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CHAPTER XXIX: AN EVIL OMEN
Florimel was beginning to understand that the shield of the portrait
was not large enough to cover many more visits to the studio. Still
she must and would venture; and should anything be said, there at
least was the portrait. For some weeks it had been all but finished,
was never off its easel, and always showed a touch of wet paint
somewhere--he kept the last of it lingering, ready to prove
itself almost yet not altogether finished. What was to follow its
absolute completion, neither of them could tell. The worst of it
was that their thoughts about it differed discordantly. Florimel
not unfrequently regarded the rupture of their intimacy as a thing
not undesirable--this chiefly after such a talk with Lady Bellair
as had been illustrated by some tale of misalliance or scandal
between high or low, of which kind of provision for age the bold
faced countess had a large store: her memory was little better than
an ashpit of scandal. Amongst other biographical scraps one day
she produced the case of a certain earl's daughter, who, having
disgraced herself by marrying a low fellow--an artist, she
believed--was as a matter of course neglected by the man whom,
in accepting him, she had taught to despise her, and, before
a twelvemonth was over--her family finding it impossible to
hold communication with her--was actually seen by her late maid
scrubbing her own floor.
"Why couldn't she leave it dirty?" said Florimel.
"Why indeed," returned Lady Bellair, "but that people sink to their
fortunes! Blue blood won't keep them out of the gutter."
The remark was true, but of more general application than she
intended, seeing she herself was in the gutter and did not know
it. She spoke only of what followed on marriage beneath one's natal
position, than which she declared there was nothing worse a woman
of rank could do.
"She may get over anything but that," she would say, believing,
but not saying, that she spoke from experience.
Was it part of the late marquis's purgatory to see now, as the natural
result of the sins of his youth, the daughter whose innocence was
dear to him exposed to all the undermining influences of this good
natured but low moralled woman, whose ideas of the most mysterious
relations of humanity were in no respect higher than those of a
class which must not even be mentioned in my pages? At such tales
the high born heart would flutter in Florimel's bosom, beat itself
against its bars, turn sick at the sight of its danger, imagine
it had been cherishing a crime, and resolve--soon--before very
long--at length--finally--to break so far at least with the
painter as to limit their intercourse to the radiation of her power
across a dinner table, the rhythmic heaving of their two hearts at
a dance, or the quiet occasional talk in a corner, when the looks
of each would reveal to the other that they knew themselves the
martyrs of a cruel and inexorable law. It must be remembered that
she had had no mother since her childhood, that she was now but
a girl, and that the passion of a girl to that of a woman is "as
moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." Of genuine love
she had little more than enough to serve as salt to the passion;
and passion, however bewitching, yea, entrancing a condition, may
yet be of more worth than that induced by opium or hashish, and
a capacity for it may be conjoined with anything or everything
contemptible and unmanly or unwomanly. In Florimel's case, however,
there was chiefly much of the childish in it. Definitely separated
from Lenorme, she would have been merry again in a fortnight; and
yet, though she half knew this herself, and at the same time was
more than half ashamed of the whole affair, she did not give it up
--would not--only intended by and by to let it go, and meantime
gave--occasionally--pretty free flutter to the half grown wings
of her fancy.
Her liking for the painter had therefore, not unnaturally, its
fits. It was subject in a measure to the nature of the engagements
she had--that is, to the degree of pleasure she expected from
them; it was subject, as we have seen, to skilful battery from the
guns of her chaperon's entrenchment; and more than to either was
it subject to those delicate changes of condition which in the
microcosm are as frequent, and as varied both in kind and degree,
as in the macrocosm. The spirit has its risings and settings of
sun and moon, its seasons, its clouds and stars, its solstices, its
tides, its winds, its storms, its earthquakes--infinite vitality
in endless fluctuation. To rule these changes, Florimel had
neither the power that comes of love, nor the strength that comes
of obedience. What of conscience she had was not yet conscience
toward God, which is the guide to freedom, but conscience toward
society, which is the slave of a fool. It was no wonder then that
Lenorme, believing--hoping she loved him, should find her hard
to understand. He said hard; but sometimes he meant impossible. He
loved as a man loves who has thought seriously, speculated, tried
to understand; whose love therefore is consistent with itself,
harmonious with its nature and history, changing only in form and
growth, never in substance and character. Hence the idea of Florimel
became in his mind the centre of perplexing thought; the unrest
of her being metamorphosed on the way, passed over into his, and
troubled him sorely. Neither was his mind altogether free of the
dread of reproach. For self reproach he could find little or no
ground, seeing that to pity her much for the loss of consideration
her marriage with him would involve, would be to undervalue the honesty
of his love and the worth of his art; and indeed her position was
so independently based that she could not lose it even by marrying
one who had not the social standing of a brewer or a stockbroker;
but his pride was uneasy under the foreseen criticism that his
selfishness had taken advantage of her youth and inexperience to
work on the mind of an ignorant girl--a criticism not likely to
be the less indignant that those who passed it would, without a
shadow of compunction, have handed her over, body, soul, and goods,
to one of their own order, had he belonged to the very canaille of
the race.
