Sara awoke that same morning with a foreboding heart. She wrote a letter to Reckage postponing his call, and another to Pensee Fitz Rewes, asking her to be at home that afternoon. At half-past two the young lady drove up, in her brougham, to the widow's door in Curzon Street. The blinds were down, and the house gave every indication that its owner was not in London. Sara, however, was admitted, and Pensee received her in a little room, hung with lilac chintz and full of porcelain, at the back of the house. Pensee, wearing a loose blue robe, seemed over-excited and sad--with that sadness which seems to fall upon the soul as snow upon water. She was reclining on the sofa, reading a worn copy of Law's Serious Call which had belonged to the late Viscount, and bore many of his pencil-marks. This in itself was to Sara a sign of some unusual melancholy in her friend.
"Why," she said, kissing her soft, pale cheek, "why didn't you let me know that you had returned? I thought you were still in Paris."
"My dear," said Pensee, sitting up with a sudden movement and supporting herself on her two hands. "I am no longer my own mistress. I have become a puppet--a marionette: a kind of lady-in-waiting--a person to whom women talk when they have nothing to say, and to whom men talk when they have nothing to do."
Sara chose a seat and studied the speaker with a new curiosity. She was charming; vexation gave humanity to her waxen features, and the flash in her eyes suggested hitherto unsuspected fires in her temperament, "She has more spirit than I gave her credit for," thought Sara, and she added, "Darling!" aloud.
"Darling, indeed!" said Pensee. "I can tell you I am tired of being a darling. There are limits.... I have no patience with Brigit, and Robert drives me to the conclusion that good men are fools--fools! I suppose he told you that I was in town again?"
"Yes."
"Well, he won't come and see me himself because she is here."
"That is merely a decision on principle. He longs to come."
"Quite so. But the girl does not deserve him."
Sara showed no astonishment; she maintained her thoughtful air, and replied with tranquillity--
"He thinks she is perfect."
"I find no vulgar faults in her, myself, although there seems no foolish thing left that she hasn't done. I am sure that every one will think her light, worldly, and frivolous. Let me say what I have been through. After the first terrible day and night at St. Malo, there was no more crying. There was not another tear. We went to Paris. She spent all her mornings at Notre Dame, all her afternoons with old Monsieur Lanitaux of the Conservatoire, all her evenings at the theatre. She found many of her mother's old friends. In the theatrical world I find much loyalty toward those actually born in the profession. They treated her as though she were a young queen. Lanitaux managed to get her privately before the Empress Eugenie. She sang for the Empress: the Empress cried and gave her an emerald ring."
"Then she has talent."
"Genius, I believe," said Pensee, solemnly. "This makes her hateful and lovable at the same moment. She is determined to be an actress. She never speaks of Robert, and she shuts herself up in her room reciting Marivaux and Moliere. The d'Alchingens have invited her to Hadley next Saturday. They encourage her theatrical ideas. And why? They wish her to lose caste. She is an Archduchess, Sara, an Alberian Archduchess. What a living argument against unequal marriages!"
"Will she go to Hadley?"
"Yes--wholly against my advice. I don't trust Prince d'Alchingen."
"How I wish I could see her!"
"She is in the library now. I will ask her to come down."
Pensee left the room, and Sara paced the floor till she returned.
"She is coming," said Pensee, "be nice to her--for Robert's sake!"
Sara nodded, and both women watched the door till the handle moved, and Mrs. Parflete entered.
She was dressed in violet silk without ornaments or jewels of any description. Her face was slightly flushed, and the colour intensified the pale gold diadem of her blonde hair. The expression--sweet-tempered, yet a little arrogant--of her countenance and its long oval form bore a striking resemblance to the early portraits of Marie Antoinette. Her under-lip had also a slight outward bend, which seemed an encouragement when she smiled, and contemptuous when she frowned. Her figure--though too slight even for a girl of seventeen--was extraordinarily graceful, and, in spite of her height, she was so well proportioned that she did not appear too tall. Youth showed itself, however, in a certain childlikeness of demeanour--a mixture of timidity, confidence, embarrassment, and, if one looked in her face for any sign of the emotions she had experienced, or the scenes in which she had played no feeble part, one sought in vain. Gaiety covered the melancholy, almost sombre depths in her character. And it was the gaiety of her French mother--petulant, reckless, irresistible, giddy, uncertain. As a child, dressed up in ribbons and lace, with flowers in her hair, she had been the chief amusement and plaything of Madame Duboc--to be held on her lap, perched upon the piano, placed on high cushions in the carriage, and lifted on the table of the drawing-room, where she entertained a brilliant, if dissipated company, by her talk, her little songs, her laughter, her mimicry, and her dancing. She rarely danced now, yet all the seductive arts of perfect dancing seemed hers by right of birth. Each movement, each gesture had a peculiar charm, and her dark blue eyes, the more provocative for their lack of passion, were full of a half-mocking, half-tender vivacity. Sara, a beautiful young woman herself, surveyed this unconscious rival and recognised, with good sense, a fatal attractiveness which was stronger than time and far above beauty. It was the spell of a spirit and body planned for fascination and excelling in this indefinable power. Had she been born to ruin men? thought Sara. Had she been given a glamour and certain gifts merely to perplex, deceive, and destroy all those who came within the magic of her glance? History had its long, terrible catalogue of such women whose words are now forgotten, whose portraits leave us cold, yet whose very names still agitate the heart and fire the imagination. Was Brigit one of these?
