CHAPTER X.

NO NONSENSE ABOUT HER.

On the day following the dinner at Richmond, Mr. Dolby presented himself at Miss Montressor's abode somewhat later than she had looked for his coming.

He did not find the fair lady in a very serene mood--she was tired; several small domestic occurrences had ruffled her temper--which, to say the truth, was not a bad one--during the early part of the day, and when they met there was in the manner of both those latent symptoms of ill-humour which arise so often between persons in the habit of being much in each other's society, and who have, therefore, cast off the self-restraint which occasionally tends to hypocrisy, but has, nevertheless, a wholesome influence in human intercourse.

Mr. Dolby omitted to tell Miss Montressor that she was looking beautiful--and that was a grave offence. He, moreover, omitted to exhibit any very lively curiosity as to the proceedings of the previous day, and though Miss Montressor did not care a straw where he had passed the interval between their last and their present meeting, or would not think of troubling herself to make an inquiry about his proceedings, she was not prepared to find him equally philosophical.

'I suppose you forgot all about the Richmond dinner?' she said to him, when a few phrases, of course, had passed between them.

'O no, I didn't forget it,' he said, 'but I suppose one dinner at Richmond resembles another very much, except in point of talk. People eat the same things, drink the same things, wear the same things, and get intensely bored earlier or later in the evening, such as the case may be.'

'It was considerably later last evening,' replied Miss Montressor, with an aggravating smile, which, however, failed to aggravate Mr. Dolby, or to tempt him into an inquiry as to the vivifying principle of the previous day's entertainment. A more acute observer than Miss Montressor might have discerned in Mr. Dolby's manner preoccupation rather than indifference; but she was not an acute observer, and she was so honestly and unaffectedly interested in herself; and not interested in other people, that she resented his indifference. It would never have occurred to this woman--who, after all, was simple-minded--that any one who came to see her could think of anything but her, at least during the visit; and she therefore promptly resolved to punish Mr. Dolby for his departure from the laws laid down by her code of what was due to her. He did not seem inclined to take up the challenge she had flung down to him, and she found herself obliged to put an aggressive question.

'I suppose you don't care to know about the party yesterday,' she said, 'because it's quite clear I enjoyed myself, though you were not there; and men always resent that, though they can get away from us and be as jolly as possible.'

'My dear girl,' said Mr. Dolby, taking the inevitable photograph-book off the table, and carefully opening its ormolu clasps, as if the investigation of its contents offered to him a mental prospect of the most charming description, 'your theories about men are utterly absurd! I have told you so more than once, and I am not disposed to discuss the subject. I am very glad you had a pleasant day at Richmond, and--though I don't care for _réchaffés_ in general, and you told me on Saturday who was to be there and all about it--I really didn't suppose you had any new or startling details to communicate. However, I don't at all mind hearing about the day if you are disposed to tell me. What did you wear? who did you go with? was the wine good? what hour did you get back?'

He had spoken in a monotonous tone of voice, with his eyes cast down, and turning over the clicking leaves of the photograph-book with one finger. Miss Montressor snatched it out of his hand with a suddenness which obliged him to look up, and he saw in her face that she was downright angry, which he had not intended her to be at this stage of the proceedings. A little later anger would be a wholesome sentiment, which he proposed to awaken; so he smiled, took her hand, and said, with an attempted playfulness:

'Come--come, Clara, let us be friends; we're both a little bit out of sorts. I don't know what cause you may have; probably nothing more serious than your day yesterday having been too pleasant and having lasted too long. By the bye, what hour did you get back?'

'O, it was very late,' said Miss Montressor, withdrawing her hand, but not captiously, and arranging her bracelets. 'It was, in fact, awfully late, and Justine had got into the horrors under the influence of a solitary Sunday, and was full of possible robbers and tramps with a taste for murder; so I went to bed in rather an ill-temper, and several things which have happened to-day have not improved me. I have not seen you so disagreeable for an age; what's wrong?'

'I am excessively disappointed, Clara, and I am afraid you will be so too; but it cannot be helped. I find I shall not be able to go with you to Liverpool.'