The painter was not merely in love with Florimel: he loved her.
I will not say that he was in no degree dazzled by her rank, or
that he felt no triumph, as a social nomad camping on the No Man's
Land of society, at the thought of the justification of the human
against the conventional, in his scaling of the giddy heights of
superiority, and, on one of its topmost peaks, taking from her nest
that rare bird in the earth, a landed and titled marchioness. But
such thoughts were only changing hues on the feathers of his love,
which itself was a mighty bird with great and yet growing wings.
A day or two passed before Florimel went again to the studio
accompanied, notwithstanding Lenorme's warning and her own doubt,
yet again by her maid, a woman, unhappily, of Lady Bellair's finding.
At Lossie House, Malcolm had felt a repugnance to her, both moral
and physical. When first he heard her name, one of the servants
speaking of her as Miss Caley, he took it for Scaley, and if that
was not her name, yet scaly was her nature.
This time Florimel rode to Chelsea with Malcolm, having directed
Caley to meet her there; and, the one designing to be a little early,
and the other to be a little late, two results naturally followed
--first, that the lovers had a few minutes alone; and second,
that when Caley crept in, noiseless and unannounced as a cat, she
had her desire, and saw the painter's arm round Florimel's waist,
and her head on his bosom. Still more to her contentment, not hearing,
they did not see her, and she crept out again quietly as she had
entered: it would of course be to her advantage to let them know
that she had seen, and that they were in her power, but it might be
still more to her advantage to conceal the fact so long as there
was a chance of additional discovery in the same direction. Through
the success of her trick it came about that Malcolm, chancing to
look up from Honour's back to the room where he always breakfasted
with his new friend, saw in one of the windows, as in a picture,
a face radiant with such an expression as that of the woman headed
snake might have worn when he saw Adam take the apple from the hand
of Eve.
Caley was of the common class of servants in this, that she
considered service servitude, and took her amends in selfishness;
she was unlike them in this, that while false to her employers,
she made no common cause with her fellows against them--regarded
and sought none but her own ends. Her one thought was to make the
most of her position; for that, to gain influence with, and, if it
might be, power over her mistress; and, thereto, first of all, to
find out whether she had a secret: she had now discovered not merely
that she had one, but the secret itself! She was clever, greedy,
cunning; equally capable, according to the faculty with which she
might be matched, of duping or of being duped. She rather liked
her mistress, but watched her in the interests of Lady Bellair.
She had a fancy for the earl, a natural dislike for Malcolm which
she concealed in distant politeness, and for all the rest of the
house, indifference. As to her person, she had a neat oval face,
thin and sallow, in expression subacid; a lithe, rather graceful
figure, and hands too long, with fingers almost too tapering--of
which hands and fingers she was very careful, contemplating them
in secret with a regard amounting almost to reverence: they were
her sole witnesses to a descent in which she believed, but of which
she had no other shadow of proof.
Caley's face, then, with its unsaintly illumination, gave Malcolm
something to think about as he sat there upon Honour, the new horse.
Clearly she had had a triumph: what could it be? The nature of the
woman was not altogether unknown to him even from the first, and
he could not for months go on meeting her occasionally in passages
and on stairs without learning to understand his own instinctive
dislike: it was plain the triumph was not in good. It was plain
too that it was in something which had that very moment occurred,
and could hardly have to do with anyone but her mistress. Then her
being in that room revealed more. They would never have sent her
out of the study, and so put themselves in her power. She had gone
into the house but a moment before, a minute or two behind her
mistress, and he knew with what a cat-like step she went about:
she had surprised them---discovered how matters stood between
her mistress and the painter! He saw everything--almost as it
had taken place. She had seen without being seen, and had retreated
with her prize! Florimel was then in the woman's power: what was
he to do? He must at least let her gather what warning she could
from the tale of what he had seen.
Once arrived at a resolve, Malcolm never lost time. They had turned
but one corner on their way home, when he rode up to her.
"Please, my lady," he began.
But the same instant Florimel was pulling up.
"Malcolm," she said, "I have left my pocket handkerchief. I must
go back for it."
As she spoke, she turned her horse's head. But Malcolm, dreading
lest Caley should yet be lingering, would not allow her to expose
herself to a greater danger than she knew.
