Part 17 (2/2)

”I can answer it to man well enough, and I will take G.o.d in my own hand.”

Years afterward we both recalled that fatal defiance, when the speaker lay helpless, at the mercy of the Omnipotence whose might he challenged.

Just then his servant, who was busily preparing for departure, entered the room.

Willis was a slight, under-sized man, of about fifty; his complexion was muddy and indefinite; his small whiskers, of a grayish red, were trimmed and pruned as accurately as a box border-edging, and the partial absence of eyebrows and eyelashes gave his face a sort of unfinished look. The expression natural to it was, I think, a low, vicious cunning; but his features and little green eyes were so rigidly disciplined that, as a rule, neither had any characteristic save utter vacuity. In his own line he was perfect. No commission that could be intrusted to him would draw from him a remark or a look of surprise. He executed precisely what he was told, and fulfilled the minutest duties of his station irreproachably, with a noiseless, feline activity. He was like the war-horse of the Douglas:

”Though somewhat old, Swift in his paces, cool, and bold.”

He held a miniature-case in his hand as he entered. ”Am I to put this in, sir?” he asked, in the slow, measured voice that was habitual to him.

His master gazed sharply at him, as if trying to detect a covert sneer--it would have been safer to have stroked a rattlesnake's crest than to have trifled with Livingstone just then--but Willis's face was as innocent of any expression as a dead wall.

”Put it down, and go on with your packing; you have no time to spare.”

The man laid the case on a marble table near, and went out.

Guy took the miniature and regarded it steadfastly for some moments, then he looked up and caught my eye. Perhaps there was an eager appeal there (for I knew well whose likeness lay before him) which displeased and provoked his sullen temper; for he frowned darkly, and then his clenched hand fell with the cras.h.i.+ng weight of a steam-hammer. Nothing but a heap of s.h.i.+vered wood, gla.s.s, and ivory remained of what had been the life-like image of Constance Brandon.

A thrill of horror shot through me icily, and a low cry burst from my lips. I felt at that moment as if the blow had fallen, not on the portrait, but on the original.

But I kept silence. The dark hour was on Saul, and I knew no spell to chase the evil spirit away.

Guy spoke at last. His manner was unusually chill and constrained.

”I expect to meet Mohun in Paris, and we shall probably go on to Vienna.

I hardly like troubling you with commissions, but I must. Listen. I leave my own name--and another person's--in your keeping. I wish it to be clearly understood that the engagement was broken off by Miss Brandon, not by me. If you hear any man speak disparagingly of her in connection with what has pa.s.sed, you can insult him on my behalf as grossly as you please. I will be here, as fast as steam can bring me, to back what you may have said or done. This is the only point in which I hope you will guard my honor. As for blaming _me_, they may say what they please. Do you quite understand? And will you promise?”

I did promise; and so, after a few more last words, we parted, more coldly than we had ever done in all the years through which we had been intimate.

Guy left England the same evening, and descended like a thunder-clap on the joyous little _menage_ in the Rue de la Madeleine, where Forrester and his bride were still fluttering their wings in the honeymoon-s.h.i.+ne of post-nuptial spring.

They were miraculously happy, those two. Indeed, they seemed to have only one taste between them, and that was Charley's. If he felt inclined, which was not seldom, to utter inaction, his wife encouraged him in his laziness, sitting contentedly for hours on her footstool, with her silky hair just within reach of his indolent hand. If, after dinner, he suggested the ”Italiens,” or the ”Bouffes,” it was always precisely that theatre that she had been thinking of all the morning.

She was in the seventh heaven when he won a hurdle-race in the Champ de Mars.

They made excursions into the _banlieue_, and farther afield yet, like a couple of the _Pays Latin_ in their first loves. The cabinets of Bercy and St. Cloud knew them; so did the arbors of Asnieres, where, in oilskin and _vareuse_, muster for their Sabbat the ancient mariners of the Seine. Nay, it has been whispered that more than once--close veiled and clinging tightly to her husband's arm--Isabel witnessed at _Mabille_ and the _Chaumiere_ the ch.o.r.egraphic triumphs of _Frisette_, _Pomare_, and _Mogador_.

My hand trembles while I record such enormities and backslidings. O Brougham-girls of Belgravia, who ”never gave your mothers a moment's uneasiness”--stars of the Western hemisphere, who can be trusted any where without fear of your wandering from your orbits--think on this lost Pleiad, once your companion, and be warned. Men are deceivers ever, even when they mean matrimony; and the tender mercies of the Light Dragoon are cruel.

Isabel was dreadfully startled at the sudden appearance of her cousin.

Her notions of his power were quite unlimited and irrational, and I believe her first thought was that he had changed his mind about the propriety of her marriage, and was come to carry her back into the house of her bondage with the strong hand.

When his curt sentences told her the facts, sorry as she was, it certainly was rather a relief to her. Charley was full of compa.s.sion too, but he only confided this to his wife. He knew better than to try condolence with Guy, and felt instantly that the case was far beyond his simple powers of healing.

They did not see much of him. The contrast of their happiness with his own state must have grated on his feelings. His grim presence chilled and clouded their little banquets at the Trois Freres or the Cafe de Paris. He sat there among the bright lamps and flowers like a statue of dark marble that it is impossible to light up, drinking all the while, moodily, of the strongest wines to that portentous extent that it made Isabel nervous and her husband grave.

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