Chapter 5

She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence. They were walking through the purple February dusk towards the Marble Arch. It was too dark to see her face under its delicate veil, and Sir Wilfrid did not wish to see it. But before he had collected his thoughts sufficiently his companion was speaking again, in a wholly different manner.

"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact with some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She raised her veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears. "That never happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return. If there is a breach--"

"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss Le Breton, listen to me for a few minutes. I see perfectly that you have a great deal to complain of, but I also see that Lady Henry has something of a case."

And with a courteous authority and tact worthy of his trade, the old diplomat began to discuss the situation.

Presently he found himself talking with an animation, a friendliness, an intimacy that surprised himself. What was there in the personality beside him that seemed to win a way inside a man's defences in spite of him? Much of what she had said had seemed to him arrogant or morbid. And yet as she listened to him, with an evident dying down of passion, an evident forlornness, he felt in her that woman's weakness and timidity of which she had accused herself in relation to Lady Henry, and was somehow, manlike, softened and disarmed. She had been talking wildly, because no doubt she felt herself in great difficulties. But when it was his turn to talk she neither resented nor resisted what he had to say. The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times, as though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most, and there were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only asked in truth for a little sympathy and understanding.

"I shall soon be calling her 'my dear' and patting her hand," thought the old man, at last, astonished at himself. For the dejection in her attitude and gait began to weigh upon him; he felt a warm desire to sustain and comfort her. More and more thought, more and more contrivance did he throw into the straightening out of this tangle between two excitable women, not, it seemed, for Lady Henry's sake, not, surely, for Miss Le Breton's sake. But--ah! those two poor, dead folk, who had touched his heart long ago, did he feel the hovering of their ghosts beside him in the wintry wind?

At any rate, he abounded in shrewd and fatherly advice, and Mademoiselle Le Breton listened with a most flattering meekness.

"Well, now I think we have come to an understanding," he urged, hopefully, as they turned down Bruton Street again.

Mademoiselle Le Breton sighed.

"It is very kind of you. Oh, I will do my best. But--"

She shook her head uncertainly.

"No--no 'buts,'" cried Sir Wilfrid, cheerfully. "Suppose, as a first step," he smiled at his companion, "you tell Lady Henry about the bazaar?"

"By all means. She won't let me go. But Evelyn will find some one else."

"Oh, we'll see about that," said the old man, almost crossly. "If you'll allow me I'll try my hand."

Julie Le Breton did not reply, but her face glimmered upon him with a wistful friendliness that did not escape him, even in the darkness. In this yielding mood her voice and movements had so much subdued sweetness, so much distinction, that he felt himself more than melting towards her.

Then, of a sudden, a thought--a couple of thoughts--sped across him. He drew himself rather sharply together.

"Mr. Delafield, I gather, has been a good deal concerned in the whole matter?"

Mademoiselle Le Breton laughed and hesitated.

"He has been very kind. He heard Lady Henry's language once when she was excited. It seemed to shock him. He has tried once or twice to smooth her down. Oh, he has been most kind!"

"Has he any influence with her?"

"Not much."

"Do you think well of him?"

He turned to her with a calculated abruptness. She showed a little surprise.

"I? But everybody thinks well of him. They say the Duke trusts everything to him."

"When I left England he was still a rather lazy and unsatisfactory undergraduate. I was curious to know how he had developed. Do you know what his chief interests are now?"

Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.

"I'm really afraid I don't know," she said, at last, smiling, and, as it were, regretful. "But Evelyn Crowborough, of course, could tell you all about him. She and he are very old friends."

"No birds out of that cover," was Sir Wilfrid's inward comment.

The lamp over Lady Henry's door was already in sight when Sir Wilfrid, after some talk of the Montresors, with whom he was going to dine that night, carelessly said:

"That's a very good-looking fellow, that Captain Warkworth, whom I saw with Lady Henry last night."

"Ah, yes. Lady Henry has made great friends with him," said Mademoiselle Julie, readily. "She consults him about her memoir of her husband."

"Memoir of her husband!" Sir Wilfrid stopped short. "Heavens above! Memoir of Lord Henry?"