"Before you go, my lady, I must tell you something I happened to
see while I waited with the horses," he said.
The earnestness of his tone struck Florimel. She looked at him with
eyes a little wider, and waited to hear.
"I happened to look up at the drawing room windows, my lady,
and Caley came to one of them with such a look on her face!
I can't exactly describe it to you, my lady, but--"
"Why do you tell me?" interrupted his mistress, with absolute
composure, and hard, questioning eyes.
But she had drawn herself up in the saddle. Then, before he could
reply, a flash of thought seemed to cross her face with a quick
single motion of her eyebrows, and it was instantly altered and
thoughtful. She seemed to have suddenly perceived some cause for
taking a mild interest in his communication.
"But it cannot be, Malcolm," she said, in quite a changed tone. "You
must have taken some one else for her. She never left the studio
all the time I was there."
"It was immediately after her arrival, my lady. She went in about
two minutes after your ladyship, and could not have had much more
than time to go upstairs when I saw her come to the window. I felt
bound to tell your ladyship."
"Thank you, Malcolm," returned Florimel kindly. "You did right to
tell me,--but--it's of no consequence. Mr Lenorme's housekeeper
and she must have been talking about something."
But her eyebrows were now thoughtfully contracted over her eyes.
"There had been no time for that, I think, my lady," said Malcolm.
Florimel turned again and rode on, saying no more about the
handkerchief. Malcolm saw that he had succeeded in warning her,
and was glad. But had he foreseen to what it would lead, he would
hardly have done it.
Florimel was indeed very uneasy. She could not help strongly suspecting
that she had betrayed herself to one who, if not an intentional
spy, would yet be ready enough to make a spy's use of anything she
might have picked up. What was to be done? It was now too late to
think of getting rid of her: that would be but her signal to disclose
whatever she had seen, and so not merely enjoy a sweet revenge, but
account with clear satisfactoriness for her dismissal. What would
not Florimel now have given for some one who could sympathise with
her and yet counsel her! She was afraid to venture another meeting
with Lenorme, and besides was not a little shy of the advantage
the discovery would give him in pressing her to marry him. And now
first she began to feel as if her sins were going to find her out.
A day or two passed in alternating psychical flaws and fogs--
with poor glints of sunshine between. She watched her maid, but her
maid knew it, and discovered no change in her manner or behaviour.
Weary of observation she was gradually settling into her former
security, when Caley began to drop hints that alarmed her. Might
it not be altogether the safest thing to take her into confidence?
It would be such a relief, she thought, to have a woman she could
talk to! The result was that she began to lift a corner of the veil
that hid her trouble; the woman encouraged her, and at length the
silly girl threw her arms round the scaly one's neck, much to that
person's satisfaction, and told her that she loved Mr Lenorme. She
knew of course, she said, that she could not marry him. She was
only waiting a fit opportunity to free herself from a connection
which, however delightful, she was unable to justify. How the maid
interpreted her confession, I do not care to enquire very closely,
but anyhow it was in a manner that promised much to her after
influence. I hasten over this part of Florimel's history, for that
confession to Caley was perhaps the one thing in her life she had
most reason to be ashamed of, for she was therein false to the
being she thought she loved best in the world. Could Lenorme have
known her capable of unbosoming herself to such a woman, it would
almost have slain the love he bore her. The notions of that odd
and end sort of person, who made his livelihood by spreading paint,
would have been too hideously shocked by the shadow of an intimacy
between his love and such as she.
Caley first comforted the weeping girl, and then began to insinuate
encouragement. She must indeed give him up--there was no help
for that; but neither was there any necessity for doing so all at
once. Mr Lenorme was a beautiful man, and any woman might be proud
to be loved by him. She must take her time to it. She might trust
her. And so on and on--for she was as vulgar minded as the worst
of those whom ladies endure about their persons, handling their
hair, and having access to more of their lock fast places than they
would willingly imagine.
The first result was that, on the pretext of bidding him farewell,
and convincing him that he and she must meet no more, fate and
fortune, society and duty being all alike against their happiness
--I mean on that pretext to herself, the only one to be deceived
by it--Florimel arranged with her woman one evening to go the next
morning to the studio: she knew the painter to be an early riser,
and always at his work before eight o'clock. But although she tried
to imagine she had persuaded herself to say farewell, certainly
she had not yet brought her mind to any ripeness of resolve in the
matter.
At seven o'clock in the morning, the marchioness habited like a
housemaid, they slipped out by the front door, turned the corners
of two streets, found a hackney coach waiting for them, and arrived
in due time at the painter's abode.
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