'Not able to go with me to Liverpool, after promising that you would?' said Miss Montressor, with a good deal of vehemence. 'I never heard such a thing. That's really too bad, and I'm quite certain there is no real reason for it. I never knew you to be prevented doing a thing that you really cared to do. You are throwing me over, sir.'

'I am not throwing you over,' said Mr. Dolby coolly, 'and your suspicions are equally unjust to me and uncomplimentary to yourself. I told you I should see you off, and I not only wished to do so, but did not foresee the slightest difficulty about it; the difficulty has arisen, however. There is a man coming from New York whom I must see, and I can only see him on this day week, the day you leave.'

'How did you know?' said she quickly. 'There is no mail in.'

'And you never heard of the Atlantic cable, I suppose? A message cabled this morning, my child; and though I am your slave, you know, I have troublesome business for my second master, whom I am obliged to serve, and this time his claims are paramount. Don't get angry--don't spoil the last few hours we shall have together for some time by causeless pique and silly petulance--that sort of thing does not attract me, and you don't look handsome when you are out of temper. I would go if I could. I cannot go, and there's an end of it.'

'Please keep your comments on my temper to yourself,' said Miss Montressor, with an air of steady and determined ill-humour, which, as Mr. Dolby had truly remarked, did not become her. Like all under-bred women, she could not venture on anger; that most disfiguring of passions was destructive to her dignity. She stood up, brought both hands resolutely down upon the table before her, and said, with a slight stamp of her foot:

'It is not business that prevents you, and I don't believe a word of it; it is because you are afraid of being seen with me. You have always been playing a game of hide-and-seek--you are no better than other people, and I am no worse, and I hate such hypocrisy. Who are you keeping up a character for, or with, a character that is to suffer because you are civil to an actress, who was going by herself to the other side of the world? I suppose you think there is more chance of your being seen in Liverpool than London by some "goody" acquaintance, who would be excessively shocked.'

'Please don't talk in that tone, Clara. _It's_ rather shocking--though I don't expect you to understand why. However, I don't mind telling you that you are not altogether wrong, though you put my objection to being seen with your pleasant associates on a totally mistaken footing; and as I don't like to part with you in a fit of offence, I shall take the trouble of explaining to you again that it is a matter of great importance to me not to be seen at present by any New York people, and not to have my name mentioned in the hearing of such. I have told you that the business I am engaged upon in London might be seriously compromised by manoeuvring friends from the other side, that my whole fortune is involved in it--an argument whose strength you might very fairly comprehend, though, mind, I do not mean to say you are as mercenary as most women, or more expensive than others; but after all, a very little imprudence on your part, you see, might make a considerable difference to you, and all the difference to me. The truth is, I have the appointment in London I have told you of and I could not go down to Liverpool and run the risk of being seen there by the set who I am advised are coming from New York by the mail that will arrive just before the Cuba goes out; so now you know all about it. You will take my word, won't you, that I am very sorry; and you will take that frown off your face, for I really want to talk to you seriously, and this is childish, however pretty.'

Miss Montressor was endowed with very good sense, and it showed her at once that Dolby was speaking the truth. She did not understand much about his business--she had never cared enough about him to try;--but she was alive to the reasonableness of his refusal to gratify her wish--a wish dictated a good deal more by _amour propre_ than any sentimental longing to enjoy his society to the last possible moment. She accordingly recovered herself; and with no more protest than a dubious shake of the head, resumed her seat and prepared to listen to Mr. Dolby.

'Well,' she said, 'go on; what have you got to say to me?'

'That,' said Mr. Dolby seriously, 'I have always found you trustworthy. Nine women out of ten, on being told that it was a matter of importance to me that no American in London should know that am in London, would have betrayed the fact to every American of her acquaintance, from an amiable desire to penetrate the motive of my injunction. I am quite sure that you have scrupulously observed it.'

'Certainly,' said she; 'it don't matter to me. Why should I go and talk about you when you ask me not? That would be simply perverse.'

