"Verily, O Gentile maiden." Lawrence grinned at her over his champagne. "I lunched Raphael last time I was in town and he told me all about it. But I shouldn't tell them. It isn't good for Gentiles to know too much about Weltpot.i.tik. That's our show." He leant back in his chair and his hot eyes challenged her to call him a dirty Jew.

Selincourt caught his last remark and looked him up and down with a twinkling glance. He no longer wondered why Lawrence had spent his summer in the tents of Kedar--so differently do brothers look on their own and other men's sisters. But he knew men and things pretty well, and at a moment when Laura was speaking to Isabel he looked straight at Lawrence and touched his gla.s.s with a murmured, "Go slow, old man." The elder man had seen instantly what neither Mrs. Clowes nor Isabel had any notion of, that under his easy manner Hyde's nerves were all on edge. Lawrence started and stared at him, half offended: but after a moment his good sense extorted a grudging "Thanks." It warned him to be grateful for the hint, and he took it: a second gla.s.s of champagne that night would infallibly have gone to his head.

A darkened theatre, fantastically decorated in scarlet and silver: a French orchestra already playing a delicate prelude: a lively audience--a typical "Moor" audience--agreeably ready to be piqued and scandalized as well as amused.

All the plays Isabel had ever seen were Salisbury matinees of "As You Like It" and "Julius Caesar." It was not by chance that Hyde introduced her tonight to this filigree comedy, so cynical under its glittering dialogue. He could find no swifter way to present to her le monde ou l'on s'amuse in all its refined and defiant charm. He liked to watch her laugh, he laughed himself and gave a languid clap or two when Madeleine Wild made one of her famous entries, but his main interest was in his plan of campaign.

Yet chance can never he counted out. When the lights went up after the first act Lawrence found himself looking directly across the rather small and narrow proscenium at a lady in the opposite box. Who the devil was it?--The devil, with a vengeance! It was Mrs. Cleve.

CHAPTER XIV

Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom she waved a b.u.t.terfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel: apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued between them was not difficult to follow. She made him a request, he rolled plaintive eyeb.a.l.l.s at her, the lady carried her point, the gentleman left the box. Then--one saw it coming--she leaned forward till the diamonds in her plenitude of fair hair sparkled like a crown of flame, and beckoned Lawrence to join her.

He cursed her impertinence. Apart from leaving Isabel, he did not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve: he had forgotten her existence, and it was a shock to him to meet her again. Good heavens, had he ever admired her? That white blanc-mange of a woman in her ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne's without the saying of Yvonne's wiry slimness? Remembering the summerhouse at Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his taste: he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he had gone so far.--He had not yet realized that during three months among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified itself from day to day.

But she had been his hostess. Impossible to refuse: and with a vexed word of apology to Laura he went out. "Dear me, what an opulent lady!" said Laura with lifted eyebrows. "Who's your friend, Lulu?"

Lucian drily named her. "Queen's Gate, and Sundays at the Metropole. They're s.h.i.+pping people, which is where the diamond ta-ra-ras come from. Oh yes, there's a husband, quite a nice fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps. No, I don't know who the chap is she's got with her. Some dusky brother. Not Cleve." He fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.

It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow. Mrs. Cleve shook hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier's empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain, was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck. An interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of Philippa's personality, one would have had to be very young, or very innocent, to overlook her drift.

"Well, my darling," said Laura, "and what do you think of Madeleine Wild?" She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve.

"Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?"

"Angelical!" said Isabel. "And isn't it luck for me, Royalty coming tonight? I've never seen any one Royal before. It's one of those evenings when nothing goes wrong."

Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world? She prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear, Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through her black lashes watched, not the d.u.c.h.ess of c.u.mberland's rubies, but those two in the opposite box. Between it and her stretched a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval was over. Across the semi-dark of a "Courtyard by Moonlight" it was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand and arm, and Mrs. Cleve's fair hair and immense jewelled fan.

What were they saying to each other in this public isolation where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?

Selincourt gave a little laugh as the curtain rose. "An old flame," he whispered to Laura, not dreaming that Isabel would understand even if she heard.

"What's an old flame?" asked Isabel, examining him with her brilliant eyes.

"Feuerzauber," said Selincourt readily. "It means fire spell.

It's often played between the acts."

"Lucian, Lucian!" said his sister laughing.

"I don't know much about music," said Isabel. "Was it well played?"

"Ah! I know a lot about music," said Selincourt, looking at her very kindly. "No, it was rottenly played. But some fellers can't tell a good tune from a bad one."

Lawrence did not return till the middle of the third act, and offered no apology. He looked fierce and jaded and his eyes were strained. "Past eleven," he said, hurrying Laura into her coat while the orchestra played through the National Anthem, for which Selincourt stood stiffly to attention. "No time for supper, our train goes at 11:59, I hate first nights, the waits between the acts are so infernally long." Laura's eyebrows, faintly arched, hinted at derision. "Oh, it dragged," said Lawrence impatiently.

