Part 24 (1/2)
The Contessa gave him a look in which there was much of that feminine contempt at which men laugh as one of the pretences of women. ”I am going to be good to her as she is to me,” she said. ”The Carnival will be short this year, and in England you have no Carnival. I will find myself a little house for the season. I will not too much impose upon that angel. There, now, is something good for you to relieve your mind.
I can read you, _mon ami_, like a book. You are fond of me--oh yes!--but not too long; not too much. I can read you like a book.”
”Too long, too much, are not in my vocabulary,” said Sir Tom; ”have they a meaning? not certainly that has any connection with a certain charming Contessina. If that lady has a fault, which I doubt, it is that she gives too little of her gracious countenance to her friends.”
”She does not come down to breakfast,” said the Contessa, with her soft laugh, which in itself was a work of art. ”She is not so foolish as to put herself in compet.i.tion with the lilies and the roses, the English flowers. Poverina! she keeps herself for the afternoon which is charitable, and the light of the lamps which is flattering. But she remembers other days--alas! in which she was not afraid of the sun himself, not even of the mid-day, nor of the dawn when it comes in above the lamps. There was a certain _bal costume_ in Florence, a year when many English came to the Populino palace. But why do I talk of that? You will not remember----”
There was something apparently in the recollection that touched Sir Tom.
His eye softened. An unaccustomed colour came to his middle-aged cheek.
”I! not remember? I remember every hour, every moment,” he said, and then their voices sank lower, and a murmur of reminiscences, one filling up another, ensued between the pair. Their tone softened, there were broken phrases, exclamations, a rapid interchange which was far too indistinct to be audible. Lucy sat by her table and worked, and was vaguely conscious of it all. She had said to herself that she would take no heed any more, that the poor Contessa was too open-hearted, too generous to harm her, that they were but two old friends talking of the past. And so it was; but there was a something forlorn in sitting by at a distance, out of it all, and knowing that it was to go on and last, alas! by her own doing, who could tell how many evenings, how many long hours to come!
CHAPTER x.x.x.
DIFFERENT VIEWS.
The time after this seemed to fly in the great quiet, all the entertainments of the Christmas season being over, and the houses in the neighbourhood gradually emptying of guests. The only visitors at the Hall were the clergyman, the doctor, an odd man now and then whom Sir Tom would invite in the character of a ”native,” for the Contessa's amus.e.m.e.nt; and Mr. Rushton, who came from Farafield two or three times on business, at first with a very keen curiosity, to know how it was that Lucy had subdued her husband and got him to relinquish his objection to her alienation of her money. This had puzzled the lawyer very greatly. There had been no uncertainty about Sir Tom's opinion when the subject was mooted to him first. He had looked upon it with very proper sentiments. It had seemed to him ridiculous, incredible, that Lucy should set up her will against his, or take her own way, when she knew how he regarded the matter. He had told the lawyer that he had little doubt of being able to bring her to hear reason. And then he had written to say that he withdrew his objection! Mr. Rushton felt that there must be some reason here more than met the eye. He made a pretence of business that he might discover what it was, and he had done so triumphantly, as he thought. Sir Tom, as everybody knew, had been ”a rover” in his youth, and the world was charitable enough to conclude that in that youth there must be many things which he would not care to expose to the eye of day. When Mr. Rushton beheld at luncheon the Contessa, followed by the young and slim figure of Bice, it seemed to him that everything was solved. And Lady Randolph, he thought, did not look with very favourable eyes upon the younger lady. What doubt that Sir Tom had bought the a.s.sent of his wife to the presence of the guests by giving up on his side some of his reasonable rights?
”Did you ever hear of an Italian lady that Sir Tom was thick with before he married?” he asked his wife when he came home.
”How can you ask me such a question,” said that virtuous woman, ”when you know as well as I do that there were half-a-dozen?”
”Did you ever hear the name of Forno-Populo?” he asked.
Mrs. Rushton paused and did her best to look as if she was trying to recollect. As a matter of fact all Italian names sounded alike to her, as English names do to foreign ears. But after a moment she said boldly: ”Of course I have heard it. That was the lady from Naples, or Venice, or some of those places, that ran away with him. You heard all about it at the time as well as I.”