'Nine women out of ten, my dear,' said Mr. Dolby, 'are perverse. I esteem myself very fortunate to have found the exceptional tenth.'

'I hate men who are always sneering at women,' said Miss Montressor; 'it's a bad sign.'

'For the women?'

'No, sir, for the men. But I daresay you have been very ill-treated in your time; only it doesn't matter to me what women you think ill of, provided you think well of me, so I will take the compliment. I assure you once again that I never mentioned your name to any American--or rather, I should say, to the only American I know.

'That is Mr. Foster,' said Mr. Dolby, with a slight effort.

'Yes,' said Miss Montressor, 'to Mr. Foster. I like him so much,' she added in a brisk parenthesis. 'Do you know him?'

'No,' said Mr. Dolby; 'never heard of him. What's his business?'

'O, I am sure I don't know. You don't suppose he talked of business yesterday, or would bother me about it under any circumstances. He was much too jolly for that. I hate your concentrated men who cannot think of anything but money-making, and cannot talk of anything except the way they make it.'

'You like the money though,' said Dolby.

'O yes, I like the money; but I like it as a result, just as one likes dinner. Dinner would be a nuisance if one had to see it cooked and know how it is done; so would money if one had to superintend the getting of it. Mr. Foster never alludes to business.'

'Ah, well,' said Mr. Dolby, 'that is no proof that he may not be in something that would clash with me, and it is highly important that he should not know of my existence,--here at least. Was there any one with him yesterday?'

'No; he came alone--I mean not with Duval and me in the mail phaeton--and was the life of the evening--such a charming man!'

'Married?' asked Mr. Dolby.

'Yes, married; and to a charming wife, if one may judge by the way he talked about her.'

'What wretched taste!' said Mr. Dolby. 'You hate a man who talks about business. I hate a man who talks about domesticities. I go so far with the Orientals as this, that men should not talk about their womankind or suffer them to be mentioned to them in general, except by very intimate friends, who ought to be mutual.'

'How do you know that we are not very intimate friends?' said Miss Montressor, suddenly assuming an air of coquettishness. The serious tone of the interview had been unduly prolonged for her taste, and she had no capacity for ethics.

'It must be a very sudden intimacy if it exists,' said Mr. Dolby angrily.

'I didn't say it was not; one doesn't take a lifetime to like a man, to find it out, and let him know the fact.'

'No,' said Mr. Dolby, 'one doesn't; nor does he take a lifetime to reciprocate, even though he has this charming wife, and talks the most arrant nonsense about her.'

'Mr. Foster talks no nonsense,' said Miss Montressor, 'about her or about me, which is what you mean to imply. He made himself exceedingly agreeable--shall I tell you how?' (There was a sudden depth in her voice and a sudden depth in her eyes which would have had pathetic meaning to any one capable of reading it.) 'You don't answer; well, then, I will. By treating me exactly like a lady, with the respect he might have paid to his wife or his sister, and without the smallest intimation, except when I turned the conversation in that direction, that he remembered that I was only an actress.'

'Pooh!' said Dolby, in a tone of exaggerated contempt, and watching her closely as he spoke; 'that is the stalest trick. A man gets introduced to you because you are an actress simply, and ingratiates himself with you by pretending to forget it. You ought to be too sharp to be done by such an artifice as that, and have too much respect for your profession to be pleased by it. After all, my dear, what's your claim to consideration and admiration? First, that you are a pretty woman, which is always the first claim that any woman can have; secondly, that you are a popular actress. When a man attempts to put either admiration or consideration on any other footing, he is in reality flattering you with an additional assumption that you are a fool. I was more honest than your new admirer, Miss Montressor.'

'My new admirer, as you choose to call him, Mr. Dolby, is at least more courteous than you are. I heard him tell Duval, to whom he does not speak on business matters, that he would postpone an important one, for the purpose of accompanying us to Liverpool.'

Mr. Dolby drew a long breath, and his nostrils expanded slowly--a symptom of emotion with which Miss Montressor was acquainted.

'I have roused him now in earnest,' she said to herself; 'we shall have a storm.'