"Let's get out of this."

It was a clear autumn night: the air was mild, and stars were burning overhead almost as brightly as the lamps in Shaftesbury Avenue. What a chase of lamps, high and low, like fireflies in a wood: green as gra.s.s, red as blood, or yellow as a naked flame!

What a sombre city, and what a fleeting crowd! Isabel had never seen midnight London before. Coming out into the hurrying street roofed with stars, she was seized by an impression of a solitude lonelier than any desert, and dark, like the terror of an eerie sunset or a dry storm on the moor.

"These taxis are waiting for us," Lawrence had come up behind her and his hand was on her arm. "Will you bring your sister, Selincourt?-- Miss Isabel, will you come with me?"

"Oh but--!" said Laura, startled. She was responsible to Val for Isabel, and she was not sure that either Val or Isabel would welcome this arrangement.

"Thank you," said Isabel, obediently getting into the second cab.

"Better come, dear," said Selincourt with a shrug, and Laura yielded, for it would have been tiresome to make Isabel get out again, and after all what signified a twenty minutes' run? Yet after the Cleve incident she did not quite like it. Nor did Selincourt; Hyde's overbearing manner set his teeth on edge; but the gentle Lucian would sooner have faced a loaded rifle than a dispute. He agreed with Laura, however, that her fair Arcadian was a trifle too innocent for her years.

Alone with Isabel, Lawrence took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick fair hair, so thick that it might have been grey, while the deep lines round his mouth began to soften as though fatigue and irritation were being wiped away. "Thank heaven that's over."

"I've enjoyed every minute of it," said Isabel smiling. "Thank you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat! If I weren't sleepy I should like to begin again."

"Oh, don't get sleepy yet," said Lawrence. He pulled up the fur collar of her coat and b.u.t.toned it under her chin. "I can't have you catching cold, or what will Val say? You aren't used to driving about in evening dress and we've a long run before us.

And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven't you?

I didn't know how to sit through that confounded play. Yes, you can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can't take me in. I know you must have hated it as much as I did. But it's all right now."

Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her waist. He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure of it . . . the truth being that under his impa.s.sive manner impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind. "I love you, Isabel, and you love me. Don't deny it."

"Don't do that," said Isabel: "don't hold me."

"Why not? no one can see us."

"Take your arm away. I won't have you hold me. No, Captain Hyde, I will not. I am not Mrs. Cleve."

"Isabel!" said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.

"O! I oughtn't to have said that," Isabel murmured. She hid her face in her hands. "Oh Val-- I wish Val were here!"

"My darling," they were among the dark streets now that border the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his tenderness, "what is there you can't say to me or I to you?

You're so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more than the child, and there's nothing on earth you need be ashamed to ask me. Naturally you want to be sure. . . . But there was nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has been; I can't discuss it, but there's no tie, no--do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?"

"I'm not crying." She tried to face him, but he was too old for her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the seasoned judgment and the fixed view. Struggling in imperfect apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces-- they came near to mastering her. In his eyes it was natural for her to be jealous. But she was not jealous. That pa.s.sion can hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had felt for Mrs. Cleve. What had pierced her heart and killed her childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have lowered himself to the same level. She knew now that she loved him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or poor, but he must--he must be what in her child's vocabulary she called "good," or if not that he must at least see good and bad with clear eyes: sins one can pardon, but the idea of any essential inferiority of taste was torture to her. And meanwhile Lawrence wide of the mark began to coax her. . "My own," his arm stole inside her coat again, "there's nothing to get so red about! Come, you do like me--confess now--you like me better than Val?"

"No, no," Isabel murmured, and slowly, though she had not strength to free herself, she turned her head away. "If you kiss me now I never shall forgive you."

"I won't, but why are you so shy? My Isabel, what is there to be afraid of?"

"You," Isabel sighed out. He was gratified, and betrayed it. "No, Lawrence, you misunderstand. I am not--not shy of you . . ." Under his mocking eyes she gave it up and tried again. "Well, I am, but if that were all I shouldn't refuse . . . I should like you to be happy. Oh! yes, I love you, and I'd so far rather not fight, I'd rather--" she waited a moment like a swimmer on the sand's edge, but his deep need of her carried her away and with a little sigh she flung herself into the open sea--"let you kiss me, because I don't want anything so much as to make you happy, and I believe you would be, and besides I--I should like it myself. But I must know more.

I must know the truth. She--Mrs. Cleve--"

"I've already given you my word: do you think I would lie to you?"

"No, I don't; they say men do, but I'm sure you wouldn't. I don't believe you ever would deceive me. But there have been other women, haven't there, since your wife left you?" Lawrence a.s.sented briefly. At that moment he would have liked to see Mrs.

Cleve hanged and drawn and quartered. "Other women who were-- who--with whom--"