Part 13 (2/2)
Mrs. Waul crossed the room to lay upon the bureau the steel pins she had taken from her mistress's hair, and the latter muttered audibly:
”For me the 'ides of March' are come indeed, but not pa.s.sed.”
”Did you speak to me?”
”There comes your husband. I hear his slow, heavy step upon the stairs. Open the door.”
As an elderly white-haired man entered, Mrs. Orme put put her hand.
”Letters from home, Mr. Waul?”
”One from America, two from London, and a note from the American minister.”
”You saw the minister then? Did he give you the papers we shall require?”
”He has been sick, I believe, but said he would be at the theatre to-night, and would call and see you to-morrow.”
”Hear this sentence, good people, from his note: 'Only indisposition prevented my attendance at the theatre last night to witness the brilliant triumph of my countrywomen. Since the palmy days of Rachel I have not heard such extravagant eulogies, and as an American I proudly and cordially congratulate you----'”
”Are you going to faint! Stand back, William, and let me bathe her face with cologne. What is the matter, Mrs. Orme? You shake as if you had an ague.”
But her mistress sat with eyes fixed upon a line visible only to herself: ”Your countrymen here are very much elated, and to-night I shall be accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Laurance, son of General Rene Laurance, whose wealth and social eminence must have at least rendered his name familiar to all Americans travelling in Europe.”
”Be quick, Phoebe, and get her a gla.s.s of wine. She has no more colour in her lips than there is in my white beard.”
”No--give me nothing. I only want rest--quiet.”
She crushed the delicate satin paper in her hand, and rallied her composure. After a moment she added:
”A slight faintness, that is all. Mr. Waul, before the curtain rises to-night, I wish you to ascertain in what portion of the house the American minister's box is located; write it on a slip of paper and send it to the dressing-room by your wife. Just now I believe I have no other commissions. If I do not ring my little bell, do not disturb me until five o'clock, then bring me a cup of strong coffee. And, Mrs. Waul, please baste a double row of swan's-down around the neck and sleeves of the white silk I shall wear to-night. Let no one disturb me; not even the manager.”
As the husband and wife withdrew, she followed them to the door, locked it on the inside, and returned to the easy chair. With a whitening, hardening face she reread the note, and thrust it into one of the silk pockets of her robe.
Although nine years had elapsed since we saw her first, in the mellow lamplight of Mr. Hargrove's library, time had touched her so daintily, so lovingly, that only two lines were discernible about the mouth, where habitual compression has set its print; and it would have been difficult to realize that she was twenty-eight, had not the treacherous eyes betrayed the gloom, the bitterness, the ceaseless heartache that filled them with shadows, which prematurely aged the whole countenance.
The added years seemed only to have ripened and perfected her exquisite beauty, but with the rounded smoothness, and the fresh, pure colouring of youth was mingled a weird indescribable expression of stern hopelessness, of solemn repose, as if she had deliberately shaken hands for ever with all that makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem.
Had she been reared amid the fatalistic influences of Arabia, she could not have more completely adopted and exemplified the marble motto: ”Despair is a free man; Hope is a slave.” For her the rosy mist that usually hovers over futurity had been swept rudely aside, the softening glow of the To-Come had been precipitated into a dull, pitiless leaden ever present, at which she never raved nor railed, but inflexibly fought on, expecting neither suns.h.i.+ne nor succour, unappalled and patient as some stony figure of Fate, which chiselled when the race was young, feels the shrouding sands of centuries drifting around and over it, but makes no moan over the buried youth, and watches the approaching night with the same calm, steadfast gaze that looked upon the starry dawn, and the golden glory of the noon.
The cautious repression which necessity had long ago rendered habitual had crystallized into a mask, which even when alone she rarely laid aside for an instant. In actual life, and among strong positive natures, the deepest feelings find no vent in the effervescence of pa.s.sionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the raving Hamlets and Oth.e.l.los, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow of the footlights.
To-day, as Madame Odille Orme leaned back in her luxuriously cus.h.i.+oned chair, she seemed quite as a statue, save the restless movements of her slender fingers, which twined and intertwined continually; while the concentrated gaze of the imperial eyes never stirred from the open window, whence she saw--not Parisian monuments of civic glory and martial splendour--only her own past, her haunting skull and cross-bones of the Bygone. Her violet-coloured dressing-gown was unb.u.t.toned at the throat, exposing the graceful turn of the neck, and the proud poise of the perfectly modelled head, from which the s.h.i.+ning hair fell like Danae's shower, framing the face and figure on a back ground as golden as that of some carefully preserved Byzantine picture.
At last the heavily fringed lids quivered, drooped, the magnificent eyes closed as if to shut out some vision too torturing even for their brave penetrating gaze, and in her rigid whiteness she seemed some unearthly creature, who had done for ever with feverish life and the frail toys of time.
<script>