But she either misinterpreted the source of this manifestation, or Mr. Dolby exhibited great self-control. Instead of the passion with which she expected to be rebuked, he simply replied, leaning back indolently in his chair, and clasping his hands over his head, with an air of absolute leisure, 'Lucky dog who can postpone business for pleasure.'

'He regards it as a very great pleasure, I assure you, Mr. Dolby. He said he would not lose the last sight of us for any consideration, and deeply regretted his absence from New York during cur stay.'

'Of course he introduced you to his charming wife.'

'Not just yet--not by letter, I mean. He hopes to be able to return before our engagement terminates; and to have, as he expressed it, "the pleasure of making the introduction in person."'

Mr. Dolby laughed an exceedingly insolent laugh.

'And you believe that?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Don't you?'

'Certainly not. I believe he has not the slightest intention that you should know his wife--it might not be convenient; he might not have quite so strong an opinion of your discretion as I have--he has not had so much time to found one, you know--and circumstances may defeat his hope of getting back during your stay. I don't think you will make Mrs. Foster's acquaintance, but I suppose you will find Mr. Foster waiting to receive you at Liverpool on your return.'

'He says so,' she answered, 'if he does not come to New York. It is all very well your sneering at a man you know nothing about, but I believe in Mr. Foster, and you shall not sneer me out of it.'

'I have no wish to interfere with your faith in him or in time,' said Mr. Dolby; 'but with reference to this same coming back, have you anything to say about me?'

Miss Montressor blushed violently. The cold cynicism of his tone hurt her. She was not sensitive, and she did not care about him, but she was proud in her way, and he had offended her.

'I do not understand your meaning,' she said. 'I do not know what you are driving at.'

'Not at an enigma, my dear. I do not want you to go away with any notion of acting a little private drama in addition to those in which I have no doubt you will make a stunning success in my country. You know well enough what a matter-of-fact fellow I am, how entirely averse to acting off the boards. I am not jealous, it is too much trouble, and I like to leave people as much freedom of action as I claim for myself; still I like things on the square, you know; and it strikes me very forcibly that it might suit your book to put our future relations upon a tolerably liberal footing.'

'Do you mean to say you want to get rid of me?' said Miss Montressor, surprised for the moment out of her coquetry into very real disgust.

'Certainly not; but, unless I am very much mistaken, it might be convenient to you to be aware that you can get rid of me, without any manoeuvring on the subject, without making an enemy of me, and without incurring any grave risk of breaking my heart.'

'I don't believe you have any heart to break,' said she.

'O yes, I have; quite as much as is convenient to myself; or pleasant for you. Look here, Clara, there is a long parting before us--at all events, a parting you have chosen to make, in the interests of your professional career. I think you are quite right, and I don't want to hamper your action with any consideration for the future. When you return, I shall be very glad to see you, but you can choose for yourself; without any reproach from me, whatever may be the end of your choice, the exact character of our future relations. You can take them up at their present point, if you please; you can reduce them to simple friendship. I don't believe in platonics, remember, as a starting-point, but I believe in them as a terminus. You know where I am always to be heard of. I presume I shall hear from you during your stay in America, but if it bores you to write, I shall not tie you to a correspondence; on your return to England, any communication you may choose to make to me shall, as we say in business, "receive my prompt consideration."'

With these words Mr. Dolby rose, buttoned his coat, took up his hat and gloves, and offered Miss Montressor his hand, with the cool ease of an ordinary morning visitor. She was so thoroughly taken aback by his demeanour, that for once in her life nature and training alike failed her. She was entirely unequal to the emergency, so she stood perfectly still and perfectly silent, without making any movement in answer to the gesture by which he invited her to shake hands. In another instant Mr. Dolby had left the room, and she heard him walk quietly down-stairs and out of the house, before she recovered herself.

For a good hour Miss Montressor sat in her drawing-room, under the impression of this extraordinary parting scene. It was a demonstration not only unlike but entirely opposed to anything which she had previously remarked in Mr. Dolby's character. If this woman had been naturally very clever--or had learned by education to decipher the relations between cause and effect, as they are, indicated by the actions of human beings--she would probably have hit upon the truth; she would probably have discerned that Mr. Dolby had for the nonce assumed her profession, that she had seen him in the character of an actor, performing a part as carefully rehearsed as any that she had ever played, and with far more serious meaning.

