XII
Isabel had looked forward all day to the promised talk with the somewhatformidable relative for whom, however, she had conceived one of thoseenthusiasms peculiar to her age and sex. Her wardrobe was barren of thecostly afternoon gowns smart women affect, but she put on an organdie,billowy with many ruffles, that consorted with the season, at least.Blue cornflowers were scattered over the white transparent surface, andshe possessed no more becoming frock. Had she been on her way to a trystwith Lord Hexam she would have thrust a rose in her hair, accentuatedthe smallness of her waist with a blue ribbon, the whiteness of herthroat with a line of black velvet; but she had the instinct of dress,which teaches, among many things, that self-consciousness in externaladornment provokes amusement in other women.
She had not the least idea where to find Lady Victoria's boudoir,although a casual reference by Flora Thangue suggested that it was onthe bedroom floor. She lost herself in the interminable corridors andfinally ran into Elton Gwynne.
"Your mother expects me--where is her boudoir?" she asked.
He was at peace with the world, and answered, good-naturedly: "I'llpilot you. Her rooms are over on the other side."
"You look as if you should be congratulated about something," she said,demurely. "There are all sorts of rumors flying about."
She had half-expected to be snubbed, but he was not in the humor to snubanybody. "You can congratulate me!" he said, emphatically. "The mostwonderful woman in the world has promised to marry me."
"I hope you will be happy," said Isabel, conventionally. She resentedhis sudden drop from his pedestal, for he looked sentimental andsomewhat sheepish. Still, her youth warmed to his in spite of herself,and again he noticed with a passing surprise that her eyes were bothlovely and intellectual. He was hardly aware that coincidentally hisJulia's eyes met his mental vision with a glance somewhat too hard andbrilliant, but he caught Isabel's hand and gave it a little shake.
"Thank you!" he exclaimed. "That was said as if you jolly well meant it.There are my mother's rooms."
He went off whistling, and Isabel raised her hand and looked at itmeditatively; his own had been unexpectedly warm and magnetic. She hadimagined that his grasp would be cold and loose.
He had indicated a private corridor, and she entered it and approached adoor ajar. There was no response to her knock, but as she was expected,and Lady Victoria no doubt was still dressing, she pushed open the doorand entered. The room was empty, but Isabel was instantly impressed withits reflection of an individuality, although of a side that hadattracted her least. Here was none of the old-time stiffness ofCapheaton, and there was a conspicuous absence of dead masters and theirpupils. It was not a large room. The walls were covered with a Japanesegold paper to within four feet of the floor where it was met by atapestry of Indian cashmeres, and from it was separated by a narrowshelf set thick with photographs in silver frames, and with odd andexquisite bibelots. On the walls were artists' sketches, and two orthree canvases of the Impressionist and Secessionist schools, expressiveof the ardent temperaments of their creators. In the place of honor wasa painting of Salambo in the folds of her python.
There were several deep chairs and a mighty divan covered withgold-colored cushions and a tiger-skin, whose mate was on the floor. Thegloom of the afternoon was excluded by heavy gold-colored curtains, andthe only, but quite sufficient light, filtered through an opalescentglobe upheld by a twisted bronze female of the modern Munich school,that looked like nothing so much as Alice elongating in Wonderland.
Isabel suddenly felt herself and her organdie absurdly out of place inthis room with its enchantress atmosphere. She wished that Lady Victoriahad made the appointment for the library, which was equally in tune withanother side of her.
She was even meditating a retreat, inexplicably embarrassed, when aninner door opened and Lady Victoria entered. She wore a tea-gown of asort, black and yellow, open over the soft lace of a chemisette,although a dog-collar of tiny golden sequins clasped her throat. In herhair a golden butterfly trembled, and in that light she would havelooked little older than her guest had it not been for the expression ofher face. It was this expression that arrested Isabel even more than thetoilette, as she moved towards the divan without a word of greeting. Itlooked as if it had been put on with the costume, both intended toexpress a mood of the wearer: which might have been that of a tigresswhose ferocity was slowly awakening with the approach of the victim. Theblack eyes were heavy with the lust of conquest, the points of the mouthturned up more sharply than usual; there was an insatiable vanity in thecommanding poise of her head. She was as little like the woman of themorning as the sun is like the midnight, and Isabel experienced apositive terror of her.
Feeling sixteen and very foolish, she sank to the edge of a chair andmuttered something about the charm of the room. Then, as Lady Victoria,who had arranged herself among the shining pillows, continued to stareat her with absolutely no change of expression, it dawned upon her thatshe had not been expected but that some one else was. With too littlepresence of mind left to retire gracefully and too much pride to appearto have ventured into the cave of Venus unasked, she managed toarticulate her gratitude for the invitation of the morning.
"Oh!" Lady Victoria's eyebrows expressed a flicker of intelligence. "Ihope you have managed not to bore yourself."
Isabel plunged into an account of her drive, to which Lady Victoria, whohad lit a long Russian cigarette, paid no attention whatever. Herexpression was still petrified, except that she might have had the scentof blood in her slightly dilating nostrils.