"She is half-way through it. I thought you knew."

"Well, upon my word! Whom shall we have a memoir of next? Henry Delafield! Henry Delafield! Good gracious!"

And Sir Wilfrid walked along, slashing at the railings with his stick, as though the action relieved him. Julie Le Breton quietly resumed:

"I understand that Lord Henry and Captain Warkworth's father went through the Indian Mutiny together, and Captain Warkworth has some letters--"

"Oh, I dare say--I dare say," muttered Sir Wilfrid. "What's this man home for just now?"

"Well, I _think_ Lady Henry knows," said Mademoiselle Julie, turning to him an open look, like one who, once more, would gladly satisfy a questioner if they could. "He talks to her a great deal. But why shouldn't he come home?"

"Because he ought to be doing disagreeable duty with his regiment instead of always racing about the world in search of something to get his name up," said Sir Wilfrid, rather sharply. "At least, that's the view his brother officers mostly take of him."

"Oh," said Mademoiselle Julie, with amiable vagueness, "is there anything particular that you suppose he wants?"

"I am not at all in the secret of his ambitions," said Sir Wilfrid, lifting his shoulders. "But you and Lady Henry seemed well acquainted with him."

The straw-colored lashes veered her way.

"I had some talk with him in the Park this morning," said Julie Le Breton, reflectively. "He wants me to copy his father's letters for Lady Henry, and to get her to return the originals as soon as possible. He feels nervous when they are out of his hands."

"Hm!" said Sir Wilfrid.

At that moment Lady Henry's door-bell presented itself. The vigor with which Sir Wilfrid rang it may, perhaps, have expressed the liveliness of his unspoken scepticism. He did not for one moment believe that General Warkworth's letters had been the subject of the conversation he had witnessed that morning in the Park, nor that filial veneration had had anything whatever to say to it.

Julie Le Breton gave him her hand.

"Thank you very much," she said, gravely and softly.

Sir Wilfrid at the moment before had not meant to press it at all. But he did press it, aware the while of the most mingled feelings.

"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation. Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry."

Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.

Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.

"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of annoyance. "I wonder whether I made any real impression upon her. Hm! Let's see whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her. He seemed to be pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous view to take, for a woman of that _provenance._"

* * * * *

An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling it essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the first person he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little topsy-turvy.

Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then, after an appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day, both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the same subject stirred in both their minds.

"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor, with a smile, as he lighted another cigarette.

"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But else there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully well."

"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She has really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is that most of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the Minister lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and agreeable creatures in the world."

Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was telling scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned around him; he was the spoiled child of the dinner, and knew it.

"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le Breton," said Bury, turning to his host.

"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to protect her, and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has poured out her grievances to you, hasn't she?"

"Alack, she has!"

"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She has really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand pities."

"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"

The Minister gave a shrug.

"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady Henry's state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle Julie always appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in other ways she has really worn herself to death for the old lady. It makes one rather savage sometimes to see it."

"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"

Montresor laughed.

"Oh, as to perfection--"

"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of it?"

The Minister smiled a little oddly.

"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very astute lady."

A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the dark-lined face.

"What do you mean by that?"

"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I have known three men, at least, _made_ by Mademoiselle Le Breton within the last two or three years. She has just got a fresh one in tow."

Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned slightly from the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.

"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.

The Minister smiled again and hesitated.

"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets at me in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well when she has been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you understand--who frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her very good friends.... Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he added, with nonchalance.

"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the young man?"

Montresor shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a power--all the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It is very curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite harmless."

"You and others don't resent it?"

"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she is rather going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened upon me at once. She must be thinking of little else."

Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone assumed a certain asperity.

"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has something to say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious even--the kind of ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in so short a time."

"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"

He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his look swept the face of his companion.

Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant gesture, motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of both men travelled across the table, then met again.

"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.

Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now exhausted the number of the initiated.

* * * * *

When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well, though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.

They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.

"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.

"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there for twenty years."

And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to interpose between him and his companions.

Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand, had let her suffer and die alone?

V

On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft, rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.