During her confused meditations it had crossed her mind vaguely that there might be a motive for his extraordinary conduct; for the senseless outburst of jealousy which, though he strenuously denied it, his line of action betrayed.

'What can he mean by it?' she asked herself a score of times, something within her heart contending with the natural and somewhat flattering interpretation which she placed upon his behaviour. She remembered his ill-humour when they first met, and it flashed across her mind as a possibility that he might have come with the predetermination to quarrel with her. But why? She had given him no offence, their last interview had been conducted on the footing of a perfectly good understanding; and the mention of Mr. Foster, to which his present freak manifestly referred, had only arisen on the present occasion.

Miss Montressor was lost in a maze; but among its bewilderments love had no place, as she was quite conscious that she could be perfectly happy without Mr. Dolby, could it be proved that he had made up his mind to do without her. And she was not vehemently impatient to emerge from the maze.

The cogitation of an hour ended, after all, in the contented conviction on her part that the sole motive of Mr. Dolby's conduct was jealousy, mingled with a perception that he was a stronger-willed and worse-tempered man than she had hitherto believed him to be.

The practical conclusion at which she arrived was that she would leave Mr. Dolby to himself for a day or two. He had spoken of 'faith in time,' and though Miss Montressor was not apt in poetry, she was capable of prosaic adaptation of the adage. She would try the effect of time at very little cost to herself. It was a matter of comparative indifference whether she saw Mr. Dolby the next day, or the next day but one, or the next day but two; he should have a wholesome interval to come to his senses, and she really had a great deal to do in preparing for her voyage to America.

Within an hour and a half after Mr. Dolby's precipitate exit from Miss Montressor's abode, that lady was engaged in the prosaic occupation of making out, with Justine's assistance, an inventory of the finery which, apart from her stage wardrobe, she considered it necessary to take to New York; then an inventory of that which she was leaving behind. These grave matters of business were of sufficient importance to shroud in temporary oblivion anything so insignificant as a quarrel with Mr. Dolby--which might, perhaps, be called a lover's quarrel on his side, but which, to Miss Montressor, had simply the commonplace aspect of a fit of unqualified ill-temper.

'He is a surly brute!' was her summary; 'and I will just leave him to come out of his sulk.'

* * * * * *

The next day but one went over, the first stage in the process of Mr. Dolby's coming to his senses in Miss Montressor's mental time-table. The hours did not drag; there was plenty to do, there were many people to see; and the more Miss Montressor dwelt upon the prospect of her Transatlantic trip, higher rose the hopes of reaching her ambition--the expectant star about to get a real opportunity of shining for the first time could not trouble her head with such mundane matters as a sullen admirer.

The next day but two went over, and Mr. Dolby neither came nor wrote. No conciliatory bouquet, no reconciliatory bracelet, came as a token of regret and repentance. Things were looking serious, and Miss Montressor was sorry--sorry, not with the interested annoyance of a woman of her class who has awakened to the fear of losing a rich lover, but sorry with a genuine kindheartedness, reluctant to part with an old friend on bad terms; and with something of the irresistible tenderness which all but a thoroughly heartless woman must feel towards one whose feelings she believes herself to have miscalculated and wounded unawares.

'Who could have thought,' she said to herself on the morning of the third day, 'that he cared about me so much?' A shallow generalisation; but somehow one would have liked Miss Montressor less if she had been more clear-sighted--if she had been able to read between the lines on this occasion.

At noon of the third day Miss Montressor took a resolution and a sheet of her very best note-paper, with a very dainty monogram in rose-colour and silver, and scrawled upon it just two of those characteristic lines which mean so much and say so little, which are full of apology without humiliating concession, and full of attraction without formal invitation.

This letter she despatched by her page, who returned considerably before she looked for him, bringing back the letter, with the unexpected intelligence that Mr. Dolby had left his lodgings at Queen-street, Mayfair, 'for good;' and also that the people at the house had no address and no instructions for the forwarding of communications intended for him.

