keeps and tortures a mouse--mainly for the sake of annoying the man of whom she was jealous.

They arrived at St. Petersburg in the depth of winter. The girl was worn out with travelling, unhappy, and ill. One night in Madame Desforets's apartment there was a supper party, and after it a horrible quarrel. No one exactly knows what happened. But towards twelve o'clock that night Madame Desforets turned her young sister in evening dress, a light shawl round her, out into the snowy streets of St. Petersburg, barred the door behind her, and revolver in hand dared the wretched man who had caused the _fracas_ to follow her.'

Rose sat immovable. She had grown pale, but the firelight was not revealing.