Shadows of Flames Part 2

How strange it seemed to think that the old, familiar life was going on there just the same! She had given her big chestnut, Hal, to Charlotte, when she married Cecil. Charlotte wrote that she rode him every day. Oh, for a ride through the Virginian fields and woods! Oh, to hear the soft jargon of the darkies--to have if only twenty-four hours of the old, free, simple life!

The cab stopped before a house in Bruton Street. This was London.

Perhaps there was no Virginia. Perhaps she had only dreamed it.

When she found that her hostess had not yet come down, she was startled.

"Am I too early? Isn't dinner at eight?" she asked the butler.

"At half-past eight, madam."

"Never mind. I will go up to Mrs. Arundel's room."

She went upstairs and knocked at Olive's door.

"Who is it?" said a sweet, slight voice.

"Sophy. I've come too early."

"Oh, you _darling_!" called the voice. "Come in. It isn't locked." Sophy heard her add, "Open the door for Mrs. Chesney, Marie."

She opened the door herself before the maid could reach it, and entered.

The room was charming grey and pink. The dressing-table was as elaborate as a lady-altar. Before it sat Olive, with her beautiful powdery brown hair over her shoulders. Only one soft puff was in place at the back of her head. The air was full of the scent of "Chypre," a perfume then very fas.h.i.+onable and which Sophy disliked. She could not understand why Olive used it. "Violet" or "Clover" would have suited her so much better.

She went up to Olive, and they kissed each other.

"You darling!" said Mrs. Arundel again. "How stunning you look! And what luck! Did you think it was for eight?"

"I thought your note said eight o'clock."

"Then it was my beastly handwriting. But I'm awfully glad, all the same.

Now we can have a comfy talk."

Sophy sat in a little Louis XVI chair and watched the hair-dressing. She thought, as she so often did, how much prettier it would look dressed simply, without being frizzled so elaborately in front and puffed so intricately behind. Mrs. Arundel's face had taken on the serious look that women's faces wear when their hair is being dressed. Her eyes were large and candid, of a soft Madonna-blue. Her small, prettily shaped mouth was pastel pink. All her features were small and prettily shaped.

She was the type of woman who still looks girlish at thirty-five. As Sophy watched her she was also thinking of how even her friends said that "Olive was never happy unless she had a lover." Three years in England had taught Sophy that a woman may be an excellent mother, a good friend, an attentive wife, and yet have "lovers." How strange it seemed to her! She could not imagine such a thing happening without an upheaval of the universe--her universe, at least. She could understand a woman, made desperate by unhappiness, "running away" from her husband with another man--but to go on living with one man as his wife and having a lover--lovers---- She had given up trying to solve it. She knew that Olive's present flame was a Roman n.o.bleman--Count Varesca--an attache of the Italian Emba.s.sy. She seemed to bloom under it into a sort of recrudescence of virginal charm.

"How you stare with your great eyes, you dear!" said Olive. "Don't I look nice?"

"You look perfectly lovely."

"Wait till you see what a deevy frock Jean has sent me."

"Jean Worth?"

"Is there any other Jean?"

Sophy laughed.

Then Olive sent Marie away.

"You know, Sophy dear, I really have something to tell you."

"Is it nice?"

"No, it's nasty ... perfectly disgusting!"

"What is it about?"

"Your dear mother-in-law--Lady Wychcote."

Sophy stiffened.

"Well?" she said.

"Sophy dear! You mustn't take it too seriously. Only--I thought you ought to know. She's saying it everywhere."

"Saying what?" asked Sophy quietly. "Please go on, Olive."

"She's saying perfectly beastly things about your influence on Cecil.

Trying to put it all on you."

"To put what on me?"

"All his--his queerness. She says you've alienated him from his family.

And...."

Even Olive's glib little tongue stuck here.

"Well?" said Sophy, as before.

"She's saying---- Oh, she's really a beast, that woman! She's saying that you've given him drugs ... taught him how to take them."

"_Drugs?_" said Sophy. Her brows knitted together. She was very pale.

"_Drugs?_" she repeated.

"Yes--opium--morphine ... that kind of thing.... I consulted Jack before telling you." (Jack was Mr. Arundel.) "And he said I _should_ by _all_ means. You aren't vexed with me for telling you, _are_ you?"

Olive's italics were very plaintive.

Sophy was looking down at the tip of her shoe, which she moved slightly to and fro on the soft carpet. She said in a low voice, very gently:

"No; I thank you."

Then she turned and went to the window, pulling aside the curtains and looking blindly out into the soft, pale night.

_Drugs!_ She had never thought of that in her inexperience. All resentment at her mother-in-law's accusation was engulfed in that appalling revelation.

Behind her back, Mrs. Arundel stole nervous peeps at the little ormolu clock on the mantelpiece. That new frock had quant.i.ties of hooks and eyes on it. She wished now that she had not sent Marie away, or that she had waited to tell Sophy until the gown was on. It was unfortunate. One _couldn't_ go up to a person who was overcome with righteous wrath and say: "_Would_ you mind, dear, just hooking me up, before you give way further to your feelings?"

But just here Sophy turned and came towards her.