Miss Montressor had literally never been so taken aback in all her life.

'What could it mean?' she again asked herself, this time without the vaguest indication of an answer; and now she was alarmed as well as sorry. Was this indeed to be a fatal and irreparable breach?

Rather late on the same evening a four-wheeled cab drove up at the door of No. 192 Queen-street, Mayfair. Two females occupied the vehicle, one of whom was presumably, by her dress and appearance, a respectable upper servant, perhaps a lady's maid. Her dress was plain, but suitable to such an assumption, and she was closely veiled. Leaving her companion, who was somewhat similarly attired, in the cab, this person rang the bell and requested to see the mistress of the house. A respectable-looking middle-aged woman, with a countenance exhibiting that peculiar mixture of conventional complacency and ever-present anxiety which characterises the London lodging-house keeper, presented herself in answer to this request, and begged that the lady would step into her little room. The visitor explained at once, to avoid disappointing the expectation which was very plainly written in the landlady's anxious face, that she had not come to engage rooms, that she had merely called to make inquiry. This announcement was met with no decrease of civility, and the invitation to walk in was repeated.

It then appeared that the visitor had called to inquire about the lodger who had recently left No. 192, and the interview between the two women very rapidly assumed the aspect of a gossiping chat. Mrs. Watts was very sorry to part with her lodger, 'which he was quite the gentleman,' and had gone away with his luggage in a cab, and himself in a hansom. There was a deal of luggage; them big boxes as come from New York, and looks like ladies' boxes mostly. Mrs. Watts could not say where he had gone to--certainly she had seen the labels; but they were two brass labels slipped into the ticket grooves, with New York in black letters upon the metal.

'Was there any name upon the trunks?' asked the visitor.

Mrs. Watts was quite sure there was no name anywhere, nor upon the strapped-up package of railway rugs, canes, and umbrellas.

'Did Mrs. Watts,' asked the visitor, 'entertain any doubt whatever upon the subject?'

'He had left in the evening, and she had heard the driver of the hansom directed to Euston Station, to catch the Liverpool mail.'

This was conclusive, and the visitor, taking a polite leave of Mrs. Watts, got into the cab and drove home without exchanging a single word with her companion.

'He is mad,' thought Miss Montressor during that silent drive, and there was a strange complacency in her mind at this conclusion--'he is stark mad with jealousy--who would have thought it? Well, he will get over it, I suppose, and it don't matter to me.'

A reader of Miss Montressor's thoughts and an observer of Miss Montressor's ways would have been struck by the extraordinary frequency with which that little phrase, it don't matter to me,' turned up in Miss Montressor's meditations, and found utterance in Miss Montressor's speech. It don't matter to me, but it is better than any play I ever had a part in, or any play I know anything about, for I firmly believe he has gone to New York beforehand to watch me.'

It was not, on the whole, an unnatural conclusion; it only lacked one element of probability. Mr. Dolby's unexpected access of jealousy had come on apropos of Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster was not gone nor going to New York. This circumstance struck Miss Montressor after some time, but she got over the little difficulty by reasoning from the particular to the general, and making up her mind that Mr. Dolby had suddenly arrived at the conclusion that she was not to be trusted either here or there. There was something flattering in this conclusion, even to a woman who did not care a straw about him, and who was in her way, and according to her light, frank and honest. Miss Montressor liked the flattery, accepted the conclusion, did not trouble herself to reconcile it with Mr. Dolby's story of his appointment in London, and supposed they should meet over there, and it would be all good fun.

* * * * * *

Only one incident remains to be recorded with regard to Miss Montressor's visit to Mr. Dolby's former abode. It was not under that familiar name that she inquired for him; it was not in that name that Mrs. Watts praised the amiability, and lamented the departure of her late lodger, nor had that been the name inscribed upon the note with the rose-and-silver monogram.

END OF VOL. I.

LONDON: ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Impending Sword (Vol. 1 of 3), by Edmund Yates