She had nothing of the deliberate coquette who, eager to please, keeps up an incessant battery of airs and graces. Her enchantments depended rather on the fact that she neither asked for admiration nor valued it. Free from vanity, and therefore indifferent to criticism, the bitternesses which destroy the peace of most women never entered her mind. The man she had chosen gave her no cause for jealousy, and, while she enjoyed men's society, she had been so accustomed to it from her earliest days that she had nothing to fear from the novelty of their friendship, or the danger of their compliments. Not prudish, not morbid, not envious, not sentimental, and not indolent, she was perhaps especially endowed for the tantalising career which the stage offers to the ambitious of both sexes. Acting came to her as music comes to the true musician. She never considered whether she would become a great actress or a rejected one: the art in itself was her delight, and she found more happiness in reciting Moliere and Shakespeare alone in her own room than she ever received, even at the height of her fame, from her triumphs before the world. There was, no doubt, a great craving in her nature for innocent pleasures and excitement. She loved gay scenes, bright lights, beautiful clothes, lively music, witty conversation. She had been born for the brilliant Courts of the eighteenth century when life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible now--when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the kingdom of the Graces.
The three women as they faced each other presented a remarkable picture. Pensee, the eldest, who alone knew the lessons of physical pain, had a pathetic grace which made her seem, in comparison with the others--radiant with untried health,--some gentle, plaintive spirit from a sadder sphere. Her clinging blue robe appeared too heavy for the frail body; her fair curls and carefully arranged chignon were too modish for the ethereal yet anxious countenance; the massive wedding-ring seemed too coarse a bond for the almost transparent hand which trembled nervously on the cover of the Serious Call. Sara, in black velvet and sable, with ostrich plumes and golden beads, with flashing eyes and a gipsy's flush, with all the self-command of a woman trained for society, living for it and in it, with all the self-assurance of a woman in an unassailable position, handsome, rich, flattered, spoiled, domineering, and unscrupulous, with all the insolence of an egoism which no human force could humiliate and no human antagonist terrify, Sara seemed the one who was destined to succeed superbly in the war of life. Mrs. Parflete--whose courage, determination, and powers of endurance were concealed by a face which might have been made of lovely gauze--seemed less a being than a poetical creation: a portrait by Watteau or Fragonard stepped from its frame, animated by pure fancy, and moving, without sorrow and without labour, through a charmed existence.
She made two steps forward when Sara advanced to meet her, holding out both hands and smiling with real kindness at the sight of a delightful apparition which looked too fragile to excite such a fierce emotion as jealousy.
"I believe we are to meet at Hadley," said Sara. "I hear you are going to act."
"Yes," replied Brigit, with a slight note of irony in her musical voice. "I am going to act."
"How charming! And what will you play?"
"I play the Marquise in one of Marivaux's comedies."
"And who will play the Marquis?" asked Sara.
"There is no Marquis," answered Brigit, laughing a little. "But," she added, "there is a Chevalier and a Comte. One of Prince d'Alchingen's attaches will play the Comte. M. de Castrillon will play the part of the Chevalier."
"Castrillon!" exclaimed Sara, in amazement.
"The Marquis of Castrillon!" cried Pensee, turning livid; "pray, pray put it off till you have heard from Baron Zeuill. Dear Brigit! for my sake, for Robert's----"
"It is for your sake and Robert's that I have accepted the invitation to Hadley. I wish you would understand. I must show them all that I mean what I say."
"But Castrillon is a wicked wretch--a libertine."
