Sara had spent the morning crying bitterly, in bed. Her letter to the Duke of Marshire was on the table by her side. From time to time she had taken it up, turned it over, shed fresh tears, and reproached herself for indecision. She held at bay every thought of Robert Orange, and formed the resolve of banishing him from her mind for ever. When the time came to dress for luncheon, she brightened a little, for the prospect of disguising her true feelings in the presence of Lord Reckage and Pensee appealed to that genius for mischief which animated the whole current of her life. To baffle the looker-on seemed not merely a great science, but the one game of wits which could never lose its interest. She was not insincere. She thought that lies, as a rule, were clumsy shifts, and abominable. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of her talent for misleading others, she had never brought herself to think well of deception. She would have liked to feel that her heart was an open book for her friends to read. It would have been pleasant, she believed, if all could have known always that she practised a delicate art and played, consummately, fine comedy whenever she found spectators. But a solitary, mismanaged childhood, and the constant sense of being in many ways a foreigner, had taught her the penalty of frankness where sympathy could not supply, from its own knowledge, the unutterable half which makes up every confidence. The bitter pleasures of a conscience which caresses its worst burden were the only real ones of her daily existence. When she could say, at the end of the day, "I have fooled them all: they think I am happy, I am not: they think Reckage amuses me, he doesn't. They think I delight in these dull dinners and balls, I hate them," a sort of exultation--the pride of a spirit singing under torture--would fill her whole being. All youth that is strong and thoughtful has much of this instinct of dissimulation. The world--to a young mind--appears controlled by elderly, suspicious, hateful custodians ever on the alert to capture, or thwart, every high enterprise and every passionate desire. There seems a vast conspiracy against happiness--the withered, dreary wiseacres in opposition to the joy, the daring, the beauty, the reckless vitality of souls still under the spell of spring. When poor Sara could escape from town into the country, mount her horse, and tear through a storm, the neighbours compared her to a witch on a broomstick, and, shaking their heads, would foresee much sipping of sorrow by the spoonful in the future of Lord Garrow. To-day, however, the young lady assumed her most demure expression, and received the guests at luncheon as though she had never learnt the meaning of tears nor joined the gale in spirit.
Sir Piers Harding was the last to arrive. He was a thick-set, livid man with an unyielding smile and the yellow eyes of one whom rich diet rather than an angry god had rendered melancholy.
"You haven't changed in the least," he said, considering Lord Garrow with some resentment.
"Ah, well!" replied his lordship, "eleven years do not make much difference at my time of life. You, however, are decidedly greyer. Where have you been hiding yourself? I think you were foolish to leave England. Gladstone was remarking but the other day, 'Harding was always so cocksure.' 'And wasn't he right?' said I. 'Of course,' said he; 'and that was the worst of him. He was right. Who could stand it?' That's the world. It's devilish unappreciative of the truth."
Reckage, much bored by the old men, stood by Pensee's chair, where he could watch Sara and angle for her glance. When it happened that she smiled at him a little--either in mere friendship or mockery--he felt a kind of fire steal through his veins, and he told himself that she was a dangerous woman--a woman who could get her own way in the long run. That she was a girl--and, with all her shortcomings, a very innocent one--made her odd powers of fascination but the more insidious. She wore a dress of wine-coloured silk which fitted plainly over her breast and shoulders and fell in graceful flounces from the waist. The warm, olive lines of her cheek and throat appeared the darker in contrast with a twist of white lace which she wore round her neck; and her black hair, dressed higher than usual, was held in place by a large ruby comb which caught the fire-light as she moved. Reckage was conscious, for the first time in his life, of a real embarrassment. He could not talk to her; he felt tongue-tied when she addressed him. Ill at ease, yet not unhappy, he struggled to maintain some coherence in his conversation; but, at each moment, his own ideas grew less certain and Sara's voice more enchanting. It seemed to convey the lulling powers of an anodyne. When he tried to rouse himself, the effort was as painful as the attempt to wake from a dream within a dream.
"You were at the wedding this morning?" she asked lightly.
"No.... What a fool I am! Yes, of course. You mean Robert's wedding?"
She gave a little smile, and murmured, dropping her voice, "I meant Robert's wedding."
Luncheon was then announced: the sliding doors which separated the dining-room from Lord Garrow's library were rolled back. They all walked in--Pensee and Sara leading the way.
"A sweet creature!" whispered his lordship behind their backs, indicating Lady Fitz Rewes. He sighed as he spoke. He could never feel that there was not something deplorable in Sara's physical brilliancy. Her upper-lip that day had a certain curl which he had learnt to regard as a danger-signal. What would she do next? As he sat down at the table and observed the sweep of her eyelashes toward Reckage, a presentiment of trouble clouded the new hopes he had formed for her career.
