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CHAPTER XXX: A QUARREL
When the door opened and Florimel glided in, the painter sprang to
his feet to welcome her, and she flew softly, soundless as a moth,
into his arms; for the study being large and full of things, she
was not aware of the presence of Malcolm. From behind a picture
on an easel, he saw them meet, but shrinking from being an open
witness to their secret, and also from being discovered in his
father's clothes by the sister who knew him only as a servant, he
instantly sought escape. Nor was it hard to find, for near where
he stood was a door opening into a small intermediate chamber,
communicating with the drawing room, and by it he fled, intending
to pass through to Lenorme's bedroom, and change his clothes.
With noiseless stride he hurried away, but could not help hearing
a few passionate words that escaped his sister's lips before Lenorme
could warn her that they were not alone--words which, it seemed
to him, could come only from a heart whose very pulse was devotion.
"How can I live without you, Raoul?" said the girl as she clung to
him.
Lenorme gave an uneasy glance behind him, saw Malcolm disappear,
and answered,
"I hope you will never try, my darling."
"Oh, but you know this can't last," she returned, with playfully
affected authority. "It must come to an end. They will interfere."
"Who can? Who will dare?" said the painter with confidence.
"People will. We had better stop it ourselves--before it all comes
out, and we are shamed," said Florimel, now with perfect seriousness.
"Shamed!" cried Lenorme. "--Well, if you can't help being ashamed
of me--and perhaps, as you have been brought up, you can't--
do you not then love me enough to encounter a little shame for my
sake? I should welcome worlds of such for yours!"
Florimel was silent. She kept her face hidden on his shoulder, but
was already halfway to a quarrel.
"You don't love me, Florimel!" he said, after a pause, little
thinking how nearly true were the words.
"Well, suppose I don't!" she cried, half defiantly, half merrily;
and drawing herself from him, she stepped back two paces, and
looked at him with saucy eyes, in which burned two little flames
of displeasure, that seemed to shoot up from the red spots glowing
upon her cheeks. Lenorme looked at her. He had often seen her like
this before, and knew that the shell was charged and the fuse lighted.
But within lay a mixture even more explosive than he suspected; for
not merely was there more of shame and fear and perplexity mingled
with her love than he understood, but she was conscious of having
now been false to him, and that rendered her temper dangerous.
Lenorme had already suffered severely from the fluctuations of
her moods. They had been almost too much for him. He could endure
them, he thought, to all eternity, if he had her to himself, safe
and sure; but the confidence to which he rose every now and then
that she would one day be his, just as often failed him, rudely
shaken by some new symptom of what almost seemed like cherished
inconstancy. If after all she should forsake him! It was impossible,
but she might. If even that should come, he was too much of a man
to imagine anything but a stern encounter of the inevitable, and
he knew he would survive it; but he knew also that life could never
be the same again; that for a season work would be impossible--
the kind of work he had hitherto believed his own rendered for ever
impossible perhaps, and his art degraded to the mere earning of a
living. At best he would have to die and be buried and rise again
before existence could become endurable under the new squalid
condition of life without her. It was no wonder then if her behaviour
sometimes angered him; for even against a Will o' the Wisp that has
enticed us into a swamp, a glow of foolish indignation will spring
up. And now a black fire in his eyes answered the blue flash in
hers; and the difference suggests the diversity of their loves:
hers might vanish in fierce explosion, his would go on burning like
a coal mine. A word of indignant expostulation rose to his lips,
but a thought came that repressed it. He took her hand, and led
her--the wonder was that she yielded, for she had seen the glow
in his eyes, and the fuse of her own anger burned faster; but she
did yield, partly from curiosity, and followed where he pleased
--her hand lying dead in his. It was but to the other end of the
room he led her, to the picture of her father, now all but finished.
Why he did so, he would have found it hard to say. Perhaps the
Genius that lies under the consciousness forefelt a catastrophe,
and urged him to give his gift ere giving should be impossible.
Malcolm stepped into the drawing room, where the table was laid as
usual for breakfast: there stood Caley, helping herself to a spoonful
of honey from Hymettus. At his entrance she started violently, and
her sallow face grew earthy. For some seconds she stood motionless,
unable to take her eyes off the apparition, as it seemed to her,
of the late marquis, in wrath at her encouragement of his daughter
in disgraceful courses. Malcolm, supposing only she was ashamed
of herself, took no farther notice of her, and walked deliberately
towards the other door. Ere he reached it she knew him. Burning
with the combined ires of fright and shame, conscious also that, by
the one little contemptible act of greed in which he had surprised
her, she had justified the aversion which her woman instinct had
from the first recognized in him, she darted to the door, stood
with her back against it, and faced him flaming.