"We have already acted together in this very piece at Madrid. Much depends on my playing well next Saturday. I am quite sure of his talent, and, in such a case, his private morals are not my affair. He is no worse than Prince d'Alchingen was, and most of his associates are."
"You can't know what you are saying," answered Pensee. "You will be so miserable when you find you have been madly obstinate. It is very hard, in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to certain prejudices."
"Are the Duke and Duchess of Fortinbras respectable?" asked Brigit.
"What a question!" said Pensee; "of course they are most exclusive."
"Then if they are quite willing that their daughter Clementine should marry Castrillon, surely he may play the Chevalier to my Marquise."
"I don't think, Pensee," put in Sara, "that Castrillon is exactly tabooed. In fact, one meets him everywhere in Paris, and, beyond a doubt, the Fortinbrases and the Huxaters and the Kentons made a great fuss over him last season. But do you like him?" she said, suddenly turning to Brigit.
The question was skilful.
"I don't take him seriously," answered Brigit; "he has the great science of l'excellent ton dans le mauvis ton. You would say--'he is vulgar in the right way.' I feel sure he never deceived women. They may have been foolish but they must have been frail before they met him! He can be ridiculous in five languages, but he cannot be sincere in one of them. As for his wickedness, one must have more than bad intentions; one must have the circumstances. I have nothing to fear from M. de Castrillon. He knows me perfectly well."
"I am simply wretched about you," said Pensee; "of your future I dare not think. I try to be sympathique, and your difficulties come very home to me because I have had such great sorrows myself. But I have little hopes of doing any good while you are so self-willed."
"Dearest," exclaimed Brigit: "trust me!"
"My child, you are 'wiser in your own eyes than seven men that can render a reason.' I implore you to abandon this mad scheme; I implore you to abandon these wrong--these dangerous ideas of the stage. I know how much I am asking, and how little right I have to ask anything, but I think you ought to listen to me."
Brigit, with a sparkling glance at Sara, stroked Pensee's cheek, and pinched her small ear.
"Mon cher coeur," said she, "I do not forget your goodness. And I needed it, for I have been so wretched and forsaken. My soul is weighed down with troubles, and grief, and anxiety: each day I expect some new misfortune: you are the one friend I may keep. But you would not know how to imagine the intrigues and falsehoods which surround me on every side. O mon amie, I must prove to them that I want nothing they can give me--that I possess nothing which they can take away."
"I know what she means, Pensee," said Sara; "she has to show d'Alchingen that her interests are fixed on art--not politics. And, from her point of view, she is right. I must say so, although I don't wish to interfere. And so long as she knows M. de Castrillon, it is better taste to make her first appearance with him than with some strange actor engaged for the occasion. After all, Mario was well known as the Marchese di Candia before he adopted the operatic stage as a profession. As for gossip, how is anybody's tongue to be stopped?"
"I do not expect that people's tongues should be stopped," rejoined Pensee.
"What the world says of me I have learned to disregard very much," said Brigit: "if I vex my friends, I must nevertheless follow my vocation. It was good enough for my mother. I do not apologise for her existence, nor do I offer excuses for my own. She was an actress: I am an actress. She succeeded: I may not succeed. But if you fear for my faith and my character, it would be quite as easy to lose both in the highest society as in the vilest theatres! I foresee mistakes and difficulties. They must come. I shan't have a happy life, dearest Pensee: I don't look for happiness. Why then do you scold me?"
"I am not scolding," said Lady Fitz Rewes: "I have never blamed you, never--in my heart. We shall get on better now that we have brought ourselves to speak out. How different it is when one judges for oneself or for another! I do believe in having the courage of one's convictions. But it was my duty to warn you----"
"This is all I wanted," exclaimed Brigit; "that we should understand each other and stand close by each other. I am not on the edge of a precipice--I am at the bottom of it already!" Her eyes had grown calm from the mere force of sadness. "You mustn't ask me to look back," she added: "you mustn't ask me to choose again. A simple, quiet life is out of the question now. I have to learn how to forget."
She moved to the door, kissed her hand to Pensee, and bowed prettily to Sara.
"I must get back to my work," she said, and so left them. The two women turned toward each other.
"There is no hope for Orange," observed Sara drily: "no man would ever forget her."
"He needn't forget her, but----"
"Yes, it would have to be sheer, absolute forgetfulness. I like her. I like all beautiful things--pictures, statues, bronzes, porcelains, and white marble visions! She is a white marble vision. And Orange will love her forever and ever and ever. And when she is dead, he will love her still more!"
She threw back her head and laughed--till Pensee laughed also. Then they wished each other goodbye, and parted.