"Who are your strong men now?" asked Harding suddenly, after a moment's contemplation of Reckage, who sat opposite.
"Our strong men?" faltered Lord Garrow.
"Aren't most of 'em place-hunters and self-seekers?"
"You must meet Robert Orange," said Pensee; "Mr. Disraeli believes in Robert Orange."
"I never heard of him," observed Sir Piers. "Who is he?"
"You may well ask," said Lord Garrow. "He claims to be a de Hausee--on his father's side. Reckage can tell you about him. Many have a high opinion of the fellow, and say that if he will stick to one branch of politics, he may become useful. Personally, I don't call him a man of the world."
"Not of our world, perhaps, papa. But there are so many other worlds!"
"Sara likes him. A lot of women like him," said his lordship. He was annoyed at her interruption and took his revenge by a feminine thrust. "The hero," said he, "married some mysterious person this very morning. We may not hear so much about him in the future!"
"Dear Lord Garrow," said Pensee, "his wife is a friend of mine--she is the most charming person."
Sara put out her hand and touched Reckage on the arm.
"Do you think," she asked, "that the wife will be an obstacle in his way?"
"Who can tell? Of course she has means, and he likes to do everything well."
"Speaking for myself," said Harding, "I have always held that a man's career rests rather on his genius than his marriage."
"But you, my dear fellow," put in Lord Garrow, testily, "you retired from political life because your theories could find no illustration there."
"Pardon me," said Sir Piers, with a grim laugh. "I retired because I had a faultless wife but unfortunately no genius. I shall therefore watch your friend's triumph or failure--for his position would seem to be precisely the reverse of my own--with peculiar sympathy."
"Ah! I fear you are rather heartless," exclaimed Sara. "For a man to have gone so far as Orange, and to know that perhaps--I say, perhaps--he can hope no higher because he made a fool of himself about a woman!"
"You speak as though it were a romantic marriage--a question of love."
"Of course," said the young lady softly. "It is a great passion."
"Well, after all," observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to Sara's delightfulness, "the British public is absurdly fond of a love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man. These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His elopement with Lady Caroline Lennox."
"To be sure," said Reckage--"to be sure. That's a point."
"It is a compliment to the sex," continued Harding, "when a great man is taken captive by a pretty face. Men, too, rally round a Lochinvar. Such an evidence of heart--or folly, if you prefer to call it so--is also an evidence of disinterestedness. So, on the whole, I cannot follow your objections to the new Mrs. Orange."
"You have been away so long," said Garrow fussily, "that you have forgotten our prejudices. Orange himself, to begin with, has something mysterious in his origin. They say he is French--related to the old French aristocracy; but the less one says in England about foreign pedigrees the better. All that of itself is against him, and Mrs. Orange, it seems, is more or less French, or Austrian, too. We can't help regarding them as foreigners, and I always distrust foreigners in politics. Why should they care for England? I ask myself."
"Why, indeed?" said Harding, with irony.
"Have I made myself clearer?" asked Garrow. "I can afford to speak. My own wife was a Russian. But I was not in political life, and she was an Ambassador's daughter."
"You think you would feel more sure of Orange's patriotic instinct if he had chosen an Englishwoman?" said Reckage.
"I am bound to say that he would have shown discretion in settling down with one of our simple-hearted Saxon girls."
"And who was Mrs. Orange before she married Orange?" asked Harding.
"A widow--a Mrs. Parflete," said Garrow.
"Parflete!" exclaimed Harding. "Mrs. Parflete! But I have met her. She married Wrexham Parflete, an extraordinary creature. He lived for years with the Archduke Charles of Alberia. People used to say that Mrs. Parflete was the Archduke's daughter. I ran across Parflete the other day in Sicily."
"But he is dead," said Pensee, much agitated; "he drowned himself."
"I cannot help that," repeated Sir Piers. "I met him last week, and he beat me at ecarte."
"Then it is not the same man," said Reckage, "quite obviously."
"Wrexham Parflete had a wife; I heard her sing at a dinner-party in Madrid. She was living with the Countess Des Escas; there was a row and a duel on her account. I never forget names or faces."
"But this looks serious," said Reckage. "Do you quite understand? It's the sort of thing one hardly dares to think. That is to say if you mean what I mean. The marriage can't be legal."
The two women turned pale and looked away from each other.
"I mean as much or as little as you like," said Harding. "But Parflete was alive last Monday."
"But bigamy is so vulgar," observed Lord Garrow. "You must be mistaken. It is too dreadful!"
"Dreadful, indeed! And a great piece of folly into the bargain. It is selling the bear's skin before you have killed the bear."
Lady Fitz Rewes glanced piteously at the three men and wrung her hands.