"So!" she cried, "this is how my lady's kindness is abused! The
insolence! Her groom goes and sits for his portrait in her father's
court dress!"
As she ceased, all the latent vulgarity of her nature broke loose,
and with a contracted pff she seized her thin nose between her
thumb and forefinger, to the indication that an evil odour of fish
interpenetrated her atmosphere, and must at the moment be defiling
the garments of the dead marquis.
"My lady shall know of this," she concluded, with a vicious clenching
of her teeth, and two or three nods of her neat head.
Malcolm stood regarding her with a coolness that yet inflamed
her wrath. He could not help smiling at the reaction of shame in
indignation. Had her anger been but a passing flame, that smile
would have turned it into enduring hate. She hissed in his face.
"Go and have the first word," he said; "only leave the door and
let me pass."
"Let you pass indeed! What would you pass for?--The bastard of
old Lord James and a married woman!--I don't care that for you."
And she snapped her fingers in his face.
Malcolm turned from her and went to the window, taking a. newspaper
from the breakfast table as he passed, and there sat down to read
until the way should be clear. Carried beyond herself by his utter
indifference, Caley darted from the room and went straight into
the study.
Lenorme led Florimel in front of the picture. She gave a great
start, and turned and stared pallid at the painter. The effect upon
her was such as he had not foreseen, and the words she uttered were
not such as he could have hoped to hear.
"What would he think of me if he knew?" she cried, clasping her
hands in agony.
That moment Caley burst into the room, her eyes lamping like a
cat's.
"My lady!" she shrieked, "there's MacPhail, the groom, my lady,
dressed up in your honoured father's bee-utiful clo'es as he always
wore when he went to dine with the Prince! And, please, my lady,
he's that rude I could 'ardly keep my 'ands off him."
Florimel flashed a dagger of question in Lenorme's eyes. The painter
drew himself up.
"It was at my request, Lady Lossie," he said.
"Indeed!" returned Florimel, in high scorn, and glanced again at
the picture.
"I see!" she went on. "How could I be such an idiot! It was my
groom's, not my father's likeness you meant to surprise me with!"
Her eyes flashed as if she would annihilate him.
"I have worked hard in the hope of giving you pleasure, Lady Lossie,"
said the painter, with wounded dignity.
"And you have failed," she adjoined cruelly.
The painter took the miniature after which he had been working,
from a table near, handed it to her with a proud obeisance, and
the same moment dashed a brushful of dark paint across the face of
the picture.
"Thank you, sir," said Florimel, and for a moment felt as if she
hated him.
She turned away and walked from the study. The door of the drawing
room was open, and Caley stood by the side of it. Florimel, too
angry to consider what she was about, walked in: there sat Malcolm
in the window, in her father's clothes, and his very attitude, reading
the newspaper. He did not hear her enter. He had been waiting till
he could reach the bedroom unseen by her, for he knew from the
sound of the voices that the study door was open. Her anger rose
yet higher at the sight.
"Leave the room," she said.
He started to his feet, and now perceived that his sister was in the
dress of a servant. He took one step forward and stood--a little
mazed--gorgeous in dress and arms of price, before his mistress
in the cotton gown of a housemaid.
"Take those clothes off instantly," said Florimel slowly, replacing
wrath with haughtiness as well as she might. Malcolm turned to the
door without a word. He saw that things had gone wrong where most
he would have wished them go right.
"I'll see to them being well aired, my lady," said Caley, with
sibilant indignation.
Malcolm went to the study. The painter sat before the picture of
the marquis, with his elbows on his knees, and his head between
his hands.
"Mr Lenorme," said Malcolm, approaching him gently.
"Oh, go away," said Lenorme, without raising his head. "I can't
bear the sight of you yet."
Malcolm obeyed, a little smile playing about the corners of his
mouth. Caley saw it as he passed, and hated him yet worse. He was
in his own clothes, booted and belted, in two minutes. Three sufficed
to replace his father's garments in the portmanteau, and in three
more he and Kelpie went plunging past his mistress and her maid as
they drove home in their lumbering vehicle.
"The insolence of the fellow!" said Caley, loud enough for her
mistress to hear notwithstanding the noise of the rattling windows.
"A pretty pass we are come to!"
But already Florimel's mood had begun to change. She felt that she
had done her best to alienate men on whom she could depend, and
that she had chosen for a confidante one whom she had no ground
for trusting.
She got safe and unseen to her room; and Caley believed she had
only to improve the advantage she had now gained.
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