Suddenly the slow flame in her eyes burned upward, and Isabel, her headfairly jerking about, saw that a man had entered and was advancingrapidly across the room, his heavy eyes wide with admiration. It was theFrenchman whom Lady Victoria had honored with so much of her attentionthe evening before.
He raised to his lips the pointed fingers negligently extended, andmurmured something to which Lady Victoria replied in French as pure andfluent as his own; and in a low rich voice, with not an echo in it ofher habitual abruptness or haughty languor.
The Frenchman accepted a cigarette and a low chair opposite the divan,whose golden cushions seemed subtly to embrace the yielding flexiblefigure against them. Neither took the slightest notice of the thirdperson beyond a muttered introduction and acknowledgment, and as the manembarked on a soft torrent of speech, bearing the burden of hisbeatitude in at last meeting the only Englishwoman whose fame in Pariswas as great as among her native fogs, Isabel rose and retreated withwhat dignity she could summon. Then Lady Victoria, seeing that she wasrid of her, and courteous under all her idiosyncrasies, rose with a longmotion of repressed energy and accompanied her to the door, her handresting lightly against the crisp organdie belt.
"Will you pour out the tea for me?" she asked, sweetly. "I doubt if I godown."
No small part of her dangerous fascination lay in her sincerity. Shereally liked Isabel, although it was characteristic of her that she didnot in the least care at what conclusions that puzzled young woman mightarrive in a more solitary meditation.
When Isabel found herself in the long cool corridor, set thick withgentle landscapes, and hunting squires, and dames haughty and humble,she drew a long breath of relief, as if she had escaped from a jungle.But she felt oddly wounded in her self-love, young and silly. She hadthought herself old in the last three years, tremendously modern. Whatdid she know? The easy morals of students in France and Germany hadrepelled her at first, but she had ended by accepting them as a matterof course, and had rather plumed herself upon her accumulating grainsand blends of human nature. She felt a rush of contempt for theircrudity. What children they were with their simple unmorality ofartists, as ignorant of the real world as babes in a wood!
When she reached her own room she astonished herself by bursting into apassion of tears. It was some time before she understood what hadinduced it. It was not that the illusions of youth had received a hardblow, for many of them had disappeare
d long since in Paris, when she hadsupported an American girl of decent family but too much liberty throughthe most desperate experience that a young woman, alone and friendlessin a foreign city, well could have. The girl had died cursing all menand the folly of women, and after Isabel had buried her and the leadingcause of her repentance, she returned to her lonely flat in a state ofdisillusion and disgust which seemed to encase her by no meanssusceptible heart in a triple panoply. This state of mind had lasted forat least three months. And there was little of which she had notabstract knowledge, nor had she lived a quarter of a century to learnfor the first time of the license which the world permits to women sohighly placed that they have come to believe themselves above all laws.
But all her experience and abstract knowledge counted for nothing, andshe had for the first time a sudden and complete appreciation of theevil of the world and of its odd association with even the highervirtues; of the fact that in the upper walks of life the balance wasmore nearly even than on planes where there existed scantieropportunities for development. There was no question that VictoriaGwynne was made on a magnificent plan, as capable of heroism, no doubt,as any of the salient women of history. She was an ornament in herworld, useful, sympathetic, the author of much good, a devoted andinspiring mother. And yet there was no more question that this Frenchmanwas the last of a long line of favored adorers than that Victoria, forall her individualities, was but a type of her kind: a kind that wassufficiently distinct from the hundreds of wholly estimable women thatwere proud to know her, or accepted her as a matter of course.
And even these good women? Had they not the same passions, the sameinclinations in the secrecies of their souls? What was the determiningcause of their indisputable virtue? A happy marriage? Too many children?Timidity? Absence of temptation? Or were they merely orthodox through amore uneven balancing of their qualities, the animal in abeyance? Forthis very reason were they not frequently narrow, unsympathetic,unuseful--unless, indeed, they were of the few who, with the mightytemptations of the Victoria Gwynnes, were mightier still in theirfidelity to some inner and cherished ideal. This lofty ideal ofwomanhood Isabel had unconsciously set up in her soul, and the suddenconviction of its imperfection was, after all, the reason of her suddendespair. For the soul with its immemorial and often incommunicableknowledge may have its moments of terror while the mind wonders.
And she was disheartened at the sense of insignificance andmortification inspired by this contact with a side of life, as real andconsequent as motherhood or government, instead of feeling merelyrepelled, infinitely superior in her unstained maidenhood. She had nowish to emulate, but neither did she relish feeling provincial, a chit,an outsider. Her youthful vanity had its way in a mind too speculative,intelligent, observant, merely to be shocked. Her memory reverted toexperiences that had made her feel as much older than the ordinary girlas she now felt at sea. What was she, Isabel Otis, after all? She felt amere assortment of fluids, which might or might not crystallize intosome such being as she had dimly apprehended, or into something quitecommonplace; realized with a shock that her own deep personal experiencehad left her less definitely moulded than she had imagined.
She rose impatiently and bathed her eyes before ringing for the maid tolace her for dinner--it was long past tea-time. "Perhaps I had bettermarry Lord Hexam and have ten children," she thought. "That sort ofexistence has kept more women up to the correct standard than anythingelse except poverty."