"Don't you see," she exclaimed, "don't you see that if there is the least doubt of Mr. Parflete's death, we ought to go to them. Some one must follow them."
"There is that touch of the absurd about it," said Reckage, "which makes it difficult for a friend to come forward. To pursue a man on his wedding journey----"
"It is no laughing matter," put in Lord Garrow; "and if the woman has deceived the poor fellow, it's a monstrous crime."
"Oh, she hasn't; she couldn't deceive him," said Pensee. "I know her intimately."
"She was considered very clever--at Madrid," said Sir Piers, finely. "To you she may appear more to be pitied than she really is."
"Don't say such things! I won't hear them. I love her very much."
"Perhaps she is clever enough to appear stupid in public."
"No, no!" Her voice trembled and tears gushed from her eyes. "You will regret these words. This news will kill her."
"Something must be done," said Sara. "Beauclerk, you ought to follow them and tell them. Pensee is right."
"This will make a horrid scandal," said Lord Garrow, who was appalled at the prospect of being mixed up in so disagreeable an affair. "Why not leave it alone? It is not our business."
"But it is Beauclerk's business, papa. Just put yourself in his place. Surely that is not asking too much."
"We must avoid everything precipitate," said Reckage; "we mustn't be over-hasty."
Lady Fitz Rewes wiped her eyes, rose from the table, and began to draw on her gloves.
"But we must be friends," she said; "if you cannot go to them, I will. Do you realise the poor child's position? An illegal marriage! She is the most gentle, beautiful person I ever saw, with the best head, the purest heart. She professes nothing. I judge her by her actions."
"But you must see," said Reckage, "that I can't give Orange all this pain unless I have something more definite to go on. Sir Piers tells us that he played cards with Wrexham Parflete last week." He paused.
"Wait a moment," said Harding; "wait a moment. Does any one present know Parflete's handwriting?"
"I do," said Pensee. "I saw his last letter to his wife. He wrote it before he committed suicide."
Sir Piers took out his pocket-book, and, from the several papers it contained, selected a three-cornered note.
"By the merest chance," said he, "I have this with me."
The others unconsciously left their seats and looked over his shoulder while he smoothed out the sheet. It was dated plainly, "October 7, 1869," and contained the acknowledgment of two L10 notes won at ecarte.
"That is the hand," said Pensee. "One could not mistake it."
"Then this is really very serious," said Lord Reckage, with twitching lips. "The whole story has had all along something of unreality about it. Robert seems fated to a renunciant career--colourless, self-annihilating."
"What will you do?" murmured Pensee, with an imploring gesture. "What will you do?"
"They leave Southampton at three o'clock," said Reckage; "it is now half-past two. The steamer goes twice a week only. I can send him a telegram and follow them overland--by way of Calais."
"Then I must go also," said Pensee firmly. "She will need me. I have had a presentiment of trouble so long that now I feel 'Here it is come at last.' I cannot be too thankful to God that it isn't worse."
Nothing showed under the innavigable depths of Sara's eyes. She had moved to the fireplace and stood there holding one small foot to the blaze.
"Are you cold?" asked her father anxiously.
"I am ice," she said, "ice!"
Reckage joined her and said, under his voice, "You think I ought to go, don't you?"
This question--given in a half-whisper--seemed to establish a fresh intimacy between them. It was the renewal of their old friendship on deeper terms.
"Yes, you must go," she answered; "and, Beauclerk, write to me and tell me how he bears it."
"He is accustomed to a repressive discipline on these matters. The philosophic mind, you know, is never quite in health. Probably, he won't show much feeling."
His gaze seemed to burn into her face. It was as though she had been walking in an arbour and suddenly, through some rift in the boughs, found herself exposed to the scorching sun. She felt dominated by a force stronger than her own nature. A little afraid, she shrank instinctively away from him, and as she dared not look up, she did not see the expression of triumph, mingled with other things, which, for a moment, lit up Lord Reckage's ordinarily inscrutable countenance. Lately, he had been somewhat depressed by his encounter with refractory wills. His horse, his colleagues on the Bond of Association, his future bride, had showed themselves fatiguing, perhaps worthless, certainly disheartening and independent accessories to his life. Here, at last, was some one brilliant, stimulating, by no means self-seeking, Quixotic in enthusiasms.
"Sara," he said, obeying an impulse which surprised himself, "do you believe in me?"
This time she gave him a straight glance.
"Yes," she answered. "You might do a great deal if you could forget yourself for a few months."
Pensee, much troubled and full of thoughts, walked over to them.
"Oh, Sara!" she said, "isn't it terrible? If you could have seen them both this morning--she looked so beautiful, perfectly lovely--a sight I never can forget. And now this blow! What man can teach men to understand the will of God?"