"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he thought, contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart and sense to his beloved London.

As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion--the noises and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more exalted post? "I've got plenty of money; why the deuce don't I give it up, and come home and enjoy myself? Only a few more years, after all; why not spend them here, in one's own world, among one's own kind?"

It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was answered immediately by that other instinct, partly physical, partly moral, which keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task. Idleness? No! That way lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to call on death--death, the secret pursuer, who is not far from each one of us. No, no! Fight on! It was only the long drudgery behind, under alien suns, together with the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead, that gave value, after all, to this rainy, this enchanting Piccadilly--that kept the string of feeling taut and all its notes clear.

"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he turned down St. James's Street.

"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have you sprung from?"

Delafield explained that he had been dining with the Crowboroughs, and was now going to his club to look for news of a friend's success or failure in a north-country election.

"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half an hour. I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."

"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir Wilfrid a moment of hesitation.

"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked on. "Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."

"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large milk depots in town that I look after."

There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and Bury surveyed him with a smile.

"No other attractions, eh?"

"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you how Dick Mason was getting on?"

"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"

"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."

"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."

The young man laughed.

"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've left him in charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"

"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick Mason?"

"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."

"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe you do."

And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm of his companion.

Delafield reddened.

"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old school-fellow?"

"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk about."

Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached his ear.

"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."

"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."

"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't been a miracle of wisdom."

"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.

"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"

"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married Evelyn's aunt, her mother's sister."

"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie _ought_ to have called the same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies, they don't. By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger sister?"

"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a widow for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives there generally with her girl."

"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"

"No."

"She speaks of them?"

"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl was presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But neither she nor her mother cares for London."

"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid, pausing. "Wasn't she in India this winter?"

"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by April."

"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and then at Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember! She's a great heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know! Somebody told me that fellow Warkworth had been making up to her."

"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir Wilfrid caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course, was just a bit of Indian gossip."

"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were two frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had recently been at Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all given to take young ladies' names in vain."

Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke Street house and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir Wilfrid's rooms.

There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the same age as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his smoking-coat, offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid, strange to say, with a large cup of tea.

"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of luxury, as he sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly made pair of legs and feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept the sleep of the just--on a cup of tea at midnight--through the rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm trying the receipt."

"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"

"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to dodder in the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's all. Well, now, Jacob, do you know anything about this Warkworth?"

"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose his words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."

"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry Miss Moffatt."

"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man, slowly.

"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling his teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has Mademoiselle Julie in that young soldier?"

Delafield looked into the fire.

"Has she any?"

"She seems to be moving heaven and earth to get him what he wants. By-the-way, what does he want?"

"He wants the special mission to Mokembe, as I understand," said Delafield, after a moment. "But several other people want it too."

"Indeed!" Sir Wilfrid nodded reflectively. "So there is to be one! Well, it's about time. The travellers of the other European firms have been going it lately in that quarter. Jacob, your mademoiselle also is a bit of an intriguer!"

Delafield made a restless movement. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, to say the least of it, frankness is not one of her characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen them together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our conversation had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or two, just to satisfy myself about her. But--"

He pulled his fair mustaches and smiled.

"Well?" said the young man, with a kind of reluctant interrogation.

"She played with me, Jacob. But really she overdid it. For such a clever woman, I assure you, she overdid it!"

"I don't see why she shouldn't keep her friendships to herself," said Delafield, with sudden heat.

"Oh, so you admit it is a friendship?"

Delafield did not reply. He had laid down his cigar, and with his hands on his knees was looking steadily into the fire. His attitude, however, was not one of reverie, but rather of a strained listening.

"What is the meaning, Jacob, of a young woman taking so keen an interest in the fortunes of a dashing soldier--for, between you and me, I hear she is moving heaven and earth to get him this post--and then concealing it?"

"Why should she want her kindnesses talked of?" said the young man, impetuously. "She was perfectly right, I think, to fence with your questions, Sir Wilfrid. It's one of the secrets of her influence that she can render a service--and keep it dark."

Sir Wilfrid shook his head.