And upon this Mr. Rushton smote upon his thigh, and made a mighty exclamation. ”By George!” he said, ”he's got her there, under his wife's very nose; and that's why he has given in about the money.” Nothing could have been more clearly reasoned out--there could be no doubt upon that subject. And the presence of Bice decided the question. Bice must be--they said, to be sure! Dates and everything answered to this view of the question. There could be no doubt as to who Bice was. They were very respectable, good people themselves, and had never given any scandal to the world; but they never hesitated for a moment or thought there was anything unnatural in attributing the most shameful scandal and domestic treachery to Sir Tom. In fact it would be difficult to say that they thought much less of him in consequence. It was Lucy, rather, upon whom their censure fell. She ought to have known better. She ought never to have allowed it. To pretend to such simplicity was sickening, Mrs.
Rushton thought.
It was early in February when they all went to London--a time when society is in a sort of promissory state, full of hopes of dazzling delights to come, but for the present not dazzling, parliamentary, residential, a society made up of people who live in London, who are not merely gay birds of fas.h.i.+on, basking in the suns.h.i.+ne of the seasons.
There was only a week or two of what the Contessa called Carnival, which indeed was not Carnival at all, but a sober time in which dinner parties began, and the men began to gather at the clubs. The Contessa did not object to this period of quiet. She acquainted Lucy with all she meant to do in the meantime, to the great confusion of that ingenious spirit.
”Bice must be dressed,” the Contessa said, ”which of itself requires no little time and thought. Unhappily M. Worth is not in London. Even with M. Worth I exert my own faculties. He is excellent, but he has not the intuitions which come when one is very much interested in an object.
Sweet Lucy! you have not thought upon that matter. Your dress is as your dressmaker sends it to you. Yes; but, my angel, Bice has her career before her. It is different.”
”Oh, Madame di Forno-Populo,” said Lucy, ”do you still think in that way--must it still be exhibiting her, marrying her?”
”Marriage is honourable,” said the Contessa. ”It is what all girls are thinking of; but me, I think it better that their parents should take it in hand instead of the young ladies. There is something in Bice that is difficult, oh, very difficult. If one chooses well for her, one will be richly repaid; but if, on the contrary, one leaves it to the conventional, the ordinary--My sweetest! your pretty white dresses, your blues are delightful for you; but Bice is different, quite different.
And then she has no fortune. She must be piquant. She must be striking.
She must please. In England you take no trouble for that. It is not _comme il faut_ here; but it is in our country. Each of us we like the ways of our country best.”
”I have often wondered,” said Lucy, ”to hear you speak such perfect English, and Bice too. It is, I suppose, because you are so musical and have such good ears----”
”Darling!” said the Contessa sweetly. She said this or a similar word when nothing else occurred to her. She had her room full of lovely stuffs, brought by obsequious shopmen, to whom Lady Randolph's name was sufficient warrant for any extravagance the Contessa might think of. But she said to herself that she was not at all extravagant; for Bice's wardrobe was her stock-in-trade, and if she did not take the opportunity of securing it while in her power, the Contessa thought she would be false to Bice's interests. The girl still wore nothing but her black frock. She went out in the park early in the morning when n.o.body was there, and sometimes had riding lessons at an unearthly hour, so that n.o.body should see her. The Contessa was very anxious on this point. When Lucy would have taken Bice out driving, when she would have taken her to the theatre, her patroness instantly interfered. ”All that will come in its time,” she said. ”Not now. She must not appear now. I cannot have her seen. Recollect, my Lucy, she has no fortune. She must depend upon herself for everything.” This doctrine, at which Lucy stood aghast, was maintained in the most matter-of-fact way by the neophyte herself. ”If I were seen,” she said, ”now, I should be quite stale when I appear. I must appear before I go anywhere. Oh yes, I love the theatre. I should like to go with you driving. But I should forestall myself. Some persons do and they are never successful. First of all, before anything, I must appear.”
”Oh my child,” Lucy cried, ”I cannot bear to hear of all this. You should not calculate so at your age. And when you appear, as you call it, what then, Bice? n.o.body will take any particular notice, perhaps, and you will be so disappointed you will not know what to do. Hundreds of girls appear every season and n.o.body minds.”